Geek High (9 page)

I
avoided Peyton and Hannah at the beach house as much as I could. Peyton was always click-clacking off in her insanely high-heeled pumps to a work meeting, or a fund-raiser, or possibly to see her plastic surgeon for another Botox injection, which meant that she wasn't around too often. Hannah was harder to dodge. The house had become a default clubhouse for her Barbie posse. Every day after school they'd appear, nonfat lattes in hand, and spread out all over the living room with copies of
Vogue
and
Allure
and
InStyle
. Their conversation revolved around clothes, makeup, and celebrity gossip. If the SATs covered what color eye shadow was hot this year or which starlet was dating the guy on that television show, these chicks would ace it.

After school on Friday, I hung out at Grounded with Charlie and Finn, and then Charlie's mom dropped me off at the beach house. (I would never think of my dad and Peyton's house as “home.”) Avery's little Jetta convertible was out in front, along with two other cars I hadn't seen parked there before—an old station wagon with wood panels on the sides, and a small, boxy SUV.

I sighed. Obviously Hannah was having a larger crowd over than usual. I never felt comfortable around her friends. They always treated me like I was a freak, an exhibit at a museum labeled
TEENAGE NERD
.

At least I had a key now, so I was able to let myself in. Hopefully I'd be able to sneak back to my room without being seen. But Willow had other ideas. As soon as she heard the door close behind me, she came skittering out into the hallway and ran straight at me, her long tongue hanging goofily out the side of her mouth.

“Hi, Willow,” I said, glad that someone was happy to see me around this place. But then my eyes widened. “Wait…” I began, but that was as far as I got.

Just as Willow tried to slow down and skid to a showy stop right in front of me, she lost control on the marble floor. Her paws flailed beneath her, and I could see the panic in her eyes…but it was too late for her to do anything about it. Eighty pounds of greyhound knocked right into me, bowling me over. My backpack went flying, while I hit the ground with a sickening thud. A second later Willow slammed into the door, letting out a whimper as she bounced off it and fell over. For a long moment both of us just lay there, too stunned to move. Willow's head had hit me in the stomach like a well-aimed punch, and nausea now rippled through me. I could distantly hear the sound of voices getting closer.

“What
was
that?”

“I thought I heard someone at the door.”

“Ohmigod, what if someone's breaking into your house?”

“Don't be an idiot, Britt; no burglar would make that much noise.”

The last voice I recognized: Avery.

And then Britt spoke again, sounding hurt. “Well, I saw on
Oprah
once that sometimes criminals do all sorts of things to try to trick you into letting them in.”

“No one's breaking in,” Hannah said in an annoyed voice. “It's just my stepsister.”

“Ohmigod, is she okay?”

“Why is she lying on the floor?”

And then a male voice from somewhere very close by me: “That was quite an entrance.”

He sounded amused, which irritated the snot out of me. Why do people find it so hilarious when someone falls? What if I were seriously hurt? What if I had a concussion or a spinal-cord injury? Would that be funny? Huh? Would it?

I opened my eyes and attempted to focus them on the owner of the mocking voice. He was cute. Which wasn't a surprise, since I doubted Hannah would hang out with anyone who didn't look like they were about to pose for a Tommy Hilfiger ad. He had red hair that curled back from his face, the sort of pale, lightly freckled skin that doesn't tan, and light blue eyes that were currently narrowed with humor. His smile was crooked, and his face wore a sardonic expression. Cute…but not my type. I've never had a thing for redheads. Besides, if he was a friend of Hannah and the Barbies, that meant he was a walking, talking Ken doll. Probably the quarterback of the football team, or something similarly clichéd.

“Do you always laugh at people who've been knocked down?” I asked, not bothering to keep the hostility from my voice.

“Only the ones who look so cute sprawled out on the ground,” he said, his grin growing wider.

Cute? The Ken doll was calling me cute? It was a sacrilege of the Laws of Barbiedom. Only blondes with snub noses and big boobs were cute. Girls with frizzy hair, big noses, and no boobs? Definitely
not
cute.

He bent over and extended a hand out to me. I paused for a moment. Was this a practical joke? Pretend to help Geek Girl up, only to let go of her hand at the last minute and watch her fall down all over again? Raucous laughter all around? But he waited patiently, and since I couldn't think of a graceful way to get around it, I finally took his hand. And then something weird happened—when his hand touched mine, I actually felt a zing pass between us.

