Queen Geeks in Love

by Laura Preble

  “I’m not laughing at you, Shelby. I just want you to tell me what’s going on. I—” Just as I’ve run out of excuses, somebody bangs furiously on the wet window. Through the hazy streaks of water, I see Becca’s spiky hair under a leopard-print umbrella.

  “Gotta go, Dad.” I lean over, kiss him on the cheek, and flip the lock before he can shut it again. “Love you.” I slam the car door before he can even respond. I don’t even look back as I follow Becca through the downpour and we run toward the drama building.

  We get to the alcove before Becca says anything. “You will never even believe what I have in my pocket!” She drops the umbrella, flinging water droplets all over the floor, and reaches into her backpack. “I’ve got it all on tape!” she says, producing a compact DV recorder.

  “You’ve got what on tape?”

  “Just watch.” She flips open the view screen and presses “play.” At first, all I see is a dark, murky picture, but soon it switches to nightshot and I see a house with a porch light shining, and a small yard with a redwood fence. “What am I looking at? Your Barbie Dream House?”

  “Wait for it.” Two figures run into the frame and approach the front door of the house. They’re all dressed in black and carry bulky sacks. The two figures crouch next to a line of hedges, then carefully put the sacks on the ground. They begin pulling something out of the bags, and then seem to bundle several objects into the makeshift aprons of their bulky hoodie sweatshirts. Then they approach the front door, and kneel. “Okay, it’s some weird religious thing, right?”

  “No, no.” Becca giggles, and that’s about the first time I’ve heard her do that. “Watch.”

  The figures hover over the doorstep, and they obscure the view. Whoever is holding the camera (and it sounds like Elisa) whispers urgently, “Hurry up! I see a light on upstairs!” The two marauders see it too, and jump up silently, grabbing their bags and running toward the camera, which focuses for one more moment to reveal a four-foot-tall stack of soup cans built in a sloppy pyramid.

  Becca presses the forward button on the camera. “Okay, so we took off, but we left Elisa’s camera in the tree to capture the moment of supreme surprise. Check it out.” The scene gets lighter and lighter as the sun comes up, and finally the front door opens. Fletcher isn’t paying any attention; he’s zipping up his backpack, juggling his car keys, and yelling something over his shoulder to someone in the house. He careens full on into the soup-can pyramid. One second he’s upright, the next, he’s flat on his back, surrounded by cans in various states of destruction. It looks like he had some pretty heavy stuff in his backpack; some of the little soldiers seem dented beyond repair.

  Becca guffaws with her donkey honk laugh, and rewinds the tape again. “Look at it in slow motion. It’s priceless!” She shows me Fletcher coming out of his house, more slowly this time, but still looking depressed, flustered, unorganized. The moment his foot connects with the bottom line of cans, he loses his footing, looks down, and an expression of disbelief and confusion fills his face. Then he crashes down (in slow motion), falling like a war hero taking a bullet on the field of battle.

  “Is that awesome?” Becca checks the alcove, which is now pretty full of people since we’re only ten minutes away from the first bell. “I have got to find a way to get that on Panther TV!”

  I feel sort of sick. I guess watching Fletcher get punked like that should have been great for me; after all, I’m mad at him, right? But instead, all I feel is the aforementioned nausea. Becca’s frowning at me as she tucks the DV recorder into her backpack. “Are you okay? You look a little green.”

  “Yeah,” I mumble. “Fine.”

  “Wasn’t it awesome?” She stares at me, and finally punches me in the arm. Kind of hard. “Wake up!”

  “To be honest, I thought it was kind of stupid.” I walk toward the double doors, knowing that this comment will cost me some serious lecturing. Becca can be quite righteous when she thinks she’s done the noble work of the Queen Geeks.

  She cuts in front of me, blocks the door with her tremendous limbs, and laughs. Laughs!

  “I don’t see why you think it’s funny.” I try to get around her, but she’s too big and too fast. “Can I go to class, please?”

  “Wait.” She motions toward the stairway leading up to the second floor, and Elisa and Amber dash out. “Shelby, I give you the Queen Geeks of the Round Can.”

