A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions (17 page)

Wow, I thought. The Septathlon was cutthroat. Like, ugly cutthroat. I mean, where was the sportsmanship?

A third team came racing through the doors, victims of the traffic jam. There were supposed to be nine teams doing battle that night. The motorcycle accident had just cut the number down to six.

O
ne of the coolest things about being backstage before any kind of giant show is peeking through the curtains to look out into the audience, without their even knowing you are able to see them. However, at the Civic Center it was even cooler, because backstage was high tech all the way, with video monitors and fancy-looking LED lights that controlled everything. From where we waited, we could see, via little television screens, the outer hall by the concession stand; the whole front of the stage; the entire backstage area, where the TV crew from the local-access channel were checking wires and setting up; and even the audience.

“Eww, look, that guy in the middle row just picked his nose,” said some kid from Moore Middle School. “I'll bet you a Twix bar he eats it.”

“You lose,” said his friend, also from Moore. “He just stuck it under the seat.”

“Hey, look, Mo,” Beanpole said, pointing at a different screen. “There's your father.”

It was my father. I watched as he made his way through the seventeenth row toward the center, where my sister, mother, and brother were sitting. My dad took the empty seat right next to my brother.

Marty looked up.

When he saw my dad, I could tell right away he was shocked and had no idea he would be here tonight. The look on my brother's face morphed into an instant scowl. Angrily, he rose from his chair and changed seats, moving to the other side of Mom, putting as much distance between himself and our father as he could.

Wow, even through the video screen I could see the rage boiling inside him.

“Any last words of advice for your team, Coach?”

I turned, startled by the voice. It was Mr. Mazer, the principal. Next to him stood Vice Principal Stone. Both of them wore coats and ties, looking all schoolly formal.

“Of course I do,” Vice Principal Stone answered. “Just remember,” he said to the six of us, “if you get eliminated early enough, my wife and I can go catch a movie.”

Principal Mazer gazed quizzically at Mr. Stone.

“My girls and I, we always joke around like that,” Mr. Stone explained with a chuckle.

We chuckled back.

“Oh,” Mr. Mazer said, offering up a halfhearted chuckle of his own. “Well, it's almost showtime. Are the Aardvarks ready? You look ready. I mean, without a doubt, you'll be the best-dressed team out there tonight.”

Beanpole smiled a big and proud smile, and then, out of sheer enthusiasm, waved hello to a student from Rawlston Middle School. No, she didn't know the kid, but to Beanpole, what did that matter? She was friendly to everybody, at one with the universe.

However, Mr. Mazer's comment had upset me. I mean, even though the subject hadn't come up among me and Q and Beanpole, we had noticed when we first walked into the Civic Center that the ThreePees were wearing matching green barrettes that would sparkle under the stage lights.

And we nerds had conveniently been left out when it came to this fashionable add-on. I was instantly bitter. Especially after all that Beanpole's mom had done to make our team look so good. Beanpole noticed the barrettes, but being Beanpole, she just shrugged it off.

“We still look great, Mo. Don't make mountains out of molehills.”

“I'd like to make
them
into molehills,” I said. It was just such a low-class move, I thought.

“Of course, we didn't get quite the student-body support that some of the other teams have,” Mr. Mazer continued as he looked around at all the different students backstage.

Boy, he could say that again. I mean, some schools must have had at least one hundred kids in the audience, belting out cheers, getting rowdy, causing a lot of ruckus to root for their classmates. Our team had zilch in terms of encouragement. Nine out of ten kids at Grover Park probably didn't even know that the Academic Septathlon was going on tonight.

“But the one student we do have in the audience seems to be trying to hold his own out there,” Mr. Mazer added.

Huh?
Mr. Mazer looked at the monitor. Saint Dianne's had a sea of navy-and-red-clad kids who were doing cheers that looked professionally coordinated. The Youngly Middle School Cobras had fans dressed in orange and black who were making some kind of hissing sounds. Grover Park had one kid—exactly one loony, bonkers, semidemented student who was standing up in the middle of the crowd screaming at the top of his lungs:

“Grover Park,

Not stupid,

Smart!

Grover Park,

Not stupid,

Smart!”

“Is that Logan Meyers?” Beanpole asked.

“What kind of cheer is that?” Brattany said, wrinkling her brow.

“Oh, he came to support me,” Kiki said, batting her eyelashes. “Isn't that
sweeeeet
?” I rolled my eyes. “You know,” she continued, “that's the kind of gesture that makes me think about taking him back.”

“Vomit alert,” I said through a fake cough.

Kiki glowered at me, but before she could say anything, the lights in the hall blinked twice, then dimmed, like in a power outage.

“Hey, the five-minute warning,” Mr. Mazer said. “I should get back to my seat. Oh, Mr. Piddles, you made it. Good.”

“Wow,” Mr. Piddles said as he approached. “You wouldn't believe the traffic.”

“Don't worry,” Mr. Mazer replied. “I saved you a seat.”

“Wonderful,” Mr. Piddles said. “It'll give us a chance to”—he paused and made eye contact with me—“talk.” He gave me one of those famous laser-beam teacher stares.

I lowered my eyes.

“You know,” he continued, “about some campus developments I have recently been told of…”

“Oh, joy,” Mr. Stone remarked sarcastically. “Shop talk, after hours.”

“Indeed, I do think it will be of interest to
you
, Mr. Stone,” Mr. Piddles answered. “Highly so, in fact.”

“I have no doubt,” Mr. Stone replied, in an
I really couldn't care less
voice.

“Well, Aardvarks, we're off. Good luck out there,” Mr. Mazer said. “We'll be rooting for you.”

Vice Principal Stone, lagging behind as Mr. Mazer and Mr. Piddles headed off to take their seats, turned around in such a way that neither of his colleagues could see or hear him, and pointed at his watch.

