Summer of the Geek (20 page)

“You did not,” Finn said accusingly. He stared at Charlie as though she’d personally wounded him.

Charlie managed to compose herself quickly. She shrugged modestly. “It wasn’t all that hard,” she said.

“I didn’t even know you played!”

“You never asked,” Charlie said.

“Prove it,” Finn said. “Show me how you get to level five right now.”

Charlie looked around pointedly. “Um, hello? We’re in a bowling alley.”

“So?” Finn asked.

“There aren’t any computers here.”

“I have a laptop in my car,” Finn said, turning. “I’ll go get it.”

Charlie and I exchanged an alarmed glance. I was pretty sure that she had never even played Arachnozombies before. Chances were she wouldn’t get past level one. Luckily, we were saved by the timely appearance of Phoebe McLeod, wearing a short denim skirt that showed off her long tan legs.

“Hi,” Phoebe said, giggling a little as she greeted Finn.

“Hi, yourself,” Finn said, sidling over to her for a kiss, all thoughts of Arachnozombies forgotten.

Charlie looked like she wanted to vomit at this scene. I tried to distract her.

“Do you want to be the scorekeeper?” I asked as I signed our names into the computer that kept track of the bowling scores.

“No, thanks,” Charlie muttered.

“But you love being scorekeeper,” I said.

Finn and Phoebe started whispering into each other’s ears, causing Phoebe’s giggling to become even louder and more giddy.

“No, I need to concentrate on my goals for the evening,” Charlie said. She straightened suddenly and waved. “Oh, good, Hannah and Emmett are here. Hannah! Over here!”

I turned and saw Hannah and Emmett strolling toward us, hand in hand.

“Hi, Bloom,” Emmett said to me. Emmet Dutch was as gorgeous as ever—tall, broad-shouldered, and tan. He had blond hair that curled back from his face and eyes the color of the ocean at sunset. There was a time, pre-Dex, when hearing Emmett Dutch call me Bloom and seeing him holding hands with my stepsister would have caused my insides to shrivel up with jealousy. Happily, he no longer had that affect on me.

“Hi, Emmett,” I said. “Are you having a good summer?”

“Pretty good,” Emmett said cheerfully.

“Is he here yet?” Hannah asked Charlie.

Charlie widened her eyes and looked meaningfully in Finn’s direction. He was so absorbed in Phoebe, he didn’t notice the exchange.

“Him?” Hannah asked, surprised.

With his shaggy hair and goofy smile, I knew Finn was not what Hannah would consider much of a catch. Still, she’d given her word, so she shrugged off her surprise and got to work.

“Where’s Dex?” she asked me. “I thought he was bringing Luke and Brian.”

Hannah, of course, knew both guys. She went to school with them at Orange Cove High, and was friendly with most of the jocks.

“He said he’d be here,” I said.

“Good,” Hannah said. She turned to Charlie and began pelting her with instructions in a low, fierce whisper. “Luke’s a lot more outgoing than Brian, so he’s probably the better bet. Still, you never know who you’ll have better chemistry with, so flirt like crazy with both of them. Touch your hair a lot, make eye contact, find reasons to touch his arm. Guys love that. Oh, and I brought you this.” Hannah handed Charlie a tube of lip gloss. “Put it on.”

Charlie looked doubtfully at the tube. “I don’t usually wear lip gloss. My hair gets stuck in it,” she said.

“You’re as bad as Miranda,” Hannah said, rolling her eyes.

“Hey!” I said.

Hannah ignored me. “Trust me. Put it on. You can’t flirt without glossy lips,” Hannah said with such authority that Charlie meekly obeyed.

I saw Dex enter the bowling alley, flanked by two guys who looked vaguely familiar. As I’d suspected, they were both of the typical high school jock variety. One was thicker through the chest and had very dark hair. The other had longish blond hair, and was even taller and lankier than Dex.

“Hey,” he said when they’d reached us. He smiled down at me.

