Queen Geeks in Love

by Laura Preble

  “Why are you drinking it, then?”

  “I’m trying to steal your essence.” He drains the glass, spatters the remaining drops onto the sand where they disappear. “Or maybe it’s a low-carb thing. I am getting a little pudgy around the middle.”

  “So, this is a dream, huh?” I turn toward the penguin, who, so far, has kept quiet. “What does it mean?”

  “You think everything is black and white,” the penguin answers, sadly lolling its shiny head from side to side. “And a lot of times what you think is true, isn’t.”

  Fletcher now turns into the penguin and walks away, leaving little waddling footprints in the sand. I stand up to chase him, but instead wake up in the dark with Euphoria, my robot, shaking my quilt. “Shelby. Shelby! Wake up!”

  “What?” All I see in the dimness is Euphoria’s green optical sensors glowing next to the red numbers of my digital clock.

  “According to my scans, you were having a nightmare.” She fastens one claw around my comforter, pulls it up toward my chin, and attempts to tuck me in. “There, there. I’m sure it was nothing. Can you tell me what happened?” She asks as she tries to perch awkwardly on the edge of my bed. She’s not so good at the bending-at-the-waist thing.

  I rub the sleep from my eyes and recall the dim vision of a drink, a penguin, and Fletcher. “No. I don’t remember. Probably that spicy Italian food.”

  “Hmmm.” Euphoria sounds unconvinced. “I think there’s more to it than that.”

  “Do you, Oprah? Well, let’s get you a talk show and maybe we can just dig into it on a more personal level.”

  Her green eyes flash in the darkness. “No need to get snippy about it. I’m just trying to help.” She whirs (and it sounds, I swear, like she’s ticked off, which is weird considering she’s not supposed to have any emotions), and her lights flash once, then her processors whir again, downshift, and go silent, leaving me with nothing but a lingering memory of fruit punch and penguin sweat.

  What did that mean, “trying to steal my essence”? That’s what he said, right? Black and white, black and white…something about black and white…were police cars involved? I roll over onto my belly, punching my pillow in frustration. I know this dream means something, but I don’t know what. Dreams are like guys—confusing, enigmatic, and they keep you from getting a good night’s sleep.

  The next morning, the phone rudely interrupts another dream. This one does not involve flightless waterfowl, but it does somehow make use of Fletcher in a ballerina costume, so I suppose it’s best left undiscussed. “Wake up, already!” Becca squawks into my phone.

  “Why?”

  “We have work to do! I just knew you’d be sleeping in and totally forgetting our meeting. Do you know what time it is? Get moving!”

  “Yes, drill sergeant. Want me to scrub your toilet with a toothbrush?”

  “Not necessary.” She takes a deep breath and drops the bomb. “I wasn’t going to tell you this until later, but I think I’ve just got to get it out there right now. We, you and me and the other Queen Geeks, have got to work with Fletcher to get our website up because we sort of made a promise that it would be up by July.”

  Now I’m awake. Becca’s bizarre plots are more stimulating than a double tall espresso with a shot of battery acid. “Back up a little, and keep in mind I’ve had no coffee. Somebody promised somebody else something. I think.”

  “Yeah.” She sounds a bit sheepish, and I hear voices in the background. “Listen, could you just come over as soon as possible? This would be better if I explained it in person.”

  “Are you sure? In person, I could throw something and possibly hit you.”

  “Naw. You have lousy aim.”

  So, as usual Becca has me embroiled in some scheme without my permission, and it involves intimate contact with a guy who makes me dream of talking penguins and revenge fantasies. Summer is supposed to be a time of relaxation. But why should the summer be any different from last school year, when Becca had a plot at every turn?

  To go to Becca’s house I need a ride, and that means my dad. He’s nowhere to be found, though, which puts a dent in my transportation plan. “Euphoria, where’s Dad?”

  “It’s not my turn to watch him,” she grumbles from the kitchen, where she is belligerently whipping an innocent batch of pancake batter.

  “Don’t be mad,” I say, patting her back panel. “I didn’t mean to be snippy with you. I just had another bad dream.”

