The Queen Geek Social Club

by Laura Preble

  “Oh,” Becca whispers, lifting the crown from the plastic box. “Look. It’s like your mom knew what we were going to do.” I feel the lump of tears forming, bite it back.

  I don’t know how long we stand there like that; a few minutes, forever. Euphoria presses the intercom button that connects every room in the house, which brings us back to reality. “Are you girls ready yet? I’ve got all the tinfoil I could find in here.”

  I wipe my face on my sleeve and lift a starchy sleeveless pink dress from the bin. It has a tab collar and buttons down the front, and it poofs out at the skirt because of a stiff crinoline underneath.

  “Perfection,” Becca says reverently. She turns to me and says, “I think we should both wear the June Cleaver dresses. You’re just as much the queen as I am. Here.” She pulls a satiny mint-green dress from the box. “This one will look great on you. Even in black and white. And you can wear the crown.”

  “Oh, I don’t have to—”

  “No,” she says, smiling. “I insist.”

  We place the bin back in its resting place, take the dresses and the crown, and meet Euphoria in the lab. We both shimmy out of our clothes and into the dresses, which are a little big, but fit otherwise. “How do I look?” Becca asks.

  “Very queenlike. What about me?”

  “Looks like you should be baking some cookies. Here. Let’s put your crown on.” She nestles the tiara in my hair. “Lovely.”

  “Now, what do we actually do on this video, and where does Briley come in?”

  We spend the next forty-five minutes figuring this out, and when the doorbell rings, we’re ready for our villainous Super Model. “I’ll go get her,” Becca offers.

  Euphoria plays with the video camera, pushing buttons and zooming the lens in and out. “That was your mother’s dress,” she says.

  “I know.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I guess.” There are no mirrors in the lab, but I do catch a reflection of myself in the window. “I wonder if I look like she did.” Euphoria doesn’t respond. After all, she never knew my mom.

  Briley is the perfect Super Model; she comes in wearing a silver sequined minidress, silver high heels, too much makeup, and really crappy jewelry she bought at a cart in the mall. Her hair is in a bubble so large it should have its own orbital path. We shoot her footage first so we can get rid of her. We prop her up on a stool next to my dad’s microscope, poof her hair out even more than it’s already poofed, and tell her to read her lines.

  “But, like, I don’t understand how this is going to even look good on video,” she whines. “I mean, it’s dark in here, and you’ve got some vending machine running the camera.”

  “Excuse me?” Euphoria’s red lights blink threateningly. Briley makes the I-smell-something-bad face and rolls her eyes, which Euphoria catches on video, thankfully.

  “Okay, now Briley, just say your lines as menacingly as possible,” Becca says from over Euphoria’s shoulder.

  “Menacingly?”

  “Uh, like you’re really mad and evil.”

  “I thought I was supposed to be glamorous!” she pouts.

  “Yes,” Becca says, gritting her teeth. “Glamorous and mad and evil.”

  “Fine.” Briley grumbles as she adjusts her big bubble hair and crosses her Super Model legs. Then she studies the paper we’ve scrawled her lines on. “So I say ‘Ha ha, Queen Geeks, you’ll never get me to eat that Twinkie!’ That’s my line? What does that mean?”

  “It’s artistic,” Becca sniffs. “You’ll see how it all fits later. Let’s go! Rolling!”

  The camera whirs on and Briley turns on the charm, smooching her lips at the lens as if she’s trying to French-kiss it, or at least give it a good hickey. “Ha ha ha, Queen Geeks, you’ll never get me to Twink that Eatie!” She giggles. “Oops. Sorry. Let’s try again.”

  We do this like eight more times. I’m about ready to set her hair on fire (and, by the way, I know this would be spectacular because I can smell the amazing amount of Aqua Net she’s used, and I happen to know from previous science experiments that of all hair sprays, Aqua Net is the only one that is guaranteed, when lit, to burn all the hair off your head). We finally get her to say the one line correctly.

  “Now, Briley,” Becca says sweetly, putting her arm around our villain. “We have to do something a little unorthodox—”

  “Un-what?”

  “A little weird. We’re not going to tell you what it is, because we want your honest, raw reaction on film. You’re such an amazing natural actress that we want to get those spontaneous reactions, and if we tell you what we’re going to do, it’ll spoil everything. Okay?”

