A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions (11 page)

O
n Saturday, we sat at a rectangular brown table near the back of the library, waiting to have our first study session with the Wicked Witches of the West.

They were late. Of course.

“So, you gonna text him back?” Beanpole asked as I looked at my phone.

“Dee-leet,” I replied, pushing a button.

“Mo, isn't this whole dee-leet thing with your dad getting a little old?” she asked.

“Not to me,” I said. “But if he stops sending me messages, I promise I'll stop deleting them.”

“Ssshh…here they come,” Q said, interrupting us. “Quick, look intimidating.”

“Intimidating?”

“Yeah, make them fear the nerd herd.” Q lowered her chin, squinted, and flashed her best
Don't mess with me
face. I watched as she contorted her body into all kinds of angles.

“Downright menacing,” I said. “I'll be surprised if they even have the nerve to sit down.”

She reached for her scuba tank.
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.

“Oh yeah. That helps, too.”

Kiki, leading the way, bounded into a chair and tossed down her backpack. Brattany and Sofes, flanking her, took seats as well—one on Kiki's left, one on Kiki's right—and tossed down their backpacks, too. It was three of us on one side of the table and three of them on the other, with about three feet of desktop space in the middle separating us.

“First rule: no phones,” Kiki said, looking at Beanpole firmly gripping her cellie.

“Number one,” I answered. “You don't make the rules. And number two, you're late.”

“What are you talking about? It's quarter after two, just like we said,” Brattany responded.

Q raised her wrist and read the digits on her calculator watch. “The current time is 2:17 and 36, 37, 38”—
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh
—“41, 42, 43 seconds.”

Kiki stared at Q with a puzzled, semimortified look. Beanpole, always the peacemaker, tried to explain nicely.

“Accurate statistics are important to her.”

“Is any of that,” Brattany said, pointing at Q, “contagious? 'Cause, like, if I catch something, my dad's a lawyer.”

“I'd rather have her on my team than you,” I shot back.

“And I'd rather not have any of you on my team,” Kiki said.

“So we agree there. But our principal, Mr. Moron, has us backed into a corner, so let's just get to it so we can get it over with, okay?” She flipped though her nine-thousand-page binder. “I've already decided that the best way to do this, since we only have about three weeks, is to just split it up. We'll study Art, Theater, and Music; you take Science, Math, Language Arts, and History.”

“No way,” I replied. “Why should you get all the easy subjects while we do the hard ones?”

“She didn't say
moo-sic
, skinny-chubby. Like, of course, if food was a category, we'd let you take it,” Brattany said to me.

Kiki laughed. “Double-double nice-nice,” she said as she and Brattany high-fived.

“Come on, you guys,” Beanpole pleaded. “We need to be a team.”

“That's right,” Sofes said. “Just like there's no shimmer in your hair if there's no
H
without the
p
.”

The entire table stopped.

“Huh?”

“You know, healthy hair? It's pH-balanced,” Sofes explained. “You can't just have the
H
.” She flipped her notebook open to a blank page. “Like, duh,” she added, as if her point were so obvious.

“Sofes, do you know about anything other than hair?” Kiki inquired in a condescending tone.

“Hmm…let's see.” Sofes looked up. “Do the physics of jet propulsion count?”

“You know about the physics of jet propulsion?” Beanpole asked, impressed.

“No, I was just wondering if that would have counted.” Sofes and Beanpole paused, looked at one another, and then, at the same exact time, smiled.

“
Hee-hee,
I'd give you credit,” Beanpole said.

“Wow, propulsion,” Sofes replied. “I can't believe I knew such a sophisticationed word.”

The two of them giggled some more as Brattany glanced at Kiki with an
I knew this was going to happen
look on her face.

“You know, there ought to be a rule that punishes your parents for the damage they're causing to society,” Kiki said to Sofes.

Rule?
Q pricked up her ears, and I could see the little hamster wheel spinning in her head.

“Academic Septathlon bylaws state that each team must operate in a system whereby the distribution of”—
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeeh-whooosh
—“questions is evenly split between all contestants, meaning an order must be established, and that order cannot be altered or deviate at any juncture of the competition.”

“Like, what is wrong with the allergy freak?” Brattany asked.

“Yeah, do we need to put her in a plastic bag or something?” Kiki wondered. “Of course, we'd poke holes in it so she could breathe.”

“Tiny ones,” Brattany added with a smile.

“She's talking about the rules, snobwads,” I said. “We have to go in a specific, predetermined order; otherwise we forfeit.”

“But there's six of us,” Sofes said.

We all paused.

“So?”

“So, doesn't that mean we'd have to six-feit? You know, not four-feit but six-feit?
Tee-hee
.”

“Okay, she goes last,” I said.

“Hallelujah, the first thing we agree upon,” Kiki said, throwing her hands in the air.

Beanpole locked eyes with me in one of those disapproving, motherly glares.

“What?” I said.

“Don't be mean, Mo. Being mean is not nice.”

“Being mean is not nice?” I said. “What are we in, second grade?”

However, Beanpole was entirely serious. “That is correct,” she answered. “Being mean is not nice.”

I let out a sigh. Deep down, I knew Beanpole was right. It was just that the ThreePees always seemed to bring out the worst in me. Why did I let those girls get under my skin the way they did?

“Finally, our coach,” Kiki said, noticing that Mr. Stone had entered the library. “Maybe he can snap you dipsticks into shape.”

“You're the dipsticks,” I said.

“No, you are!”

“You are!”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Vice Principal Stone said, walking up to our table. “Now, let's get one thing straight. I may be the coach on paper, but let me tell you, I only have six months before retirement, and I have no plans to do squat with any of this contest nonsense.”

“Huh?” We stared. Having a coach was a big part of the Academic Septathlon.

