Into the Wild Nerd Yonder (12 page)

Thankfully, Dottie is fully immersed in creating what she calls “the most pwnage-inducing adventure you have ever seen. Well, it’s your first adventure, so it will be kick-ass no matter what. Right, n00b?” She has taken to calling me “n00b,” which I know is a dis, but Dottie claims is just a term of endearment for “role-playing fresh meat.” Yes. Endearing.

I try to work on an English essay assignment, but I can’t seem to get my brain to stop drifting to Henry . . . Char . . . Bizza. If this Van thing never happened, I’d be right there with Char calling Bizza at lunch, stopping by after school with crappy gossip magazines, helping her through whatever she’s going through. But I have to get it into my head that this
friendship is over. Friends don’t treat friends the way Bizza treated me, and besides, I’ve got new sort-of-friend-type people who actually want to hang out with me, not use me to get through the punk cloud of smoke at Denny’s.

I turn to precalc (maybe something more concrete will keep my mind from wandering), but I can’t shake this guilty feeling I have about Bizza. Kicking myself all the way, I get a bathroom pass and head for the farthest stall in the most remote girls’ bathroom. Cell phone use is against the rules during school hours, but I don’t exactly feel like arguing with the hall monitor about why I need to call my friend from a pay phone in the middle of the day. Hopefully, no one will hear me. Bizza’s number is still programmed as number 2 on my phone. I thought about deleting her, but that seemed so permanent, like once her number’s gone I no longer have the ability to contact her if I really need to (ignoring the obvious fact that I’ve had her phone number memorized since first grade, and I couldn’t forget it if someone dropped an anvil on my head).

I lean against the inside of the stall door. (I’d sit on the toilet lid, but for some reason our school bathrooms don’t have lids. Maybe to prevent us from sitting on them and talking on the phone when we’re supposed to be in class.) A cigarette butt floats in the toilet bowl, and I wonder how anyone managed to smoke in the bathroom without some suspicious authority figure smelling it. Maybe that’s why the bathrooms always smell like an overload of generic celebrity perfume—to cover up
the cigarette stink. My mind continues these (not so) enlightening observations until I get up the nerve to push 2. There are only ten minutes left in the period, and I refuse to be late to history, since Mr. Stein makes any latecomers wear a dunce cap. He claims it’s been done this way throughout history. Maybe he wouldn’t feel that way if he lived through the lice epidemic our school had in the third grade.

Bizza’s phone rings three times, and then her mom picks up. “Hello?” she whispers, as though she knows I’m hiding in the school bathroom.

“Hi, Mrs. Brickman. It’s Jessie. Is Bizza home today?” I whisper back.

“Jessie, so nice of you to call. I haven’t seen you in ages. Are things going okay?” Mrs. Brickman continues to whisper. I’m a parental favorite, mainly because I rarely get into trouble, I’m polite, and I get good grades. Funny that my parents never got close with Bizza’s or Char’s parents; they mostly just waved from idling cars, waiting to pick us up.

“I’m fine, Mrs. Brickman. You?” I wish I didn’t have to make nice with the clock ticking. Plus, every time I hear a noise from the hall, I’m sure it’s the hall monitor coming to confiscate my phone. What if they think it’s
my
cigarette in the toilet?

“Oh, okay. I took the day off work to take care of Bizza. She’s not feeling well.” I’m dying to make an allusion to the Van BJ at the party, but of course wuss out, when Mrs. Brickman says, “Sore throat. She’s sleeping next to me on the couch,
that’s why I’m whispering. I told her if it doesn’t get better by Friday I’m taking her to the doctor. And you know how she hates the doctor, so I’m sure she’ll be good as new in no time.”

Bizza has been afraid of the doctor ever since she had that prick test for allergies. Any time a needle comes near her, she goes screaming crazy.

“Do you want me to tell her you called?” Ig. Did I? I mean, I called to be nice, but leaving a message puts the ball back in her court. I don’t want to jump with panicky avoidance every time my phone rings.

“That’s okay. I’m sure I’ll see her at school tomorrow.” We hang up, just as the bell signaling the end of study hall rings. Instantly, girls with pointy shoes and giant purses fill the bathroom, and I escape before I’m covered in smoke and perfume.

