The Queen Geek Social Club

by Laura Preble

  “Right. But only if they come to the dance with a special ticket we’ll give them for participating, and then they get the opportunity to reach into a barrel for the thousand dollars.”

  Becca wags her finger at me. “I think I’m getting this. So we ask them to do it, spread a rumor that if they do it they can get a special ticket to make them eligible for the drawing, but then no ticket ever wins, right?”

  “No, a ticket has to win,” I say. “But by the time the dance comes around, and we do the drawing, they’ll have forgotten all about the money.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Not with the serious money-grubbing we’ve got around here.” Elisa shakes her head in dismay.

  “How about a date with a movie star?” Becca asks nonchalantly, as if she has movie stars sleeping at the bottom of her purse.

  “Like?” Amber asks.

  “Like maybe Brandon Keller.” She looks down at her nails, as if to appear humble. “My parents happen to know him. I told you they worked in movies.”

  “So you could get someone a date with Brandon Keller, the television star? The romantic stud of the world? Everybody’s book-cover fantasy?” Elisa scoffs. “I don’t think so. But if you want to try and tell people that, I’m all for it. It’ll come back on you if it gets screwed up.”

  Becca throws an arm around Elisa as the bell ending lunch rings. “That’s why I like you. I know I can count on you to watch my back.”

  “So we text everyone we know, spread rumors, and get everybody to do this next Friday?” Becca asks. Amber and Elisa nod as they gather up their stuff.

  “Wait,” I say. “Shouldn’t you check in with Brandon Keller before you commit him to a date? I mean, he probably has other stuff going on, like making huge blockbuster movies.”

  “Leave that to me,” Becca says breezily as she saunters off to class.

  During fifth and sixth periods, I tell as many girls as I can about the upcoming ignorefest and possible date with a hottie movie star. Many of them stare at me in disbelief for a second, then ask, “So what do you have to do? And how do you get a ticket?”

  By the time I meet Becca in front of the library after sixth period, she’s bouncing with joy. “I cannot believe how many girls are in, just this afternoon! I wrote a note and passed it all around to every girl, and by the time we left, they were all asking me how they could get the tickets!”

  As we walk through the grass toward the street, I mention the thought that’s been plaguing me all afternoon. “What if they just say they did the Nibid thing, but didn’t, and then they get a ticket?”

  She shrugs. “Well, we can’t watch all of them. But at least of few of them will do it, and that’s enough. It will make an impact. Maybe we should make them wear stickers too.”

  “Okay. Stickers that say ‘I’m ignoring you because it’s National Invisible Boy Day,’ something like that?”

  “Right. We can print those out without a problem. Big, pink stickers.” She gleefully chuckles at the thought of all the girls on campus branded with our badge of honor. “On a less interesting subject, I have a project due in Social Science, so I’m going to have to get home and put some time in on that tonight, and tomorrow after school Mom’s driving us up to L.A. to get some of the stuff we need for the haunted island. We’re staying over.”

  “Where do you get haunted-island-making supplies?”

  “You go to the special-effects people, the ones who make that stuff in movies.” Becca skips along, confident that everything, even things as massive as a haunted island and a date with a movie star, will be taken care of in the same way that picking up milk at the 7-Eleven is taken care of. I wish I had her confidence, her absolute belief that whatever she wants will happen.

  So, I guess, I focus on the stuff I know I can do, like stupid schoolwork. “Well, you want to come over for a little while and read Romeo and Juliet? We have to finish Act II by tomorrow.”

  “Only if you’ll be Romeo.” She grins wickedly. “Or maybe we could call Fletcher.”

  “Don’t mention that name!” I am still really mad at him for taking our ideas, and I don’t think I can forgive him, even if he does have extra-sexy green eyes.

  At home, Euphoria putts in with a pitcher full of delicious iced lemonade and a plate of her absolutely best cookies, the peanut butter ones with a chocolate kiss in the middle. This is a sure sign that something is wrong.

  “Uh, what’s with the royal treatment, Euphoria?” I ask as she attempts to leave the room without comment.

