Revenge of the Geek
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
ALSO BY PIPER BANKS
Geek High
Geek Abroad
Summer of the Geek
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First published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, November 2010
Copyright © Whitney Gaskell, 2010
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCAREGISTRADA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Banks, Piper.
Revenge of the geek/Piper Banks.
p. cm.
Summary: With her boyfriend, Dex, in Maine and her friends facing their own issues, Miranda
Bloom, girl genius, befriends Nora, a shy new student, but soon Nora’s relentless imitation of
Miranda threatens to ruin junior year at Geek High.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47792-2
[1. High schools—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4.
Stepfamilies—Fiction. 5. Genius—Fiction. 6. Florida—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G2128Rev 2010
[Fic]—dc22 2010028770
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For Sam
Chapter One
“Just try them on, Miranda,” Hannah, my stepsister, ordered me. She sounded like an army general sending troops into battle. Except that we weren’t on a battlefield. It was even worse than war—we were at the mall.
Hannah had dragged me from one end of the Orange Cove Mall to the other, stopping in nearly every store we passed. We were now in J.Crew, and I was drooping with exhaustion.
“Why bother trying them on? They’re my size,” I said, double-checking the tag on a pair of skinny jeans. Then I saw the price. “These jeans cost eighty dollars!”
“So?”
“Why would anyone spend eighty dollars on a pair of jeans? That’s insane. I could get these at Target for twenty bucks.”
Hannah looked at me with a pitying expression. “No, you couldn’t. Now go try them on.”
I sighed. There was no point in arguing with her. I turned toward the dressing room.
“Wait,” Hannah said. She handed over a huge pile of clothes—skirts, pants, tops. It looked like she’d gotten one of everything in the store. “Try these on, too.”
“What? All of these?” I asked, reeling under the weight of the clothing.
“All of them,” Hannah said. She checked her watch. “And you’d better hurry. If you keep wasting time, we’re never going to make the movie.”
Defeated, I headed to the dressing room.
“Show me everything you try on,” Hannah called after me.
The next half hour was sheer hell. I know some girls love trying on clothes and think of shopping as a hobby. I am not one of those girls. Pulling countless shirts over my head and wriggling into an endless series of pants caused me to become light-headed.
“I think I need a Coke,” I complained to Hannah on one of my frequent trips out of the dressing room to model an outfit for her. “My blood sugar is low.”
Hannah was unmoved. “You haven’t tried on the dark-washed denim pencil skirt yet.”
“Seriously, I can’t try on one more thing. I’m going to pass out from hunger.”
“The denim pencil skirt,” Hannah ordered. “I told you: we’re making over your wardrobe.”
“Why does it matter? They’re just clothes.”
Hannah looked truly shocked. “Clothes always matter,” she said. “Now go try on the denim pencil skirt!”
Forty minutes later we left J.Crew with bags so heavy that the thin, ropy straps felt as if they were about to cut through my fingers. I was wrung out. I mentally calculated how much money I’d spent that day—it was at least half the money I’d saved that summer working as an au pair to Amelia, a ten-year-old music prodigy. My dad had offered to chip in for new school clothes, but since he’d just bought me a car—an ugly used car, but I wasn’t complaining—I felt guilty asking him for money.
Hannah seemed oddly energized after our shopping expedition. “Oh, my gosh, just think of how much better you’re going to look this year,” she said as we made our way toward the food court.
Hannah was so beautiful that heads were swiveling as we walked by. She had a really pretty face, set off by platinum blond hair that swished across her shoulders. She was also very thin an
d very petite. I always felt freakishly tall and gangly when I stood next to her, like a clumsy giraffe towering over a dainty gazelle.
“Gee, thanks,” I said. I didn’t think my old wardrobe was that bad. Maybe I wasn’t a fashion plate, but my clothes were unobjectionable. Jeans, T-shirts—that sort of thing.
“No problem,” Hannah said, missing my sarcasm. “I bet your friends at school won’t even recognize you.”
