Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen

by Donna Gephart

  “Says you,” Mom says.

  Says Dad, I think, but don’t say it out loud.

  My stomach really hurts.

  Charlie races into the living room and skids to a stop in front of Neil. “Brownies!” He flaps his hands like a fish flopping on a hook. “Burning! Brownies burning!”

  We all sniff at the same time.

  “Right you are, little man.” Neil rockets up and crosses the dining room in three long strides.

  As I hear the oven door squeak open, Mom says, “Your brain is special, Olivia. It seeks out and absorbs trivia like a … sponge.”

  While most sponges live for only a few years, some species can live for more than two hundred years.

  Maybe Mom’s right.

  “Livi, when it comes to learning and remembering facts, it’s like you’ve been training for it your whole life.”

  I like the way that sounds, that I’ve been training for it my whole life. But that’s not right—not when it comes to geography, anyway. Now, if it were a Jeopardy! competition, then I could say I’ve been training for it my whole life. And mean it.

  Thinking about training reminds me of the time Nikki and I decided to train for the Disney Marathon. Of course, we’d never even run half a mile before, except in PE class, and then only when forced to by our evil teacher, Mr. Piltz. And Disney World is a thousand miles away, but Nikki had read about the marathon in a magazine and thought it would be fun to run through the theme parks together. We decided the best way to train would be to run ten miles a day every other day until we could build up to really long runs. The first day, we managed to jog about a quarter mile away from home and a quarter mile back before collapsing in a heap on our living room couch.

  Mom was there with lemonade, Pop-Tarts and encouragement.

  Nikki and I never did get back to running. And now, with three thousand miles and a mound of bad feelings separating us, we’ll never accomplish that goal together.

  “Your mom’s right,” Neil says, walking in with the pan of brownies, spoons and napkins.

  Charlie follows, stuffing a wad of brownie into his mouth. “Yeah, your mom’s right,” Charlie says, a shower of crumbs exploding. “Oooh, hot.” He waves his hand in front of his lips and hops from foot to foot, as though that will help cool the brownie scorching his mouth.

  “Lovely.” Mom turns her back to Charlie and spoons out some brownie. She blows on it without taking a bite. “Olivia, one of the first books you ever read, when you were only four, was the encyclopedia.”

  I take a spoonful of warm brownie and smile at the memory of those big, moldy-smelling books from Mom and Dad’s shelf in their bedroom. I loved looking at the pictures, and the way the entries were arranged from “A” to “Z.” Those books had what seemed like an endless supply of facts about everything from aardvarks to zydeco music.

  “When you were Charlie’s age,” Mom continues, “you used to beat your grandfather at Jeopardy! all the time.”

  “Of course I did,” I say, biting into my scorched brownie. “Grandpa Jack had Alzheimer’s.”

  “Not back then,” Mom says.

  I tilt my head.

  “Not that bad, at least,” she says, popping a loose chocolate chip into her mouth.

  “Oh, no!” Charlie screams, reaching between his shoulder blades as though he forgot something that was supposed to be there. He runs back into the kitchen.

  Neil shakes his head at Charlie and sits on the stool again. “Olivia, what’s the one thing you’re most worried about?”

  Taking tests. Geography. Taking geography tests. But the thing I’m most worried about is … I look right at Neil and tell him the truth. “Tucker Thomas.”

  Mom laughs and a brownie crumb goes flying. “Tucker Thomas? Didn’t your father call him the Boy with Two First Names?”

  I smile, but remembering Dad makes my stomach hurt again. Dad always came up with funny names for everyone. Charlie is Tigger—the happy, bouncing character from Winnie-the-Pooh. Dad used to call Mom Marion the Librarian, which is kind of weird because even though her name is Marion, she’s a newspaper reporter, not a librarian. And oddly enough, her boyfriend, Neil, actually is a librarian. I wonder what Dad would call him. Jerkface Who’s Living in My House with My Kids? That one’s a little long, I suppose.