“Hi,” I said.

“This is Luke and that’s Brian,” Finn said. “And this is Miranda.”

We all said hello. Luke was the dark-haired one, and he stood with his hands in his pockets, his eyes roaming over the crowd. They rested briefly on Hannah, again on Phoebe, and then lingered when they got to Charlie. I turned and saw that Charlie was smiling at him, while tilting her head to one side and tucking her purple hair behind her ears, as per Hannah’s instructions.

“Hey,” he said to her.

“Hey yourself,” Charlie said flirtatiously.

Hannah looked pleased, but I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable. I didn’t think anything good could come of Charlie acting like anyone other than herself. Charlie seemed to read my thoughts, and winked at me.

Don’t worry
, the wink said.
I’ve got a plan.

I rolled my eyes.
That’s exactly what I’m worried about.

Charlie grinned at me and then turned her attention back to Luke. “Let’s have a bowl-off,” she suggested. “We’ll pick teams, and then the team with the highest score has to buy wings and cheese fries for the other. The shoe rental is over there.”

Everyone who hadn’t already gotten their bowling shoes obediently went off to rent some, accompanied by Finn, who didn’t seem willing to leave Phoebe’s side for even a moment. Only Hannah remained at the lane with Charlie and me.

“No way,” she said, shaking her head, so that her platinum hair swished around her face. “I am absolutely not wearing rental shoes. That’s totally gross.”

“You have to or they won’t let you bowl,” Charlie explained.

“Fine, then I won’t bowl,” Hannah said.

“This was your big plan,” I reminded her. “You can’t not participate.”

“I’ll just watch, and give advice where needed,” Hannah suggested.

“No way,” I said. I pointed to the shoe rental. “Go rent a pair of bowling shoes. We’re all in this together now.”

Hannah pouted, but gave in.

“She really doesn’t have to bowl if she doesn’t want to,” Charlie said as we watched her join Emmett in line.

“Yes, she does,” I said. “I’m not missing a chance to see Hannah in ugly footwear for the first time ever.”

“I thought you two were getting along better these days,” Charlie said.

“We are. But even so, it’s too good an opportunity to pass up,” I said. I glanced at my friend, who looked pale and nervous, but also determined. “You don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to.”

“I absolutely want to,” Charlie said firmly. “Finn’s not going to know what hit him.”

At first, Charlie’s prediction seemed to fall flat. We divided up into two teams. Dex, Brian, Hannah, Emmett, and I bowled on lane two, while Finn, Phoebe, Luke, and Charlie bowled on lane three. Hannah tried to talk Brian into joining the other group—“We’re two couples over here. You don’t want to be a fifth wheel,” she said—but he wouldn’t budge.

“It looks like there are two couples over there, too,” he said, nodding at Luke and Charlie, who were talking animatedly. Charlie was incorporating all of Hannah’s flirting tricks, touching her hair and making lots of eye contact. Luke definitely seemed interested in her, I thought, but for all the good it seemed to be doing—Finn was so wrapped up in Phoebe, he didn’t seem aware of their existence.

“I’ll be a fifth wheel either way,” Brian continued, sitting down at our lane.

Hannah didn’t seem overly pleased by this, but the sight of Charlie’s successful flirting with Luke seemed to mollify her.

“Who wants to go first?” I asked as I began signing everyone up on the electronic scoreboard.

It turned out to be pretty fun for a while. Dex was a terrible bowler, which was a surprise, considering how athletic he was in general.

“Stop laughing at me!” Dex demanded as he guttered the fifth ball of the night.

“Sorry,” I said, still giggling. “It’s just that you bowl about as well I drive.”

Hannah got the hang of it, under Emmett’s tutelage, and Brian was pretty good, too. But I seemed to be having the lucky streak of the night, hitting strike after strike, and easily taking first place.

“Yes,” I said, raising a fist of victory as I downed all of the pins in a spare.

“It’s just pure luck. There’s no skill involved at all in this game,” Dex grumbled as he stood to take his turn.

