“Will that work?”
“It always does in the movies. So what’s this dumb boy like?”
“
Dumb
isn’t the right word. He’s just normal. We’re in English together, he plays point guard for the varsity basketball team, and he’s totally hot but doesn’t come across as cocky at all. He’s just…a boy.”
“Do you think he likes you?”
“I seriously doubt it. Nate’s dorky enough to possibly maybe want to go for somebody like me. Eli’s cool.”
“But you have a crush on him anyway?”
“Am I a horrible person?”
“No, you’re a fifteen-year-old girl. Lustful thoughts about dumb jocks are more than allowed — they’re expected.”
“I miss you.”
“
Te echo de menos, también.
”
The next day, when Nate and I arrived at lunch, the rest of the Brain Trust was in the middle of a heated debate in French. Nate jumped right in. I slumped into my chair, feeling left out and stupid. I looked out across the cafeteria and spotted Eli laughing with a bunch of other jocks. They were throwing food and goofing around. I knew I’d never be able to fit in with them, but considering I didn’t speak French, I wasn’t doing a very good job of fitting in where I was either. I pulled my calculus book out of my bag and completed that night’s homework while I picked at a salad.
I almost pulled out my MP3 player to finish my physics reading at the same time, but Nate was the only member of the group who knew about my unusual listening habits. I didn’t want to give the others reason to start hating me, so incomprehensible French continued to accompany my dining.
Then Lissa said my name, so I looked up from my math homework. She was in the middle of some elaborate story that involved a lot of hand motions and gestures toward me. Nate hid behind his overgrown hair, so I couldn’t see his eyes, but he’d twisted the corners of his mouth into a small smile. Haroon was staring right at me.
“If you guys feel the need to discuss me during lunch, could you please do it in English?”
“Sorry,” Haroon said. “I was just telling these guys that I finished writing the code for a new computer game I’m developing. Miles is going to come over on Friday night to beta test it for me. Then Lissa told us you play video games the same way you ace calc tests, so do you think maybe you’d want to try out my game too?”
“You made your own computer game? That’s really cool.”
“It would be even cooler if you’d play it.” His smile was pleading.
I’d never really talked to Haroon or Miles outside of lunch. Making some more friends wouldn’t be bad, and I did like playing video games. “Sure, I’m in.”
“Thanks, Sam. You’re awesome.”
I climbed into the back seat of Haroon’s Honda Civic on Friday afternoon. Miles was riding shotgun. They talked computer code the whole way to Haroon’s house, but at least they weren’t speaking French.
When we got to Haroon’s, we headed into his basement, which was a total man cave. Discarded pizza boxes and empty pop cans littered the floor. A refrigerator was stationed at the bottom of the stairs. Miles pulled out a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew. “Do you want anything to drink, Sam?”
“No, thanks.”
Haroon headed over to his computer and loaded his latest creation, a fighting game.
Oh great, my favorite.
He explained the controls to me while Miles chugged the entire two liters of caffeine and sugar. Miles was always pretty hyper, and I expected he’d be scaling the furniture in a few minutes. That’s not how it turned out, though. Miles somehow managed to channel all of his sugar high into the computer keyboard. With two fingers, he could do wonders with a broadsword.
I may have been known to dream in Tetris blocks, but I’d never liked killing for entertainment. “Crap.” I died for the third time in only a half hour. I let go of the keyboard and combed my fingers through my hair, pulling it up into a ponytail.
“Don’t feel bad about losing.” Miles leaned back in his chair. “I’m actually relieved to see you’re human. I was starting to wonder if you were a cyborg.”
Not knowing how to respond, I decided to get up. “Haroon, is it okay if I grab a Coke or something?”
“Yeah, help yourself.”
“Will you grab me another Mountain Dew?” Miles called after me.
I found a twelve-ounce can of Coke for myself and tossed Miles another two-liter bottle. He took advantage of the break in our playing to ask, “So why don’t you like Haroon’s game?”
Way to put me on the spot. “I do like it. The graphics are amazing.” The hourglass figure he’d given my warrior princess avatar was unrealistic, but well done.
“You’re bored, and you’re not even trying. This isn’t the performance Lissa described.”
I shrugged. “I don’t like killing people. I mean, all we’re doing is hitting buttons and trying to knock each other out. There isn’t any strategy. Being able to see twelve moves ahead of your opponent doesn’t do any good if there aren’t moves to see.”
