Dating on the Dork Side

by Charity Tahmaseb

  I had my own reasons for not liking Clarissa. She was one of those girls most people happily admitted they didn’t like—as long as it was in quick whispers behind the locked doors of bathroom stalls. Because all Clarissa had to do was wrinkle her nose in your direction for your social status to plummet.

  But no one, not even Clarissa, deserved Aiden’s messages. Not even the mild one posted at 10:26 p.m.:

  Dude, I’m in, up close and personal with victoria’s secret.

  And no one deserved the eighty-seven lurid messages in the comment thread beneath it, either. So when Elle asked Clarissa if she wanted to see her page on the wiki, I knew just how serious that question was.

  “Yeah, sure.” Clarissa tossed her head and added, “Bring it on.”

  Elle nodded to me. “Camy, why don’t you show everyone what happened on June twelfth?”

  Clarissa jerked her head toward me. I think, maybe, she knew what was coming. She stood there and took it anyway. For a moment, I felt sorry for her. For a moment, I almost liked her again.

  Up on the screen, the new slide came into focus. Elle had told me to title it “The Date.”

  “Damn,” someone whispered.

  “That isn’t—” Clarissa began, but something that sounded like a sob swallowed her words.

  “True?” Elle suggested. “Would it matter either way?”

  “What’s the big deal?” Sophie said. “Guys were saying way worse things about me in sixth grade.”

  “Camy?” Elle said.

  My second cue. Elle had reasoned right. We needed both Clarissa and Sophie on our side, or the whole plan would fail. A few girls squirmed in their seats and a few got up to comfort Clarissa. Everyone stopped when Sophie’s wiki page flashed on the screen.

  It wasn’t pretty. While innuendo and speculation were present on most of the pages, the comments on Sophie’s page read like a scoreboard of sexual favors. After the first couple of entries, I’d stopped reading, and believing, most of what was posted there. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day to do that many things with that many boys.

  If Sophie was bothered by what she read on the screen, she didn’t show it. Not at first, anyway. She kicked up her feet again and rested them on the chair. A second later, her boots hit the floor. She leaned forward, then stood and clomped over to the screen as if she needed to see the words up close.

  “What the ever-loving hell?” She traced the comments with a finger, lingering on the names of each guy, snorting and shaking her head. Then she turned toward the girls in the room.

  “I’ll go through your list and I’ll be glad to tell you who I’ve done,” she said. “I’ll even tell you which one of your boyfriends I want to hook up with next. But I’m telling you this right now. I never touched The Ab. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t even show up in his dreams.”

  “Oh, please.” This from Clarissa, who’d recovered her voice.

  Sophie spun on her. The girls sitting in front of Clarissa ducked. “You got something to say, Delacroix? Then come over here and—”

  “Ladies.” Elle held up her hands. “You’re venting your anger at the wrong gender. We could keep going through examples, or…”

  “Or what?” Sophie spat.

  Clarissa’s gaze traveled the room, each girl, one by one, falling under her scrutiny. “Or we could go through the list,” she said.

  Sophie glanced at her. Something passed between them, a brief moment of understanding, and Sophie nodded.

  By four thirty, we’d read through dozens of comments. Some recounted tales of hanging boogers and various embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions that had occurred through the years. One thread covered leg shaving—or lack thereof—and came complete with Photoshopped images of girls’ heads atop Sasquatch bodies. An entire page of comments listed who wore padded bras. Another suggested who should wear them. Quite a bit more time was focused on who would do what and when. Finally, there was an especially painful discussion of Lana Greene’s allegedly hairy nipples.

  No girl in the room was left unscathed. Not even me and my fantastic smell.

  Sophie, back in her chair, leaned across the desk and whispered, “You’ve got to lend me your deodorant.”

  “So, what do we do?” The question came from Clarissa, who sounded like she’d had all her normal bitchiness knocked out of her.