  I don’t actually know how Dad feels about Neil. When we talk on the phone, he doesn’t say much more than “How’s Neil doing?” I assume he doesn’t like Neil, but I really don’t know. All I know is that I don’t like having Neil here all the time. It wasn’t as bad when he just visited sometimes, but now he actually lives here. He walks around in his bathrobe in the morning, with a forest full of chest hair showing. He sits at Dad’s old place at the table when we eat. And he takes the newspaper into the bathroom, and when he emerges half an hour later, I need a gas mask to go in.

  I miss having Dad here, even though the reason he left us is pretty awful. I can’t think about that right now, though, because it will make my stomach hurt more.

  Instead, I try to remember something nice about Dad. He made up five different nicknames for me—Butter Bean, Jelly Bean, String Bean, Beany Baby and Lovely Livi, which makes me melt when Dad says it, even though with eyeglasses, occasional zits and flat-as-a-flapjack hair, I’m anything but!

  “What about Tucker Thomas?” Neil asks.

  I shrug. “He’s good at geography.”

  Mom says, “So?”

  “So,” I say. “He’s really good at geography and loves to rub it in when he gets a better grade on a test than I do.”

  “Livi,” Mom says. “I’m sure it’s only good-natured teasing. You guys have been friends forever.”

  “Well, we aren’t friends now. And Tucker Thomas’s teasing is anything but good-natured!”

  “Oh,” Neil says, nodding, as though he understands some great truth about the universe.

  He doesn’t. Just because he’s a librarian and is surrounded by books doesn’t mean he understands a single thing about me. At least Dad knows I’m a geography ditz. He was the one who pointed it out to me in the first place. And Dad would never have trouble understanding why I’m nervous the day before a geography test.

  Charlie dashes in, a dish towel tucked into the back of his pajama top like a cape. He skids to a stop and puffs out his chest. “Did you know there are 516,000 bacteria in each square inch of armpit?” He demonstrates this by lifting his right elbow, like a chicken’s wing, and pointing to his pit.

  “Fascinating,” Mom says. “Disgusting, but fascinating.”

  “It’s true,” Charlie says. “I read it in Livi’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not! book in the kitchen.”

  Like me, Charlie started reading when he was four. Now he’s a pretty good reader for a kindergartner.

  Neil tousles Charlie’s hair. “Way to be a guy, little man. Gross facts are cool.”

  Charlie grins like he just won a trophy or something, then slaps Neil five so hard that I’m sure Tucker Thomas and his parents must have heard it through the living room wall that separates our town houses.

  Neil shakes out his hand, pretending Charlie’s slap might have broken a couple of the twenty-seven bones in it.

  Charlie raises his small fist and declares, “I’m Armpit Bacteria Man!” Then he darts up the stairs, stumbling midway, but he catches himself and keeps going.

  I shake my head, amazed that Charlie doesn’t get upset when he stumbles like that. He never gets frazzled or embarrassed, even when he does something really stupid, like wearing his bumblebee Halloween costume to school the day before his class party.

  I wish I could be more like Charlie.

  That way, I could go to school tomorrow without worrying about the geography test. I mean, if I can’t ace a simple geography test, how will I ever get on Jeopardy!? And I have to get on Jeopardy!

  To make matters worse, Tucker Thomas sits next to me. So when the test papers come back in a couple days, he’ll see how badly I did and be sure to wave
his perfect test score in my face.

  Maybe if I went to school dressed as a bumblebee, no one would notice when I bomb the test. Or perhaps I should stroll into class dressed as Armpit Bacteria Man. But I’m not going to do those things. I’m going to go to school dressed as me—Olivia Bean—and I’m pretty sure I’m going to fail that test.

  Oh, my stomach is killing me.

  After breakfast, I take one more look at my globe and give it a mighty spin for luck, but that doesn’t quell the nervous feeling in my stomach. I grab my backpack and leave for school, thinking I might as well get this over with.

  As I lock our front door, I recite the seven continents—“North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia and Antarctica.” I’m so absorbed reciting the continents as I walk down our front steps, I barely notice Tucker Thomas leave his house.

