Geek Magnet

by Kieran Scott

  “Glenn, I thought you were going to go check on the sound,” I said finally.

  “I will. As soon as you give me an answer.”

  He looked around at our audience gleefully. He was enjoying this. And so were they. Which meant no one was going to help me. Stephanie would have, but she hadn’t arrived yet. I was going to have to kill her later.

  “KJ? What’s going on?” Fred said, his expression pathetic.

  And suddenly, my heart skipped a beat. Epiphany!

  “Glenn, you . . . you know I can’t date anyone in the cast,” I improvised. “I’m the stage manager. How would that look?”

  Ha! Now I couldn’t date Glenn or Andy or Fred! Three geeks down with one blow! Genius!

  “I’m not in the cast. I’m in charge of AV,” Glenn said, all proud.

  Damn these geeks and their quick minds.

  “Well, I’m still in charge of you,” I said with a shrug. “And we all know how messy on-set romances can be. Sorry.”

  “Tough break, Marlowe,” one of the ubiquitous drama guys said as he walked by. He slapped Glenn on the back at the exact same moment that Glenn was taking another slug from his Yoo-hoo bottle. There was a gross choking sound. His eyes widened. And suddenly, I was on the receiving end of a cool, refreshing chocolate shower.

  The Drama Twins screeched. Nobody moved. I looked down at my new light blue sweater. A constellation of brown droplets. Everywhere. All the heat in my body rushed up my neck and into my face.

  It’s fine. It’s fine. Do. Not. Panic.

  “Are you okay, KJ? Are you okay?” Fred asked, loping over.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Oh, God, KJ. Your sweater!” Glenn cried. He looked around the stage, searching for God knows what. “Here! Take this.”

  He pulled his velour shirt off over his head, momentarily exposing his prominent ribs before the white T-shirt underneath fell back into place.

  “No! Take this!” Fred yanked his hooded sweatshirt off the back of a chair, knocking the chair over in the process.

  All around us, people started to chuckle. My skin burned so hot it was going to incinerate my clothes. Then Glenn would really get a show to remember.

  “I’m fine, you guys, really.” I walked over to the pile of unclaimed scripts that were left on the stage, turning my back to them and willing them to go away. Couldn’t they see they were embarrassing me?

  “No. Really. I want you to have it,” Glenn said, following me. “Please. Take it.”

  “No, take mine,” Fred said.

  “It’s my fault. You want mine.”

  “I’ve got a cardigan!” Andy announced helpfully.

  “No, you want mine, KJ. Don’t you? KJ? KJ?”

  I looked down at the stains on my new sweater as laughter filled my ears. I was going to cry. I was actually going to cry. So much for being dizzy with power. If anything, I was suffering a serious power outage.

  Go away! Please just go away!

  “Holy crap!” Robbie Delano, the tall, emo-cute, drummer/ actor/class cutup who was playing Danny Zuko, looked up and shoved his chair back suddenly. He put his hand on Glenn’s chest, effectively pushing him away from me. “Glenn, buddy, I think I see smoke in the AV booth.”

  “What?” Glenn’s jaw dropped. He was gone in a flash. The air around me cooled slightly.

  “Hey, Freddy. You wanna go over some lines?” Robbie crooked his arm around Fred’s neck and basically yanked him away. “Andy! Where’s my script, man? I thought you were on top of things around here. Chop chop.”

  Andy dropped to the pile of scripts at my feet to find it. Suddenly I could breathe again. I was still covered in chocolate, but Robbie Delano had saved me. Why? We’d barely ever spoken two words to each other. Robbie was one of those guys who functioned in his own little world, outside the crazy clique society of our school. Back in middle school he had been one of the jocks, one of the blessed ones, bff with Cameron Richardson, who ruled our class to this day. But somewhere along the line, all that had changed. Now Robbie was sports-team free and instead, played drums in the marching band, sang in the choir, and was always in the musicals. Yet he never hung out with the drama crowd or the band geeks or anyone else, really. He’d been in my class since kindergarten, but other than that, I knew next to nothing about him.

  “ Thanks,” I mouthed to him.

  He smirked in response. “No big.”

  My body heat returned to sub-nuclear levels. Okay, so I knew one thing about him. I now owed him one big, fat favor.

  ACT ONE, SCENE TWO

  In which:

  WE MEET TAMA GOLD, CAMERON RICHARDSON, AND MY BOOBS

  “KJ, IT LOOKS FINE,” STEPHANIE TOLD ME, STARING AT MY CHEST IN the bathroom mirror. We were on a five-minute break from the table read so that Mr. Katz, the faculty adviser, could go out to his Subaru and chain-smoke Marlboros. “It totally fits.”

  I turned to the side and there they were in full glory. The mega-boobs. My face burned with irritation. The curse of being a redhead—my face flushed at the drop of a hat.