“That means, don't ask me questions, don't bring me problems, and don't get me involved in any aspect of this,” he instructed. “You are absolutely and entirely on your own.”

Mr. Stone scanned the library to make sure the conversation wasn't being overheard.

“And if you tell anyone, I'll make sure every official document that says you ever attended this school vanishes from the system,” he threatened. “You'll be like ghosts. No transcripts, no records, not even a photocopy of your birth certificate will exist, you understand me?”

We stared, wide-eyed.

“Oh, believe me, I can do it,” he said confidently. “You'd be amazed at the power of cyberspace to suck data into places where it will never be seen again.” Mr. Stone adjusted the knot of his tie and straightened it. “The last thing I want right now is to be some lame coach in some lame trivia game for a bunch of mean-spirited, wannabe Einsteins, got it?”

“Yes, sir,” we softly replied.

“Good. You'll only see me twice. Once now and once on the night of the competition, where we're all going to pretend that we've worked really hard putting in lots of long hours, like good little goofballs. Otherwise,
zap!
Your files will disappear into the black hole of the Internet.”

Mr. Stone buttoned his coat and checked his wristwatch. “By the way, why are you still even here?” he asked.

“Um,” I said, “we're studying?”

“But you've got to get over to the Civic Center to register by six tonight, or you won't be eligible.”

“We do?” None of us had heard about this.

“Ah jeez, this is exactly what I mean,” he said, throwing up his hands. “If you don't hightail it over to the Civic Center to register within the next eighty-seven minutes, you won't be allowed to participate. Holy cow, don't you know that the Academic Septathlon is governed by rules, rules, rules?”

“But, like, don't
you
need to be there to sign some documents or something for us?” Brattany asked.

“Have Kiki forge them,” he replied. “I mean, she forges her parents' signatures all the time, anyway. How hard can mine be?”

Kiki sheepishly looked down as Mr. Stone grumbled something I couldn't quite make out and then walked off.

Great, I thought. We were now coachless.

The other girls started calling their parents right away, to see which of them could drop everything and drive us over to the Civic Center. I didn't dare call my house.

“And why is that?” Beanpole asked, her hands on her hips.

“Because dear old Dad might show up wanting to fill a hole or something,” I replied honestly.

She shook her head. “I bet if he knew you just said that, he'd be hurt.”

“And I bet if I even knew him AT ALL, I'd care.”

I popped a piece of saltwater taffy into my mouth. I'd always liked saltwater taffy. Number one, it's taffy. Yum. Number two, it is practically a zero-fat food item. Of course, it is also a zero-nutrition food item, but considering that it must have come from the ocean—I mean, why else would they call it saltwater taffy (like, duh)?—how unhealthy could it really be?

Okay, maybe Beanpole had a point, but I hadn't really come to terms with how I felt about my father. However, he'd been gone for years and years, so I should at least have had that much time to figure it all out on my end, no?

Or at least months and months.

Weeks and weeks?

“Mo, please don't take this the wrong way,” Beanpole said in a kind, sympathetic, might-become-a-kindergarten-teacher-one-day type of voice, “but you have issues.”

“Beanpole, you alphabetize your underwear, so when it comes to having issues, let's just agree that I'm not alone, all right?”

Q hung up her phone. “My mom's on her way. She'll be here in ten.”

“You see?” I said. “Problem solved. Let's go wait by the carpool loop.” The three of us grabbed our backpacks and got ready to go.

“Shouldn't we, you know, offer them a ride?” Beanpole asked, sort of nudging over toward the ThreePees.

“Let them hitchhike,” I said. “With any luck, some campfire-story guy with one eye and a rusty chainsaw will pick them up.”

Q smiled. When it came to the way we felt about the Three-Pees, she and I were
simpático
. (That's Spanish for “on the same page.”)

“Come on, you guys, they're our teammates. And like it or not, we're going to have to start working with them.” Beanpole turned toward the ThreePees and cheerily called out, “Hey, you need a ride?”

Sofes twirled around and smiled. “Um, yeah, I think we actually—”

“Eat a molded muffin, Beanpole,” Kiki said as she stepped in front of Sofes. “My sister will be here in five.” She put her phone into her back pocket and stared at Sofes with a
What are you doing?
look on her face. Sofes hung her head and shrugged.

“See?” I said to Beanpole as I headed through the silver turnstile. “You can't be nice to them. It doesn't pay.”

Before we knew it, Q's mom, Mrs. Applebee, picked us up in what we had affectionately named the Nerd Mobile. Really, the car was nothing more than a four-door blue import with leather seats and cup holders for every passenger, but once we'd given the car this nickname a couple of months earlier, the joke had sort of stuck.

We climbed in and put on our seat belts.

“Are you okay, Alice? You know I'll always drop everything to come and get you right away. You know that, right?”

“I'm fine, Mom,” Q replied. “We just needed a ride.”

“Are you sure you're feeling okay?” Q's mother asked. “I noticed you wheezing last night.”

“I'm fine, Mom.” Q rolled her eyes. “Fine. We're going to be late.”

After a silent mother-daughter battle of wills, where Q's mom communicated through eye contact that she was highly concerned for Q's health, and Q responded by dismissing her mother's phobia, averting her gaze and looking out the window, Mrs. Applebee put the car in gear and we drove away.

By 5:35, we'd arrived at the Civic Center, a crisp white building that Grover Park had built a few years earlier in an attempt to attract some fancy theater productions to the area. Broadway revival shows like
Cats
and musicals that old people loved, like
Oklahoma!
, played there practically every other month. But there were minor shows that played there, too, like B-level circus shows where the elephants were blind, and international dance troupes featuring ballerinas from countries no one had ever heard of, like the Republic of Nauru.