Hannah and I were the same age—we were both sixteen and going into our junior year—but we attended different high schools. Hannah went to Orange Cove High. I went to the Notting Hill Independent School for Gifted Children, which was better known as Geek High. Most of the kids at Geek High had a special talent. For example, I could solve math problems—even complex ones—in my head. Growing up, my rather unflattering nickname had been the Human Calculator. And I didn’t even want to be a mathematician. I wanted to be a writer.
“I don’t think skinny jeans are going to mask my true identity,” I said.
“Just you wait. People will see you in a whole new light,” Hannah promised.
I didn’t believe that for one moment. The thing about going to Geek High was that most of the kids really did care more about their studies than what their classmates were wearing. Besides, why would I want to be seen in a different light? I had lots of friends at school. Okay, sure, I had some enemies, too—like awful Felicity Glen and her toady Morgan Simpson. Felicity had mocked me endlessly over the years for my boyish figure and boring clothes. But I was pretty sure that if she couldn’t make fun of my clothes, she’d just find something else to ridicule. Like my too-large nose or my wavy hair that frizzed when it was humid. Considering that I lived in South Florida, that was pretty much all the time.
Hannah paused outside a shoe store to examine the contents of the store window.
“Can we please get something to eat? I’m starving,” I complained.
“You’re always starving,” Hannah replied. She whipped out her pink cell phone and began scrolling through her messages.
“Emmett’s here,” she said.
“Here in the mall?”
Hannah nodded. “Over at the Gap. He wants to meet us for lunch.” She punched a rapid succession of buttons on her phone. “I’m telling him to meet us at the food court.”
“Great,” I said, my heart sinking.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Emmett. I did. In fact, once upon a time, I’d liked him way too much. Emmett was a year ahead of me at Geek High. He was nice, an academic superstar—his specialty was science—and absolutely gorgeous. I’d had a secret crush on him for years. But Emmett had taken one look at Hannah and become instantly smitten with my stepsister. I’d been devastated at the time, but was long over it by now. For one thing, Hannah and Emmett did make an adorable couple. And, for another, I’d fallen pretty hard myself for someone else.
Dex McConnell, boyfriend extraordinaire. He really was great. Smart, bitingly funny, and very handsome, if—like me—you happen to like redheads. Dex was also an amazing surfer and had been the star player on the Orange Cove lacrosse team. Had been, as in past tense. Four days earlier Dex had left our small town of Orange Cove to go to boarding school in Maine on a lacrosse scholarship. It was an amazing opportunity for Dex, but I missed him so much that my stomach curled over on itself whenever I thought of him.
I was pretty sure Hannah had proposed this shopping trip to distract me, and so far it had been working, mostly because my I’m-stuck-in-a-shopping-mall misery was, for the time being, drowning out my missing-Dex-so-much-it-hurts misery. But that was before I found out I was going to be hanging out with Hannah and Emmett. Nothing makes you feel more alone than playing third wheel to a happy couple.
“He’s meeting us by Big Top Pizza,” Hannah announced, pocketing her cell phone. “Not that I’d eat the pizza there. Gag.”
“Why?”
“Tiffany’s boyfriend Geoff’s older brother used to work at Big Top Pizza. He said that they once had a cockroach fall into the vat of pizza sauce, and their manager wouldn’t let them throw out the sauce,” Hannah said. “So they kept using it on the pizzas. And, get this—when they reached the bottom of the pan of sauce, the cockroach was missing. So it must have ended up on one of the pizzas.”
“Ewww,” I said.
“I know, right? Ever since I heard that, I refuse to eat there,” Hannah said.
I tried not to think of how many hundreds of slices I’d eaten at Big Top Pizza over the years. I’d always viewed a slice of their pizza as my reward for withstanding the horrors of the mall.
“Um, Hannah?”
“Yes?”
“How long have you known about the cockroach pizza?”
Hannah tossed her hair back as she considered. “I’m not sure. Maybe a year or two?”
“A year or two?”
“I think. Why does it matter?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it before? It’s information I would really liked to have had,” I said.
Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know. It never occurred to me to tell you. Look, there’s Emmett.”
Emmett was standing in line at the now-notorious pizzeria. He was tall—even taller than me—with broad shoulders, blond hair, and eyes the color of the ocean. He smiled when he saw us approaching.