  I felt as shell-shocked as she sounded. We’d just gone through a lot of words about a lot of girls. In the aftermath, we now had this one thing in common. The wiki was some sort of secret guy tribunal, judging every girl’s worth by her smile, eyes, hair, and assumed body measurements.

  “I’m going to show you what we do,” Elle said.

  That was my third cue. I hopped up from the computer and let Elle sit. My heart fluttered uncontrollably. She logged in to Facebook, everything still projected on the screen for all to see.

  “Good,” she said. “He’s online.”

  She opened a message session with Gavin, a single command that said:

  Watch my profile.

  Then she changed her status from In a relationship with Gavin Madison to Single.

  “What are you doing?” one of the cheerleaders said. Actually, she shrieked, her voice rising with her next words. “We have a game tonight!”

  “He’s a big boy,” Elle said, her voice impassive, almost bored. “He can deal.”

  A message from Gavin popped up on the screen.

  Gavin: wtf?

  Elle: You saw it.

  Gavin: are we breaking up?

  Elle: way to keep up. Are you on the honor roll?

  I braced for a string of obscenities, but they never came. Gavin’s icon just vanished. When Elle checked his status again, he was no longer online.

  “Uh,” said Clarissa. “That was a little harsh, don’t you think?”

  Elle closed Facebook and The Hotties of Troy reappeared.

  “Should we see what happens to my page?” she asked. She clicked on her name. There on top was a new entry with just one word:

  bitch

  High school football in Olympia is a big deal. The whole town (minus Rhino) comes out for every home game.

  Maybe it was habit. Maybe I was superstitious. I don’t know. But before each game, I walked row three of the track that surrounded the field. I can’t remember ever not doing it. Tonight, I’d gone a quarter mile when Mercedes Washington dashed up to me. She was perky and petite, but came equipped with a powerhouse engine. The rows of braids on her head swayed and danced with her every move. She never stopped—cheerleading, gymnastics, and in the spring, tennis.

  “Oh, my gosh, Camy.” Mercedes clutched my arm. “I did it. I dumped Lukas right before he went into the locker room, and now I can’t breathe.” She waved her free hand in front of her face. I wanted to suggest that if she paused between sentences, the whole breathing thing might work itself out.

  Before we left that afternoon’s secret meeting, Elle had extracted a promise from each girl with a so-called significant other: All dumping would occur before first bell on Monday.

  Oxygen deprivation aside, Mercedes didn’t look too broken up about the breakup. Lukas had been another one to give play-by-plays of dates. He was also the second string quarterback for Olympia High. Something told me tonight’s play-by-play would suck, on so many levels.

  “So.” Mercedes caught her breath. “Are you okay? Did you dump Rhino yet?”

  Did I ... what? My mind churned for a few moments before I found the right combination of words.

  “One,” I said. “I’m not going out with Rhino. Two, he wasn’t on the list.” Yeah, like Rhino would ever be on that sort of list. I imagined his disgust if he heard about the wiki. The rant would almost be worth breaking my promise to Elle.

  “Oh!” Her face lit up. “That’s right. He totally wasn’t on the list. Wow. An actual nice guy. I don’t think I know one of those.”

  Nice? Rhino? Sure. Only if Machiavelli was nice. I tried to hide my smile, but Mercedes t
ook my look as complete agreement.

  “I’ll be sure to tell him that,” I said.

  “Great. You know, I—” Her eyes darted sideways and I followed her gaze.

  In the center of a group of cheerleaders, Elle was sending Mercedes her own eye message.

  “Gotta go. My leader, she beckons.” Mercedes did a little bow with a flourish and ran off.

  I laughed. Who knew Mercedes Washington was so clever?

  The air cooled. I felt it on my cheeks, that first cold bite of autumn. I untied the fleece hoodie from around my waist and slipped it on. Dew came next, the night heavy with it. I tipped my face toward the sky, closed my eyes, and felt the weight of it against my lashes.