  “That’s kind of a personal comment.” Elisa snorts at her own dumb joke. No one else does. “Okay, sorry. Anyway, Shelby, how did you feel about seeing Fletcher take a nosedive into dozens of cans of tomato soup?”

  Amber stands next to her. “Did it make you feel good or not?”

  Actually, I feel like crying. I try to dart away, in any direction, but one of them is blocking me no matter which way I go. It’s like a game of human keep-away, and I’m the ball. I am definitely going to blow at any moment, and a Mount Vesuvius of tears will flow down my cheeks, flooding the alcove and sending us all to our doom—

  Becca, Amber, and Elisa grab each others’ hands and form a ring-around-the-rosies circle. “Admit it,” Becca hisses, “you love him.”

  “You didn’t want to see him hurt,” says Elisa.

  “Or humiliated,” says Amber.

  “Or cut on rusty metal,” Elisa adds. By the looks she gets from the others, I figure that wasn’t part of the script. The first bell rings.

  “Here’s the point,” Becca says, her voice getting louder so it carries over the din of kids going to class. “You do really care about him. Pretending that you don’t is a lie, and we all know what happens to liars!”

  “They get cut on rusty metal,” Elisa said knowingly.

  “No, they live unhappy lives and their souls are blackened forever,” Amber says matter-of-factly. “And they pay retail for everything.”

  Becca puts an arm around my shoulder as we walk out into the misty drizzle flanked by Amber and Elisa. “Our eloquent point is this: You must get back together with him. We can’t stand to see you miserable, and even though we’d like to have you all to ourselves, it’s not fair to make you choose between him and us. We want you to be happy, and you won’t be happy without Fletcher. So, Fletcher stays.”

  “What about the soup cans?” I ask, pretending that I have something in my eye.

  “It took us a freakin’ weekend just to get that many,” Elisa mutters. “It was way worse than the Twinkies from last year, and you can’t eat them.”

  I stop and turn to Becca, then hug her in front of everybody. I don’t care what anybody thinks. Whatever. I hug Amber and Elisa too, and I feel this great sense of relief, like a two-ton soup can has been lifted from my shoulders.

  And I have a real burning desire to see Fletcher.

  14

  PARTY OF ONE

  (or Halloween Blues)

  At lunch, I pull out my cell phone and key in Fletcher’s number. It rings and rings. I try it again. No answer.

  I’m parked at the entrance to the cafeteria, which on rainy days smells like wet dogs rubbed with Pine-Sol. It’s a great appetite suppressant. Although the weather has gone from downpour to spitty drizzle, it’s currently dry except for drips from the building overhangs. I see Becca striding across the senior lawn toward me, getting some pretty nasty looks from the seniors brave (or stupid) enough to claim their territory outside despite the weather.

  “So,” she says, shaking droplets from her blond spikes, “did you call him?”

  “I tried.” I fold the phone and put it back in my pocket. “He’s not answering.”

  “Probably the weather.” She scopes the food lines and finds the shortest one. “I’m starving. C’mon.”

  I actually don’t have much of an appetite. We get in line behind a group of football players (you can tell by the massive backs and the fact that they tote five-gallon jugs of water around), and I happen to catch the end of a conversation: “Yeah, so I think that’s over. Now he can go back to being normal again,” a blac
k kid says to a tall, skinny blond guy.

  “She’s pretty out there,” the blond agrees, punching a shorter kid with mousy brown dreadlocks and a wannabe mustache. “Scott, you gonna go for it?”

  “I don’t go for no sloppy seconds,” Scott replies, which makes all the guys laugh. We’re almost to the serving line when the first kid says, “He said she’s all talk anyhow, and she’s got that huge freaky friend with the tattoo—” And then the guy speaking glances back, sees us, and immediately has a coughing fit as he grabs his tray.

  Becca’s face has clouded over and I am afraid for the safety of the football squad. “Hey,” I say softly, touching her arm. “Don’t worry about it.” But on the inside, I feel like throwing myself into a vat of French fry grease and ending it all.

  We get our food as the football players, who’ve now all noticed that we’re standing there, slink to the farthest corner of the room. I walk, zombielike, to a small table and drop my tray with a clatter, jostling my nutritious lunch of cherry Jell-O, pretzels, and chocolate milk, which were the only things I could see to grab with tears blurring my eyes.

