Dating on the Dork Side

by Charity Tahmaseb

  Then I thought about Rhino as the probable mastermind behind the wiki. I rolled onto my back and waited for the phone to stop. It chimed a minute later, letting me know a message was waiting for me in voicemail.

  “Can you get in?” Elle’s voice was frantic. “I thought maybe I had the caps lock on, but I tried again and nothing.”

  I stumbled out of bed, opened the login screen for the wiki and entered Jason's information. All I got was a warning telling me my user name or password was incorrect and inviting me to try again.

  Uh-oh.

  I tried again. And again. I even tried different passwords. Then I tried different user names. But if I couldn't log in as Jason, what made me think I could get in as Aiden? I picked up the phone to call Elle, but then I imagined how that conversation might go.

  “What happened? Why can't we log in?” she might say.

  “Jason probably changed his password,” I would answer.

  “But why last night?”

  Because of me, I thought. Because of what happened with Gavin.

  And that was when the doorbell rang. Downstairs, I heard the door creak open and Dad's voice, low but friendly.

  “Camy?” he called up the stairwell. “You awake yet?”

  “Sort of.”

  “There's someone here to see you.”

  At six-thirty in the morning? Who? Rhino? If not him, then who else?

  “I’ll be right down.” I set the phone on my desk and pulled on a T-shirt and jeans. For the first time ever, I really hoped the person at the door wasn't Rhino. I was still hoping that when I walked through the living room. Dad was sitting in his chair, laptop open.

  “Camy, quick, before you go outside, I need to show you something.”

  My feet froze. It was early. I hadn’t had much sleep. I’d never been good at math, but I found myself adding up Dad + laptop + needing to show me something. Had he found The Hotties of Troy? Had he hacked into it, just like I had?

  He turned the screen around. I closed my eyes.

  “That's my girl, front page of the sports section.”

  He was reading the online edition of the Olympia Weekly News. And there, in the picture, was me. The photographer had snapped the photo during Gavin's amazing touchdown run. He’d caught me with my arms in the air, the fake fur stole slipping from my shoulders, Number Fourteen running past in the foreground.

  “I’ve already emailed a copy to your mom. And outside?” Dad nodded toward our front door. “I’m not sure, but I think Number Fourteen is waiting for you.” He gave me a look, which under normal circumstances would have been one of those annoying, know-it-all Dad kind of smiles.

  I spun and headed back up the stairs.

  “Hey!” Dad called out. “Where are you going?”

  “To brush my teeth.”

  I let the sound of my feet pounding up the stairs drown out his laughter.

  In seconds, I was on the floor with my cheek pressed against the hard wood. My fingers strained to reach Gavin's jersey, which I'd shoved way under the bed. I pulled it free, then just looked at it. How would I get this past Dad?

  I opened my window. It was still dark out, not even a hint of sunrise showing. I wrapped the jersey in a tight ball and threw it. Then I brushed my teeth and headed down the stairs and out the door.

  Gavin was standing in the driveway with his hands in his pockets. He opened his mouth to say something when he saw me, but I rushed past him and around the house. The lilac bushes had caught his football jersey and I waded in to tug it free. The first thing I did when I got back to Gavin was throw good ol’ number fourteen right at his face.

  “What the heck?” he said, fumbling with the jersey. “I’m sorry about last night. I had no idea that—”

  “That what? That Jason just happened to be at the field? That he just happened to take my picture and upload it on the wiki? That he changed his password so now I can’t log in?” I took a quick look at the house, hoping Dad couldn’t hear me shout.

  “What are you talking about?” Gavin asked.

  “I can't log in. Sometime between last night and now, Jason changed his password, or someone changed it for him.”

  “I swear to you, I didn't do it. I haven't been online since …” He shrugged. “Wednesday, I think. And I had no idea Jason was going to be at the football field last night.”

  He sounded so sincere, and those amber eyes looked so honest. Part of me wanted to believe him, despite all the evidence.

  “Okay,” I said. “Then can you get me back in?”

  “In where?”

  “The wiki. Change his password again. Or give me my own login.”

  He stared down at his shoes. “I can’t do that. It was one thing when you figured it out on your own, but I ...” He shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  If I couldn’t get a login, maybe I could get something else. Maybe I could at least get some information to make my life a little less awful. “Then how about this. Did Rhino start the wiki?”

  Gavin's head shot up. “What?”

  “Because I think he did. I think I found proof of it last night.”

  Gavin choked out a laugh. “Rhino? Why would you think that? It's probably something Jason did. He’s an idiot.”

  “So, you’re saying Jason took a picture of me. With Rhino's laptop. And then he posted it on the secret disclaimer page?” I asked, making my voice all syrupy sweet, the same way Elle did.

  Even in the dim light from our porch, I could tell his face went pale.

  “Why were you really at Rhino’s last night?” Something clicked, another piece of the puzzle bringing the picture into focus. “It wasn’t to see me,” I said. “And I don’t think it was for Elle, either.” Gavin + Rhino = the wiki. It seemed too awful to contemplate. “You were there to tell Rhino about Coach Cutter’s talk.”