  On the sidewalk, I turn and see Tucker skip—skip!—down our shared front steps. It’s the skip of a boy who knows he’s going to get a hundred on today’s test. It’s the skip of a boy who doesn’t need to take one last look at his globe before leaving the house. It’s a pompous, arrogant, annoying skip!

  I bet Tucker Thomas is not reciting the continents in his mind right now. He’s probably thinking about where on the refrigerator door his mom and dad will hang his one hundred test paper when he gets it back.

  “Bean,” Tucker calls.

  Why can’t he use my first name like everyone else? At least he didn’t use his other nickname for me, which I despise. I pretend I don’t hear him.

  “Hey, Bean,” he yells again. “Ready for the test?”

  “Am I …” I whirl around and glare.

  Tucker’s standing with his head tilted, a knucklehead grin on his face. “You know,” he says, running a hand through his dark, wavy hair. “The geography test.”

  I shake my head in disbelief because that boy can be such a blooming idiot, and I walk toward school—away from him. I wish Nikki still lived on our street and she and I were walking to school together, like we used to. I wonder what terrible thing I did in a previous life to deserve to live next door to Tucker Thomas. I mean, why do our houses have to be attached so you couldn’t fit a dime between them? Who cares about a dime, anyway? I wish there were a small country between us!

  I glance over my shoulder and am disturbed to see Tucker hurrying toward me. I speed up. I’d be happy with the world’s smallest country separating our houses—Vatican City.

  Tucker closes the gap between us and walks beside me. “Hey, Bean,” he says, catching his breath. “What European city has been called the birthplace of democracy?”

  My heart does an extra panicked beat because I don’t know which European city has been called the birthplace of democracy. I don’t remember seeing that information in my notes.

  “Give up, Bean?”

  I keep walking, lips pressed together. Maybe Tucker’s teasing me. Maybe that information was never given. Or maybe—gasp!—I wasn’t paying attention when Ms. Lucas talked about that particular geography fact. Maybe I was thinking about Dad or Nikki or Jeopardy! or something much more important than the birthplace of democracy.

  Tucker gets close to my ear. “Or do you know the answer, Bean, and are trying to rattle me?”

  Rattle you? I wheel around, my hair smacking Tucker in the face. “Tucker, why are you following me?”

  He blinks a few times. “Athens. The answer is Athens, Greece. You should know that, Bean.” Tucker takes a step back. “And I’m not following you. I’m walking to school.”

  I cross the street.

  Tucker crosses, too.

  “Stop following me!” I stamp my foot, then walk forward with great purpose.

  Tucker walks so closely behind me, I’m afraid he’s going to step on the backs of my sneakers, like he used to do when we were in fifth grade together. “It’s a free country,” he says.

  I turn around. “Stop.”

  He stops. “But I’m not following you, Bean.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not,” he says. “You just happen to be walking in front of me. And we’re going to the same place.”

  I shake my head and see Matt Dresher approach. My stomach clenches. I can’t stand that kid, but Tucker walks to school with him sometimes, which shows what a complete and total idiot Tucker Thomas is.

  “You’re so immature,” I yell to Tucker, without looking back.

  “You’re so immature,” he mocks.

  “See,” I shout. “That proves it.”

  “See,” he says. “That proves nothing.”

  I breathe hard through my nose, but don’t say another word. Tucker Thomas might have the brain of an MIT college professor, but he’s about as mature as Charlie … when he’s pretending to be Armpit Bacteria Man.

  I jog the rest of the way to keep Tucker and Matt Dresher at a safe distance. By himself, Tucker is annoying, but when he’s with Matt, Tucker is downright mean.

  When I get to school, I appreciate the fact that Tucker and I are in different homerooms. This will enable me to panic about the geography test in private—well, as private as a classroom with thirty-two kids, a teacher and a pet iguana can be.

  Before going to his homeroom, though, Tucker pokes me in the shoulder from behind. “Good luck on the test, Bean,” he says. “And don’t forget we need to know the five oceans.”

  I nod. Five oceans. That should be easy. I went over that this morning. There’s the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean … um, the Southern Ocean—I always forget that one—and the Indian Ocean.