Willow had gotten up on her own, and was now indulging in a good shake. Willow is the master of the shake. She starts with her head, lets it move down her body to her tail, and then finishes up with one last full-body shake for good measure.

“Thanks,” I said gruffly, once I was back on my feet. I knew I sounded ungracious, but the zing had unsettled me.

“No problem. I'm Dex,” he said, still holding on to my hand.

“Oh,” I said.

“No, you see, this is the part where you're supposed to tell me your name,” Dex said patiently, although I could tell from the glint in his light blue eyes that he was teasing me.

“Thanks for the tip,” I said, withdrawing my hand.

And at that, Dex chuckled softly. “Tough crowd,” he said.

“Dex, you don't have to talk to her,” Hannah said, marching over and grabbing the sleeve of his faded blue T-shirt. “She's just my stepsister. She's temporary.”

“I didn't know you had a sister,” Dex said. Even though Hannah was pulling on his sleeve, he continued to look at me.

“Stepsister,” Hannah corrected him.

“I normally stay in the kitchen, scrubbing the pots and pans,” I said.

“Until the prince arrives with your glass slipper?” he asked.

“That's right,” I said.

Hannah didn't get the Cinderella reference. She frowned, so that three vertical lines appeared just over her nose. “Come on, Dex.
TRL
is coming on. And Avery needs you to open a soda for her,” Hannah said to Dex.

“She can't open her own soda?” Dex asked.

“God, no. It'd ruin her manicure,” Hannah said seriously.

Dex glanced at me.

“Don't let me keep you. It sounds like you're needed, and besides, we can't have you missing
TRL
,” I said.

If Dex was put off by my mocking tone, he didn't show it. He just grinned at me in a way that gave me the same tingly feeling I get when I eat cake frosting straight from the can.

“One does have to keep up on pop culture,” Dex said.

And then he pivoted and followed Hannah down the marble hallway. Just before they took the left-hand turn that led into the den, Dex glanced back at me. I blushed, embarrassed that I was caught watching him, and I immediately looked away, down at Willow. She still seemed a little dazed.

“Come on, girl,” I said, and looped my fingers under her collar to lead her back up to my bedroom. When I took one final glimpse back down the hallway, Dex and Hannah were gone.

That evening I had to sit through yet another uncomfortable dinner of takeout with my dad, Peyton, and Hannah. As usual, my dad was trying to pretend that we were one big, happy family, Peyton was doing her best to ignore me, and Hannah was yammering on about her favorite subject: herself.

“Can we go to the mall this weekend? I was looking through
Marie Claire
and saw the cutest denim corset skirt from Bebe. I
have
to have it,” Hannah said.

Hannah was a bottomless pit of material need. There was always something—a skirt, a sweater, a bracelet, a bag—that she
had
to have. And Peyton never, ever said no to her.

“Sure, we'll go tomorrow and pick it up. Oh, wait, I can't tomorrow. I'm playing tennis. Why don't you go with your girlfriends?”

“Okay,” Hannah said with a pleased smile. Now that the skirt had been promised to her, she was—for the moment, at least—satisfied.

“Miranda could go with you,” my dad suggested.

I could? Hannah, Peyton, and I stared at him.

“What?” Hannah said, which pretty much summed up what we were all thinking.

“I don't like going to the mall,” I said quickly.

Hannah found this news so startling, she stopped gaping at my father and began to gape at me. “You don't like the mall?” she asked, as though I'd just announced that I'd decided to grow a pair of fish gills, and from now on would be breathing underwater. “But…where do you get your clothes?”

“The Gap mostly,” I said. Sadie had always dragged me there twice a year so I could stock up on essentials.

Hannah shook her head slowly, as though she couldn't reconcile my lack of interest in shopping with her consumer-driven life philosophy.

“Come on; it'll be fun,” Dad said. He was like Willow when she got hold of a used Q-tip, and then clamped her mouth shut and refused to let me pry it from her jaws.

“Richard, I don't think you should force it,” Peyton said.

“I think it would be good for the girls to spend some time together,” Dad said. He looked hopefully from me to Hannah. “You go to different schools and have different friends, after all. Wouldn't you like to get to know each other better?”

No,
I thought.
No, I do not want to get to know Hannah better. And what's more, just because you decided to marry Peyton doesn't mean that I should have to make friends with her insipid, balloon-headed daughter.

