by Piper Banks
I suddenly had the feeling that I didn’t want to hear the second part.
“And second, I want you to be on the Mu Alpha Theta team, and you’ve decided you don’t wish to participate. Since extracurricular activities are elective, I can’t force you to be on the team,” he said.
“No, sir,” I said firmly. “You can’t.”
“So I’d say this is quite a pickle we have,” the headmaster continued, ignoring my comment.
Silly me for thinking we’d gotten past the whole Mu Alpha Theta issue. I should have known that Headmaster Hughes wouldn’t have given up on it so easily. It wasn’t his style. The man was like a pit bull. A bald pit bull.
“I guess,” I said cautiously.
“Do you have any ideas on how we could solve our problem?” Headmaster Hughes asked. He looked a little…well, gleeful, actually. He was frown-smiling wider than I’d ever seen before. I’ll be honest: It freaked me out.
“No,” I said. “Do you?”
“Why, yes, I do,” Headmaster Hughes said. His frown-smile grew even wider, and he quirked one eyebrow. “I think you and I should make a deal. I’ll agree to let you make the proposed changes to the Snowflake.” I felt a whoosh of relief, and was just starting to smile my thanks when he lifted a finger before I could say anything. “On one condition,” he continued.
I felt a chill run down my back, and waited.
“You have to agree to rejoin the Mu Alpha Theta team,” he said.
My mouth dropped open. Literally. “You’re blackmailing me?” I gasped.
The frown-smile turned into a genuine frown. “Blackmail? I hardly think there’s cause to make a charge like that,” Headmaster Hughes said coldly. “I’m simply offering a solution to our problems. This way we’re both compromising. We both get something we want, while each giving up something.”
As my shock wore off, I could feel my temper bubbling up. “Something I want? I didn’t want to organize the Snowflake in the first place! You made me do it!” I said, louder than I meant to.
“There’s no cause to shout,” Headmaster Hughes said, his voice frosty.
“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. I hadn’t meant to shout. “It’s just…this is really unfair. You know I didn’t have anything to do with the Geek High Web site, and yet you punished me for not telling you who is writing it by putting me in charge of turning the Snowflake into a more popular event. And so fine, I’m planning it, even though I really, really don’t want to. And now that I’ve brought you my ideas for making the Snowflake more popular, you’re telling me you won’t act on them unless I join Mu Alpha Theta, which is something else I really, really don’t want to do.”
Headmaster Hughes took a minute to resteeple his hands, and tapped his index fingers together.
“Miranda, sometimes grown-ups do things that you won’t agree with. And even though you might not understand their motivations, sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that they’re acting in your best interest,” he said.
Why did he keep talking to me like I was five years old? I gritted my teeth.
“Sir, do you really think it’s in my best interest to organize the Snowflake?” I asked.
“Yes, I do. But I wasn’t talking about the Snowflake just now. Or the Mu Alpha Theta team, for that matter,” the headmaster said.
I was confused again. Was he going to start talking in riddles now? Or, even worse, would he force me to solve the riddles before allowing me to leave his office? Like a bald headmaster version of the half-woman/ half-lion sphinxes that always pop up in fictional mazes, and force the hero to solve riddles before being allowed to pass?
My confusion must have been reflected on my face, because the headmaster decided to give me a hint. “Have you talked to your mother recently?” he asked.
I stiffened. “No,” I said. I knew my dad had talked to her a few times, giving her progress reports on me (“She and Hannah are becoming the best of friends! They even went to the mall together!”), but I still hadn’t returned any of Sadie’s phone messages or e-mails, even though she was getting seriously mopey. She’d sounded like Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh in her last e-mail to me.
“I think you should give her the benefit of the doubt,” Headmaster Hughes said.
And to this, I had no reply. I glanced at my watch. “I really have to go. I’m already late for Latin class,” I said. I was still holding the cupcake, and it was crumbling in my hand.
