The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

by Alexandra Robbins

  “I love you,” Ariana said. Her eyes welled up. “You’re so nice! You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met! Thank you, thank you so much!”

  “Anytime. No biggie,” Joy said. As she went into her classroom, she glanced back and saw Ariana watching her, squeezing the monkey tightly.

  A few days later, as Joy’s English class watched a movie, Xavier teased Keisha. Joy noticed that Keisha, who sat next to her in the front row, looked upset. “Are you okay?” Joy asked. “Don’t pay attention to him. he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Keisha dismissed her. “I’m fine. It’s nothing,” she said.

  “I don’t think it’s nothing. You look like you’re going to cry.”

  Keisha shot her a look that said “Go away.”

  Joy tried to speak sternly but compassionately. “I’m not as bad as you think,” she said. Keisha’s eyes widened.

  Joy watched the movie for a few more minutes, then scribbled a message onto a piece of notebook paper: “To Keisha: Sometimes things aren’t supposed to be easy, whatever it is just look past it and try to have a clear perspective. Just think positively. Have a good week! :)” She folded the paper and handed it to Keisha, along with an apple lollipop she had bought at a fund-raiser earlier that day.

  Surprised, Keisha read the note. Soon, she passed a note to Joy: “That’s so sweet, thanks a lot, this really helped me. I’m sorry for acting like a bitch. PS are u sure you don’t want ur sucker?”

  Joy wrote back: “It’s okay, we all have our days, you’re a smart girl just work towards what you want, and yeah, keep it. I was thinking you’d need it.”

  They resumed watching the movie. Keisha wasn’t cold to Joy again.

  Joy was determined to inject “positivity” into other people’s lives. Eventually, she hoped to become a psychologist (broadcasting on the radio or TV) specializing in adolescents dealing with abuse or suicidal thoughts. “I don’t think society focuses on that so much because of a taboo,” she later explained. “I mean, I grew up with abuse and people don’t address it because of fear or not knowing what to do. My deepest passion actually is acting; there’s just something about relating my emotions to another person that completely captivates me. So I’d also love to act, but I need to help people. I have the drive and the passion for it. I know I will be something big.”

  She believed this career path was an obvious extension of her nature. “People tend to run away from becoming more than what they know they can be,” she said. “I like to make people recognize who they are and show them that someone has faith in them. The way I do it is by making the person see the good in themselves, talking to them on a personal level.”

  JOY’S PE CLASS WAS gathered for attendance-taking when the teacher announced that the class wasn’t going to change into gym clothes because of the rain. The students relaxed. Joy chatted with Christine, a Filipino girl who was also in her Spanish class. She and Christine had bonded because other girls “hated on” them for being naturally skinny.

  As they chatted, Joy could hear Mia, the Mexican girl who had been bullied, repeatedly asking classmates, “What did [the teacher] say?” The students ignored her. Mia’s friends were busy gossiping.

  Finally Joy turned to answer her. “He said that we don’t have to change and that we should go to the gym,” she called out.

  “Oh, really? Cool, thanks!” said Mia.

  “No problem,” said Joy. “You’re welcome.” She recognized an opening, and crossed the room to stand next to her. “So,” Joy began, “are you gonna start talking to me now? Are we gonna act like civilized human beings?” They both laughed.

  “Yeah, we can,” said Mia. “Are you used to it here yet?”

  “Um, I’m getting used to it. I’m not as professional anymore.”

  “So have you started chillin’ with people? You speak or understand slang yet?”

  “No, I don’t. But I can try,” Joy said.

  “It’s cool. Me and my homegirls just thought you had a problem with us.”

  “I have a problem with no one. I’m a cool person. I don’t like to judge,” Joy said.

  “That’s good. We should talk!” Mia said.

  Joy was relieved she wouldn’t have issues with Mia anymore. “Of course!” she replied.

  The girls went their separate directions. Mia’s friends crowded her. “What’s up with her? What she say?” one of them asked, pointing and watching Joy walk away.