  Briley frowns at her. “I don’t know—”

  “Go!” Becca and I run out of the frame, leaving Briley looking bewildered. “Look mad and evil, Briley! C’mon, give it everything you’ve got!”

  Briley snarls and arches her back like Catwoman if Catwoman had had some kind of nerve disorder. “Now!” Becca yells.

  We both rush into the frame with hands full of Twinkies, and we smash the cream-filled yumminess into her perfectly perky face. She squeals and flaps at us like an overwrought chicken, and then Becca yells, “Cut!”

  “Oh!” Briley shrieks as she wipes the cream filling from her face. “What’s wrong with you? Why did you do that?”

  “Your reaction was perfect!” Becca hugs her. “That was so honest. Thank you so much!”

  “You’re welcome!” Briley stands up, teetering on her silver heels, scrapes the Twinkie goo from her face, and smooshes it, two-fisted, onto Becca’s cheeks and into her hair. “You two are even weirder than I’d heard.” She stomps off, bangs on the swooshy door, and can’t get out. “And you don’t even have a doorknob! You’re freaks!”

  “Okay, thanks. We’ll call you,” Becca sings after her as she leaves through the swooshy door that I’ve opened. We both collapse in a heap, laughing.

  “You’ve never looked lovelier.” I grab a paper towel and wipe the snack cake off her face. “I wonder if that’s good for your skin.”

  “Lots of preservatives. Maybe I won’t age.” After most of the sticky goop is wiped off, Becca checks her watch. “Whoa, it’s almost eight-thirty! I suppose I should call home. Will my cell work in here?”

  “No, probably not. Just go right outside and it should be okay. Are we still going to try and do the rest tonight?”

  “I hope so. If not, we’ll do it tomorrow? Well, let me call first. Maybe I can stay over.”

  As she leaves, I take the camera from Euphoria. “Thanks for helping. That was great.”

  “Hmm. Very interesting project. I suppose you’re hungry?”

  “Yes,” I say, somewhat surprised because I am, actually, really hungry. “Where’s Dad, by the way?”

  “He said he was going to a meeting or something. Told me he wouldn’t be here for dinner, and that he’d be home late.”

  “A meeting? This late?”

  Becca comes back in. “Whew. She’s in a good mood for a change. Said I could stay. I am famished. What about you?”

  We eat leftovers (and chocolate, of course) and finish filming our part of the video. The highlight of this is when we are standing in Dad’s lab, with all the weird blue and green neon lights glaring up at us in our froofy dresses and pearls and Euphoria shooting from the floor so we look extra tall. We stand with hands on our hips in the classic superhero stance, and Becca says her line: “The Queen Geeks: making models fatter, one Twinkie at a time.”

  7

  BOWLING FOR BOYS (or You Always Hurt the Ones You Love)

  The week goes quickly, and by the time Friday rolls around, we’re looking forward to taking the weekend to edit our masterpiece. I try to talk Becca into going to her house for a change; I mean, I’ve never been over there. I’ve never even met her mom, and I am starting to wonder if maybe she’s hiding some deep, dark secret, like her mom’s a gun runner or a Jehovah’s Witness or something.

 
; “It’s just not a good idea,” Becca says as we walk to our last class of the day.

  “Why not?”

  She pauses uneasily, then turns a sunny smile toward me. “I’ll have you over in a couple of weeks, okay? We’re still unpacking, and the house is a mess, and my mom’s a little bit uptight. She can’t stand having people come over if things aren’t absolutely perfect.”

  “I wouldn’t care—”

  She puts a finger to my lips. “Just wait. Believe me, you don’t want to come over right at the moment.” And with that, she disappears into her classroom, leaving me wondering what the big mystery is. Well, I guess it’s going to have to go on the back burner for the moment, because I have other more pressing problems on deck for this evening.

  There’s the issue of bowling with Elisa Crunch.

  I am still not thrilled by the idea of spending my Friday night in someone else’s musty shoes with a big spherical piece of plastic wedged onto my hand. While I’m not exactly a germ freak, I don’t think sharing things like shoes and balls is hygienic. Call me crazy.

