Dating on the Dork Side

by Charity Tahmaseb

  The problem with the wiki wasn’t solved yet, either. But with the homecoming drama over, we could take our time and figure out a way to really get our revenge. I felt so good that it was almost impossible to keep from whistling as I walked into school.

  I don’t know what I was thinking.

  Actually, I do know what I was thinking. I needed to check both my locker and the girls’ locker room to find the wiki spreadsheets before the wrong person got hold of them. I was stacking stuff next to my locker door when a shadow fell across the floor.

  I heard a rattle of paper first, then, “Looking for these?”

  I looked up to find Elle … and Clarissa. My knees felt like water, but I stood and faced them.

  “A dating spreadsheet? Really?” Elle slammed the papers into my chest. “I don’t know what’s worse, this, or what you have going on with Gavin.” She took another paper from Clarissa’s hands and held it up for me to see. It was a photo of two people standing on a fifty-yard line. The boy had his back turned to the camera. The girl was wearing a jersey.

  “You lied to me,” Elle said.

  “It's not what you think. I don't have anything going on with Gavin,” I said. Not anymore.

  “Right.”

  “And those.” I pointed to the spreadsheets. “I was trying to find out who was behind the wiki. Which, oh, by the way, I did. Remember?”

  “Yeah, great job with that,” Elle said. “No, really. Thanks for ruining my life. And thanks for waiting all of three seconds before going after Gavin too.”

  “Hello? You and Rhino?” What? Did she want it both ways? “You get all the guys and the rest of us get none?”

  From down the hall, someone said, “You tell her!”

  Elle sent a withering look in their direction and they shut up pretty quick. She turned back to me but she didn’t say anything else. And Elle always had something to say. Instead, she shook her head like she couldn’t stand to look at me for one more second and walked away.

  Somehow, that was worse.

  But even worse than that, Clarissa didn’t leave. She stayed behind with a satisfied look on her face. Something clicked then. I remembered what Bing Bing had said about Clarissa and Jason. I remembered Clarissa’s reaction when she caught us dancing. My knocked-over book bag in the locker room while we were all getting ready. The missing spreadsheets. Clarissa’s disappearance from Elle’s party Friday night. The stadium lights.

  Suddenly it all made sense.

  “So,” I said, “what were you doing with Jason at the football field the other night?”

  Her cheeks colored, just slightly, but she tossed her head, letting her hair swing back and forth.

  “You should’ve just given me the login to begin with,” she said, “and saved yourself all this trouble.”

  Yeah. Right. I stared at her.

  “Would that have been so hard?” Her smirk went all syrupy sweet. The smile told me she wasn’t through, not yet.

  Later that morning, I was sitting in calculus, my eyes pointed in the direction of the short, student-run TV show that played twice each day, once before lunch and once before last block, but I wasn’t really watching. I was just glad it wasn’t the special homecoming edition. Kevin probably wouldn’t finish editing that until the end of the week. I wondered if I could come down with something contagious between now and then.

  A gasp sounded behind me. Then a snort of laughter to my left. I tried to focus on the screen but my eyes didn’t register what they were seeing right away. An amazing blue. Warm, sunlit sand. The blur of skin.

  I sat straight up and leaned across my desk, like that would give me a better view. It was the photo of Elle and Clarissa from Greece. It had to be. Sure, it was blurrier, and pixilated. But if you knew what it was—and some of the guys seemed to know—then it was obvious.

  My heart thumped hard, but slowed as I glanced around the room. Sure, some of the guys were snickering, Aiden in particular. But the mathletes all looked at each other and shrugged. The substitute at the front of the classroom barely gave the screen a second glance before going back to the newspaper on the desk.

  I don’t know how Elle ended up at the door to the classroom three seconds after the bell rang. But she did. She stiff-armed me into a locker. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth got tight and fierce. I had never thought Elle Emerson could look ugly, but in that moment, she did.

  “What the hell do you think you’re trying to pull?” she demanded.

  “It wasn’t me,” I told her. “I can’t even log in anymore. Remember?”

  “But you have a backup.”

  True. I did. “I didn’t do it,” I said. “I wouldn’t do it.”

  “How do I know you’re just not saying that?” There was a threat in Elle’s voice. “Get me proof.”

  She didn’t add, “Or else.” She didn’t have to.

  As I walked to my locker at lunchtime, it hit me: Who was I going to sit with? Rhino? Not likely. Elle? Only if I wanted a lasagna rollup smeared in my face. Sophie? Maybe. If I could find her.

  I stumbled on Mercedes instead. She was at my locker, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Camy,” she choked out when she saw me.

  Tears were bad, but at least she was talking to me. I ran the rest of the way to my locker and hunkered down next to her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Dalton. He … he found out.”

  “About what?”

  She gulped a few breaths. “About the whole dork dating thing. And he got really mad. He said, ‘Why don’t you just dump me already?’ since that was the plan all along. I tried to explain that at first it was a setup, just for homecoming. But then I got to know him. I really like him, Camy. Lukas is nothing compared to him, but Dalton won’t … He won’t believe me.”