I BEAT MY ALARM RADIO BY WAKING myself up this morning. I once read that you can remember your dreams better if you keep a journal next to your bed and write down everything you remember the second you wake up. You should do this at any point in the night you wake up, which I did, and which is why I am insanely tired. Now all I have next to me is a notebook filled with unreadable, crooked words. One page looks like it says “Turkey holiday,” and I think I can make out “banana crepe” on another. Or is it “banana crap”? All I know is I don’t see the word “Henry” anywhere in the notebook. Maybe I dreamed the whole dreaming-about-him thing in the first place. So at least that’s taken care of for today. And my new phone strategy, just in case Bizza does get a message from her mom that I called, is to leave my cell off. That way my family has to screen calls on the regular phone, and she’ll know my cell’s off when it goes straight to voice mail. That’s if she calls.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to let it go.

Char greets me at my locker before first period. She’s in some bizarre gold lamé catsuit, complete with severe cat-eye makeup and thick bangle bracelets shoved up past her elbows. I envy her nerve for a twinge, until she brings up Bizza. “So have you talked to Bizza yet? I called, but her mom said she couldn’t come to the phone. Sore throat.”

“That’s as much as I know,” I say, gathering my books. I wonder if Char will notice my new skirt, made with cute Elmo fabric I snagged at a baby sheet sale. Maybe she’s blinded by her own golden glow because she doesn’t say anything. Or maybe she doesn’t even notice. Or maybe she does notice, but she doesn’t want to say anything until I say something about her outfit. I’m not saying anything.

“I wonder what’s wrong with her.” Char looks overly concerned.

“It’s a sore throat. Big deal. My mom’s had one for a week. It’s just something that’s going around.” Char’s overanalysis of Bizza’s everything annoys me, and I’m happy that she chose to bother me before instead of after school so I can make a clean getaway. The first bell rings, and I tell her, “See ya later.”

“Yeah, okay.” She pauses, with a stressed look on her face. “I hope I don’t get Bizza’s sore throat.” I curse Char in my head that she
does
get it, but then I feel guilty and make her uncursed.

Polly smiles at me as I walk into English. We have an essay test about the significance graphic novels play in documenting
history in the twenty-first century. I like this kind of test because it doesn’t require as much studying as it does thinking, and Ms. Norton loves it when we get abstract and analytical (i.e., throw in a lot of big words and BS), so I know I’ll do well. I smile back at Polly and notice how pretty she is—naturally red lips, bouncy hair, and she’s so tall and thin. I look at her for a minute and try to take her out of context. Like, if she didn’t go to this school and grow up with me and all of these people around us, and nobody knew she played the flute and was in the smart classes and dates a really goobery-looking guy—would she be popular? Would she want to be? A flash of Henry’s bright eyes and curly hair pop into my head. What if Henry’s pants weren’t so short, his shoes not so white . . . How is it that someone becomes a dork? Do they choose to, just like Bizza and Char decided to turn punk? Are they born that way? What makes some people like punk music and Denny’s and other people like costumes and Dungeons and Dragons? And where do I fit into all of this?

I try to clear all of the existential questions from my head and focus on my essay test. The BS flows nicely, and I leave class feeling pretty confident I scored an A. In fact, I did so well that I decide to make today an official A + test day (yes, this is something I sometimes do), and I skip out on lunch with the band geeks in order to study for my precalc test in the library.

Oh. Henry’s here. In the library. I don’t want him to see me. Hide in the stacks, yeah, that old cliché hide-in-the-stacks
routine so I can spy on the nerd who I may or may not have dreamt about. Because just sitting down near him instead of hiding from him would be weird, right?

My pathetic reasoning is interrupted by a scuffing sound coming from one row behind me. I peek through some dusty Einstein biographies to catch my brother and his homecoming bride making out. Yuck. I always try to avoid seeing my brother and his girlfriends in the act because I, nor does anyone else in the world, I hope, do not need to see Barrett’s hand on some girl’s butt. I don’t care if she
is
the potential homecoming queen. Now I should really just bust out of here and sit down near Henry. I mean, I am going to his house tomorrow night, and—

“Jessie?” It’s Barrett, who has extracted his hand from atop Chloe Romano’s ass and is now standing behind me, watching me watch Henry. “What’re you doing?”

I fumble a book off the shelf in front of me. “Oh, you know, just looking for something good to read.” Barrett nods to the Enrico Fermi biography in my hands.