But I couldn't say that, obviously. And besides, my dad was looking so hopeful. And even though I was still really angry at him for being absent from my life for the past three years, there was a small part of me that couldn't bear to disappoint him.

“Okay,” I said reluctantly. “I'll go.”

Hannah looked at me, her eyes round with horror.

“Well, I suppose, if the girls want to…” Peyton said, with a shrug. “And Miranda, you could use Hannah's help picking out a few new outfits. She has excellent taste. And you could use a makeover.”

Dad rewarded Peyton with a huge grin. “That's right. You can do a makeover. It'll be fun.”

“But…wait,” I said. I didn't
want
a makeover. I
liked
my boring Gap clothes.

“Mom,” Hannah said in protest.

Peyton looked at her daughter, eyebrows raised and mouth pinched.

“And you can pick up a new pair of shoes while you're there, too,” Peyton said, in a transparent bribery attempt.

Hannah sighed, and slumped back in her chair.

“Fine,” she said. She could be bought with new shoes, but that didn't mean she had to be happy about it. Hannah picked up an egg roll, took a bite out of it, and then made a face. “Gross. It's cold.” She dropped the egg roll, pushed her plate away, and then crossed her arms irritably.

I really, really hoped I'd be able to think up a reason to bail on the shopping trip by tomorrow morning.

“S
o are you coming, or what?” Hannah asked the next morning.

I looked up. I was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the modern platform bed in the guest room, working on a short story I was writing. Willow was sacked out on the floor next to the bed, lying on a white flokati rug. The room also contained a spare modern dresser and a low, boxy white chair that looked like it had never been sat on. I hadn't done anything to make the room my own, other than set out two photographs in plastic frames on the dresser. One was a snapshot of Charlie and Finn that I'd taken at SeaWorld the previous spring. We'd been standing in line for the Kraken ride, and they were wearing sunglasses and smiling cheesy grins. The second photo was of Willow at the dog park being chased by a tiny little Yorkie. The picture of Sadie and me in our faux-diamond tiaras and sucking our cheeks in like beauty contestant pageants—taken last year at the book party Sadie's publisher had thrown for her when
The Gentleman Pirate
was released—was squirreled away in the top drawer, under my favorite sock-monkey pajamas.

Hannah was standing in the doorway to the room, wearing short shorts, a pink hoodie, and pink leopard-print Dr. Scholl's sandals. Her blond hair cascaded down over her shoulders in a glossy sheet, her makeup was cover-girl perfect, and her toenails were painted a sparkly shade of lilac.

“Is that what you're wearing?” she asked, looking me over critically. Her lips quirked into a frown.

I glanced down at myself. I was wearing a pretty typical outfit for me—khakis and a white T-shirt from the Gap. It seemed pretty inoffensive.

“Yeah. Why?” I asked, puzzled.

“Never mind,” she said with a sigh. “Come on. Avery's going to be here any minute.”

“Wait…Avery's coming?” I asked.

“Of course. Why?”

“Nothing. I just….” I just needed to think of an excuse to get out of this. Spending the day with Hannah was bad enough. Adding Avery to the mix made it just that much worse. But what excuse would work?
I'm not feeling well, cough-cough?
Or,
My school just started having classes on Saturdays?

Something told me Hannah wouldn't buy it, so I just shrugged and nodded. I slipped on my Jack Purcell sneakers—Hannah wrinkled her nose when she saw them—and then followed her out the front door. Avery was just pulling up in her sporty red Jetta. Hannah waved before turning back to look at me with a swish of pale blond hair.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. That guy called,” she said.

“What guy?” I asked, although I already knew from the sinking feeling in my stomach exactly whom she was talking about.

“You know. That cute guy you introduced me to at dinner the other night,” she said. “We're going out to a movie tonight.”

And then she opened the front passenger door of the Jetta and slid gracefully inside. I stood there, gaping down at her while the blood pounded in my head. Hannah and Emmett were going out. On a
date
. I felt dizzy, almost sick. And my mouth was suddenly dry, feeling just like it does when the dentist fills a cavity and packs your cheeks with cotton.

I mean, I knew Emmett was going to call her. Obviously. He had asked me for her number, after all. But a small part of me was hoping that he wouldn't really, that he'd somehow figure out that Hannah was too vain and shallow for someone as amazing as him.

“Are you getting in?” Avery asked, leaning across Hannah and peering up at me.