  But bowling we do go. Dad, who for some reason has become friendlier than usual, volunteers to drive me, pick up Becca (who insists we pick her up at school), and deliver us to the Finger Bowl and Restaurant, one of the few places around that still thinks arterial clog is a selling point for its cheeseburgers. The front of this place looks like God’s jigsaw puzzle, and God, apparently, likes to leave his playthings lying around. The main entrance is plaster cast in geometric shapes that slope on a diagonal into the ground, giving it the appearance of having been swallowed by a huge chasm in the earth. Combined with the dog-pee yellow and deep violet paint job, the Finger Bowl’s architecture has earned it a place in Ripley’s Believe It or Not as one of the ugliest places that still charges less than two bucks for a Coke.

  Dad waves to us and agrees to pick us up at eleven, which astonishes me even more. As I watch him drive away, Becca shakes her head and laughs. “What?” I ask.

  “Your dad. He cracks me up.” She yanks open the frosted-glass-and-chrome door and we walk into the refrigerated air of the Finger Bowl. “I mean, can’t you figure out what’s going on here?”

  “Huh?”

  We walk past knots of people in various stages of bowling. The hollow sound of pins striking polished wood alleys rings in my ears. Becca gets to the shoe counter and stops. “Size nine, please. Try to get me something that isn’t smelly.” She turns to me again. “Have you noticed that your dad is extremely cheerful lately?”

  “Yes. I don’t see why that’s a problem. I like it. Six and a half for me, please.”

  The clerk brings Becca’s shoes; she sniffs them, wrinkles her nose, and pays her five dollars. “You should be paying me to wear these,” she says to the clerk, who shrugs and gets me my shoes. Turning to me, she smiles patronizingly. “Sweetie, your dad is dating.”

  Sound rushes out of my ears like the calm suck of the tide before a tsunami. My mouth gets dry, my hands go numb, and I am torn between wanting to cry, wanting to hit Becca, and wanting to set my bowling shoes on fire.

  “Did you hear me?” she asks, waving her hand in front of my face. I slap it away. “Whoa. Sorry. Should we find Elisa?”

  “Why don’t you find Elisa, and I’ll just go—go do something else. Maybe she should be your best friend.” I take the shoes the clerk has set down for me and throw them viciously against the racks of other shoes waiting to infect strangers’ feet. I walk away, then start to run blindly, looking for the bathroom. Why can you never find a bathroom when you’re crying or have diarrhea?

  I end up at the farthest end of the Finger Bowl, squatting down next to a gigantic gumball machine crammed with multicolored plastic balls. The carpet smells of old French fries, floor wax, and foot powder, which is something I can guarantee you don’t ever want to smell, but especially not when you’re having an emotional crisis. I feel like puking.

  Becca huffs up next to me. “Do you have to run so fast?” She wheezes. “I mean, I really try not to participate in PE, so my endurance is pretty crappy. Why did you throw your shoes at the nice attendant?”

  “What do you mean, my dad is dating? How could you say something so awful?” Now tears are flowing freely, mingling with all the other unidentified fluids that have set up a colony in this bacterial Club Med of a carpet.

  Becca squats down next to me. “Gosh, I’m so sorry, Shelby. I—I guess I didn’t think. I’m really sorry.” She gently touches my shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s go get a drink or something. I’ll buy.”

  “It’s just such a mean thing to say.” I wipe my face with the edge of my sleeve. It smells, inexplicably, like Corn Nuts. I think I’ll have to burn it.

  “Why is it mean?”

  I turn and look in her eyes, unbelieving. “What if I said your mom or dad was dating? Wouldn’t that piss you off?”

  “Yeah, but my parents are divorced. And my dad was already dating even before that, which is a whole other story.” Becca frowns at me, puzzled. “Your dad isn’t divorced, though—oh. Oh.”

  She puts her arm around me, and doesn’t say any more. We sit there, hugging, for a long time, and finally I stop hic-cupping, and the waterworks slow to a trickle. “Let’s just go bowling,” I say finally.

  “Okay. Whatever you want.” She gets up, pulling me with her. “We should look for Elisa, though. She’s probably thinking we stood her up.”