  I slipped through the people jostling for food and seats before the kickoff. Sometimes I played a game where I worked on guessing the stops and starts of those around me. When I was “in the zone,” I could sneak through a crowd without ever bumping or brushing up against anyone.

  I was so busy dodging others and searching for a spot in the stands that I only noticed Clarissa Delacroix when she planted herself in front of me. We stared at each other, her jade eyes flinty under the stadium lights. I had never understood her attitude whenever we landed within three feet of each other. If anyone should have issues, it should be me.

  “So,” she said to me now. “Can you get me in?”

  “In where?” I asked, not knowing what she meant and feeling like a moron because of it.

  “The wiki.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. With the crowd swarming around us and the marching band clattering into the stands, I barely heard her. “The Hotties of Troy. I want to ... I want to see for myself.”

  No, I couldn’t. I had suspected this might happen, and so had Elle. We weren’t giving out Jason’s password. That way, not only could we keep tabs on all the guys, but if a girl strayed with anyone on the anti-hit list, we’d be sure to know about it.

  I didn’t bother to explain all that. I simply said, “Talk to Elle.”

  “Are you taking orders from her now?” Clarissa spat the words. “That’s not the Camy I knew.”

  The Camy she knew?

  “You don’t know me at all.” I turned from her and immediately bumped into someone. I didn’t care. I was out of the zone now. “But,” I added under my breath, “I know you all too well.”

  Talking to Clarissa had soured my mood. I bought a Cherry Coke then spilled half of it on my feet, soaking my Chuck Taylors all the way through to my socks. After I got mustard on my jeans, I considered leaving early.

  But I always stayed until the game clock ran out. Until three years ago, I’d been in the same youth football league with these boys. I hadn’t been the first girl to play. I was probably the only one with a career-ending injury, though: a spectacularly blown-out knee. I got the same surgery the pros did and spent most of eighth grade on crutches.

  And I never played football again.

  Even if most of the players on the field were also on the anti-hit list, that didn’t mean I could abandon those guys. So tonight I did what I always did at Trojan Warrior football games. I settled into the stands and watched the Olympia High School football team, and Gavin “Mad Dog” Madison in particular, play.

  Gavin had been a star player since third grade but you couldn’t tell that tonight. He overthrew; he underthrew. Coach Cutter called timeouts and took him to the side for pep talks. I was too far away to hear anything, but I could tell the vibe was less Gee, son, what’s wrong? and more What the hell is your problem?

  The only time Gavin resembled his old self was when he ran the ball up the middle, charging through the other team’s linebackers. It was his signature move and the reason behind the nickname Mad Dog. He always pushed through without caring whether he got hurt.

  Tonight, it looked like he wanted to get hurt.

  At halftime, Coach pulled Gavin and put in Lukas, who threw even worse than Gavin had, proof that a forward pass could actually sulk. We lost with one of those spectacular, cringe-worthy scores that, years from now, fans would still talk about in hushed tones. Through it all, the cheerleaders kept up their relentless stunts and chants, but I’d never seen a more miserable group of peppy girls. They managed to depress the crowd even further.

  After the game, I still sat huddled on the frigid aluminum bench, wriggling my numb toes. Once the crowd had cleared, I stepped down from the stands and headed for the field. I walked the fifty-yard line, placing one foot in front of the other in the center of the white line.

  I was halfway across when I spotted someone else heading for the center of the field. My feet stopped moving. My heart did too. I stood there, in my sticky shoes, and waited for Gavin.

  “I thought I was the only one who did this,” he said when he caught up to me.

  I shrugged and he fell into step beside me, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his letter jacket. We walked in silence with only the rumble of the closing concession stand door and our quick breaths to keep us company.

  “Thanks for not saying anything about the game,” Gavin said at last.

  “What game?” I asked, and he laughed.

  When we reached the other side, he said, “Can I give you a ride home?”