I nodded, and, feeling as though my limbs had turned to wood, I climbed into the backseat.

“Are Britt and Tiff coming?” Hannah asked as Avery peeled out of the driveway, narrowly missing the mailbox.

“Nope. No room. The backseat is only big enough to seat two,” Avery said. And even though neither of them said anything, I knew what they were thinking—it was my fault that the twins weren't accompanying them on the mall trip. Well, I wasn't any happier about it than they were.

“I have a date tonight,” Hannah announced. “So I have to find something
amazing
to wear.”

I felt another stab of pain, although it wasn't quite as pronounced. Maybe if Hannah brought up her date with Emmett another four hundred times, it would stop hurting altogether.

“With who? Not Matt!” Avery gasped.

Hannah snorted. “As if. After what he did at Parker's party, I'm not even speaking to him.” She turned back to look at me. “Matt's a guy I was sort of seeing over the summer.”

I was surprised that Hannah was addressing me directly. Ever since I'd moved in, she'd gone out of her way to ignore me, other than the occasional eye roll when Willow bounded in the room or an exasperated sigh if I exceeded my four allotted minutes in our shared bathroom. Not that I was all that torn up about it. As far as I was concerned, the less direct contact I had with the Demon Spawn, the better.

I hadn't liked Hannah from the first time I'd met her. We were twelve, and I was going through an awkward phase made worse by the horrible short haircut I'd insisted on getting after seeing Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday
. Unfortunately I failed to realize something that in retrospect seemed obvious: Audrey Hepburn didn't suffer from frizz-head. I did. The haircut was a big mistake. Hannah—looking perfect, as I would come to learn was her usual state—had stared at me, and then turned to her mother and said, “Who's that boy? I thought Richard said he had a daughter?”

My father's vision of Hannah and me turning into Best Friends Forever was pure fantasy. I'd agreed to go on this shopping trip only to please him. So I was surprised—pleasantly so—that Hannah was making an effort. Well, if she was going to be on her best behavior, I would try, too.

“What happened at Parker's party?” I asked.

Avery giggled, and Hannah rolled her eyes dramatically. “He got wasted and hooked up with Melanie Carmichael. Like, five different people saw them,” she said.

And I actually felt sorry for her for a minute. Even a girl as gorgeous as Hannah had guy trouble now and again…it made me like her a little more to know this.

But then she ruined the effect by continuing. “He was totally beer-goggling. Melanie is such a freak. She has these huge lips….”

“Oh, I know!” Avery squealed. She stuck out her lips in an exaggerated O shape. “Like this,” she said.

“And she's so annoying,” Hannah continued. “She's freaking obsessed with cheerleading.”

“Cheerleading is
so
passé.” Avery sighed.

“Oh, I
know
,” Hannah agreed.

And the conversation pretty much continued like this all the way to the mall. One of them would bring up someone and think of awful things to say about them, while the other would exclaim, “Oh, I
know
!” Over and over and over again.

For my part, I was too busy worrying about staying alive to pay much attention to their conversation. Avery seemed to do everything but look at the road as she drove. She talked, fiddled with the radio, answered her cell phone, ran her fingers through her hair, text-messaged the twins, touched up her lip gloss…all while tooling along at fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit. She ran two stop signs and came close to side-swiping a Jaguar.

“Why are you screaming?” Avery asked, turning all the way around in her seat to look at me.

“That was a red light!” I said.

“No, it wasn't. It was definitely yellow,” Avery said with a shrug, although she did look back at the road, which was a definite improvement. “So, Melinda…I wanted to ask you something.”

“It's Miranda,” I said.

“Sorry,” Avery said, although she didn't sound particularly sorry. “
Anyway
, what exactly did Dex say to you yesterday?” Avery kept her voice casual, but undermined this by peering intently at me in the rearview mirror.

“Dex? Oh, that guy who was over at the beach house?” I asked.

“Yeah. Wasn't he talking to you?”

“Sort of,” I said, remembering the mocking glimmer in those startlingly pale blue eyes. No, that wasn't right. He hadn't been mocking me…. It was more as though he and I were in on a joke together.

“Did he say anything to you about me?” Avery asked.

“No,” I said. And then I caught on. “Oh! Are you two dating?”

“I wish.” Avery sighed.