  “What? Oh, just felt like practicing my baking skills. Don’t want them to get rusty, you know. Ha. Rusty! Get it?” She laughs, a high-pitched, chittering laugh that sounds like nerves to me.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask as Becca dives for a cookie.

  “Nothing’s wrong, why would anything be wrong? Nothing’s wrong.” She says it so fast I barely register anything except the word wrong, which means something definitely is.

  “Is it Dad? Listen, don’t freak out. I’m okay about the dating thing, if that’s what it is.” I pour some lemonade into a glass and try to act as calm as possible. It’s really weird when you have to keep a lid on your feelings in front of your robot so you won’t upset her.

  “Oh, come on, Euphoria,” Becca mumbles over a mouthful of cookie, “you can tell us. We can keep a secret.”

  “Well, all right.” She rolls over to us, and whispers (as best a robot can whisper, which is something like the low hum of a blender), “I am a little nervous, really. It’s because . . . well . . . your father has decided to bring in another robot.”

  “What?” I practically spit out my lemonade. “Another robot? To replace you?”

  “Oh, no, no.” She pretends to fan herself, something I think she picked up watching Gone with the Wind too many times. “To help him in the lab, and outside. And I’ve sneaked a peek online, to see what he’s doing—”

  “Euphoria! Did you sneak into Dad’s online folders? That’s like going through somebody’s underwear drawer!”

  “I know, I know,” she chatters. “I feel so bad about it, but I needed to know. So I found out that it’s probably going to be a combination leaf blower/mower and vacuum with a computer interface that makes it programmable. And he’s got a really cute processor!”

  “Unbelievable. Euphoria has a boyfriend.” Becca shakes her head and grabs another cookie. “Even the females who aren’t human let their lives revolve around guys.”

  “Well, I’m happy for you,” I say, patting her claw. “I hope it works out.”

  “Oh, so do I!” She hums some tuneless song as she rolls merrily into the kitchen. The phone rings, and since she’s too love-struck to answer it with any kind of sense, I pick it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Shelby. It’s Fletcher.” I hang up the phone immediately. It rings again.

  “Who was that?” Becca asks.

  “The Thieving Freckle Jockey.” The phone continues to ring, and to avoid Euphoria picking it up, I answer. “Listen, Fletcher, I don’t want to talk to you. Ever. You stole our ideas and I hope you and Samantha Singer will be very happy—”

  “Will you stop talking for one moment?” he interrupts me. “Just listen for a change. I called to apologize. I really didn’t mean to steal your ideas. I told Samantha they were your ideas, and that I was just presenting them, and I also told her that there is no way I can take her to the dance. Because I’m taking you.”

  “You are not taking me anywhere!” I slam the phone down again. “The nerve of this guy! How dare he think I would care if he takes the blond bubblehead to the dance or not? I couldn’t care less. He can take whoever he wants to any stupid dance that comes up.”

  Becca claps slowly. “Very convincing. Oscar-worthy.”

  “Huh?”

  She sighs heavily, then leans forward, smiling at me with a sheepish grin. “Shelby, you like him. You really do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be so mad at him.”

  “Some friend you
are.” I grab a pillow from the couch and pound it with my fist. “How can you say I like him at all? He drives me crazy!”

  “Exactly my point.” Becca grabs her Romeo and Juliet book and waves it at me. “Lots of times people end up falling for the person they think they hate the most.”

  The phone rings again, an annoying ring that I know belongs to Fletcher Berkowitz. I can just tell. “Hello?”

  “Shelby, listen, before you hang up—”

  “I’m listening.” I pound the pillow with my fist. Poor, poor pillow.

  “Oh.” He pauses, as if the fact that I am agreeing to talk with him is totally unexpected, which it probably is, given the fact that I practically blew his head off last time. “Okay. Well, I want to explain something to you. I kind of fit into that crowd, the Samantha Singer crowd, but I’m not one of them.”

  “Sort of like you’re a spy or something? An alien walking among the humans?” The snide tone in my voice is exceedingly mean.

  “Kind of. I’m not saying they’re bad people, I just don’t think like them on a lot of issues.”