  She inclines her metallic head slightly toward me, then turns to flash her green eyes at me. “That’s okay, honey,” she says. The batter starts bubbling on the griddle. “I think this must be about that young man. Did you have a spat?”

  “No one calls them ‘spats’ anymore.” I dip a finger into the glass measuring cup full of maple syrup and lick off all the sugary goodness.

  “Well, something happened.” The first batch of golden-brown perfect pancakes is ready; I grab a plate. No use standing on ceremony. “And don’t eat too many of those. You have to watch your figure.”

  “Watch my figure?” I slather butter on, then drown the poor cakes in a sea of syrup. Too bad for them. “Why should I do that?”

  “Well—” She turns over another flapjack and thinks for a moment. “I don’t really know. Why do people say that?”

  “Never mind.” I take my plate to the dining room and come back for a glass of milk. “Anyway, back to my original point. Dad is gone?”

  “He’s in the garage.” She pours more batter, then an alarm sounds from her midsection. “Time to make more coffee. Could you go out and get your father? He wanted me to alert him when it was eleven.”

  Still in my fuzzy plaid pajama pants and T-shirt, I pad barefoot outside. For some bizarre reason it’s eleven in the morning and a lot of people are awake. I hear Dad in the garage making semiverbal grunts, which means he’s messing with the lawnmower formerly known as Fred.

  We inherited Fred when an acquaintance of Dad’s decided he wasn’t working out and planned to turn him into a garbage disposal. My dad rescues crappy machinery like some people rescue pound puppies, so Fred ended up living in our garage. Unfortunately, Euphoria has a big crush on him, even though he’s pretty limited. When you think about it, it’s kind of like my situation. I’ve always dated substandard guys who can’t communicate, but mine just haven’t been as handy as hers. Fletcher, of course, is an exception. Perhaps he actually could mow a lawn with his teeth.

  “Hey.” Oh, trouble is brewing. Fred is lying in greasy pools on the garage floor. “Is this a punishment or an accident?”

  “Hi, honey.” He blindly waves in my direction as he turns a wrench and produces a painful squawk from a rusty bolt.

  “Euphoria sent me to retrieve you for breakfast. I also think she wanted an update on Fred’s condition.”

  Dad stands up and wipes his hands on his already filthy jeans. “I’m afraid that Fred really should’ve been a garbage disposal. I think he’s chewed his last turf.”

  “Sorry.” He smiles and nudges a pile of parts with the toe of his boot. “Come on in the house, Dad. Euphoria made pancakes, and if you don’t come in, I’ll eat them all. And she told me to watch my figure.”

  “She did?” He shakes his head and gestures toward the brick path to the front door. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Look who programmed her.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I grin at him and as we reach the front door, I spring it on him. “Hey, can you give me a ride to Becca’s?”

  “I guess.” He wipes his feet on the throw rug and then takes off his shoes. You have to do both, otherwise you get an aluminum tongue lashing from Euphoria. She doesn’t allow dirt on the carpet, and she doesn’t like to clean dirty shoes.

  We sit down to pancakes, coffee, milk, and a bowl of fresh oranges. Euphoria doesn’t sit, but she does hover, and has to put in her two cents’ worth, as usual. “Mr. Chapelle, I really think you need to speak with Shelby about young men.”

&nbs
p; “Uh…I’m in the room. You can talk to me if you want me to do something.”

  She ignores me. “As I was saying, she doesn’t seem to be thinking about her figure, and you know that once a girl begins to put on a little weight, it just goes straight to the hips.”

  Dad is laughing quietly, clearly amused about getting fashion and health advice from something that has no internal organs or clothing allowance.

  “Dad, will you please tell her that no one cares about my figure?” I viciously stab a golden-brown blob and stuff it into my mouth.

  He chews thoughtfully on his breakfast, then takes a sip of coffee before answering. “I think you’re probably wrong about that, sweetheart.” Euphoria snorts triumphantly. “You’re going to be sixteen in January. From what I remember of being a teenaged boy, I’d suspect that most of them are looking at your figure. But who cares? Fletcher likes you for who you are.”

  “Are you saying I’m fat?” I pour more syrup as Euphoria’s red warning lights blink like a neon sign with hiccups. “Could I have a straw with this?”