Haroon leaned forward. “Do you like chess?”
“I’ve played it a few times.”
Haroon tapped Miles’s shoulder, and they swapped places. He pulled up an electronic chessboard. “I haven’t totally mastered the whole AI thing, but see if you can beat it.”
“Okay.”
At first I simply played the board, moving quickly, not really thinking about where everything was leading. Then the computer sacrificed its bishop, which made absolutely no sense. I stopped and stared at the screen. If I took its bishop with my knight, it would counterattack with the rook. I’d slide back, only sacrificing a pawn. It would advance its queen. Every move unfolded in my mind until the computer’s planned win appeared eighteen turns later — checkmate. I advanced my pawn, leaving the computer’s bishop on the board.
I turned to smile at Haroon. “Did you program in that trick? It’s clever, but I’m not going to let a computer beat me that easily.”
He smiled without taking his eyes off the screen. “Just keep playing.”
The computer moved its rook forward one space. The game was back up in the air, until I figured out its next strategy and backed it into a corner.
After I won, Miles slapped me on the back. “Dude, you totally need to join the chess team. Watching you slaughter Graham in a public forum would be freakin’ awesome.”
“Graham’s on the chess team?”
Miles leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up onto the desk. “Is it a dorktastic activity? Graham’s the club president.”
I shrugged. I didn’t exactly like Graham, and I didn’t want to fill my free time with more academic challenges. “So what are you, the club VP?”
“Nah, that would be Lissa. I kind of suck at chess, actually.”
Haroon laughed. “Miles is the president of the school’s checkers club.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“If Graham gets to put chess club on his resume, why can’t I put checkers on mine?”
I shook my head and laughed. “You guys are all crazy. I mean, can’t you just live your lives and not spend every second worrying about resumes and competitions?”
“Says the girl taking five AP classes as a sophomore.” Miles smirked.
“I know, I’m a hypocrite. But seriously, don’t you guys ever get tired of competing? I mean this whole Brain Trust thing is just…”
I didn’t know how to finish my sentence, and Miles and Haroon didn’t jump in to finish it for me. So we just sat there in awkward silence. Finally, Miles said, “So instead of fighting each other, do you want to shift to team mode and see if we can kill all of Haroon’s NPCs?”
“Yeah.”
Haroon reloaded the game, and I spent more time focusing on the layers of graphics and less time focusing on Miles’s rapid attack moves. It really was a cool game. Haroon was good at what he did.
When we finished playing, I grabbed another coke from the fridge and moved an empty pizza box to clear a seat on the couch.
“You’re pretty cool.” Miles sunk down onto the couch beside me. “As much as I love watching Graham lose, I don’t think you should join the chess team, but if you ever want to play checkers…”
“Checkers is a pretty fun game.”
“When I first met you, I thought you were just like Graham, and then I thought you might be like Nate, but you aren’t like either of them, are you? You’re a whole new species.”
I narrowed my eyes at Miles. He’d ingested a ton of sugar and caffeine but was somehow acting more calm and philosophical than I’d ever seen him. “So, what are Graham and Nate like?”
Haroon sat backwards in his desk chair so he was facing us. “Graham thrives on competition and doesn’t care about anything but winning. Nate thrives on competition too but spends his time hoping he’ll lose. And you, you’re…” He trailed off.
I
was the dyslexic chick who had somehow conned the most competitive group of brainiacs in the Northwest into thinking I was a contender. I was scared, and anxious, and also a little curious. “Why does Nate want to lose?”
“’Cause he’s Nate.” Miles looked at me like I was the stupidest person on the planet. “Mr. Mopey poetry. Somehow he’s convinced himself he’s smarter than everyone else and therefore has to be depressed and lonely all the time. And in his crazy twisted mind, he’s decided having other people outperform him academically will give him a reason to live. It’s stupid, we know, but nobody wants to see the guy off himself, so we all study like mad just to make our boy happy.”
I knew Nate wore dark clothing and needed a haircut, but he wasn’t that emo. He was Nate. I shook my head, not wanting to believe what I was hearing. “That isn’t true. It can’t be. Nate’s so…friendly.”
“Friendly?” Haroon raised his eyebrows at me in a way that was almost sexual. Not like he was checking me out, but like he was imagining Nate checking me out. It made me sort of uncomfortable. “You guys aren’t…?”
