Geek Abroad

by Piper Banks

  But Douglass made unruly students in his class spend their detention time cleaning out the cages of the snakes he kept as pets in his room. And Finn hated snakes.

  “Nope. Keegan’s teaching Enviro Sci,” I said. “Didn’t you notice what classroom we’re in?”

  “I wasn’t really paying attention. I wonder if it’s too late for me to transfer,” Finn muttered. He glanced nervously back at the long reptiles slithering around in their glass aquariums.

  “It is,” Charlie said, walking in with a group of our classmates, and tossing her bag on the open desk next to me. “I checked, and the class is closed. Keegan’s only taking five students this semester, because of all of the field trips they’re going to be going on.”

  “Charlie!” I said, grinning at her. “Hey!”

  The last time I’d seen her, Charlie’s hair had been pink and spiky. In my absence, she’d colored it a rich, dark burgundy and had cut it in a short, choppy style that accentuated her large brown eyes and pale skin. She was wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt with an artfully torn denim miniskirt and her clunky black Doc Martens. It was an outfit that would look ridiculous on me, but Charlie was able to carry it off with great panache.

  “Hey, you,” Charlie said. She leaned forward and gave me a quick hug. “When did you get back?”

  “Last night. Sorry I didn’t call. I was exhausted and went straight to bed,” I said.

  “It’s okay. I wasn’t home anyway. I was out with Mitch,” Charlie said. Suddenly her expression became dreamy and unfocused. She hugged her arms around herself and smiled goofily. “We went for a walk on the beach as the sun was setting. It was so romantic.”

  Finn let out a disgusted snort. I turned to glance at him, but he was glowering down at his laptop. I could tell he wanted nothing to do with this conversation.

  Charlie didn’t seem to have heard Finn. “And then later we were looking up at the stars, and I was pointing out some of the constellations to Mitch, and do you know what he said?” she continued in a nauseatingly gushy voice.

  Charlie paused, waiting for me to respond.

  “Um. No. What?” I asked.

  “He pointed up to this really bright star and said that it would be our star. Can you believe that? All couples have a song, but how many have their own star?” she exclaimed.

  I stared at her for a long moment. “Who are you, and what have you done with my best friend?” I finally said.

  Finn sniggered, and Charlie shot him a dirty look. For the first time since I’d set eyes on her, she looked like her old self. The Charlie I knew and loved was sarcastic and cynical and amazing. That Charlie, the old Charlie, would have been disgusted by the way this current Charlie was mooning over some guy’s idiotic line. I mean, come on. A couples star? It was appallingly sappy.

  “Sorry. I just thought you might be interested in what’s new with me,” Charlie snapped, not sounding at all sorry.

  “I am,” I said, attempting a conciliatory tone. “So things are going well with Mitch?”

  Charlie beamed. “Amazing,” she said, with a deep, self-satisfied sigh.

  “How about everything else?” I asked.

  “Like what?” Charlie asked.

  “You know. Anything. Everything. How about your painting? Are you working on your new show?” I asked.

  Charlie’s an incredibly talented artist and has had several shows at local art galleries. The last one was so successful, a big-name gallery in Miami offered to host her next show there, and I knew Charlie had been really excited about it. She was just waiting until she had enough new paintings to exhibit. I knew it was only a matter of time before she was ready. Plus, she’s bipolar, and when she’s on one of her manic swings, it’s not unusual for her to stay up all night painting.

  “Oh. You know. Nothing much lately,” Charlie said vaguely.

  I stole another look at Finn. This time he looked back at me. I could tell from his raised eyebrows that he was thinking the same thing I was: It was one thing for Charlie to go all mushy over Mitch, but quite another thing altogether for her to stop painting. Art had always been her life.

  “But what about your exhibit?” I asked, turning back to face Charlie. She hadn’t noticed Finn and me exchanging dark looks.

  “What exhibit?” she asked.

  “The one down in Miami!” I exclaimed.

  “Oh, that.” Charlie shrugged dismissively. “We didn’t set a date or anything. The guy at the gallery just said to contact him when I was ready. So it’s not like there’s a rush.”