  Gavin had barely spoken to me since eighth grade and now he was offering to drive me home? As much as I would have liked to settle in beside him, in his car, or anywhere—Elle’s spectacular dumping this afternoon, and the equally spectacular loss tonight, sent warning sirens firing through my brain.

  Besides, I didn’t need a ride. I wondered if I could speak without stuttering.

  “I’m just going over to Rhino’s,” I said finally. “It isn’t very far.”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course you are.”

  His words stung me, but I couldn’t say why. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” He scratched his head, then looked not at me, but past my shoulder. Maybe at the field and the fifty-yard line behind me. “It means nothing.”

  Gavin walked off, following the asphalt path to the parking lot. I stared after him. Halfway there, he stopped, turned around, and stared back. Although I couldn’t see his expression, this time I knew he was looking straight at me.

  The light from Rhino’s garage glowed yellow and warm. It cast strange shadows across my jeans, highlighting the mustard stain and my ruined Chuck Taylors. Rhino wouldn’t care if I showed up looking like a mess. Chances were, he wouldn’t notice my clothes at all. But he’d notice me. Even though he was leaning so close to the huge computer screen he could give it a kiss, he turned around and waved when I walked in.

  “I love nights like this,” he said. “Cold enough that there aren’t any bugs, but I can still keep my door open.”

  Yes, Rhino lived in his family’s garage, with his row of self-built computers lining one wall, and his bed—a single mattress on the floor—up in the loft. It may sound weird, like one of those “orphan beneath the stairway” kind of stories, but it was totally his choice. He’d begged his parents for months before they finally relented.

  I’d helped him move, lugged all his books from his bedroom. We’d whitewashed the walls together, spread cement paint across the floor and found carpet squares to cover the oil stain the paint couldn’t hide.

  Now, when I came over, his mini-fridge was always stocked with Cherry Coke (my favorite). The garage felt like a second home, and Rhino like a brother.

  “We lost,” I told him now.

  “Huh?” His eyes darted toward me, then back to the screen. “You lost something?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “The football game. We lost.”

  “So?”

  There was no point in talking to Rhino about the sucky game, the breakup drama at school, or my strange encounter with Gavin on the fifty-yard line. Rhino wouldn’t care, but I didn’t have anyone else to share this stuff with. Sometimes I missed having a best girlfriend.

  “Elle dumped Gavin today,” I said, “right before the ga
me.”

  “Eh.” To my surprise, Rhino swiveled in his chair, abandoned the screen, and rolled closer. “The world’s a better place if they don’t reproduce.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it.

  “Besides.” He rolled over to the mini-fridge. “It’s not like they were really into each other or anything.” He tossed me a Cherry Coke.

  I set the drink on a side table and tried to understand what Rhino had just said. “And you know this … how?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m stating something that should be obvious to anyone with an IQ above fifty.”

  “Oh,” I said, groping at the knowledge that my IQ must be, at best, forty-nine.

  “It was an image thing with them. You know, like a marriage of convenience. Not that they hate each other, but it was just easier that way.” He shrugged. “They could accomplish all the social stuff without any relationship drama.”

  Well, we had drama now.

  “Mercedes dumped Lukas too, right before the game.”

  A spark of curiosity lit his eyes. “Is there some sort of cheerleader conspiracy going on?”

  I shrugged. Then I started to expand on the subject. “Actually,” I said, but Elle’s words pinged my conscience so hard that I stopped.

  It wasn’t like I told Rhino everything, anyway. For one thing, I’d never confessed my mixed-up feelings about Gavin. Rhino would tell me I was just being a dumb girl. That was something I didn’t want to hear.

  “Actually, what?” he prompted when I didn’t say anything more. “You drinking that?” He pointed to the Coke, and I shook my head.

  “I guess there was something that happened on Facebook, with Jason and some photo.”

  “The beach one? He didn’t actually post it, did he?”

  I blinked a few times, taking in this new bit of information. “Wait. You saw it?”

  “Jason sent it out to the baseball team. At least he was smart enough not to include the coach. Too bad it was so blurry.”