Summer of the Geek

by Piper Banks

  I turned and saw Hannah and Emmett strolling toward us, hand in hand.

  “Hi, Bloom,” Emmett said to me. Emmet Dutch was as gorgeous as ever—tall, broad-shouldered, and tan. He had blond hair that curled back from his face and eyes the color of the ocean at sunset. There was a time, pre-Dex, when hearing Emmett Dutch call me Bloom and seeing him holding hands with my stepsister would have caused my insides to shrivel up with jealousy. Happily, he no longer had that affect on me.

  “Hi, Emmett,” I said. “Are you having a good summer?”

  “Pretty good,” Emmett said cheerfully.

  “Is he here yet?” Hannah asked Charlie.

  Charlie widened her eyes and looked meaningfully in Finn’s direction. He was so absorbed in Phoebe, he didn’t notice the exchange.

  “Him?” Hannah asked, surprised.

  With his shaggy hair and goofy smile, I knew Finn was not what Hannah would consider much of a catch. Still, she’d given her word, so she shrugged off her surprise and got to work.

  “Where’s Dex?” she asked me. “I thought he was bringing Luke and Brian.”

  Hannah, of course, knew both guys. She went to school with them at Orange Cove High, and was friendly with most of the jocks.

  “He said he’d be here,” I said.

  “Good,” Hannah said. She turned to Charlie and began pelting her with instructions in a low, fierce whisper. “Luke’s a lot more outgoing than Brian, so he’s probably the better bet. Still, you never know who you’ll have better chemistry with, so flirt like crazy with both of them. Touch your hair a lot, make eye contact, find reasons to touch his arm. Guys love that. Oh, and I brought you this.” Hannah handed Charlie a tube of lip gloss. “Put it on.”

  Charlie looked doubtfully at the tube. “I don’t usually wear lip gloss. My hair gets stuck in it,” she said.

  “You’re as bad as Miranda,” Hannah said, rolling her eyes.

  “Hey!” I said.

  Hannah ignored me. “Trust me. Put it on. You can’t flirt without glossy lips,” Hannah said with such authority that Charlie meekly obeyed.

  I saw Dex enter the bowling alley, flanked by two guys who looked vaguely familiar. As I’d suspected, they were both of the typical high school jock variety. One was thicker through the chest and had very dark hair. The other had longish blond hair, and was even taller and lankier than Dex.

  “Hey,” he said when they’d reached us. He smiled down at me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “This is Luke and that’s Brian,” Finn said. “And this is Miranda.”

  We all said hello. Luke was the dark-haired one, and he stood with his hands in his pockets, his eyes roaming over the crowd. They rested briefly on Hannah, again on Phoebe, and then lingered when they got to Charlie. I turned and saw that Charlie was smiling at him, while tilting her head to one side and tucking her purple hair behind her ears, as per Hannah’s instructions.

  “Hey,” he said to her.

  “Hey yourself,” Charlie said flirtatiously.

  Hannah looked pleased, but I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable. I didn’t think anything good could come of Charlie acting like anyone other than herself. Charlie seemed to read my thoughts, and winked at me.

  Don’t worry, the wink said. I’ve got a plan.

  I rolled my eyes. That’s exactly what I’m worried about.

  Charlie grinned at me and then turned her attention back to Luke. “Let’s have a bowl-off,” she suggested. “We’ll pick teams, and then the team with the highest score has to buy wings and cheese fries for the other. The shoe rental is over there.”

  Everyone who hadn’t already gotten their bowling shoes obediently went off to rent some, accompanied by Finn, who didn’t seem willing to leave Phoebe’s side for even a moment. Only Hannah remained at the lane with Charlie and me.

  “No way,” she said, shaking her head, so that her platinum hair swished around her face. “I am absolutely not wearing rental shoes. That’s totally gross.”

  “You have to or they won’t let you bowl,” Charlie explained.

  “Fine, then I won’t bowl,” Hannah said.

  “This was your big plan,” I reminded her. “You can’t not participate.”