“Looks engrossing, dorklet.”

“I’m not a dorklet.” I stuff the book back onto the shelf. “And aren’t you supposed to be in class? Not making out with Chloe Romano?”

“Are you spying on me?” No, I want to say, I’m spying on that nerd over there. “We both got bathroom passes. I’m going back to class now, Oh Hall Monitress. Enjoy your scientific
discoveries.” He pats me on the head in a big-brotherly, slightly condescending way.
Grrr.
I’m not a dorklet. I’m just going to sit with one.

I head over to Henry’s table with the plan that it would be rude not to at least say hello, and if he offers me a seat then I’ll take it, but only to study my precalculus. I try to be casual as I walk up, assuming he’ll see me and the conversation will begin immediately. But he doesn’t look up, and I recognize the white cords hanging down from his ears. I guess I could just sit down, or say something, or walk away really fast and pretend I never intended to sit with him in the first place. I decide on the last choice, but just as I move, Henry says, “Jessie?” Is it weird that I like the sound of his voice saying my name?

“Hey, Henry. I saw you sitting here, but I didn’t want to bother you. Are you studying? What are you listening to? Do you have lunch now?” Why am I being rambly? It’s not like I have to impress him with my coolness. Calm thyself.

“What?” He yanks out his earbuds, and I’m thankful he couldn’t hear the game of twenty questions I was unintentionally playing with him. “Um, hey, how’s it going?” Real smooth-like.

“Good. Just listening to Bob Dylan and studying for precalc. I pretend that the music helps me study, but I think it just gets songs stuck in my head and helps distract me from how stressed out I actually should be.” He smiles, and I’m surprisingly mushed by the squintiness of his eyes.

“Who do you have for precalc?” I ask and sit down across from him.

“Ms. Jersen. Last period. So hard to focus on math at the end of the day.”

“I heard she’s hard, too.” Conversation flows normally, and I figure he really can’t see the Henry dream look on my face. Phew. I relax a little. “Do you want to study? I made flash cards of the formulas.” I pull out some cards from my bag and notice that he’s smiling even bigger at me now. “What?”

“Flash cards?” he asks me with an eyebrow raised.

“What?” I ask again. “What’s wrong with flash cards?”

“Nothing, I guess. I just haven’t used flash cards since I learned my multiplication tables. But you’re the one with the straight As in math, so I won’t question your methods any longer. Quiz me.”

Wait a minute. Was I just made fun of by a nerd for being a math dork? And how did he know I was a math dork anyway?

We spend the rest of the period quizzing each other on formulas (where, by the way, I completely kick his ass). It’s sort of fun, in a studying-for-a-precalc-test kind of way. When we get up to leave, I can’t help but notice his floody jeans. Why do I care again?

“Thanks for your help. Maybe we can do this again next precalc test.” He has amazing eye contact, and I’m a tad uncomfortable looking into his blue-raspberry-Slurpee eyes.

“Sure. But I may have to charge you,” I joke. On the way to precalculus, I suddenly panic. I just helped a dork study for a math test. Wouldn’t that make me an even bigger dork?

Mike Eastman passes back the tests without any comments about how I smell today. I put pencil to paper and ace the test.

DOTTIE VERSED ME IN THE BASICS of Dungeons and Dragons all through study hall, but I barely heard her. My nerd exchange incident really disturbed me. It’s like how I was thinking about Polly and how pretty she is, and I was spying through the biography section, and then my brother calls me a dorklet and I end up tutoring someone who is supposed to outnerd me and where does that put me on the social food chain? I have never been anywhere on it, technically. Like, if the school had to be divided into groups based on social status, it would be so easy to say to most people, “You go over there to jocks, and you go over to the dorks, and you go over to the emo kids, and the punks, and the stoners.” And after all that sorting through the giant school strainer, I would be left hanging out by myself still in the strainer because I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. When I’m a senior, and it’s time to fill out our senior survey for most and best and biggest and hottest, I would be voted nothingest—except that I wouldn’t, because I’m so nothing that nobody would vote for me. But what if I keep heading in the direction I’m heading in—away from the punk god Barrett, away from the freshly
punk skag Bizza, and toward the nerd clan? Do I want to be voted biggest geek? Highest dork to the nth power? Tutor of nerds with ugly shoes?