  “It so does not,” I said, crossing my arms over the hot pink hoodie she was attempting to lend me. I pressed my forearms down so hard it hurt. God, I hated those damn things. Sometimes I wondered if there was some breast fairy who came in the window every night, attached a tire pump to my chest area and went to work. “You are of a normal size. I am purely Himalayan.”

  “Well, what do you want to do? Wear a stained sweater for the rest of the day?” she asked, wrinkling her small upturned nose. Everything about Steph was small. Her feet, her boobs, her ears, her hands. With her blue eyes and curly brown hair she was like a walking, talking Precious Moments figurine. I, meanwhile, was deformed.

  “All right, fine,” I said finally, grabbing my bag. “Let’s just go back.”

  “You’re welcome!” Stephanie said with a hint of sarcasm. She’s like a mom that way. Always making sure you’re polite.

  “Thank you!” I replied with a smile, matching her tone.

  We walked out of the bathroom and headed for the lobby outside the auditorium.

  “So Robbie Delano really saved you?” she asked.

  “Yep. It was like he had some geek-repelling force field around him or something,” I told her. “It was super cool.”

  “Huh. Well, by definition that would sort of make him a geek, too,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Uh oh, Science Girl has a new hypothesis,” I joked.

  Stephanie could make a scientific theory out of almost anything. She once did a whole project on how White Castle isn’t as popular as Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s because red, yellow and orange promote hunger, whereas blue and white promote inner peace. No, I’m not kidding.

  “Well, think about it. With magnets, the positive force is attracted to the negative force. So let’s say you’re the negative force—”

  “Why do I have to be the negative force?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay, you’re the positive force. The geeks are the negative force. The only thing that could repel them is another negative force. Therefore, Robbie is a geek!” she finished happily.

  We had just stepped into the lobby, and about a dozen people stopped talking as Stephanie’s last four words echoed throughout the room. Laughter quickly, inevitably, ensued. Stephanie looked like she was about to die.

  “Omigod. Kill me now,” she said.

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because my Cameron Richardson radar was going berserk.

  “Cameron Richardson,” I whispered through my teeth, my heart pounding.

  “What?” Steph asked. She was still distracted by her verbal vomit.

  He was standing in the corner with Tama and some other guys from the basketball team, all sweaty from practice, cradling a ball and laughing at some joke his friend had made. I loved his laugh. It wasn’t the usual popular-guy laugh. You know how they always laugh really loudly while looking around at their friends to make sure they’r
e all still laughing, too, so they’ll know when to stop? Like the second something stops being funny to one of them it must stop being funny to all of them. Not Cameron. He laughed like no one was watching him. And sometimes, when you thought he was finished laughing and he’d gone all quiet, he’d suddenly, spontaneously giggle out of nowhere to himself. Sometimes, in bio class, I’d catch him doing that. I loved him most in those moments.

  Of course, he’d never caught me doing anything. I was pretty sure that Cameron had a special superpower that enabled him to see right through me.

  “Cameron Richardson Cameron Richardson Cameron Richardson,” I muttered.

  I was moving Steph through the lobby now, trying to look casual and cool as we passed by Cameron’s little klatch of friends. His red-and-white Washington High cap was on backward and he lifted it up to scratch at his dark blond curls. My palms were sweating and I felt lightheaded, just like I always did when Cameron was around. The agony of him being right there and not being able to talk to him was a daily torturous bliss. Yet somehow, every day I woke up believing this would be the day. The day that he would see me walking into one of our shared classes and realize he had a major thing for short, shy, red-haired artists. He’d suddenly find his leggy, supermodel, Catholic-schoolgirl-of-the-month ridiculously boring, dump her on her perfect ass, and sweep me off my feet. It could happen. It just . . . hadn’t yet.

  Steph and I were just about through the doors to the auditorium when Tama Gold spoke.

  “Hey, KJ. Come here a sec!” I froze. Stephanie tripped over my ankle and took a header into the auditorium. I was powerless to stop her. Everyone was watching me now. Including Cameron.

  Those were the first words Tama had spoken to me all year. She used to talk to me all the time. Last year during the musical I had actually thought we were becoming friends. But the second the show was over, she went back to the beautiful people, back to acting like I didn’t exist. I still felt stupid for thinking we could have been friends. I mean, Tama was the most blessed of the blessed. Two years ago she had waltzed right into this school as a transfer student, and before the first mystery meat of the year had been served, she had the popular crowd under her thumb. She was model gorgeous with blemishless cocoa skin, stunning green eyes and smooth brown curls that were never, ever out of place. Not to mention the legs. The height. The ability to wear a plastic garbage bag and make it look like haute couture. How could I have ever thought that a girl like that would waste her time on a girl like me?