“And as for the Snowflake? And Mu Alpha Theta?” he asked, crooking one furry eyebrow up again. Sunlight streamed in from the windows behind his desk, bouncing off his baldpate. If he wore an earring, the headmaster would look a lot like Mr. Clean, I thought.
I considered his proposal. If I made the changes to the Snowflake, then maybe—maybe—I’d get through the school year without everyone in the school hating me. In fact, maybe my fellow students would even appreciate me for saving them from having to sit through a marathon of the world’s most boring speeches. And as much as I didn’t want to rejoin Mu Alpha Theta, it wasn’t like being on the team was all that bad. The actual work was pretty easy for me. I’d have to go to practice once a week, and the competitions, of course. But maybe if I studied extra hard, I could find a way to fit in the Ampersand, as well.
So, in the end, I gave in.
“Okay,” I said dully. “It’s a deal.”
Headmaster Hughes’s face lit up like Christmas.
“That,” he said happily, “is excellent news.”
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that point, I thought grimly, and I stood to leave.
Chapter 19
DEVIOUS DEEDS
Which Geek High math brainiac was recently blackmailed into rejoining the Mu Alpha Theta team by Headmaster C. Philip Hughes? And just how exactly did he blackmail her? GEEKHIGH.COM plans to get to the bottom of this shocking allegation….
“We’re going to have a prom!” Felicity screamed at a truly surprising decibel level, after I told her the news the next morning just before mod lit class began. She even began shimmying around in a victory dance, and looked unfairly adorable doing so.
Morgan, as usual, began to ape Felicity, even getting up from her chair so that she could dance, too, although she looked ridiculous bumping and grinding around her desk.
“All right, well…just thought you should know,” I said, turning away before anyone would further associate me with the pair of them. I quickly crossed the room and sat down in my regular seat next to Charlie and Finn, who were in the middle of debating whether late-seventies disco was bad in a good, retro-kitsch way or just plain bad.
“How can you say ABBA is overrated?” Charlie argued. “Their music was brilliant!”
“Um, because it sucks?” Finn suggested.
“ABBA,” Charlie said severely, “does not suck. Besides, I don’t know why I’m even talking to you about this. You think Beck is the epitome of modern music.”
“You don’t like Beck? I don’t think I can be friends with someone who doesn’t like Beck. The man is a genius,” Finn exclaimed.
Charlie shrugged. “He’s okay. But he’s no ABBA.”
Finn made a choking sound.
I’ve found that it’s best to ignore Charlie and Finn when they start going at it like this, so I dug my laptop and copy of The Sun Also Rises out of my backpack, and tried not to look at Emmett as he walked in the room and dropped into his seat. I was doing much better at not staring at him. I only stole the occasional peep in his direction, and even then, I limited myself to three peeps per class period. And, oddly enough, the less I looked at him, the less I wanted to. Which caused me to feel conflicted. If Emmett was losing his hold over me, that should be a good thing, right? Especially since he was dating my odious stepsister. But it also made me sort of sad. My crush on Emmett had kept me company for two years.
“How do you explain ‘Dancing Queen’?” Finn asked, his voice dripping with disdain. “It’s not a song; it’s a jingle. It�
��s toothpaste-commercial music.”
“‘Dancing Queen’ is a classic!” Charlie sputtered. “You have no taste!”
“I’m all taste, baby,” Finn said.
“Will you two please stop? You’re giving me a headache,” I muttered.
“Cranky much?” Finn asked me.
“How can you even ask her that? It’s basically your fault she’s back on the Mu Alpha Theta team,” Charlie admonished him.
“Not even I could have predicted that Headmaster Hughes would be so devious as to blackmail her into that,” Finn said. He grew thoughtful. “It almost makes me respect the man.”
“First of all, I’m not talking to you,” I said.
“Why not?” Finn asked.
I shot him my dirtiest look. “I can’t believe you blogged about me again on that stupid Web site.”
“I had to,” Finn insisted. “It was a great piece, and I owed it to my readers. It has it all—the struggle between good and evil, a contest of wills, life hanging in the balance….”
“Whose life is hanging in the balance?” Charlie asked.
