A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions (3 page)

“Why are you, Barbara Beanpole Tanner, the number one rule follower of the century, defending our presence here?” I asked. “Besides, the bell's going to ring, and I don't want to be late for class. Now, come on, enough with this. Let's go.”

“We can't,” Beanpole replied, remaining seated. “Not yet.”

“Why?” I asked.

She looked down, clearly hiding something.

“Beeeanpole…”

“Because I invited the ThreePees here to eat lunch with us, so we could bury the hatchet.”

“You did what?!” I shouted. Q's eyes popped wide open. This was clearly news to her, too. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“'Cause I wanted to make peace between us all,” Beanpole said. “Kids at the same school should get along.”

Q reached for her inhaler and took a few slurps.
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.
The ThreePees had already tormented her enough to last a lifetime, maybe even two, and even though Q had come out of her shell around us—people whom she trusted—all her life she had been ridiculed by divas like the ThreePees, kids who cared more about their pedicures than they did about global warming, and it had scarred her. After all, it's one thing not to care what other people think about the way you dress and act; it's totally another to be the piñata that brats like to smash with nastiness simply for their own entertainment.

“I already agreed that I'd let bygones be bygones,” I said. “Isn't that enough?”

“That's not peace,” Beanpole replied. “The tension is still off the charts whenever we're near them. I mean, just look at what happened with the Slam Book.”

“But I don't want to eat lunch with them,” I said. “I don't even want to go to the same school as them. I just want to, like, NOT deal with them. Ever.”

“That's exactly what I mean,” Beanpole answered. “This is why we need to meet and clear the air.”

Q remained silent.

“Not a fan,” I said. “Not a fan at all.”

“Well, you can't always avoid things when you have issues with people in your life, Maureen,” Beanpole said in a motherly tone. “No offense, but it's kind of immature.”

“Immature? Me, immature? How would you like an injection of Twinkie cream up your nose?”

“Well, if that's not a mature way to handle conflict resolution, I don't know what is,” Beanpole replied.

“Is that why you keep checking your phone?” I asked.

“Yeah, they're late,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “And it doesn't make sense, either, 'cause we've been planning this for, like, three days.”

“Planning what for three days? Lunch?”

“Kiki said they needed three days,” Beanpole told me. “To get it all set up.”

“Get what set up? Beanpole, this doesn't make any sense.”

Then suddenly, it did. Once we heard the door close, followed by a loud
CLICK
, that is.

“Was that…” I said, looking toward the door. I crossed the room and tried the handle.

“Locked,” I said.

I glanced around. There were no other doors.

“We're locked in.”

Y
ou know, I don't really need any help when it comes to creating level-ten embarrassing situations for myself. However, the ThreePees were always eager to lend me a hand.

How nice of them.

Like that time I saved Q from the ThreePees, well, the way I did it was by hijacking these special peanut-butter-and-mango-marmalade sandwiches the vixens had made in order to trigger a monster allergic reaction in the new girl at school. Then, once I had the sandwiches, I quickly jammed them into my mouth so that the weapons of torment would be eliminated. Unfortunately, this act of heroism for Q turned into a personal disaster for me.

A disaster that ended up on YouTube, thanks to Brittany-Brattany.

Oh, the joy of seeing myself online running around the outdoor courtyard screaming,
“Mmmrrfft rrmmfft dmmfft!”
with a mouthful of sticky peanut butter preventing me from being able to utter an understandable word.

The story ended well for me, though. The video went viral.

Pah-thetic.

Justice, though, was eventually served on the ThreePees after our school's big talent show, when those witches ended up sucking a karmic lemon good and hard. That's because my older brother, Marty, made their eyebrows fall out. Just before they took their official school yearbook photo, too. In the pics, their faces looked like Easter eggs designed by kindergartners on laughing gas.

A video of that was also posted on YouTube. It was hysterical. (At least, I thought so. Our school principal, not so much.)

Anyway, while we were thinking about letting bygones be bygones, the ThreePees were planning revenge, and now that they had double-crossed Beanpole and somehow “fixed” the lock on the door, we were sitting ducks.

I knew it, I thought. I just knew it.

An ominous voice cackled from above. I tilted my head backward and saw a window above the door frame. Suddenly, one, two, then three faces appeared.

“Well…looky what we have here. Nerdwads in the art room.”