  “Oh, so you just sort of hang out with them out of pity? To let them bask in the glow of your greatness? Well, I think I’ll pass.” Oooh. That was good. Maybe a little too good. Do I really want to chase this guy away totally?

  “Fine.” A slight twist of anger is added to his regretful tone of voice. “If you’re too narrow-minded to actually listen to me, then I guess we don’t belong together anyway.”

  “Narrow-minded?” I practically scream. “How can you call me narrow-minded? I’m in the most liberal, most progressive club on campus! We’re trying to make a difference, to open people’s minds!”

  “Except that if somebody doesn’t fit into your little cookie-cutter world of what we should all be, then they’re narrow-minded, huh?” Fletcher chuckles, but it sounds sad. “Well, great reasoning. You sound just like the rest of them. Except with a better vocabulary. See you at school.”

  The line clicks dead, and I feel like my heart might explode. “What happened?” Becca is next to me on the couch, her hand on my arm. “You look terrible. What happened?”

  “I think I just blew it.”

  Saturday comes, and it’s so boring that I actually look forward to working on school stuff. Becca is gone to Los Angeles with her mom to get the haunted-island-making supplies, and I just feel like burying my head under several feet of hard, uncomfortable concrete. That isn’t readily available, so I settle for eating more cookies.

  Euphoria pops into my room every once in a while and checks on me, trying to cheer me up. “Shelby, maybe we could go outside and play some croquet?” She buzzes excitedly. “I think the new gardener robot is due to arrive today.”

  “If you really want to get a glimpse of him, just roll on outside and wait.” I look at my Life Management work-sheet and realize that I’ve colored all the reproductive organs black. This won’t help my grade. “Did Dad go to pick him up?”

  “I think so,” she says breathlessly as she rolls to the window and pulls the blinds aside. “The car’s still gone, though. He left really early, before you got up.”

  “Do you know where your hottie bottie is from?”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to call him,” she says, but she titters in a girlish way anyway. Seeing a robot love-struck is not something I would recommend to anyone.

  “What if you two don’t hit it off?”

  She whirs and clicks in a disapproving way. “Shelby, we’re not like humans, you know. We all get along.”

  “I seem to recall a scuffle with a certain garbage disposal.”

  “That was only because the disposal was defective,” she huffs as she takes the hint and rolls out of the room. “No need to bring up the unpleasant past. Do you need anything?”

  “Just a new personality,” I mumble as she leaves.

  When Dad does finally get back with the lawn bot, Euphoria is pretty disappointed. I don’t think she realizes that not all machines have her conversational skills. She tries to talk to the gleaming hulk of aluminum tubing and electric wire, but it just sits there, burping up blades of grass. Dad is in the driveway tinkering with it, with Euphoria standing around pretending to dust the garage.

  “So? How’s the new lawn boy?”

  “Ah,” he sighs, frustrated, as he wipes sweat from his forehead. “I got it from Dr. Merton, one of his little tinkering projects that didn’t quite work. I was hoping to fix it, but I can’t quite get it to do what I want it to.”

  “Maybe you should let me try,” Euphoria purrs.

  “Subtle as an armored tank,” I whisper to her as I walk back to the house.

  My cell is ringing; it’s Becca. “You will not believe this. We actually ran into Brandon Keller at lunch. He’s totally in for Nibid.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Yeah, I’m kidding. But it sounded good, huh?” Her laugh crackles on the cell phone line. “Anyway, we got the wind machine, fog machine, rain tree, lights, and a sound system that will probably break the windows. Plus, and this is the best, a real movie pirate ship.”

  “You got all that in the Jeep?”

  “Naw. Borrowed a truck. Mom can actually drive a truck better than she drives the Jeep. She just runs over anything in her way.”

  “Efficient.” Back in my room, I close the door, hoping to avoid more gossip about the lawn mower from Euphoria. “He didn’t call back.”

  “Did you think he would? Hang on.” I hear a squeal of tires and horns honking, and then Becca says, “Just don’t flip him off, Mom. I’d like to make it home in one piece. Anyway,” she says, back to me, “maybe you need to call him.”