  Already Joy was ashamed about the assumptions she had made about Mia back when the girls harassed her. Because of the other Mexicans she had encountered at Citygrove, she had assumed that the Mexican girls in PE were ignorant. For the rest of the month, Joy and Mia greeted each other whenever they passed by.

  REGAN, GEORGIA | THE WEIRD GIRL

  Late at night, Regan was surfing Facebook when she received an IM from a student who had graduated last year. The student wanted to go away to college, but her boyfriend asked her to stay in town with him. “What’s the right thing to do?” she asked Regan.

  “You have to do what’s right for you,” Regan answered. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you’re young. Chances are, your relationship isn’t going to last anyway, and if he can’t stay with you while you do what you need to do, then it’s not worth it. But I know that love doesn’t work that way. If you love him, even if you know it might not last, you’re going to want to stay with him, so I know this is hard.”

  They talked for a while longer. At the end of the conversation, the student thanked Regan profusely for being there for her. “Love you for real, Davis,” she wrote.

  Regan glowed. “It made me remember how amazing and important my job is,” she said later. “In the end, teaching isn’t about anything except the students. Forget all of the administrative bull and the bureaucracy. Teaching is about kids. I find myself spending a lot of time with students, giving them advice on life issues more so than on Shakespeare. And although administration would argue that means I’m not doing my job, I disagree.”

  Regan was the kind of teacher whom students sought out for nonacademic discussions. Regularly in the morning or during her planning period, she received visitors who would drop their books on her desk and say, “I’ve been looking all over for you. I need help.”

  Delilah, a fellow English teacher who Regan liked, once asked her, “Why do kids love you so much?” Delilah had several of Regan’s former students in a new class, and those students had asked whether she ran her class like Regan did. “It was like Freedom Writers in there!” a student told Delilah.

  “I don’t understand it,” Delilah said to Regan. “They flock to you. How do you manage that kind of rapport?”

  Regan couldn’t say for sure, but gave her best guess of an answer: “I listen.”

  In the spring, some of Regan’s students participated in the Mr. Johnson pageant, an inter-grade competition among Johnson boys. Regan spent her Saturday night at the pageant—which Mandy supervised—to support the students.

  On Monday, when one of the boys, a senior, walked into second period, Regan said, “I went on Saturday, and I waited for you to come out from backstage, but I never saw you!”

  “Aw, man,” the senior said, appreciating her support. “I tried to put you on the thing, but she said no.”

  Regan asked him to clarify. He explained that contestants could name “sponsors”: adults whose names were listed on the program as people who had been supportive. “I wanted to put you down as my sponsor, but [Mandy] said I couldn’t because she doesn’t like you.”

  Regan’s jaw dropped. What?! “She didn’t actually say that, did she?” Regan asked.

  The senior looked uncomfortable. “I’m just playin’,” he said, but then added, “Why don’t you two like each other?”

  Obviously he isn’t playing, Regan thought. “No. She doesn’t like me,” she replied, against her better judgment. “I have no problem with her.”

  “I need to try to end y’all’
s problems,” the senior said.

  Briefly, Regan considered confronting Mandy about involving students in their drama, but she concluded that such a discussion would only make the situation worse.

  A few days later, when Delilah asked if Regan and her first-period class wanted to accompany her class on a movie field trip, Regan jumped at the chance. James Johnson did not have the budget for frequent field trips; the opportunity to leave school grounds was rare and welcome.

  Two weeks later, Delilah approached Regan with bad news. Because of the number of classes wanting to go, there was room for only a few chaperones. When Delilah had gone to the teacher in charge—who was part of the black clique called “The Seven”—to discuss the dilemma, her immediate reaction was, “Let’s take Davis off, then.”

  Regan stared in disbelief. Delilah avoided eye contact. “Why?” Regan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Delilah said. She was not convincing.

  When Regan asked who was still on the list, Delilah mentioned four teachers. All of them were black. And one teacher’s class wasn’t even going. It made no sense. Why did the administration refuse Regan, whose class was going on the trip, in favor of a teacher whose class wasn’t?