“Stop nitpicking,” Finn said.
“And second of all,” I continued, ignoring them, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You know, if you wanted to get back at him, you could say you’re going to compete in Mu Alpha Theta, and then not follow through. The first competition isn’t until January, right? So that’s after the Snowflake,” Finn said.
“I said I don’t want to talk about it,” I repeated through clenched teeth.
“And besides, she’d still have to go to practice every week in the meantime,” Charlie said.
“That’s true,” Finn said. “But if the point is to screw with the headmaster, then—”
“You guys!” I exploded. “I. Don’t. Want. To. Talk. About. It.”
Charlie and Finn exchanged a significant look, which just irritated me even more. I cracked my paperback open, and tried to lose myself in Hemingway’s spare prose. I’d looked at the online reader’s guide the night before, and apparently the narrator, Jake Barnes, was impotent (hence all the wounded-bull imagery). But I’d read the novel all the way through, and hadn’t caught a single reference to impotence. This was what bugged me about literary fiction—you had to interpret everything. Why couldn’t a story just be a story? If the man is impotent, just say he’s impotent. Maybe Sadie’s books wouldn’t win any literary awards, but at least they’re good stories and they spare the reader from having to slog through page after page looking for hidden symbolism just to figure out what’s going on.
“Good morning, all,” Mrs. Gordon said cheerily as she entered the room. She was holding a stack of papers in her arms. “I have your short stories graded.”
Mrs. Gordon began handing the stories back, turning them facedown on our desks, as was the policy of Geek High. (A few years back, some kid came close to having a nervous breakdown when a classmate saw that he’d gotten a C-plus on a geology exam. Shortly thereafter, the school enacted the facedown-hand-back rule.) Mrs. Gordon set my story down on my desk. I drew in a deep breath for luck before flipping it over…and once I did, all I could do was stare down at my story in horror. There was a big red B-minus scrawled on the top right corner of my story. Below the grade was a note, also written in red pen: Miranda, see me after class.
I felt numb all over, except for my cheeks, which were unbearably hot. A B-minus? I’d never gotten a B-minus before. Up until now, the lowest grade I’d ever gotten was a B, and that was in the eighth grade when I had strep throat, but insisted on taking my earth science midterm anyway. And I’d certainly never gotten such a low grade in English before. I normally rock English. It’s always been my biggest academic strength after math. I pressed my hands to my cheeks, hoping to cool them down, but instead I just warmed up my hands.
“How’d you do?” Tate Metcalf asked Tabitha Stone.
“An A,” she said smugly.
“Cool,” Tate said. “I got an A-minus.”
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe it; I pulled off a B-plus!” Charlie whispered excitedly. “I thought for sure I was going to fail. I pulled an all-nighter the night before the story was due, and by the end I didn’t even know what I was writing.”
Charlie had done better than I had on an English assignment? I could feel the jealousy winding snakelike through me. I always got better grades than she did in English. Always. Of course, she kicked serious butt in art and science, so it all balanced out, but still. How had she done better than me? I’d worked on my short story for weeks.
But I couldn’t say any of that to her. So I just swallowed back my disappointment and tucked my story into my backpack before Charlie could see the big red B-minus at the top of my paper.
“Great,” I said dully.
“You okay?” Charlie asked, her brow furrowing with concern.
I nodded, smiled briefly, and then pretended to turn my attention to the class discussion of The Sun Also Rises.
At the end of the period, I waited for everyone to leave before approaching Mrs. Gordon. Charlie and Finn took forever to pack up their books, distracted as they were by the recommencement of their “does disco suck?” argument.
“I don’t know why I even bother to talk to you,” Charlie said, exasperated after Finn made a crack about Gloria Gaynor.
“It’s my dark good looks and my witty personality,” Finn said. “The chicks can never leave me alone.”
Charlie whacked him on the arm, and Finn yelped.
“Damn, woman,” he said, rubbing his arm. “Been lifting weights?”