  “But I thought you were really excited about the show,” I said.

  “I was. I mean, I am. Wait . . . why are you so obsessed with this?” Charlie asked.

  “I’m not. I just . . . I just don’t want you to miss out on such a great opportunity,” I explained.

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” Charlie said. She glanced at the clock. “I’m going to see if Mitch is online.”

  She opened up her laptop, clicked on her instant-messaging program, and a minute later was tip-tapping away, the goofy smile back on her face.

  “Hey, Miranda,” Sanjiv said, appearing in front of my desk. Sanjiv Gupta was a gangly, serious boy who wore thick glasses and had a prominent Adam’s apple. He was the captain of the Mu Alpha Theta math competition team, and he took his position very seriously. But, then, Sanjiv took everything seriously. I don’t think he actually possessed a sense of humor.

  “Hi, Sanjiv. How was your holiday?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he said. “Don’t forget we have our first team practice tomorrow.”

  “Oh, right. Okay,” I said.

  Once Sanjiv had returned to his seat, Finn said, “You’re not going to stay on the MATh team, are you?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. I sort of have to.”

  Mr. Hughes, the headmaster of Geek High, had blackmailed me into rejoining the MATh team the previous semester. In return, he’d let me make the necessary changes to turn the Snowflake Gala into a fun dance (up until this year, it had been a horribly dull dinner featuring a dry academic lecturer). Which sounds like a fair bargain . . .except for the part where I hadn’t wanted to plan the stupid Snowflake in the first place, and did so only under duress from the headmaster. To make matters even worse, being on the MATh team had meant I couldn’t join the staff of the Ampersand, Geek High’s award-winning literary journal. For a brief time, I’d thought I might be able to juggle both extracurricular activities, but then Sanjiv had scheduled a practice at the same time that a mandatory informational meeting for the Ampersand was being held, and so I had to miss the Ampersand meeting. . . . Which meant that I wasn’t able to join the journal this year. It was hugely disappointing.

  “But the Snowflake is over,” Finn said. “Hughes can’t make you stay on the team now.”

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to quit. I may be gifted in math, but it wasn’t something I enjoyed. Not like the other members of the MATh team, anyway. They actually thought it was fun to spend their afternoons sitting around working on math drills. But Sanjiv and the rest of my MATh teammates would be royally ticked off at me if I quit now. They were counting on me.

  “I have to,” I said, yawning. “I said I would.”

  Finn shrugged. “If you say so,” he said, unconvinced. Finn never does anything that he doesn’t want to do. Except go to school, and even then, he treats it all like it’s one big laugh.

  Which reminded me—I hadn’t checked out Finn’s blog, geekhigh.com, in a while. He wrote the blog anonymously, updating his readership on all of the school gossip. I clicked over to the Web site, but saw that it hadn’t been updated since the last time I’d checked it while I was in London. Instead there was a note at the top of the Web page that read: ON HIATUS.

  “On hiatus?” I read aloud, and raised my eyebrows at Finn.

  He shrugged moodily. “I haven’t felt much like blogging lately,” he said. I could have sworn I saw him cast a hurt glance at Charlie, who was still
too immersed in her IM conversation with Mitch to notice.

  Just then, Mr. Douglass came in. He was, as usual, wearing a three-piece suit. He was the only teacher at Geek High who wore a suit to work—the rest of the male teachers wore chinos and polo shirts—but it was hard to imagine stiff, fussy old Mr. Douglass dressed casually. His hair and mustache were white, and his fleshy face and hands were covered with liver spots. He looked up at the class, jowls quivering. The few students still standing quickly took their seats.

  “Quiet down, quiet down,” Mr. Douglass said grumpily. “Or I’ll start taking down names for cage-cleaning duty.”

  Finn slouched down in his seat, looking disgusted.

  “This semester we’re covering the subject of geology. This is not, as some students have derisively called it”—Mr. Douglass’s eyes raked over the class, and he had a very sour expression on his wrinkled face—“ ‘Rocks for Jocks.’ So if you’re here thinking that this course will earn you an easy A, you can just leave now.”