“I think he's totally going to ask you out,” Hannah assured her. “Now that he and Wendy have broken up.” She looked back at me to explain. “Dex was going out with Wendy Erikson for, like, two years, but they broke up over the summer.”

“Wendy Erikson?” I asked. I had no idea who she was talking about.

“Wendy,” Avery pronounced, “is freaking gorgeous. She's a model. She was in a commercial for Lever 2000. She was totally naked except for a towel. I could never do that. Well. Maybe I could if I had her body. Here, look. I have a picture of her.”

Avery rooted around in her purse and pulled out a page that had been ripped out of a magazine. It was an advertisement for zit cream, and featured a beautiful girl with the sort of creamy skin that a pimple wouldn't dare mar.

“This is her?” I said. “Dex's ex-girlfriend?”

“Uh-huh. She's gorgeous, right?” Avery said.

“Um…yeah,” I said. Because the girl was, indisputably, gorgeous. She had a mane of golden blond hair, enormous chocolate brown eyes, full, rose-colored lips, and perfectly straight, white teeth. It was almost painful to look at her—
that's
how beautiful she was.

“There's not an inch of fat on her anywhere,” Hannah said enviously.

“I would kill to have her body,” Avery moaned.

I found it hard to believe that Hannah could envy anyone for her looks, considering she herself was certainly pretty enough to model. And Avery, while not as classically beautiful as Hannah, was no slouch herself. With her dark hair, striking features, and golden-flecked eyes, she was glamorous and exotic-looking.

“And she was really dating Dex?” I asked. Because Dex was cute, sure, but he didn't strike me as the date-a-model type. He seemed a little too…well, grounded for that. But then, it wasn't like I knew him. I'd talked to the guy for only two minutes.

“Well,” Hannah said, twisting around in her seat to look at me, “the story
I
heard was that Wendy broke up with Dex because she's going to drop out of school and move to New York to become a professional model.”

“Really? I heard
Dex
broke up with
her
because he thought she was distracting him from lacrosse,” Avery said.

“He plays lacrosse?” I asked.
Aha!
I knew I'd gotten a jock vibe off him.

“Oh, yeah. Dex is, like, the star player at OC High,” Avery said. She looked at me in the rearview mirror again. “So you saw him yesterday. Isn't he gorgeous?”

“Well…” I hedged. Because he wasn't, really. I mean, sure, Dex was appealing, and had the whole sparkling eyes and easy grin going for him. But he was also a bit quirky-looking, what with his pale, freckled skin and curly hair. No, not gorgeous. Emmett was gorgeous—Prince William gorgeous. Dex was more like William's kid brother, Harry.

But thoughts of Dex and Emmett and their relative states of gorgeousness were momentarily chased from my consciousness by the garbage truck looming ahead that Avery was about to crash into. I let out a terrified yelp. “Look out!” I squeaked.

“Whoops!” Avery said. She swerved at the last minute and averted a collision with the truck, and then took a scarily sharp right-hand turn into the mall parking lot.

“I totally thought Dex was going to ask you out yesterday,” Hannah said, and my breath caught in my throat…right up until I realized that she'd been talking to Avery, not me.

“No,” Avery said with a rueful shake of her head. “I gave him, like, three different chances—I even mentioned that I wasn't doing anything tonight—but all he said was, ‘The library's open late on Saturday.'”

This made me laugh, although I had to disguise it with a cough. Hannah glanced back at me.

“Sorry, I have allergies,” I said apologetically.

“I don't even know what that means. Do you think he meant that he wanted to
meet
me at the library?” Avery asked.

“I don't know,” Hannah said, frowning. “Wouldn't he have said that?”

“You're probably right,” Avery said as she pulled into a parking spot and slammed on the brakes. “But maybe I should buy a new outfit. You know. Just in case he calls.”

“Good idea,” Hannah said supportively. “You should always be prepared.”

I'd fully expected the day at the mall to be as bad as spending hours on end sitting in an airport terminal, trying not to make eye contact with the crazy guy who smells like baked beans and talks to himself, but it actually wasn't all that bad. Mostly I just tagged along after Hannah and Avery while they attempted to max out their Visa cards in an all-out shopping blitz. Hannah bought the Bebe skirt, as well as two pairs of shoes, a mini-handbag, three bejeweled T-shirts, and a cascade of barrettes and hair clips from the accessory store. Avery was a bit more restrained, limiting herself to a new pair of Seven jeans and ridiculously overpriced rhinestone flip-flops.