  “I’ll just watch, and give advice where needed,” Hannah suggested.

  “No way,” I said. I pointed to the shoe rental. “Go rent a pair of bowling shoes. We’re all in this together now.”

  Hannah pouted, but gave in.

  “She really doesn’t have to bowl if she doesn’t want to,” Charlie said as we watched her join Emmett in line.

  “Yes, she does,” I said. “I’m not missing a chance to see Hannah in ugly footwear for the first time ever.”

  “I thought you two were getting along better these days,” Charlie said.

  “We are. But even so, it’s too good an opportunity to pass up,” I said. I glanced at my friend, who looked pale and nervous, but also determined. “You don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to.”

  “I absolutely want to,” Charlie said firmly. “Finn’s not going to know what hit him.”

  At first, Charlie’s prediction seemed to fall flat. We divided up into two teams. Dex, Brian, Hannah, Emmett, and I bowled on lane two, while Finn, Phoebe, Luke, and Charlie bowled on lane three. Hannah tried to talk Brian into joining the other group—“We’re two couples over here. You don’t want to be a fifth wheel,” she said—but he wouldn’t budge.

  “It looks like there are two couples over there, too,” he said, nodding at Luke and Charlie, who were talking animatedly. Charlie was incorporating all of Hannah’s flirting tricks, touching her hair and making lots of eye contact. Luke definitely seemed interested in her, I thought, but for all the good it seemed to be doing—Finn was so wrapped up in Phoebe, he didn’t seem aware of their existence.

  “I’ll be a fifth wheel either way,” Brian continued, sitting down at our lane.

  Hannah didn’t seem overly pleased by this, but the sight of Charlie’s successful flirting with Luke seemed to mollify her.

  “Who wants to go first?” I asked as I began signing everyone up on the electronic scoreboard.

  It turned out to be pretty fun for a while. Dex was a terrible bowler, which was a surprise, considering how athletic he was in general.

  “Stop laughing at me!” Dex demanded as he guttered the fifth ball of the night.

  “Sorry,” I said, still giggling. “It’s just that you bowl about as well I drive.”

  Hannah got the hang of it, under Emmett’s tutelage, and Brian was pretty good, too. But I seemed to be having the lucky streak of the night, hitting strike after strike, and easily taking first place.

  “Yes,” I said, raising a fist of victory as I downed all of the pins in a spare.

  “It’s just pure luck. There’s no skill involved at all in this game,” Dex grumbled as he stood to take his turn.

  “So says the guy with a score of twenty-seven,” I teased.

  I sat on one of the benches behind our lane and took the opportunity to glance over at the other group. Phoebe was bowling. Behind her, Finn sat alone on one bench, while Luke and Charlie, deep in conversation, sat close together on the other. Luke had slung a casual arm over the back of the bench, as though he were working his way up to shifting it onto Charlie’s shoulders. Finn seemed to have finally snapped out of his Phoebe-induced trance. Instead of watching his girlfriend bowl, he had his eyes pinned on Charlie and Luke.

  Maybe Hannah’s plan is working, I thought with a jolt of shock.

  “He’s really bad at this,” Brian said, sitting down beside me.

  I turned and saw Dex shank the bowling ball straight into the gutter. I laughed.

  “Yeah. He’s pretty awful,” I agreed.

  Brian smiled at me. Like Dex, he didn’t have the typical jock, meathead look about him. His brown eyes were thoughtful, and he seemed almost uncomfortable in his body, as though it had grown too quickly for him to get used to it
. His legs were folded in front of him, and his long arms rested on his knees.

  “Are you on the lacrosse team, too?” I asked.

  Brian nodded. “I’m not that good,” he admitted. “I’m a second stringer. Or, actually, more like a third stringer. I really just play to stay in shape for the fall soccer season.”

  “They seem like they’re a lot alike, soccer and lacrosse,” I said.

  “Yeah, except that in soccer, no one tries to whack you in the knees with a long stick,” Brian said. “Which is a good thing, I think.”

  “I can see that,” I said.