  Mr. Douglass paused, as though waiting for one of his students to stand up and march out of the room. I glanced over at Finn again, thinking that if anyone was going to leave, it would be him. But Finn didn’t move. Instead, he had his fingers primed on the keyboard of his laptop, ready to take notes. Which was really rather shocking for Finn, considering he normally spent class time playing around on the Internet or working on one of the computer games he was developing.

  He must be even more afraid of snakes than I thought, I decided.

  Mr. Douglass looked a bit disappointed that we’d all stayed rooted in our seats. He cleared his throat and continued. “Geology is, of course, the study of the solid matter of the earth, and thus is considered part of the earth sciences.” He coughed. “Eh-eh-eh.” It was a disgusting, wet, phlegmy sound. “Do any of you know how old the planet Earth is?”

  A half-dozen hands immediately shot up into the air. The propeller-hand phenomenon was common at Geek High. In a school full of geniuses, everyone was a know-it-all. Well. Everyone but me. I had no idea how old the Earth was. I glanced at Charlie. She didn’t have her hand up, either, and from the speed with which she was typing—as well as the dreamy, drippy expression on her face—I got the distinct feeling she was still instant messaging with Mitch.

  If Douglass catches her doing that, she’ll get stuck cleaning up snake droppings for sure, I thought.

  “Yes, Mr. Frost,” Mr. Douglass said.

  “The earth is four-point-six billion years old. The outermost shell of the earth is called the lithosphere, which is fragmented into tectonic plates,” Christopher Frost began, speaking in the flat monotone he always used. Christopher had sandy-colored hair and rarely blinked behind his thick glasses. I was familiar enough with Christopher’s idiosyncrasies to know that he would keep talking until he was stopped. If Mr. Douglass didn’t cut him off, Christopher would cover the entire syllabus.

  Douglass seemed to have figured this out. “That’s enough,” he said curtly.

  “The tectonic plates move independently of each other. . . .” Christopher continued, blissfully unaware.

  “I said, that’s enough. Do you not understand what those words mean, Mr. Frost? Shall I look them up in the dictionary for you?” Mr. Douglass asked, his voice rising and his face coloring.

  Christopher fell silent and blinked a few times. I frowned. Sure, Christopher could be annoying, there was no doubt about that. But that was just what he was like; he didn’t know any better.

  “Jerk,” Finn muttered under his breath.

  “Now. Where were we?” Mr. Douglass asked. “Eh-eh-eh.” He plucked a cotton handkerchief out of his pocket and hocked up into it. “Right. Tectonic plates.”

  Revolting, I thought, with a shudder. It was going to be a long semester.

  “Doesn’t Douglass know that Christopher is autistic?” Finn asked later that day, after school.

  “Is he?” I asked.

  Finn stared at me. “Did you seriously not know that?”

  “No. I just thought he lacked some social graces. That’s not so unusual,” I said, shrugging. “There are lots of kids at Geek High who don’t really fit in anywhere else.”

  It was true. In fact, when I was a kid and my parents first became aware of my ability to calculate sums in my head, they’d had me tested to see if I was on the autistic spectrum. I think it was because of the movie Rain Man, which featured a severely autistic man, played by Dustin Hoffman, who was also able to solve complex math problems in his head. Insert an eye roll here, considering that (a) it wasn’t the most flattering comparison for them to make, and (b) I didn’t have any of the other symptoms that Dustin Hoffman’s character had. I was a pretty normal kid in all, except for the calculator that came hard-wired to my brain.

  “Seriously, I’m just amazed that they’re not lined up outside the school ready to study us,” Finn said darkly.

  “Who?”

  “You know. Doctors. Psychiatrists. Sociologists.” Finn shrugged. “You have to admit, the Geek High student body would make an interesting case study.”

  Finn, Charlie, and I were at Grounded, a coffee shop and our favorite after-school hangout. Actually, Finn and I were there together, sitting at one of the small round tables and drinking lattes. Charlie had come with us, but she was perched on one of the tall stools lined up near the counter, sipping an iced coffee through a straw and giggling at something Mitch said.