“So says the guy with a score of twenty-seven,” I teased.

I sat on one of the benches behind our lane and took the opportunity to glance over at the other group. Phoebe was bowling. Behind her, Finn sat alone on one bench, while Luke and Charlie, deep in conversation, sat close together on the other. Luke had slung a casual arm over the back of the bench, as though he were working his way up to shifting it onto Charlie’s shoulders. Finn seemed to have finally snapped out of his Phoebe-induced trance. Instead of watching his girlfriend bowl, he had his eyes pinned on Charlie and Luke.

Maybe Hannah’s plan is working, I thought with a jolt of shock.

“He’s really bad at this,” Brian said, sitting down beside me.

I turned and saw Dex shank the bowling ball straight into the gutter. I laughed.

“Yeah. He’s pretty awful,” I agreed.

Brian smiled at me. Like Dex, he didn’t have the typical jock, meathead look about him. His brown eyes were thoughtful, and he seemed almost uncomfortable in his body, as though it had grown too quickly for him to get used to it. His legs were folded in front of him, and his long arms rested on his knees.

“Are you on the lacrosse team, too?” I asked.

Brian nodded. “I’m not that good,” he admitted. “I’m a second stringer. Or, actually, more like a third stringer. I really just play to stay in shape for the fall soccer season.”

“They seem like they’re a lot alike, soccer and lacrosse,” I said.

“Yeah, except that in soccer, no one tries to whack you in the knees with a long stick,” Brian said. “Which is a good thing, I think.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“The team is really going to miss Dex next year,” Brian said.

It’s weird that how when you know you’re about to hear something you really don’t want to hear, everything seems to slow down a bit. Noises get a bit dimmer, people seem to move slower. It’s almost as if there’s a slight hiccup in time. This was one of those moments. Even though I didn’t know what Brian was talking about—miss Dex? Why? Where else would he be?—I instantly knew it was going to be something dreadful. And I also knew that there was no way I would be able to swallow back my next question, as much as I might want to.

“Where is he going to be next year?” I asked quietly.

Brian looked surprised. “You don’t know?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Brian looked at Dex’s back, his expression shifting to one of uneasiness. “Oh, man. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t realize . . . I mean, I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?” I asked again. My skin felt like it was both hotter and more sensitive than usual. My cheeks burned, and the tension of my hair pulled back in a ponytail suddenly made my scalp ache.

“Miranda, what’s wrong?” Hannah asked sharply, looking from Brian to me. “Brian, did you say something rude to her?”

Brian held up his hands, and stood. “No way. I just . . . look. I’m going to go get a soda.”

He bounded off, throwing one worried glance back at us over his shoulder. I sat frozen in place. Where was Dex going? Was his family moving? Was that what he had talked to Wendy Erickson about, but hadn’t wanted to tell me?

Hannah stood, and plopped down in Brian’s vacated seat. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Brian said . . .” I stopped, my throat closing, refusing to let out the words.

“Brian said what?” Dex asked, suddenly in front of us, looking down at me, his face creased with worry. I started at his sudden appearance—I hadn’t even noticed that he’d finished his turn.

I stared back up at him. “Brian said you’re not going to be here next year,” I said quietly. “Is that true?”

“What? I’m sure Brian was just kidding,” Hannah sad quickly. “Right, Dex? I mean, where would you go?”

But Dex had gone pale. He swallowed, and then took in a deep breath.

“I was going to tell you,” he said.

I nodded, even though it felt as if all of the air had been sucked out of the room. “Tell me what?”

“I got a scholarship to the Brown Academy. It’s a prep school up north. They want me to play lacrosse for them,” Dex said.

I nodded again and tried to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind. He was leaving town. And he was leaving me. I stood suddenly, surprising Dex so much that he took a step back. Hannah was staring up at us with her mouth agape.

“I have to go,” I said. My voice sounded weird to my own ears—thin and high-pitched.