  “The team is really going to miss Dex next year,” Brian said.

  It’s weird that how when you know you’re about to hear something you really don’t want to hear, everything seems to slow down a bit. Noises get a bit dimmer, people seem to move slower. It’s almost as if there’s a slight hiccup in time. This was one of those moments. Even though I didn’t know what Brian was talking about—miss Dex? Why? Where else would he be?—I instantly knew it was going to be something dreadful. And I also knew that there was no way I would be able to swallow back my next question, as much as I might want to.

  “Where is he going to be next year?” I asked quietly.

  Brian looked surprised. “You don’t know?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  Brian looked at Dex’s back, his expression shifting to one of uneasiness. “Oh, man. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t realize . . . I mean, I thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?” I asked again. My skin felt like it was both hotter and more sensitive than usual. My cheeks burned, and the tension of my hair pulled back in a ponytail suddenly made my scalp ache.

  “Miranda, what’s wrong?” Hannah asked sharply, looking from Brian to me. “Brian, did you say something rude to her?”

  Brian held up his hands, and stood. “No way. I just . . . look. I’m going to go get a soda.”

  He bounded off, throwing one worried glance back at us over his shoulder. I sat frozen in place. Where was Dex going? Was his family moving? Was that what he had talked to Wendy Erickson about, but hadn’t wanted to tell me?

  Hannah stood, and plopped down in Brian’s vacated seat. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Brian said . . .” I stopped, my throat closing, refusing to let out the words.

  “Brian said what?” Dex asked, suddenly in front of us, looking down at me, his face creased with worry. I started at his sudden appearance—I hadn’t even noticed that he’d finished his turn.

  I stared back up at him. “Brian said you’re not going to be here next year,” I said quietly. “Is that true?”

  “What? I’m sure Brian was just kidding,” Hannah sad quickly. “Right, Dex? I mean, where would you go?”

  But Dex had gone pale. He swallowed, and then took in a deep breath.

  “I was going to tell you,” he said.

  I nodded, even though it felt as if all of the air had been sucked out of the room. “Tell me what?”

  “I got a scholarship to the Brown Academy. It’s a prep school up north. They want me to play lacrosse for them,” Dex said.

  I nodded again and tried to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind. He was leaving town. And he was leaving me. I stood suddenly, surprising Dex so much that he took a step back. Hannah was staring up at us with her mouth agape.

  “I have to go,” I said. My voice sounded weird to my own ears—thin and high-pitched.

  Dex laid a hand on my arm. “Miranda,” he began.

  I shook his hand off. “Please don’t. Not right now.”

  “We should talk about this,” Dex said softly.

  I knew that if I stood there much longer, I was going to cry. I could already feel a burning sensation in my chest, pushing upward through my lungs and filling my throat. I turned and started to walk away.

  “Where are you going, Miranda?” Hannah called after me. “It’s your turn!”

  I didn’t look back. And Dex didn’t follow me.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Although it was almost unbearably hot and muggy out, I decided to walk home. I knew I could call my dad for a ride, but I didn’t want to have to explain the tears sliding down my cheeks.

  Dex had lied to me. He’d let me think that things next year would go on just the same as they had that summer. He’d let me think that we’d be together.

  If it had been the other way around, if I were the one leaving, I’d have told him, I thought. And then I suddenly realized that this wasn’t entirely true. I hadn’t, after all, told Dex about the possibility that I might be moving to London for the upcoming school year.

  But it wasn’t the same. Not at all. For one thing, I hadn’t decided yet whether I was actually going to move to London. Once I had made that decision, I would have told Dex immediately. The only reason I had kept the possibility from him was that I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. He, on the other hand, had already made his decision . . . and he hadn’t told me. He’d told Brian, and probably told his other friends, also. But he hadn’t told me.

  Why had Dex told me he was in love with me if he knew he was leaving? I wondered as a spasm of pain shuddered through me. Maybe if he hadn’t told me that—hadn’t used the word love—I could have protected my heart.