  Becca covers one of my hands with her silver-ringed fingers. “Listen,” she says gently. “They don’t know anything. Let’s just go talk to him.”

  “I finally decide to let him in again, and this is what happens?” I say, sadness catching at my voice. “It’s like the universe is trying to tell me I’m an idiot for even thinking something might work out.”

  “You want me to talk to him?” she asks, stabbing a huge forkful of Caesar salad and stuffing it into her mouth.

  “I don’t know. This is so screwed up. I shouldn’t even be allowed to think about having relationships.” We both eat our lunches in silence, me slurping little spoonfuls of red goo while Becca munches. I don’t even like Jell-O. But really, it’s all I deserve.

  After a while, Becca glances at her phone, and then gathers our trash onto one tray. “Bell’s going to ring. I’ll try to catch him after P.E. Ready to go?”

  We trudge across the campus, and I feel like I’m dragging rusty chains behind me. How is it possible for one person to poison a perfectly nice little relationship with someone before it even really gets off the ground? I mean, we didn’t even spend all that much time together! I guess I just have a talent for losing people.

  P.E. sucks, as usual, but because it’s been raining, we have to stay inside the doomnasium. Mr. Cruces keeps trotting around us like a sheepdog nosing at stray mutton, and I keep dragging my feet as the other sheep trot around the track. “Chapelle, let’s pick it up, okay?”

  I don’t answer. I sense I am bordering on insubordination, but like a kamikaze pilot circling over a sushi factory, I am resigned to the fact that I am going to cause a big stink. “Chapelle, did you hear me?” Cruces’s Marine voice starts oozing out of his crew cut when he gets mad. My lack of response infuriates him. I usually smile politely and apologize for being human, but today, I just don’t care. “Chapelle, out of the line,” he yells at me. I’m supposed to pull out of traffic and go to the designated chew-out spot under the basketball hoop, but I just keep trudging around the circle like a pony at a carnival.

  Becca slows down (she always outruns me, of course) and pulls up next to me. “Shelby, you’d better stop,” she hisses. “He’ll give you a referral!”

  I don’t even care. I just keep trudging. I’m going so slow now that other girls are bumping into me like I’m a piece of rotten driftwood clogging up the stream. Row, row, row your driftwood, gently down the drain…. As I’m singing to myself, I feel a strong hand on my shoulder. It’s a campus supervisor, the guy we all nicknamed the Termin-Asian because he’s a Japanese cage fighter outside of school, and he’s so big he could probably create his own weather system if he sweated or cried enough. “Shelby Chapelle?”

  The Termin-Asian grabs my arm firmly but gently, and pulls me out of the group and toward the double doors. “Where are we going?” I ask.

  He snorts. “Tahiti.”

  “Cool.”

  Where we really go is the vice principal’s office. I’ve never been there, actually; usually, the only kids who see the inside of the V.P. offices are the ones who get dress coded, do drugs, have fights, or destroy or steal stuff.

  They park me on a chair in the hallway, and I stare at the wall ahead of me. It’s full of artwork done by students in sketch class, and these are all pictures of containers being opened with things popping out of them. There’s a Christmas present with a big red bow, and a doll with a skull waves from the open box; a wooden treasure chest with a skull hand crawling out, clutching an iPod; a pink candy box with a white satin ribbon containing tiny chocolates with the faces of real babies peering out. Maybe they’re dropping acid in art class.

  “Shelby?” A tan, blond woman holding some paperwork stands at the end of the hallway. “I’m Mrs. Boyed. Come on in.”

  I follow her into a nice office with a classy carpet, trophies on shelves, and pictures of students on a corkboard next to the desk. “Sit,” she says, indicating a chair opposite her desk. “So, you had some trouble in P.E.? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” I mumble, staring down at my shoes.

  She studies me. “Mr. Cruces told the supervisor you refuse to participate.”

  “I was moving.”

  She laughs a bit. “Yeah, he says you never stopped moving, but you were going so slowly that you were causing traffic jams, and you weren’t listening to anything he said. You can see how that would be a problem, right?” I nod. She taps some keys on her computer. “You’ve never had any discipline problems, Shelby. What’s going on with you?”