  Later that day, Delilah walked in on Regan, who was sitting in an empty classroom and talking on the phone to her mother. When Regan hung up, Delilah asked what was wrong. “The field trip thing,” Regan said. “I feel like they took me off the list ’cause I’m white.”

  “It’s not that,” Delilah said.

  “What is it, then?” Regan asked.

  “Stay after school and I’ll tell you.”

  After the last class of the day, Delilah found Regan and said, “We need to have a serious talk.” She listed other English teachers’ grievances against her: Regan had too many absences, they claimed, and she had taken her girlfriend to the emergency room during the school day for a minor injury. “It’s not just because you’re white. I was supposed to talk to you about this a while ago,” Delilah said.

  Regan flipped out. “I’m not about to be punished because I had to go to the emergency room. If it had been someone’s husband or child, no one would have said anything,” Regan said. “I don’t care about the field trip, but I don’t want my kids to be punished. They are a great class and they deserve to go out. So take me off the list, fine, but let my kids go.”

  But she did care. On the drive home from school that afternoon, she cried hysterically to her mother—the first time she had cried all year. (“It’s not just because you’re white,” Regan repeated Delilah’s words. “Oh, what, because you’re gay, too?” her mother replied.)

  Regan hated that her colleagues were petty and immature. She was tired of being picked on. When she got home, she did what she considered to be the professional thing to do: She called the head of the English department to ask that her class be able to go on the field trip even if she couldn’t chaperone.

  Over the next few days, gossip spread among teachers that Regan was “trying to cause trouble,” and that she had “tattled.” Eventually Regan’s entire class was kicked off of the field trip list. “I seem to be the scapegoat of the department this year. Fine. Whatever. But I don’t see why people have to make this so difficult, knowing I’m leaving at the end of the year. People are just taking their misery out on me. If that’s what makes them feel better, so be it,” Regan said later. “I don’t start trouble; that’s just not who I am. So I hate having people start trouble with me. Why am I the person who everyone is against when I’m the nicest person in the department?”

  Even Regan’s faculty evaluation, which she had received recently, included a personal dig. The ratings of her teaching were good. Regan’s only “Needs Improvement” was in the category about her appropriateness with faculty and students. “My administrator wrote that I shared too much about my personal life with my students, and that I need to learn to use more discretion—which was a direct reference to my telling the kids that I’m gay,” Regan said. “I really wanted to demand an explanation as to why that isn’t appropriate, and yet Mandy and Wyatt could tell all of their students that they were dating, but I didn’t want to argue. I’m just so over it.”

  At this point during the year, Regan and I agreed that because she hadn’t been able to find a GSA cosponsor and her job security seemed at risk, we would let the challenge die. Not even the Diversity Committee would touch gay issues. Instead Regan focused her efforts on working outside of James Johnson to promote LGBT tolerance. She started a blog and web community as a safe space in which twentysomething lesbians could interact. Within days, grateful emails from blog readers flooded her inbox.

  ELI, VIRGINIA | THE NERD

  Eli rejoiced when Kim—a girl from his lunch table whom he liked talking to—and a few of her friends invited him to play board games with them in the library on early-release days. Eli laughed more often than usual with this group, even though he couldn’t help thinking, I should really be doing schoolwork right now, while in the midst of a game.

  During a game of Apples to Apples, Kim was having a side conversation with a friend. “Watch,” she said, smiling. “Eli, when did you turn in your college apps?”

  “October,” he said.

  “See?” Kim said to her friend. “When did you finish your gov vocab?” The homework was due at the end of the week.

  “Two weeks ago,” Eli replied.

  “See! He’s such a nerd. And he worries too much.”

  “Yeah, you are kind of OCD,” said another friend.

  Eli didn’t mind the ribbing. The board games in the library were the only social events he’d attended in months.

  ELI WAS BOTH EXCITED and anxious to walk into the auditorium for his last high school competition. He had higher expectations than usual. Strattville had not boasted any successful Academic Bowl teams in recent memory, but this year the team was decent—and was entering this final round with more points than most of its opponents.