  “Me call him? No way! What’s the point of Nibid if we make our lives revolve around guys?”

  “Right. But aren’t you thinking about him and nothing else?”

  “No,” I lie.

  “Right. So, I guess you’re good. See you tomorrow, and we can get together to see if this stuff works. Can you come to my house?”

  We decide on eleven, I hang up, and I sit on my bed and steam for a while. I am not obsessing about him! How dare she suggest that I spend all my time thinking about Fletcher? It’s ridiculous. But then, when I really look at my thoughts over the last few days, I have to admit: He has been at the top of the list a lot of the time. Maybe he hypnotized me.

  It gets dark, and Dad is still in the driveway hammering away at Mr. Grassroots, or whatever his name is. “Hey, Dad. Want to eat something? Maybe Euphoria can stop ogling the new guy long enough to whip up some spaghetti.”

  Euphoria’s lights flash indignantly in the twilight. “Well, I don’t need to be told twice,” she says as she rolls to the front door. “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone.”

  “Not working, huh?”

  “Nope.” Dad throws an old greasy rag onto the cement. “He’s stubborn. The primary problem is the programming, and I just can’t get it right. Plus, he’s kind of rusty.” He looks into the pink-orange sunset that is spreading across the tops of the palm tree silhouettes. “Looks like it’s time to put him to bed, though. Want to help me stow him in the garage?”

  “Euphoria would probably be happy to take care of him,” I murmur as we push the heavy, clunky metal man toward the back of the building. “I think she’s in love.”

  “Really?” He loops a length of nylon cord around the machine and ties it to a hook in the wall. “I think you’re reading that into her. She’s not programmed for that.”

  “Not like humans, huh?” I help him close the door; he locks it and puts an arm around my shoulders. “Dad, I’m not sure that bit of programming was a good idea.”

  “Love?” He laughs and walks me toward the door. “Love is always a good idea.”

  “Sounds like a greeting card.”

  “Thanks. I practice.” He stops before we go inside. “We never really talked about all that dating stuff, did we?”

  “Honestly, Dad, I’m done with dating for a
while.”

  “I was sort of talking about me.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” In my teenaged, self-obsessed mind, I had totally forgotten about the whole Dad-dating crisis. “Well, we don’t have to talk about it. If you feel ready, you do it. It’s your life.”

  He smiles at me, kisses me on the forehead, and opens the front door. “But you’re a big part of it, and you’ll always be a big part of it. Don’t forget that. Oh, and if you do happen to start dating again, I want to meet him.”

  Figures. Of course, at this rate, I don’t think it’ll be something I have to worry about.

  When I get to school Monday morning, I see that the Queen Geeks have been busy. Or at least one of them has been. There are huge butcher-paper posters everywhere (and I mean everywhere, even the girls’ bathrooms) that read NATIONAL INVISIBLE BOY DAY—FRIDAY. And on almost every flat surface (including the sidewalks) there are screaming acid-green fliers advertising a date with Brandon Keller for one lucky girl who ignores boys on Friday.

  When I get into English, the whole room is buzzing about it. “Samantha Singer told me!” Taffy Burton chatters to Jennifer Crist. “I mean, if she thinks it’s for real, it must be!”

  “Wow,” Jennifer answers. “A date with Brandon Keller. I don’t think I’d live through it.”

  One of the acid-green fliers is posted on Napoli’s front board, and as she starts class, she points to it. “I gather from all the talking that you all saw these today.” The class settles a bit since it seems she’s going to talk about something interesting. “So what do you think?”

  “About what?” A girl in front asks.

  “About this National Invisible Boy Day. Is that a good thing, or is it insulting?”

  Silence. Nobody, including me, had thought at all about whether it was good or bad. It just was. “Shelby, Becca. Aren’t you all in charge of this event? Can you tell us why you’re doing it?”

  Becca stares at me, wide-eyed, coughs, and points to her throat, leaving me to field the questions, as usual. “Well—” I start. Dustin, my old reliable harasser, pipes in: “It’s probably because they’re all lesbians and they don’t like guys.” This gets an appreciative chuckle from several other boys.