  Tucker walks away.

  Wait a minute. That’s only four. What’s the name of the fifth ocean? The Niña, the Pinta … oh, that’s not it. “Um, Tucker,” I call into the crowd of kids. “Tucker?” I whisper fiercely as I crane my neck to find him among the throng of kids. I push my glasses up on my nose and barely croak, “What’s the name of the fifth ocean?”

  But Tucker’s gone.

  And I’m alone in an ocean of middle school kids, not one of whom can prevent the geography disaster that’s about to occur.

  Later, I walk into Ms. Lucas’s room like my sneakers are made of lead (atomic number 82). My stomach is so discombobulated, it feels like I swallowed a porcupine. Who invented tests, anyway? Especially geography tests? Why can’t teachers assess our knowledge like they do on game shows? Then at least it would be fun.

  Tucker’s already in his seat, leaning back with one arm casually laid over the desk behind him. His relaxed demeanor reminds me of how Dad used to look when he and I played along with Jeopardy! on TV. I bet a porcupine hasn’t taken up residence in Tucker Thomas’s gut.

  I slide onto my desk chair, which is next to Tucker’s—just like our houses are next to each other on Rutledge Street. Remembering my deficient store of geography knowledge in regard to the world’s oceans, I whisper, “Hey, Tucker, what’s the—”

  “Everything off your desks,” Ms. Lucas says.

  My throat squeezes. You can do this, I tell myself. Geography just isn’t your thing, Butter Bean, Dad says inside my head. That’s why you wouldn’t do well on Jeopardy! I gulp hard because I believe Dad. Then I slide my backpack under my chair, feeling like I’m about to get a tooth pulled, or at least get a rigorous and somewhat painful cleaning.

  “A pen and nothing else.” Ms. Lucas strides along the aisles. She taps Myrna Levin’s desk. “Everything off.” Myrna tosses her tiny purse under her chair.

  Ms. Lucas stands three desks in front of me, facing the front of the room.

  I lean toward Tucker, eyes looking forward, and whisper, “What’s the—”

  “No talking,” Ms. Lucas snaps, like she can see out of the back of her head. Either that or she has bionic hearing.

  I sink low in my chair and cross my arms over my chest. My pen rolls to the floor, and I don’t bend to pick it up, afraid I’ll get in trouble again.

  With lightning speed, Tucker snatches it from the floor and plants it on my desk.


  Thanks, I think, too afraid to utter a sound, but impressed with Tucker’s slick maneuver. Why is he being nice to me?

  A paper lands on my desk. There are thirteen unlucky questions on the front side and eight more on the back, including one essay question. Gulp. How will I have enough time to answer twenty-one questions—one of which is a totally unfair essay question about some tribe I’ve never even heard of? I don’t think I know twenty-one things about geography all together.

  “This exam is worth twenty percent of your grade for this marking period.” Ms. Lucas’s voice fills me with dread. “You may begin.”

  Those are the last words I hear before I pick up my pen, write my name and begin the process of flunking the test.

  The first question is: Name the five oceans.

  I glance at Tucker, who is hunched over his paper; then I write the four names I remember. Four, not five. Sweat breaks out in my armpits. I practically feel the 516,000 bacteria per square inch floating around in there.

  Since Ms. Lucas is at her desk, I peek at my classmates. They are hunched over their papers, writing furiously. I’m sure each of them remembered all five oceans. I’m sure the kids in my class don’t have Teflon-coated brains like mine when it comes to remembering geography facts. And I’m absolutely positive not one other person in this class, including Ms. Lucas and probably the entire school, has to deal with what I do: a dad who took off with her best friend’s mom and her best friend, then moved to California, which happens to be on the opposite side of the country from me.

  California borders the Pacific Ocean. At least I remember that ocean. I also remember that California is the most populous state in the country. One out of every eight people in the United States lives in California, including my dad, Stella Costelli and my former best friend, Nikki Costelli. The California coastline is 840 miles long. The state tree is the California redwood. Los Angeles, the largest of the 58 counties by population, happens to be where Dad, Stella and Nikki set up house.