They must have been standing on a ladder. Though the glass muffled their voices somewhat, we could still easily hear them.

“Nice pants, Maureen. Is there going to be a rainstorm?” Brittany-Brattany asked about my new Capris. “Or does the weather just call for thunder thighs?”

The ThreePees let out a big, mean laugh.

“Yeah…or lightning hair.”

Kiki and Brattany paused, then turned to stare at ThreePee number three, Sofes.

Some girls are not playing with a full deck. Sofes O'Reilly wasn't even dealt any cards.

“Huh?” Kiki asked.

“You know, lightning your hair?” Sofes explained. “Like when you use too much peroxide-based color wash and the oxidization of the follicles creates a shade of tint that's too light.”

“Sofes, are you sure the chemicals you use in your hair products are safe for your brain?” Kiki asked.

“Well, if the shampoo I was using contained pyrethrin, there might be cause for concern, but they only put that in pet shampoo, to help control fleas and ticks.”

Kiki rolled her eyes. “Can we please get back to the reason we're here?”

“Yeah…payback!” Brattany lifted up her camera-phone and prepared to record us on video.

“Oh, Nerd Girls, I hope you like art collages,” Kiki said. “Because you are about to become one.”

“On YouTube!” Brattany added with fiendish joy.

“But you said we were going to bury the hatchet,” Beanpole called up to them.

“The only thing that is getting buried today, dorko, is YOU!” Kiki lifted a black device. “Under a blizzard.”

Was that a remote control?

“This is gonna be double-double nice-nice,” Brattany said, getting ready to hit the
RECORD
button.

Kiki glanced around at all of the fans in the art room. Six of them, the big industrial kind, had been spread around, each pointing toward the center.

Each pointing toward us.

Suddenly I saw a sense of organization in everything. Trays of uncovered paint had been positioned in front of the fans on the left. Tubs of glitter, their tops removed, sat in front of the fans on the right. I saw feathers and strips of felt and confetti and sparkly things galore, all placed in a position where the wind from the fans would be sure to hit them.

No wonder it had taken the ThreePees three days to set this up. The whole room had been booby-trapped!

“Don't do it, Kiki,” I warned.

“Too late, skinny-chubby…It's done.”

Kiki pressed the
ON
button, and the fans whirred to life.

“Take cover!” I yelled, as if I were in the army. “INCOMING!”

Beanpole and Q didn't budge, because they had no idea what I was talking about.

Seconds later, paint began to fly, splattering everywhere. Feathers and glitter and felt strips swirled about. Within seconds, we were in the middle of a hurricane.

I tried the door again. Still locked.

I tried to turn off a fan, but couldn't see any buttons on it, because of the ever-increasing typhoon of arts and crafts.

Finally, all I could do was try my best to block my face as art materials showered us from all angles. Purple, green, yellow, red. It was like being inside the middle of a cyclone.

Then it stopped. Just stopped. Faintly, I heard a voice.

“That's enough, Kiki. That's enough!” It was Sofes. “You said it wouldn't be that bad.”

Kiki laughed. “You get that?” she asked Brattany. “'Cause I can turn them back on.”

“No, don't,” Sofes protested.

Brattany lowered her phone, checked the playback screen, and smiled. “Got it. Got it all.” She smirked wickedly, then laughed. “Wonder how many hits this one will have on YouTube?”

“I wonder how long they are going to sit stuck in there before they're discovered,” Kiki responded.

Sofes wrinkled her brow. “You mean we're not gonna let them out? What if they supplicate?”

“You mean, suffocate,” Kiki said, correcting her.

“Yeah, what if they suffocate?” Sofes repeated.

“There's air in there,” Kiki replied. “And fumes, too, I imagine.”

Kiki high-fived Brattany and hooted, “Double-double nice-nice.” With the recent budget cuts, our school had an art teacher on campus only three days a week, and today, Friday, wasn't one of them. That meant that it might not be until after the weekend before we'd be discovered.

I gazed at Q. Paint, feathers, and sparkles decorated her forehead. She looked like she'd been mugged by a gang of preschoolers.

“Well,” Sofes said, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of abandoning us in a locked room, “what if they starve to death?”

Kiki glanced at us. “I'm sure the porky one will eat the other two before that happens. Now, come on, let's go before someone comes.”

“But wait,” Sofes protested. “We can't just leave them in there.”

“Oh, yes, we can,” Kiki shot back. “And we will.”