“No.” I didn’t know how Haroon planned to finish that sentence, but no seemed like the right answer. It didn’t matter anyway. Nate and I weren’t anything. I thought we were friends, but apparently, I didn’t know anything about him.
Miles laughed. “Everything makes sense now.”
“It does?”
“Duh, Nate’s totally hot for your big old baby brain.”
Haroon shot Miles a look that came across way too much like confirmation. I felt self-conscious. “We’re just friends. We’ve been hanging out after school lately, just doing homework and stuff. We aren’t dating or anything. Nate’s just, you know, studious, not clinically depressed.”
“You must be even smarter than I thought, ’cause Nate is definitely hot for your big old baby brain.” Miles laughed so hard, I thought Mountain Dew was going to shoot out of his nose. “Nate doesn’t have friends, except for people who live in books. He’s an okay guy, so we humor him at times, but nobody hangs out with Nate just doing homework and stuff. Nate hangs out with dead poets. I didn’t think it was possible for him to connect with a real person. But clearly, our boy has found his equal in you.”
Somehow, Miles’s words made me forget how to breathe. “I’m not Nate’s equal.”
Haroon smiled. “You’re right. Nate doesn’t look eighteen moves ahead when playing chess.”
Thankfully, my mom picked me up before I could embarrass myself even more. I sat in the car and stared at Portland’s February rain. “So whose house were you just at?”
“Haroon’s.” I turned to face my mother. We’d been in Portland for three weeks, and she still didn’t know anything about any of my friends. “He’s super into computer programming and makes his own games. Miles and I headed over today to beta test his latest creation.”
“I’m glad you’re making friends, honey. I really am. But isn’t it weird for a teenage girl to spend all her time with boys?”
I groaned. “Why is that weird? In case you haven’t noticed, the world is coed. The whole idea that little girls are only allowed to play dolls with other little girls while the little boys are busy playing with their trucks is beyond stupid. I’m the textbook definition of a geek, Mom. Boys who make their own computer games, and forget to bathe, have way more in common with me than girls who don’t want to think about anything but fashion and makeup. Haroon and Miles are nice guys. They’re my friends, and gender doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“You’re right. It’s good that you’re making friends, and gender shouldn’t matter. I just remember how much fun you used to have with Gabby and Arden. They cared about a lot more than just fashion and makeup. They cared about you. Trying to make a few girl friends in addition to your new guy friends can’t be bad.”
“This isn’t San Diego, Mom. The girls here don’t like me.”
“Have you tried talking to them?” My mom pulled into the garage under our apartment building but didn’t make any move to get out of the car.
“Yeah, I’m going to Kaitlyn’s house again tomorrow to finish our English project. But it’s strictly homework. Trust me, Mom. Kaitlyn doesn’t want to be my new best friend. She thinks I’m a freak.”
I thought about what Miles had said about Nate. How he always felt lonely. How he couldn’t relate to anyone who didn’t live in books. I couldn’t even read books. I couldn’t relate to anyone, period. My mom reached over and squeezed my shoulder. This was all her fault. I’d had friends in San Diego. Gabby and Arden got me. It wasn’t my fault we had to move. I pulled away from my mom and stormed out of the car.
Eli drove me to Kaitlyn’s again on Saturday so we could finish our English video. In our scene, Lady Macbeth confessed her crimes while sleepwalking. Eli and I were the wakeful maid and doctor observing her decline, and Kaitlyn was the crazy, power-hungry noble.
Kaitlyn and Eli ran in the same circle, so I should have been the outsider, except I wasn’t. Thanks to our casting, I was somehow in the
us
while Kaitlyn stood alone. We even filmed ourselves separately. We ran the scene three times. First with the camera set up on a tripod to get a wide-angle shot of the entire scene. Next Eli and I performed the scene alone while Kaitlyn held the camera and filmed close-ups of our interactions. Then I filmed a close-up of Kaitlyn our third time through.
Once we’d finished shooting, we sat down in front of Kaitlyn’s computer to splice everything together. It was clear Eli rarely worked so hard on schoolwork. He didn’t complain, but he seemed a little surprised by my desire to make the video perfect. Mr. Donavan may have been willing to give us an A without all the extra effort, but if we had to make a movie, I wanted to make a good one.