“Wuss,” Charlie said to him. She turned toward me. “Are you coming?”
“I’ll catch up in a minute. I have to talk to Mrs. Gordon about something,” I said.
Curiosity flickered in Charlie’s face, but she didn’t press me. “Okay. I’ll see you later,” she said.
After Charlie and Finn left, I approached Mrs. Gordon, who was sitting behind her desk, typing on her laptop. When she saw me standing there, she smiled kindly up at me.
“You wanted to see me?” I asked, hoping I didn’t look as forlorn as I felt. I’d been fighting back tears all period.
“I wanted to talk to you about your short story,” Mrs. Gordon said.
“I guess you didn’t like it,” I said with a hollow laugh.
“On the contrary, I loved it,” Mrs. Gordon said.
I blinked. “You did?” I asked.
She nodded. “It was wonderful—witty, warm, insightful. And the writing was superb.”
“But…but…but then why did you give me such a low grade?” I blurted out.
Mrs. Gordon sighed and took her glasses off. They hung around her neck on a black nylon cord. “To be honest, Miranda, I gave you a higher grade than I should have. You ignored the assignment. You were supposed to write your short story in the style of one of the writers we’ve studied this term in class. Your story read more like a Jane Austen novel of manners,” she said. “It was an updated fairy tale, not a modernist piece.”
“But I worked so hard on it,” I said, and yet again I found myself fighting back tears.
“And it shows. It’s a wonderful story…. It’s just not what I assigned you to write,” Mrs. Gordon said.
I knew that there was no point in lobbying her for a grade change. Mrs. Gordon was fair, but tough.
“Okay,” I said, turning to leave. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Wait, Miranda. I didn’t ask you to stay because of your grade,” Mrs. Gordon said.
“You didn’t?” I stopped and pivoted back around to face her.
“No. As I said, I thought your story was wonderful. In fact, I think you should submit it to a short-story competition.” Mrs. Gordon pulled out an orange flyer and handed it to me. The heading on the flyer read: ALFRED Q. WINSTON CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST. “This is a national writing competition for high school students.”
I stared down at the flyer. “Really? Do you think I h
ave any chance of winning?” I asked, doubtful that a story that had earned only a B-minus would be a contender in a national writing contest.
“I do. The competition will be stiff. This is the preeminent national writing competition for high school students, after all. But it would be a wonderful experience for you, and a real feather in your cap if you made it to the finals,” Mrs. Gordon said.
“Finals?” I repeated.
Mrs. Gordon nodded. “They’re held every spring in Washington, D.C.,” she said. “So are you interested? I’ll have to enter it for you. Each student has to be sponsored by a teacher.”
I could feel a nervous tightening in my stomach. A writing competition? Me? The idea that a bunch of strangers would be reading my story—and comparing it to other, probably better stories—made my toes curl with horror.
But at the same time…wasn’t this what I’d wanted? To find out if I was good at something other than math? And if that turned out to be writing…well, that would be amazing.
So I nodded, and swallowed. “I’d like that,” I finally managed to say.
Mrs. Gordon beamed at me. “I’m so glad. Why don’t you give me your story back, and I’ll send it in.”
I hesitated. “You’re not going to use the copy you graded, are you?” I asked.
“Well…yes, I was. Why?” she asked.
“Because this one has an enormous B-minus written across the top,” I said. I pulled it out of my backpack and held it up to show her. “Don’t you think that might work against me?”
Mrs. Gordon laughed. “I see your point.”
“I’ll go print out a fresh copy for you in the computer lab,” I said, tucking the graded copy back into my bag. I grinned at her. “Thanks, Mrs. Gordon.”
“It’s my pleasure, Miranda.”
My good mood over the writing contest kept me elated through the rest of the day…right up until the final bell rang, and it was time for my first Mu Alpha Theta practice. I dropped my books off in my locker, and closed the door with a resigned metallic slam. Charlie loved to paint, and Finn could—and frequently did—spend all day and night parked in front of his computer. Why was it that the one subject I was gifted in bored me to tears?