  A car drove past me, its headlights glaringly bright, its wheels spinning through puddles left over from a late afternoon storm. I ducked my head to avoid the lights, and trudged on.

  This must have been what Dex and Wendy had been talking about when they met at the mall food court, I realized. I remembered what Wendy had said when I saw her surfing at the beach. “It was nice to get out on the waves again . . . I keep telling Dex how much he’ll miss it . . . Especially if he’s in the Northeast . . . You can’t surf much when there’s three feet of snow out.” So she’d known, too. She’d known before me.

  I didn’t hear the second car approaching until it slowed down next to me. I glanced up at it and recognized Emmett’s Jeep even before I saw Hannah in the passenger seat. She leaned out the window to talk to me.

  “Get in, Miranda. We’ll drive you home,” Hannah said.

  “That’s okay. I’d rather walk,” I said.

  “It’s raining,” Hannah pointed out.

  “It is?” I looked up. It had started raining, heavily, without my noticing.

  “You’re freaking me out. Get in,” Hannah ordered.

  I obeyed her, climbing in the back of the Jeep. The top was on, but the windows and back were open, and the resulting breeze felt good on such a humid, airless night.

  Hannah twisted around in her seat.

  “That was a dramatic exit,” she said. “You pretty much brought the bowling party to an end.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. I think everyone was bowled out,” Emmett said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

  It was the first time I’d ever ridden in a car with Emmett. A year ago, this would have made my life. It was amazing how much things had changed in such a relatively short amount of time.

  “Dex was pretty upset that you left,” Hannah said.

  “He was?”

  Even though the mere mention of Dex’s name caused a fresh wave of throbbing pain in the general region of my heart, I still wanted to hear every detail. Luckily, Hannah instinctively understood this without my having to ask.

  “Yeah. He looked really sad. And then Brian came back, and Dex was furious at him for telling you. They got into a big fight,” Hannah reported.

  “It’s not Brian’s fault that Dex has basically been lying to me,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, Dex didn’t see it that way. For a minute there, I thought Dex was going to punch him. But then Dex just turned around and walked off, without saying good-bye to any of us. And then Brian took off, and then Emmett and I left,” Hannah said.

  “What about Charlie?”

  “She was still there. She and
Luke seemed to be hitting it off,” Hannah said, sounding pleased with herself. “And the other guy, the one she likes—what’s his name?”

  “Finn.”

  “Right, Finn. He was definitely jealous. My plan totally worked. I told Charlie to report in tomorrow, so we’ll find out what happened,” Hannah said.

  When we got back to the beach house, Emmett started to turn off the car, but Hannah put her hand on his arm. “Why don’t you just drop me off? I think Miranda needs some girl time.”

  “That’s okay,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. Really.”

  “No, it’s cool. I have an early shift in the morning,” Emmett said. He gave Hannah a quick kiss.

  She made a face. “All you do is work,” she complained as she unlatched her seat belt.

  “We can’t all have cush jobs standing in front of a camera looking pretty,” Emmett teased her.

  “Gag,” I said, climbing out of the Jeep. Hannah giggled and climbed out after me.

  “Bye,” she said, waving as Emmett drove off. Then she turned to me. “Come on. Let’s go see if there’s any ice cream.”

  “Ice cream?” I asked.

  “Yes, ice cream. That’s what girls are supposed to eat when they’ve had a romantic crisis,” Hannah informed me as she opened the front door. “It’s, like, a rule or something.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said. My stomach felt so cramped and sour, I doubted I’d ever be hungry again. “But you can have some if you want.”

  Hannah looked shocked. “I don’t eat ice cream. Do you have any idea how many fat grams are in it?”

  “You have got to stop obsessing about your weight,” I began, but then stopped. I heard voices coming from the kitchen. Angry voices. More specifically: Dad and Peyton. “Oh no. Are they fighting again?”

  “Let’s go see,” Hannah said, heading off in the direction of the kitchen. I reluctantly followed her.

  “. . . can’t believe you told that to Dr. Patel!”

  “He told us to be honest with our feelings!”