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I hugged her.

  “Could you talk to him?” she asked.

  I said I would. I was halfway to the cafeteria to find him when I tumbled into the lockers for the second time that day. This time, it was Prudence Laramie on one side, and Babette “Bing Bing” Riley on the other.

  “What’s this stuff about a spreadsheet?” Prudence said. “What did those guys do? Did they rank us? Rate us? Decide who was good enough to date?”

  “Yeah,” Babette said. “And she helped them. She helped them rank us.”

  “Look,” I said, turning to Prudence first. “You’re right. There was a list, but Randall had only two words on his request.”

  Prudence crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Your name.” I turned to Bing Bing. “And you. Why do you even care? You only went to homecoming with Jason because … I still don’t even know why you did it.”

  “Fair warning. I’m doing a newspaper article on this,” Bing Bing said. “I’ve got a lot of people who are willing to talk.”

  Like the chess team, I thought, and the mathletes, and everyone else who had ended up as a dream dork date. They both pushed away from the lockers and headed for the lunchroom.

  Babette threw a last glance over her shoulder at me. “Fair warning,” she said again.

  The second I walked into the cafeteria, I knew that talking to Dalton was out of the question. He was sitting at Rhino’s table with Tim Lansing and the rest of the chess club. Rhino looked at me with a chill in his eyes that sent a shiver to my heart. I took a step back, tripped over my feet, and crashed into someone in the doorway to the caf.

  That someone was Tara Tanaka.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  Of course we did. I was the most popular unpopular girl at Olympia High. She dragged me into the girls’ bathroom.

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but you need to fix the part that involves Dalton,” she said. “We start the chess tournament next week, with Prairie Stone. If he doesn’t stop playing like an idiot, they’re going to kick our asses.”

  “I …”

  “I took him out in five moves in study hall today. Five mov
es. Freshmen play better than that.”

  I nodded. What more could I do?

  She left me alone in the girls’ bathroom. I stayed there for the rest of lunch.

  When school finally ended for the day, I climbed the stairs to the tutoring room, but I stopped on the third floor landing. Ms. Pendergast was standing near the door to the room. I’d forgotten that she had something she wanted to talk to me about. I wasn’t sure what that “something” was. Considering the way my day was going, though, it probably wouldn’t be anything good. I hunkered by a water fountain until I heard her clip-clop down the stairs.

  Byron and a few freshmen boys were the only ones in the tutoring room. No Lexy. No pom squad. Not even a single leftover strand of pom-pom fringe on the floor. If Lexy’s quote wasn’t still glittering up on the wall, I might’ve thought the whole pom squad invasion had been a dream.

  The boys squirmed in their chairs, and I didn’t even try to stop them when they said they had to leave early. Only Byron paused at the door on his way out.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Down on the practice field, Gavin called, “Hut!”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  Byron shook his head. “Nothing. I just wanted … I mean, I just wanted to say I got a B on my last algebra test.” He shrugged, and then he left too.

  I sat alone in the tutoring room until the rattle of shoulder pads ended and the players abandoned the field.

  Tuesday morning, I convinced myself that I was sick and needed to stay home from school. Dad put on his worried face and made me promise to rest.

  I tried watching TV, but every show seemed to be about some kind of drama or other. And even though I wished Judge Judy would show up to straighten out the mess I was in, I didn’t feel like watching her help anyone else. I turned on my laptop instead. That was when I realized I wasn’t just locked out of the wiki. Almost all of my new “friends” on Facebook had blocked me too.

  I looked for something to read, but I’d been too busy to go to the library lately. All I had was my online copy of Lysistrata.

  After school, Sophie showed up at my door, out of breath, face flushed.

  “You’ve got to help me,” she said.

  I couldn’t even help myself, but I invited her in anyway. “What’s wrong?”

  “What isn’t?” She frowned and flopped into a chair. “I got called down to the office today.”

  “For what?”

  “They accused me of cheating on my Grapes of Wrath report. I knew something like this was going to happen last week, but I wasn’t really worried. It’s not like they can prove anything. And then there was homecoming and—”

  “Did you do it? Did you cheat?” I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  “Hell, no! This is all Clarissa’s fault.”

  I was perfectly willing to believe that Clarissa Delacroix was the root of all evil. I just couldn’t see the connection between her and The Grapes of Wrath.

  “What did she do?” I asked.

  “You know how Pendergast has been busting my ass about English again this year?” Sophie said. “I’m in the same class as Clarissa. And I was talking to this girl about how you helped me before. Then, remember that Sunday when I was over here for the football game? Just talking to you brought back all that tutoring stuff you showed me. You’re like some kind of miracle worker. Anyway, that’s what I told her.”

  “And Clarissa heard you?”

  Sophie nodded. “She popped right up and went straight to Pendergast’s desk.”

  “I still don’t understand,” I said.

  “She took what I said and made it sound … well, you know Clarissa.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “If I could pass with your help, then anyone could. Anyway, like I said, I wasn’t that worried, but since it was Clarissa, I thought she deserved a little … payback. Especially after what she did to you at homecoming, when you were dancing with The Ab.”