  Gavin still looked pale, but his expression hardened, game face on. He wasn’t budging, but I tried anyway.

  “Get me a new login,” I said.

  “I wish I could.”

  “But you won’t, will you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then I don't have anything else to say to you.”

  “Camy, wait ...”

  I turned my back on him and stepped inside. I shut the door behind me, then waited to hear the doorbell ring.

  It didn't. And when I peeked out the front window, Gavin was gone.

  I needed more coffee before I could even think about facing Rhino. I needed a shower. I needed a brain transplant too. And maybe something for my heart. But first, I had to get the coffeepot back downstairs before Dad noticed it was gone.

  At least I managed to accomplish that one impossible thing before breakfast. I brewed a new pot, then drank a cup to congratulate myself. With renewed determination, or just too much caffeine, I threw on a jacket, then shoved my feet into a pair of Chucks.

  What started as a march straight to Rhino’s soon turned into a meandering stroll. I knew I needed to talk to him right away. Elle had already left two voicemails and three texts. I couldn’t put off telling her forever. Still. Until I looked him in the eye and heard what he had to say, it could still all just be a big mistake, couldn’t it? Rhino could still be the best friend he’d always pretended to be.

  The door to his garage was closed, but I only had to stand in the driveway a few minutes before it opened. Inside, Rhino was wandering around with his hair all wild, wearing rumpled pajama bottoms and his chicken butt shirt.

  He sure didn't look like an evil genius.

  “Hey, Ladybug.” He raised a hand in greeting. “You’re up early. Have fun at Elle's party?”

  “Funny thing about that,” I said. “She disappeared partway through it. No one could find her.”

  “That's strange,” he said.

  After everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I just wanted to get it over with. I was done hinting. I was done asking. There was no more try. Only do. I walked over to Rhino’s l
aptop. I brought up the browser and typed the address for the wiki.

  “You're going to have to log in,” I said.

  “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “For real? Haven’t you been tracking me every time I logged in as Jason?” I said. I heard the tiniest of exhales. Annoyance? Defeat? I couldn’t tell.

  “Actually,” he said at last. “I have an app for that.”

  I stared straight ahead, at the wiki's login page, not daring to glance at Rhino. “Explain.”

  “What do you want me to say?” He sat on the arm of the sofa, directly behind me.

  I swiveled in the chair to face him. “For a start, I’d like to know what made you think that this was a good idea.”

  “Good? I never thought it was a good idea. I thought it was a great idea. A brilliant idea.”

  “So all these things you guys write about us girls, you think it doesn't hurt?”

  “Not when you didn't know about it,” he said. “That was the whole point. You should be thanking me for rounding up the biggest jerks in our school and locking them up in their own online playground.”

  “Playground? It’s more like you created the perfect Petri dish and then inserted a superbug into it. You took a wound and gave it a cozy place to fester.” He bristled then, and I wondered. Did he really think that if a tree fell in a forest and no one was around to hear it, it didn’t make a sound?

  Words hurt even if the victim never hears them.

  “What you’ve done, Rhino, it’s … it’s misguided at best, and at worst it makes you look like one of them. I never thought you could be such an assho—”

  “I don't know what you're so upset about,” Rhino said. Then he rolled his eyes. No. Really. He rolled his eyes. “And I don’t know why I ever bothered to do everyone in our stupid school this favor, anyway.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” I said. “Every mean post, every embarrassing picture, every stupid thing some jerk says about me or Elle or Sophie or Mercedes—”

  He held up a hand. “That wasn’t me. I haven't hurt anyone.”

  “You posted that picture of me yesterday,” I snapped.

  Rhino flinched. “You found the disclaimer page.”

  Oh, yeah. I'd found it, all right.

  “That was childish. I took it down after a few hours.”

  “When? Before or after you were sucking face with Elle … and who knows what else last night.”

  “Is that what this is really all about?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “No.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Sure, I was sure. Mostly, anyway.

  “Here's the thing,” he said. “What if you never saw that picture of yourself? What if you’d never had access to the wiki at all? Would you be mad at me right now? Would we even be having this conversation?”

  “So you're saying that ignorance is—” I was so angry that I couldn’t even think of the word.

  He cocked his head and scooted farther back on the arm of the sofa. “Bliss? Maybe. You have to admit, a lot of things would be better if you just didn’t know.”

  “What things?”

  He looked at me like I was the dumbest person on the planet and started waving his hands back and forth between us.

  “Besides us, I mean.”

  “What about your beloved football?”

  “Football? I don’t see—”

  “Think about the season we’d be having if not for you, and for Elle and her—what did she call it? Boy boycott?”

  With Gavin as quarterback? I’d been counting on a great season, and Rhino knew it.

  “What do you care about football?” I said.

  “I don’t, but you do. That’s the point. And honestly?” He gestured toward the wiki. “Do you really care about any of the other girls on there? Elle? Clarissa?”

  I started to say, “I don’t,” but that wasn’t true. Not anymore.

  “Look, I never meant for it to happen, but I do care.”

  Rhino raised his eyebrows.