  I can’t tell her what’s going on with me. Nobody cares about stupid boyfriend stuff. “I just don’t feel very well today. It’s probably my period.” Maybe that will work?

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.” Nope. Not on a woman, I guess. “Something is bothering you. Did somebody say something to you? Anybody threaten you?” I shake my head. “Girlfriend? Boyfriend?” Aw. Stupid hormones. I start crying. I think I should have my tear ducts removed. “Boyfriend. Ah.”

  She pushes a box of blue tissues over to me, and I yank out a big handful, then blow my nose with no thought to how loud it would be or how embarrassed I would be. I just can’t care. “It’s really nothing,” I hear myself say. But I don’t sound like myself. I sound like somebody with a real problem. My voice is all shaky and weird, and my throat feels tight, like I can’t breathe.

  “So, it’s a boyfriend thing,” Mrs. Boyed says, nodding as I cry like a stupid baby. “All I can tell you is that it goes away eventually. It seems like the biggest thing in the world right now, but when you get to be twenty-one, or maybe even next year, you won’t even remember it was a problem. And I also know that none of that helps at all.” She shuffles the paperwork, and sighs. “As to the thing in Mr. Cruces’s class, I’ll give you a warning, and ask that in the future if you feel like you’re just not capable of doing P.E., you take a nonsuit day, just don’t get dressed. You’ll get points docked from your grade, but you won’t have a confrontation.” She signs the form, then pushes it across the desk to me. “Sign there, and expect your dad to talk to you about it when you get home.”

  “My dad?”

  “Sure. If you get a referral, we call home. But as I said, you’re not in major trouble. Just explain what we talked about, and I’m sure it will all work out.” Yeah. She doesn’t know my dad.

  I leave the office feeling worse than when I got there, if that’s possible. P.E. is almost over, though, so thankfully I don’t have to go back there. All I have is period six, and instead of going, I start walking off campus. This is not something I usually do; in fact, I’ve only skipped high school once, and I faked sick that time. This is the first time I’ve ever just ditched and walked off. There’s a feeling of danger to it, but mostly, I just feel tired.

  I can’t go home, of course. So, instead, I head to the park near the high school. I find a bank of
vacant swings, throw my backpack on the ground, hop on, and just start to pump my legs as hard as I can, driving the swing upward in a pleasant arc toward the hot blue sky. I don’t know how long I do this, but I get tired, so I find a patch under a tree and lie down for a nap.

  The next thing I know, Becca is shaking me awake. “Hey, what are you doing?” She looks sweaty and hot, and not in the best mood. “We’ve all been walking all over the world looking for you. Hang on.” She pulls out her cell and calls someone. “I found her. She’s at the park, by the swings.”

  My head feels buggy, like ants have been crawling on it, and my mouth is dry. “What time is it?”

  “Four.” She drops down to the ground and sits across from me. “What happened after P.E.?”

  “I saw Mrs. Boyed. She gave me a warning. I ditched.”

  Becca studies me, frowning. “This is really not like you, Shelby. Since when have you let a guy ruin your life? I mean, I really like Fletcher and all, but you have us, you have the club, you have yourself. Why do you need any guy?”

  “Oh, yeah, like when you were all nuts over Jon, huh?” I hear the sharp edge in my voice. “But I guess that’s different, because it’s you.”

  “I didn’t ditch school.” She glances over toward the baseball field behind the trees, and then stands up. “Okay, well, I’m heading out. Call me later.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll talk to you tonight. I’ll plan to come over too. Thea can stop whatever dumb project she’s working on to give me a ride. I’ll be there around five or six unless I hear from you.” When she stands up, her dragon tattoo is parallel to my face, and I stare into the slanted green eyes of the lizard, who seems to be sticking his forked tongue out at me. “Love you, Shelby.”

  As I watch her leave, I hear footsteps behind me. “Hey,” Fletcher says gently. “Didn’t want to scare you. I’m not a mad stalker or anything.” He sits down next to me, crosses his legs and gives me a hug. A brotherly hug. “I hear you had a bad day, huh?”