  Elisa is parked on lane twelve with a quart bottle of Mountain Dew, which is nearly empty. She vibrates at a higher frequency than others around her, due to the excessive sugar and caffeine. “Hey guys!” She jumps up like she’s just landed on an electrified whoopee cushion. “Wow, I’mgladyou’rehere. SeemslikeI’vebeenwaitingforhours!” She rushes to the cool aluminum ball-spit-out thing (I know it probably has a real name, but I don’t know it) and grabs her green custom-made Lady Ball. “Lucille and I have been waiting to kick some ash!” She laughs as if she’s just made the funniest joke in the history of comedy. “Kick some ash! Get it? The bowling lanes are made of ash wood! Isn’t that fantastic?”

  “Did you drink all that Mountain Dew by yourself?” Becca asks as she looks on a shelf for a ball the right size.

  “Yep.” Elisa’s eye twitches. “I don’t even drink coffee. Whatarush!”

  As we go about the business of bowling (or pretending to bowl, in my case), I can’t stop thinking about what Becca said. My dad, dating? I guess there have been times when the car has been gone . . . and he has seemed a little bit happier lately. But I couldn’t believe he’d actually go out on a date. He is my dad, after all. How gross. I decide to tuck the whole concept away in the back of my mind, in my mental broom closet where I keep elementary school embarrassments, bathroom mishaps, and inappropriate fantasies.

  After about a half hour of bowling, Elisa crashes from her caffeine high and becomes more normal, at least for her. “So, tell me about the video.” She is marking my score in the little squares that light up on a tote board above our heads. I have a disgustingly low score. “It sounds like a hoot.”

  “Yeah,” Becca says as she takes a swig of Diet Pepsi from a can. “If you could’ve seen Briley’s face when we smashed her with the Twinkies . . . priceless!”

  “Ooh.” Elisa turns and starts primping her hair. “Hottie at three o’clock.”

  “Huh?” Becca turns to look at the open area behind us. “Where?”

  “Over there.” Elisa grabs her head and turns it so she’s staring out past the main doors.

  “Yeah, no one is going to notice you staring if you twist her head off,” I remark as I search for my ball, the gold one with the swirly things on it.

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Um-hmmm.”

  “Helllooooo.”

  “Geez, you guys sound like, well . . . guys.” As I am about to send the ball down the lane and into the gutter (at least I’m consistent), I turn instead and see the most gorgeous guy ever created since time began. You may think I’m exagg
erating, and maybe I am, but at that moment, with the sunlight bouncing off the chrome door of the Finger Bowl and lighting him like a saint with a halo, he seems to me to be Adonis, or Hercules, or that other guy with the golden fleece.

  “He’s with Tim Lilly and Brian Cambridge.” Elisa whispers in Becca’s ear. “No, don’t look. Pretend you don’t care.”

  “I don’t know either of those guys,” Becca whines. “How can I meet him?”

  “I know them. They’re both in my Honors Chemistry class.” Elisa rubs her hands together. “Fresh meat, ladies. I’ll be back.”

  Watching her walk away, I feel as if I may actually follow the little bowling ball down the lane and disappear into the pin changer. Elisa Crunch is not only stealing my best friend, but she’s now trying to cozy up to the one guy that has really interested me since, well, forever. Could life get worse?

  “She’s bringing him over here,” Becca whispers. “The guys are all coming over here!”

  “No.” I know I look like crap because I’ve been crying; those of us of Irish background don’t do well with tears. If I were darker-skinned, maybe then I’d just look intriguing, but instead I always look like somebody left my face in the oven too long and everything melted into everything else and then burned. “I’ve got to get to the—” Before I can even speak it, let alone get to the bathroom, Elisa is dragging the new recruit and the two other guys into our bowling cubby.

  “Becca Gallagher and Shelly—”

  “Shelby.” I am trying to hide my face with my hair. I probably only succeed in looking wasted.

  “Right. Shelby Chapelle. This is Tim, Brian, and Anders. He’s from Norway.”

  “He’s an exchange student,” Tim offers. “He’s staying at my house.”

  I barely register Tim or Brian; I think they are wearing jeans and shirts and they definitely have hair. This is because I focus all my essence and energy on Anders, the Nordic god. He is as tall as Becca and has neck-length sandy-blond hair. His eyes are ice blue, with long silky lashes, and his complexion is fair, but with ruddy cheeks. He’s wearing a cream sweater, which sets off his eyes as well as his perfect Cupid’s-bow lips. I can’t stop looking at the lips.