  “Okay, not so much about Clarissa, but I care about Elle, and Mercedes … and Sophie, too. That’s why I’m here. Not because I’m jealous, or even because I was hurt by that stupid picture you posted of me. I’m here because I care about those girls, and I want to make things better for them.” I looked at Rhino then, really looked at him. “Isn’t there anything you care about?”

  Rhino’s gaze flickered around the room. It was like he was trying to look anywhere but into my eyes. Then a familiar expression settled on his face. It was the same one I saw whenever he tried explaining a math concept that I just couldn’t get, frustration mixed with a little disbelief. He sighed and pressed his lips together.

  After a moment, he said, “If you really have to know … I did it for … for baseball.”

  “Baseball?” I said. I started to add You’ve got to be kidding me, but the evidence was everywhere—the Twins pennant on the wall, the framed photo of him and his brother Darren in matching uniforms, the RBI stats scattered across his coffee table.

  “Yes, baseball,” Rhino said. “And it was working, too. All I had to do was roll out the wiki, then, a little encouragement here, a little team bonding there, and voilà!” He threw his hands into the air. “Suddenly our team was winning the district championship, just like when Darren was playing. It was perfect. And it could have worked for football too, if you and Elle hadn’t come along and screwed everything up.”

  “Baseball,” I echoed, because I still wasn’t 100% sure I could believe him. “Really?”

  Rhino looked toward the ceiling. “You don’t understand,” he said. His words were surprisingly soft. “No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “Right. Wrong? Those words only have meaning because we say they do. Was it right that I gamed the system to get you onto the homecoming court? You didn’t seem to mind that.”

  That was so unfair. “I never asked you to do it.”

  “You didn’t complain about it, either, or when Sophie won.” He pulled at the hem of his shirt. “I don’t remember being thanked for that yet.”

  I’d known Rhino since preschool, but suddenly I felt like I had never met the boy who was sitting across from me. I stood up and pushed the chair in carefully.

  Rhino didn’t say a word until I took my first step out of the garage. “Cams, come on. Don’t be like that,” he called. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to tell Elle.”

  He caught me at the end of the driveway and put a hand on my shoulder. I shook it off.

  “You’re going to do what?” he asked. He was squinting a bit from the rising sun, or was that worry I saw in his eyes?

  “Depends. Are you going to shut down the wiki?” I asked.

  The squinting stopped and Rhino’s stare went hard.

  “Then if you’re not going to do anything about it, I guess I will.” I turned onto the sidewalk.

  “You know your precious Gavin was in on it from the start, don’t you?” Rhino called after me. “From. The. Start. And he thought it was a good idea. No, a great idea! He thought it was the most brilliant fucking idea he had ever heard!”

  I knew I shouldn’t listen. I shouldn’t let it hurt me; that was the only reason he was saying it. I kept walking, not looking back, not once.

  And I pretended it didn’t hurt at all.

  Chapter 20

  ELLE TEXTED ME two more times before I found her in the school gym, helping the student council members take down decorations from the dance.

  What’s up with you and rhino? the first text said.

  He says you’re mad read the second one.

  I should have figured Rhino would go straight into damage control. Hadn’t I always told him that the best defense was a good offense? I probably should have replied to Elle right away, too, but I thought this was something I needed to do face-to-face.

  “We need to talk
,” she said, then crooked her finger.

  I followed her to an empty classroom in the language hall. As soon as we stepped inside, she opened a cabinet, took out a TESTING, DO NOT ENTER sign and stuck it to the outside of the door. The move reminded me of Gavin and our meeting in the boys’ bathroom.

  She sat on top of the teacher’s desk and squared her shoulders. “Okay, first, I’m sorry that you’re mad about Rhino and me, but you should’ve said something. I asked you straight out, remember? And you were all, ‘we’re just friends’.”

  “I’m not mad about you and Rhino.”

  “That’s not what he said.”

  Of course.

  “I don’t care what he said. It’s not true.”

  “Whatever.” She flipped her hair. It was obvious she believed Rhino over me. “We still have that other problem to deal with. Can you get into the wiki?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t think I could trust myself to talk about the wiki and Rhino’s part in it yet. I knew I would have to choose my words carefully.

  “So,” she said, “whatever the reason is, you’re ticked at Rhino, but I’ve been thinking.” She picked up a pencil from the desk and beat it against her thigh like a drum. “You were right all along. We should totally bring him into this. I mean, he’s so smart about this kind of thing. He could hack the system. Easy.”

  I shook my head again, not sure I could hold back much longer, but then Elle’s phone chimed. “Hold on,” she said. Then, “Oh, good lord.”

  “What is it?” I asked, both curious and afraid to hear the answer.

  “Nothing that I can’t deal with later. Just another one of those stupid girls who can’t keep it in her panties. Recognize this one?” She turned the phone’s screen toward me.

  I tried to swallow the bile that was rising in the back of my throat because there, on Elle’s phone, was a photo that I was intimately familiar with. It was me. And Gavin. On the fifty-yard line. The ‘dear’ in the headlights shot.

  She turned the screen back around and started pinching and swiping, trying to enlarge the image. “Ugh. This phone,” she said. “Anyway, it’s probably one of the pom squad girls. Or, no, one of Sophie’s skanks.”