“Do either of you want a slice?” he asked.
“No way,” Hannah and I said in unison.
“And neither do you,” I added.
Emmett looked confused.
“Just trust me,” I said. “Let’s go to Sunshine Burger instead.” I shot Hannah a sidelong look. “You don’t know anyone who worked there, do you?”
“Nope,” she said. “It’s safe, as far as I know.”
“Good,” I said.
Emmett looked curious, but he just shrugged, and we all headed over to Sunshine Burger. Ten minutes later we were sitting at a table with our trays. Emmett and I had ordered exactly the same thing: a double-decker cheeseburger, large fries, soda, and a chocolate shake topped with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. Hannah had a salad with grilled chicken and low-calorie dressing on the side. After eating three bites, she groaned and pushed back her tray.
“I’m stuffed,” she said.
I had just taken an enormous bite of my double-decker, so it took me a few minutes to chew and swallow before I could respond. “How can you be stuffed on two lettuce leaves and one tiny piece of chicken?”
“Hannah always eats like a bird,” Emmett said, beaming at her as though there were nothing more marvelous than the ability to survive on a few sticks and twigs.
I rolled my eyes, instantly irritated. One of the many, many things I liked about Dex was that he never minded that I had as large an appetite as he did. This was quickly followed by the now-familiar pang of sadness that thinking of Dex always caused recently. He’d been gone for only four days, and it already felt like forever. We talked every day on Skype, but it wasn’t the same as feeling the warmth of his hand entwined with mine or breathing in the freshly-laundered-clothes smell of him. I wasn’t going to see him in person until he was home for Thanksgiving break. How was I going to make it until then?
“Miranda?” Hannah said, interrupting my sad thoughts. “Did you hear me?”
“What? No.”
“I didn’t think you were listening,” Hannah said accusingly. “I said Emmett wants to come to the movies with us. Is that okay? I know we were supposed to be having a girls’ day out.”
“Fine with me,” I said. “Emmett can be an honorary girl for the day. As long as he doesn’t mind getting pedicures with us.”
But now Hannah and Emmett weren’t listening to me. They were staring at each other with matching goopy expressions. I could have stood on the table and belted out a rendition of “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” complete with Beyoncé’s dance moves, and it still wouldn’t have gotten their attention.
“You’ve got a stray hair,” Emmett told Hannah, sweeping the of
fending lock out of her face and tucking it behind her ear for her.
Hannah giggled and tipped her head coquettishly. “Maybe I should cut my hair short so it stays out of my face. I’ve always wondered how I’d look with a really, really short style.”
“Don’t do that. I like it long,” Emmett said, gently pulling on one of her silver-blond locks.
“You don’t think I’d look pretty with short hair?” Hannah asked.
“You’d look gorgeous no matter what,” Emmett said. He took her hand and brushed his lips against her knuckles.
“Gag,” I said.
Hannah and Emmett both looked at me. They seemed startled to find me sitting at the table with them.
“Seriously,” I said, “this is nauseating. You’re going to have to stop it now before it ruins my appetite.”
“Ignore her,” Hannah told Emmett. “She misses Dex, so she’s feeling bitter about love.”
“I’m not bitter about love,” I said, stung. “I happen to be very pro-love.”
“How is Dex doing? Have you talked to him?” Emmett asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I talked to him last night. He’s fine. His roommate’s cool, and he said that everyone on the lacrosse team gets along.”
Dex had sounded really upbeat when I talked to him. I knew he’d been nervous about starting at a new school far away from home, where he didn’t know anyone. It had been too great an opportunity for him to pass up. The Brown Academy had one of the top high school lacrosse programs in the country, and a lot of the lacrosse players who went there ended up getting recruited by universities such as Princeton and Cornell. I knew it was important to him to do well at his new school, and I was glad that he was adjusting to being there. But a smaller, not-so-nice part of me had hoped that he’d be missing me too much—as much as I missed him—to settle in quite so quickly.
“Are you all ready to get back to school tomorrow?” Emmett asked.