“Moo-vie.”

A moment later, he was gone.

“He's not nice,” Beanpole said in a firm tone.

“Wow, you really roasted him with that one, Beanpole,” I said. “I mean, that's almost go-wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap language, coming from you.”

“So, what was that all about?” Kiki asked, hands on her hips.

“What?” I said.

“The look Mr. P. gave you.”

Gulp.
Over Kiki's shoulder, I spotted the door to the backstage restroom.

“I have no idea what you're talking about. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to pee.”

Phew, I thought as I headed toward the bathroom. Avoided that one. I guess sometimes there
are
benefits to having a teensy bladder.

After a well-timed pee and a hand wash with pink bathroom soap, I returned to my group. However, my group wasn't where I had left it. While I was in the restroom, each of the schools had been placed in some sort of order by the back wall, all the coaches gone. Standing with the teams, to my surprise, were the judges. All three. There were two men, one tall and thin, one potbellied and wearing glasses, and of course, there was the chief, Miss “No Nonsense” Terrier.

“There's our captain,” Kiki said as I walked up, bitterness clearly in her voice.

“Wrists?” Miss Terrier said to me.

“Huh?”

“We need to see your wrists,” the tall judge said.

“We've had cheaters,” the potbellied man explained as Beanpole pulled her long sleeves back down after having just gone through the inspection I was about to go through.

I held out my arms and pulled up my sleeves. “Nothing to hide,” I said.

Satisfied, Miss Terrier turned to Q, the last in our group.

“And you, too, young lady.”

Q, having already taken off her nonregulation calculator watch in the car and given it to her mom, pulled up her sleeves to prove she had nothing written on her arms.

“All clear,” she said.

The judges nodded in approval.

“And that is?” Miss Terrier asked, peering at the oddly shaped item in Q's left pocket.

“A medical device,” Q said, withdrawing her inhaler. “It meets all the criteria on page thirty-six, paragraph four, section two in the regulatory handbook.”

Miss Terrier inspected the device.

“And yes, I have a doctor's note on file with school, should you need to”—Q began to cough—“should you need to verify.”

The potbellied judge smiled. “Well, indeed, it is refreshing to have a contestant who's taken the time to familiarize herself with the rules.”

Q grinned.

“
Knowing
the rules and
obeying
the rules are not the same thing,” Miss Terrier noted as she slowly handed back Q's scuba tank. “Let's just hope that tonight your team doesn't confuse the two.”

“I don't believe we will,” Q answered. The two of them, Q and Miss Terrier, looked deeply into one another's eyes.

Is Q having a staring contest with the Queen of Mean? Like, OMG, is she crazy?

“Good,” Miss Terrier replied, the first to blink. “Then you'll be sure to remember that once the competition starts, only the captain will be permitted to officially address the judges.”

“Once the competition begins, we certainly will,” Q replied. “But technically, it hasn't started yet.”

“But technically, it's about to,” Miss Terrier responded. “And I like technicalities.”

Q took a slurp from her inhaler.
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.
“Me, too.”

Again they stared at each other, eye to eye.

“Then mind them tonight, Grover Park,” Miss Terrier said, “and good luck.”

With that, Miss Terrier, her spine straight, her hair perfect, walked away, the two other judges following along closely behind.

“What are you doing?” I said to Q. “Trying to get her mad at us before we even begin?”

“I like her,” Q answered as the judges inspected the wrists of another team.

“But it feels like she's ready to disqualify us at any moment,” I said.

“I know,” Q answered admiringly. “And she does it with such”—
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh
—“style.”

“You are weird,” I said.

“Aardvark.”

“Come on, girls,” Kiki said to her two coconuts. “It's fire time.”

“Fire time?” I asked as they began to walk away.

“Yeah,” Kiki said, taking out her mascara. “Fire time. Probably not usually a big concern for you.”

Brattany, lipstick in hand, smiled and got ready to inspect herself in a backstage mirror, while Sofes took out a hairbrush.

Armed with beautification tools of the kind that I didn't even own, the ThreePees wiggled off to make sure that they were, well…ThreePee enough for the cameras.

“Can you believe them?” I asked, turning to Q. “I mean, the barrettes weren't enough; now they need to—” I stopped in midsentence. “Are you running a fever?” I asked, noticing the sweat on Q's brow.

“Uh-huh.”

“More than 101?”

“Uh-huh.”

“More than 102?”

“Yup.”

“More than 103?” I asked, my alarm growing.

“One-oh”—
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh
—“five,” Q said. “But that's only because I'm wearing this long-sleeved top.”

My eyes practically popped out of my head.
One-oh-five?
I was so stunned I couldn't move.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I've gotten up to 107 before.”

Just then, the house lights dimmed again, but this time they didn't come back up to full brightness.

“Oh, relax, Mama Maureen, it's”—
Cough, cough
—“a manageable 101.8,” Q said. “I'm fine.”

“You're fine?” I said, taking in the greenness of her skin. “Let's not exaggerate, okay?”

“And here we go now,” a guy in a black T-shirt barked at the teams as he adjusted a pair of headphones. “When I call your school, move to your assigned positions on the stage.” He crossed over to the center of the big red curtain and listened for instructions from someone in a booth, probably in the rear of the auditorium. The ThreePees scurried back over, still tending to their looks.

“How's my lipstick?” Kiki asked Brattany, seeking a last-minute inspection.

“Dominating. Mine?” Brattany asked. Kiki took a moment to look over her teammate's lips, then adjusted a strand of her hair.

“Fierce,” she said.

“Hey, turn your phones off, you guys, turn your phones off,” Beanpole excitedly reminded us, waving her cellie. “Make sure they are powered
all
the way off, too. It's instant disqualification.”