  Mitch had a square face, large vacant eyes, and a snub nose. He gelled his dark hair up into spikes that stood straight up on top of his head, making him look like a porcupine. Mitch worked at the coffee shop, and so he was standing behind the counter and wearing a navy blue apron over a maroon GROUNDED T-shirt. But there weren’t any other customers in the shop, so he was able to stare at Charlie with a sappy, lovestruck expression that was the mirror of the one Charlie wore.

  Finn followed my gaze.

  “I know. They’re revolting,” he said.

  “Well. She seems happy,” I said loyally, not wanting to run Charlie down behind her back. Unfortunately, at that very moment, the two lovebirds began to kiss noisily.

  Finn snorted. “Happy? She seems possessed,” he said. “And in the worst way possible.”

  “I’m sure it’s just a stage. Once they’ve been going out for a while . . .” My voice trailed off. I had no idea what they’d be like after they’d been going out for a while. Maybe this was the sort of affliction that got worse over time. Maybe in a few weeks, they’d be surgically attached at the lips.

  A curly-haired woman wearing workout clothes walked into the coffee shop, sending the bell on the front door jingling. She strode up to the counter and waited patiently to place her order. A minute passed. And then another. And another. The whole time, Mitch and Charlie were so busy kissing, they hadn’t noticed she was standing there.

  “Excuse me,” the woman said.

  Still no response from the kissing couple. The woman looked over at Finn and me.

  “I just want a cup of coffee,” she said helplessly. “Is there anyone else working here?”

  Finn sighed. “Hold on,” he said. He stood and walked around the counter, passing by the oblivious Mitch, and poured a cup of coffee for the woman from the large thermos by the cash register. She started to hand him money, but Finn waved her off.

  “This one is on the house,” he said.

  “Thanks,” the woman said, smiling at him. “I’m glad someone’s doing their job around here.”

  When she left, the door jingling closed behind her, Mitch and Charlie finally broke apart. Mitch looked around, his brow wrinkling in confusion when he saw Finn behind the counter.

  “What are you doing? Did I just hear the door?” Mitch asked.

  “Nope. You didn’t hear a thing,” Finn said, now helping himself to coffee before coming back around the counter and over to our table. He held up his paper cup in a mock toast to me, and said, “M, I’m out of here.”

  “What . .
. now?” I asked. I opened my eyes wide and tilted my head meaningfully at Charlie and Mitch, who had gone back to smooching.

  I knew Finn understood that I didn’t want to be left alone with the couple. But he just shrugged, winked at me, shot one last disgusted look at Charlie, and then headed out of the coffee shop.

  Mitch looked up again as the bell jingled on the closing door. His mouth was red and chapped, and his eyes looked a little dazed. “Did someone just leave?” he asked. Charlie giggled and leaned in for another kiss.

  I sighed, slumped back in my chair, and tried to avert my eyes.

  Chapter 11

  Modern Literature class was a yearlong course, so we were continuing where we’d left off before Christmas. On our first day back, Mrs. Gordon—my favorite teacher—had assigned us Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’d started reading it, and been immediately enchanted with the idea of moving to the French Riviera and living the life of the ultraglamorous American expatriate. Minus the insanity and alcoholism, of course.

  As usual, the desks in Mrs. Gordon’s small, messy classroom were set up in a circle. Posters from Shakespeare plays were tacked to the wall, and a tall narrow bookshelf behind Mrs. Gordon’s desk was crammed full of books. Padma Paswan, wearing an inadvisable amount of turquoise eye shadow, was already there, deep in conversation with horsey-faced Tabitha Stone, when Finn, Charlie, and I walked in to class. Tate Metcalf, Christopher Frost, and Sanjiv were also in their seats. Tate brightened when he saw Finn.

  “Dude, I played Mutant Monkeys last night. You were right, it’s a great game,” Tate enthused. Tate had skin the color of dark coffee, a wild frizz of hair, and loved video games almost as much as Finn did.