  “Shelby, please!” Euphoria yanks the syrup away. “I’m just looking out for your best interests!”

  “No, of course you’re not fat. I just meant that—oh, never mind.” Dad sighs and cuts a few more pieces of pancake with his fork. “If Shelby wants to eat pancakes, nothing is going to stop her, Euphoria. She’s just like—” He stops himself, fork in midbite. “She’s stubborn.” He puts the fork down and, for a moment, just stares vacantly at a spot on the tablecloth. I know exactly what he’s thinking.

  Mom.

  Even though years have passed, these little moments will pop up now and then, more for him than for me. He’ll be going along, having a normal life, and then like a freight train, some smell, or sight or sound will remind him of Her. And when that happens, all the pain and the stuff he’s buried because it hurts to think about it, all that rushes at him like a wave, out of control, and he can’t stop it. But all he does is pretend it’s not there.

  It passes; he looks up, smiles, pretends his eyes aren’t just a little bit wet. “Just finish up and get ready, honey. I’m leaving in about ten minutes.”

  We drive to Becca’s in silence. I know we’re both thinking about Mom, but neither of us wants to mention it, so we pretend to be alone.

  When he pulls the Volvo into the circular driveway in front of the Gallagher mansion, he leaves the engine running. “Okay, then,” I say, giving him a peck on the cheek. He grabs my arm a little too hard. “Ow.”

  “Sorry.” He lets go and grips the steering wheel. “I just want you to know that—I’m glad you remind me of your mom. It’s not a bad thing. I mean, I didn’t want you to think—”

  “Dad.” I do understand, but I can’t even tell him what I’m really thinking: that I don’t remember everything about her. “Don’t worry about it. I knew what you meant.”

  As he drives away, I pause to watch him before I ring the bell. Nobody ever gives you a rule book on how to deal with a death in the family, and even if they did, nobody’s problems would be the same, I guess. And it’s been almost four years. Shouldn’t we be kind of over it by now? And just as I think that thought, a big rush of guilt hits me in the face, and I start to think that maybe I didn’t really love her, if I want to forget about her….

  “Hey.” Becca pokes me in the small of my back. “Were you planning to come in, or are you just going to become part of the landscaping?”

  “Yeah.” I grin at her. “Maybe I’ll do that.” She gives me a quizzical look, and I can’t blame her; I’m sure I look sort of wigged out. “Just had a Dad thing. What’s up with you?”

  “Ah.” One good thing about Becca: Whenever I want to distract her, all I have to do is talk about her. She is, actually, her favorite subject. “It’s like this. We have to get our website up and running, and it needs to be great because—” she takes a big breath as if she is about to confess that she clubs harbor seals to make furry thong bikinis “—because we are going to be entering a website competition at Comic-Con in a few weeks.”

  This makes me totally forget my awkward morning. “You are kidding.” I stop in the doorway.

  “Come in or Thea will be griping about the air conditioning,” she says, pulling me into the hallway.

  I should explain what Comic-Con is, for people who don’t know. It’s this total geek fest where thousands of people who love science fiction, comics, movies, Star Trek, and that kind of stuff all show up at once and create a huge rift in the geek/normal continuum. You can see famous actors, pretend to be a Klingon, or spend your college fund on little plastic figurines and comic books. It’s like geek nirvana. But these are serious geeks, not the dabblers that we are. We will be crushed by the overwhelmingly superior geek quality of the other people who live and breathe this stuff. Becca doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into, as usual.

  “Okay. So, what do you mean, we are going to enter a contest at Comic-Con?” I ask. Becca rolls her eyes sheepishly toward the vaulted ceiling as she prepares to be nagged by me. “There is no way we can enter a contest at Comic-Con. It’s full of professional people, and we are not that. Besides, where would we get the money? And why would we do it? I mean—”

  “Hey, Shelby.” Fletcher’s voice in my ear causes some chemical reaction that makes me dizzy and I want to giggle. So, I do.

  Becca stares at me, aghast. “What are you laughing about?”

  I can’t stop. I just shrug and keep on giggling. Fletcher, who is standing in the hall, waves to me and grins. I wonder if he will start giggling too.