  Stephanie dusted herself off, shot me a quick look, and headed to the table to grab her script.

  “KJ! Are you in there?” Tama trilled, earning a round of laughter from her friends.

  I turned around. Cameron Richardson’s eyes went directly to my breasts. Damn. I crossed my arms and held on tight. He blushed and looked away.

  “What’s up?” I asked Tama.

  “Nothing. You never talk to me anymore,” Tama teased with a pout. “I was so psyched when I heard you were going to be stage manager.”

  “You were?” I asked, approaching slowly.

  The other guys, Tommy and Dustin, looked me up and down like they’d never seen me before. As if Tommy hadn’t regularly peed in my pool back in grade school when we were briefly friends.

  “Omigod! Totally,” Tama said. “It’s always good to have friends in high places.”

  She reached out her long, slim arm and wrapped it around my shoulders, tripping me closer. I hazarded a glance at Cameron. He looked right in my eyes this time, and smiled. No. Freaking. Way.

  “You guys all know KJ, right?” Tama asked, presenting me like a child. As if I hadn’t been going to school with them my whole life.

  “S’up?” Dustin and Tommy said in unison, with the exact same nod.

  “Hey, KJ,” Cameron said, tossing his ball up and down. “How’d you do on the bio test?”

  Wait a second. He knew I was in his bio class? He knew I existed?

  “Good, uh, fine. You know. Got an A,” I said.

  What!? What!?

  “You’re such a little brain,” Tama teased, knocking me with her elbow.

  “KJ and I are the only juniors in our section of AP bio and she’s pretty much the only one who ever gets A’s,” Cameron said.

  This was unbelievable. Cameron Richardson noticed my grades? I was so floored, and so very, very red, I couldn’t look any of them in the eye. I stared down at my blue plaid Converse and tugged at my hair.

  “Dude. What’s all over your hands?” Dustin asked, disgusted.

  I held out my fingers. There were purple and red splotches of paint on a few of my fingertips and under my nails. From art class. Eighth period. I had forgotten to clean up in all my haste to get to the theater. I looked at Cameron and gulped. I bet money none of the girls he went out with was ever seen in public without a professional manicure.

  “It’s just paint. I had art,” I said, shoving my hands under my arms.

  “It’s called soap and water. Ever heard of it?” Tommy joked.

  He and Dustin slapped hands and cackled. I was starting to wish Tama had never invited me over here.

  “That’s real class, man,” Cameron admonished. “Shut the hell up.”

  Hang on. Had Cameron just defended me? Okay, Tama inviting me over here was the best thing ever!

  “Come on, kids! Let’s make magic happen!” Mr. Katz announced, coming through the door behind us.

  “Mr. Katz! Mr. Katz!” Tommy shouted mirthfully. “Is it too late to audition?”

  Mr. Katz paused in the auditorium doorway, his Grateful Dead T-shirt bulging with his stomach from under his tweed jacket. He looked at Tommy curiously. The guys dropped their gym bags and balls and backed up.

  “‘Go, greased lightning, you’re burning up the quarter mile,’” Dustin sang. Badly.

  “‘Greased lightning! Go, greased lightning!’” Cameron and Tommy chorused. They did a rough imitation of the dance from the movie. Horrible, really. But it was Cameron, and pretty much the cutest thing ever.

  “A fine rendition, gents, but get out,” Mr. Katz said wryly as he smoothed down his comb-over. “Ladies? Shall we?”

  Tommy and Dustin took off for the gym at a jog, but Cameron hung back. “Don’t worry about those guys,” he said to me, grabbing up his basketball. “They can be real jackasses sometimes.”

  “Yeah. And the sky is blue,” I said without thinking.

  Cameron laughed. Laughed! At my joke!

  “Good one. See ya in class,” he said.

  “Yeah. See ya.”

  I stood there and watched him go. I had to remember every single detail of this moment. What I was wearing. What he was wearing. The exact hue of the sunlight streaming through the windows. Every detail of the day Cameron had finally seen me. How was I going to function normally for the rest of the day? How was I going to function normally ever?

  I took a deep, giddy breath and turned around. Tama was still there. And she was smiling in a way that made me feel like she knew every single one of my innermost secrets and found them all hilarious.

  “What?” I said dumbly.

  “Oh my God! You like him! You like Cameron Richardson!” she squealed. “You naughty girl, you. Crushing on the big basketball star.”

  “I don’t like him,” I protested.

  “No! Cage! I love it! You and Cameron is exactly the out-of-left-field idea this school needs,” Tama said. “In fact, I am totally going to talk you up to him.”

  “Really?” There was no hiding my excitement.

  “Totally!” She draped her arm over my shoulders again as she led me through the double doors. “Now, let’s talk costumes. Blue is really my color, so I’m thinking Sandy’s clothes should have blue as a theme. . . .”