Sofes didn't challenge her further.

“Hey, nerds, we'll leave the key in the lock for you,” Kiki said, dangling a set of silver keys in the window where we could see them. “All you have to do to get out is get out to unlock the door and then you can get out.”

“Like Houdini,” Brattany said as she high-fived Kiki one more time, their payback for what had happened to them at the talent show complete.

Each of the ThreePees took one final look at us from the window. Kiki stared like a military general, as if she were a battlefield commander who had just done some stern and serious damage to her enemy. Brattany wore the smile of a snob, the kind of smirk that belongs to a kid who thinks she's better than everyone else and likes rubbing their noses in it. Sofes, however, bit her bottom lip and twirled a strand of hair. She looked worried, concerned. For her, this was a prank that had gone too far.

“Come on,” Kiki said. “We are outee.” A moment later, their heads dipped down below the window frame and they were gone, out of sight.

I turned to Q. “You okay?”

Slowly, she reached for her inhaler.

Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp. Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp.

“How 'bout you, Beanpole?”

Beanpole raised her eyes but didn't speak. Hurt, betrayal, and disbelief filled her face. I stared for a sec, completely unable to imagine how long a bath it was going to take to get all the paint and glitter off her body. This was what happened when you let bygones be bygones, I thought. People mowed you down.

“We need to get out of here,” I said, trying the door handle again.

Still locked.

Beanpole lifted her phone to make a call. She pushed a few buttons, then stopped.

“Ruined.” She looked at her device, which had been drenched in paint. “Totally destroyed.”

Q and I quickly checked our cellies. “Great, no bars.”

“I just wanted to bury the hatchet,” Beanpole explained, half apologizing to us, half trying to figure it out for herself. A tear filled with glitter fell from one eye. “I just thought that we should, you know, all try to get along.”

I didn't answer. I knew things could never be good between girls like them and girls like us. Meanness was in their blood. And stupidity was clearly in ours.

The only sound in the supply room came from Q.

Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp. Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp.

One hour and forty-five minutes later, as we sat stranded in the art room, a
click
broke the silence.

“What the stuffings happened to you?”

Vice Principal Stone, a tall, gray-haired, medium-bellied old guy in a bright red tie, walked through the door.

Of course, we Nerd Girls are a lot of things, but one thing we are not is snitches.

“Nothing,” I said, a fuzzy pink feather drooping from my chin.

Neither Beanpole nor Q said a word.

Mr. Stone stared, semi-astounded at the sight of us. He waited for more of an explanation. We didn't give him one. A gap of silence followed.

Finally, seeing that he wasn't getting anywhere with us, Mr. Stone shifted the black walkie-talkie he was carrying from his left hand to his right, and noticed that Beanpole was holding a cell phone.

“Why didn't you call someone?”

Beanpole lifted her phone. “Destroyed.” She was so sad I thought we were going to have to have a funeral for this thing, like it was some sort of fluffy pet that had died or something.

“No bars,” I commented, lifting up my phone.

The vice principal tried to assess the situation. Mr. Stone was one of those old-time guys who had been around this school for, like, thirty years, and I could tell by the look on his face that he almost wished he'd never opened that door.

After rubbing his temples in an
I already have a migraine from this
way, the VP slowly raised his walkie-talkie to his lips.

“Stone to office. Stone to office. Copy.”

No answer. The VP rolled his eyes and tried again.

“Stone to office. Stone to office. Copy.” Mr. Stone gazed around the room. He had to have been thinking, What a disaster.

“You realize I'm less than one year away from retirement, right? I mean, I don't need this,” he said. “I don't need this at all.”

None of us responded.

“Stone to office, Stone to office. Do you copy?!” he repeated, raising his voice. “Oh, come on,” he said in frustration to his walkie-talkie.

“Um, how'd you find us?” Beanpole asked, a Popsicle stick dangling in her hair.

“Anonymous tip,” he answered. Suddenly, a voice crackled from the radio.

“Copy, Mr. Stone. G'head.”

“Finally,” he said before speaking into the radio transmitter. “I need a hose, some soap, and three top-to-bottom Aardvark outfits from the PE room sent back to the C wing of the campus. Copy.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end, as if whoever was listening was struggling to understand the request.

“Uhhh…why? Copy.”

Mr. Stone glared at the three of us before responding.

“Looks like we got ourselves a little situation with some of our scholars.”