  Becca glances suspiciously between us. “Okay. Let’s all have some coffee. Maybe the effect of whatever you guys are on will wear off before Amber and Elisa get here. Come on.”

  Fletcher puts his arm around my shoulders, and it feels so good there I consider having it grafted on. We amble down the hall to the room that I refer to as a giant chocolate truffle. It’s her family playroom, with these great mounds of cushy brown suede sofas and pillows, and a big pool table, plasma TV, and of course, a killer sound system. She clips her iPod into its dock. Within seconds some kind of New Age whale-mating Celtic music surrounds us.

  “Is this elevator music for dolphins or something?” Fletcher quips. He even thinks of the same jokes that I do!

  We sit together on the biggest of the chocolate truffle sofas as Becca thumbs a hidden switch on the wall. “Meredith, could we have coffee service for six in the front room? Thanks.”

  Meredith is what the Gallaghers call a personal valet to the family. She’s not a maid, because maids don’t get paid well, nor do they wear Prada. I’ve never seen Meredith clean anything and I’ve never seen any other housekeepers, so best I can figure, she must coordinate a closet full of gnomes to cook and scrub.

  “Okay.” Becca takes a deep breath, grins at the two of us, and plops down on the deep-pile caramel silk rug. “As I said, I entered our club in this high school website contest that they have at Comic-Con. I want us to win, because if we win, we’ll get lots of exposure for the club.”

  “Why do we need to do that?” I scooch away from Fletcher just a bit. “And this is about the Queen Geeks, isn’t it? Why is Fletcher involved? He’s definitely a geek, but as far as I’ve heard, not a queen.”

  “Thanks, I think.” He arches an eyebrow at me quizzically.

  Meredith, her timing expert as always, slides silently into the room with a silver tray full of delicious caffeinated goodness. She’s like a smooth-running machine; she never makes a sound. It’s kind of creepy. If she didn’t have coffee, I’d probably try to knock her down and check for an on-off switch. She smiles at me as if she knows what I’m thinking and pours the steaming beverage into three white ceramic mugs. “Anything else?” she purrs.

  The doorbell rings. “Could you get the door?” Becca asks apologetically. Apparently, Meredith doesn’t answer doors either. She gives Becca a look that reminds her of this fact, and then she heads wordlessly for t
he front door. “That must be Amber and Elisa.”

  “Okay, okay.” I take a swig of coffee. “But how do we fit in to Comic-Con? That’s all movies and comics and stuff, not school clubs.”

  “You’re right,” Becca says. “Comic-Con is for movies, comics, stuff like that. But here’s the great idea: We actually do a graphic novel that is all about the Queen Geeks, and we become, like, superheroes in it, and then we sell it and have a website, and then we become sort of these mass-market super media darlings, and then we get people to play us in the movie. I’m thinking for me, maybe Lindsay Lohan.”

  Stunned, I simply stare at her. Last year was bad enough. We had to start this club and recruit other geeks and then get on TV and work on the school dance, but that was all small potatoes compared to what she’s talking about now. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  Fletcher clears his throat. “Look, I know I’m not officially part of the club, but honestly, this is a good idea, even if it sounds kind of out there. You’ve got to give Becca credit. She dreams big, and that’s how things happen. Why shouldn’t we do it?”

  “Well, first of all, we are not you. You are not us. We are us. You are you.”

  “Pronoun abuse.” Fletcher whistles through his teeth. “Two-cup penalty. Cut her off.”

  “Fletcher has been around all through the whole birth of the Queen Geeks,” Becca says. “In fact, he’s the one who really helped us sell the idea of the dance last year. And that’s what really got people to notice us.”

  Amber and Elisa join us. Amber is the resident goth-poet girl, tall and reedy, and she owns every piece of black clothing they sell at the mall. Elisa’s feet barely touch the floor when she’s in an SUV, and she’s almost as wide as she is tall. She also has a secret love affair with her electronic daily planner Palm Pilot, which I found out she calls “Wembley.” If you’re dorky enough to name your organizer, you are definitely a geek.

  “Hey, ladies,” Elisa says as she goes for the coffee. “Oh, and Fletcher. Sorry.”

  “No offense taken,” he answers. “I think of myself as a lady, in the universal sense.”