  “Sophie, what did you do?”

  “I went into the wiki and found that picture of Clarissa and Elle. I was the one who put it on Trojan TV yesterday.”

  “You were the … what?” For a second, I couldn’t speak. “It was you? You realize Elle is about to kill me for that. She thinks I did it.”

  “Yeah, well, we cropped her out of the picture, but somehow the image reverted to the original. I’m real sorry about that.”

  Sorry? She was sorry? She was going to be even sorrier when Elle found out. “Wait. Who is we and how did you get into the wiki?”

  “That’s the worst part.”

  “There’s a worst part?”

  “Yeah. The school knows something about the Hottie site and they think Kevin is involved in it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She stood and started pacing. “They called me back to the office this afternoon, to talk to me more about the cheating thing. Then they started asking all these other questions. They wanted to know how Kevin and I ‘got together’ and how other people ‘got together’ too.” She kept making air quote motions. “Then they asked if I’d ever seen anyone access an unauthorized webpage on a school computer.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I lied, of course.” She stopped pacing and turned to face me. “So, anyway, when I left the office, they were calling Kevin down there. And … and after school, he wouldn’t talk to me.” Her face crumpled.

  I wondered if I looked like that, like I was on the edge of falling apart.

  “But Kevin didn’t have anything to do with the wiki. They can’t touch him for that,” I said.

  “Right. But—”

  “He’s the one who got you in, isn’t he?”

  She nodded and sniffed. “He hacked the site. Like you did. And if they find out he was in it, it’s all over for him. Goodbye car. Goodbye scholarship. Goodbye Sophie.” Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

  “Do you still have access?” I asked.

  “I guess so.” Sophie shrugged.

  I blinked, the enormity of the idea knocking into me. It was one of those wonderful, terrifying notions that I didn’t have the courage to voice. Not yet.

  “I think I might have a plan,” was all I said.

  Chapter 22

  THERE’S STRESS, like when you haven’t studied for a test that you really, really need to do well on. There’s dread, like when you know something is going to go from bad to worse. And then there’s the absolute terror of being called to the office first thing on a Wednesday morning.

  The first bell was still an echo in the air when Mr. Moore set down the phone and turned his gaze in my direction.

  “Ms. Cavanaugh, it seems you’re wanted in the office.”

  Murmurs rose around me. If Jason had been called to the office, no one would’ve noticed. But in my case? It was news.

  “And take your books,” Mr. Moore added.

  A chorus of oohs rose around me. Heat stung my cheeks and I blinked fast, working to keep tears from my eyes.

  “Save me a seat,” Jason said.

  I ignored him and rushed from the room. There was no reason to worry, I told myself. They could be calling me to the office for something good. Maybe I was getting some sort of award for maintaining decent grades when the whole school was falling apart around me.

  Except it hadn’t been that kind of week.

  In the office, I spent an eternity in the world’s most uncomfortable chair. Finally, the principal’s door opened. Clarissa danced out and gave me that smile, the one that said she wasn’t done with me.

  “You can go in now,” the secretary said without looking up. I took in a deep breath and pushed myself out of the chair.

  I wasn’t sure if Principal Miller’s office was small or if it only looked that way because there were so many people crammed inside it. Principal Miller was sitting behind her desk. Vice Principal Jourdan, Ms. Pendergast, and Ms. Wilson, the school social worker, were in chairs along the wall
.

  “Have a seat, Camy.” Principal Miller pointed to a chair directly across from her. “It’s been brought to our attention that there may be a plagiarism ring in our school.”

  My shoulders relaxed; at least I knew what this was about.

  “It’s possible some of the students you’ve tutored might be involved.” She paused to adjust a paper on her desk. “And that you may have assisted them.”

  “But—”

  Ms. Pendergast spoke up before I could say more. “Camy, when I talked to you on the first day of school and encouraged you to be more involved with the other students, this was not what I had in mind.”

  “But I would never—” I started to say, but Ms. Pendergast interrupted me again.

  “You know, dear, Ms. Wilson was just telling us that it’s not unusual for children of divorce to seek support from inappropriate sources.”

  My cheeks felt like they were on fire. “But that’s not … Most of the students I tutor don’t need to cheat. They just don’t have good study habits. That’s all I give them. That’s all I’ve ever given anyone.”

  “Right.” Ms. P used a manicured fingernail to corral the lipstick at the corner of her mouth.

  “Perhaps you did it without even knowing it,” Principal Miller added softly. “Did you lend someone a paper you wrote, so they could see an example of how one should be written? Or maybe you left your own work unattended, where someone could see it?”

  “No,” I said. “Principal Miller, I know that Sophie Vega didn’t cheat. She worked hard to write that paper.”

  “Unfortunately we have a witness who says she heard Ms. Vega state differently,” Principal Miller said.

  “And, anyway, it is kind of interesting that so many of your … poorer … students have seen such a dramatic turnaround in their grades,” Pendergast added.

  The fire in my cheeks went into nuclear meltdown. “No one cheated in my room.”