  Eli scanned the posters draping the five tables onstage. His heart sank. Not only would Strattville be competing directly against Arrington, but also his team’s table was the farthest from the moderator, which could lead to difficulty hearing the questions.

  Students from ten schools packed the auditorium; the schools from the morning round hadn’t scored enough points to threaten Strattville’s contention for the title. Students practiced trivia or did homework as they waited for the moderator to take the stage. Near Eli’s team, in the back of the room, a few students from another school practiced slapping imaginary buzzers.

  The moderator called the teams to the stage and explained the competition format. Questions were worth ten points apiece. Each round would consist of two sets of toss-up questions, during which teams would buzz in to answer, and two series of questions directed to each team separately. Each student could compete in only one round. Because Strattville didn’t have enough members for four students to compete in each round, however, two of its groups, including Eli’s, had to proceed with only three students.

  Eli’s group was up first. Eli sat in front of the buzzer, hoping that his round would be a geography round. As the moderator began with science questions, Eli’s team was silent. Then, “What is a talisman?” Eli buzzed in, then hesitated. What was the judge looking for? “A . . . charm?” Eli asked.

  “Correct. Next question. “What’s the derivative of yx = 19 with respect to x?”

  Buoyed by his success, Eli buzzed in quickly. “-y over x.”

  “Incorrect.” Eli kicked himself. He hadn’t answered with respect to x.

  His teammates answered a few other questions. When the judge directed questions to Eli’s team, Eli leaned forward in concentration.

  “Who was the only nonelected president?”

  “Ford,” Eli answered with confidence.

  “Correct.” Eli’s teammates patted him on the shoulders.

  “Where do Creoles live?”

  “Louisiana,” Eli said.

/>   In the final toss-up round, the moderator finally asked the type of question Eli had been waiting for. “What is the largest artificial lake in the United States?”

  Eli slapped the buzzer. “Mead,” he answered.

  “Correct.”

  When Eli’s group returned to the audience, teammates cheered. The coach said they had tied for the highest points scored in the round. Eli was slightly disappointed, though. He could have done better. As the second round began, Eli was dismayed to realize that this was the round that focused on geography questions. He answered every geography question correctly in his head. On stage, Arrington, the perennial champion, wasn’t dominating the questions. Frostpike, another nearby school, was pulling ahead. Soon, it was apparent that Strattville and Frostpike were the leaders.

  “In the Old Testament, what is the fourth of the Ten Commandments?” the moderator asked. From his seat in the auditorium, Eli triumphantly raised his fist in the air. Strattville’s most devout Catholic happened to be on stage. She buzzed in immediately. “Thou shalt honor your mother and father,” she said.

  “Incorrect.”

  “What?” murmured Eli and his teammates.

  “No, she’s definitely right!” a Catholic girl whispered to Eli. As the game progressed, Eli’s teammates tapped their cell phones. Apparently there was some debate over the text of the fourth commandment, but enough sources agreed with Strattville that they believed they had grounds to contest if needed. For now, it was so unlikely that ten measly points would matter that they remained silent in their seats.

  After the last round, Eli and his team were on edge while the moderator conferred with the judges. They hadn’t kept track—the questions passed too quickly—but they thought they had done well. They knew they had beaten Arrington, which was a major victory in itself. In fact, they thought, they might even have won for the first time in school history.

  For Eli, this moment was bittersweet. He would miss Academic Bowl. Nowhere else did he feel like a leader, the kind of guy to whom people turned for advice and companionship. He hardly saw his Spanish camp friends anymore. He hadn’t been able to reach Dwight in months. The board game hours continued on early-release days, but the conversations didn’t veer toward the personal. Eli had the lingering feeling that even his supposedly close friends didn’t get him. They considered him odd for not wanting to go to prom because he thought the dance was “a waste of hard-earned money.” Eli didn’t mind that he wasn’t going, but he did mind that his friends made such a big deal about it, trying to fix him up or warning that it was a mistake to miss his only prom. In addition, they repeatedly questioned why Eli was going to Westcoast University when he had been accepted to more prestigious schools. Eli would shrug amiably and daydream about going to a university where students would appreciate him.