Geek Charming

by Palmer, Robin

  “You’re talking with your mouth full,” he said.

  I finished chewing and dabbed at the corners of my mouth. “I am not.” I reached for another fry. “I’m just going to have one more, if that’s okay.” It couldn’t hurt. I had already fallen off the wagon with the Russian dressing.

  “Have as many as you want,” he said.

  Wow. How nice to be around a guy who encouraged a girl to eat—even if he was a geek. The few times I had tried to snag a fry from Asher’s plate, he always gave me a look like he had just caught me shooting drugs or something. But now one turned into two turned into him ordering me my own side of fries. I felt a little self-conscious pigging out like that in front of him, but soon I relaxed. I didn’t even get upset and say, “Excuse me, but are you kidding?” when an old man and woman shuffling past our booth stopped to say what a cute couple we made.

  “You really love movies, don’t you?” I asked as I scarfed down some of the onion rings he had ordered for us. (Well, he said they were for us, but I don’t particularly like them, which is why I only had seven or so.)

  He nodded as he dipped one of them in the salsa/mustard combination he had whipped up. Although it sounded disgusting, it was pretty yummy.

  “How come?”

  He shrugged. “’Cause I guess I find real life overrated.”

  “Yeah, but if you’re spending your time watching movies all day and night, then you’re not exactly giving real life a chance,” I replied.

  He thought about it. “I guess you have a bit of a point.”

  Um, duh.

  “I don’t know,” he continued. “They’ve just always been a way for me to escape. Especially when my parents started fighting a lot, before my dad moved out.”

  “What happened?”

  “He started having an affair with one of his clients. An actress-slash-yoga teacher. She’s twenty-three.”

  “What is it with these old guys and younger girls? And all their names end in i—Brandi, Staci, Lesli.”

  “Or it’s Amber. That’s my dad’s new wife’s name, and Steven’s dad’s girlfriend’s name—”

  “Omigod—that’s my dad’s girlfriend’s name, too! She works at Neiman Marcus. She came over for dinner once and kept looking at me like I was an ugly piece of furniture that she couldn’t wait to donate to Goodwill.”

  “Yeah, well, my dad basically did get rid of me. I talk to his assistant more than I talk to him. The last time we did talk, it was so that he could tell me that Amber was pregnant and that she was going to have the baby at home in the bathtub and they wanted me to videotape it.”

  “Eww,” I said, suddenly no longer hungry. I pushed the onion rings away.

  “I know. That’s partly why I want to do the doc—so I can get a scholarship and not have to depend on him anymore.”

  As Josh mixed together mustard and A.1 steak sauce as another potential dip for the fries and rings, I thought about how weird it must have been to have to worry about scholarships and not getting sick because you didn’t have health insurance. It was as if he was one of those characters in a fairy tale who was kicked to the curb and forced to wander in a dark forest for years. Before he started eating again, he took out his inhaler from his back pocket and sat it down on the table.

  “Are you worried you’re going to have an asthma attack while you eat?” I asked, pointing at it.

  “No. It was in my back pocket, so it’s hard to sit up straight, which is what I need to do in order to digest my food properly.”

  This guy was weird. “What’s up with that thing anyway?” I asked.

  He looked up from his plate. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re like my dad and his black Amex card,” I said. “You never leave home without it.”

  “I told you—I have asthma. Probably because I was born—”

  “Premature. I know,” I replied.

  “It’s medical,” he insisted. “I can even show you the note from my allergist that he wrote me for gym class.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “Do you want dessert?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “No thanks. I’m not all that hungry,” I replied as I looked at my watch. “And I should probably get going anyway.”

  He looked at the check and threw down some bills.

  “I’ll get it,” I said quickly.

  “Nope. I got it.” Josh smiled.

  I opened my wallet and took out a twenty. “No, really—you can put the money toward health insurance or something.” I hoped that wasn’t rude.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

  Huh. Now if I had said that to Asher, not only would he have taken it, but he also would have asked me for gas money.

  “Sorry again about the dead battery,” he said as we stood in front of the parking structure. He was parked in employee parking, which was down five levels, while my BMW was in my special VIP spot right near the entrance.

  “Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be,” I replied. “I mean, it was actually kind of . . . fun.” Who knew? It was nice to be around someone who was just normal, rather than perfectly put together and glancing around the room all the time to see what everyone else was doing and if anyone else was looking at them.

  “Yeah. It was,” he replied, sounding somewhat amazed as well. “Well, see you at school tomorrow.”

  “Okay. And I’m not sure what I’m doing this weekend, but as soon as I do, I’ll let you know so you can have your one weekend night of filming.”

  “That would be great,” he said.

  I reached over and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “You know, you should really think about getting a haircut because your eyes aren’t half bad. That shade of green is very in this season.”

  He turned bright red and pushed it back into his face. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  “See you mañana,” I said as I started walking toward my car. Obviously Josh was a geek, but maybe he wasn’t a total geek. Sure, he had no fashion sense whatsoever, and the inhaler thing was so not sexy, and there was the talking-while-chewing thing. But as my grandmother says, there’s a lid for every pot, so I’m sure he’ll end up with someone.

  chapter six: josh

  Other than one time last year when Mom made me take out her college roommate’s niece who was visiting from Des Moines, Iowa, the following Saturday night was the only time in my seventeen years on the planet that I ever spent a weekend night with a girl. Granted, it was business-related, but, still, when you spend most weekend nights hanging out in your room IMing with guys from Amsterdam debating whether The Godfather or Godfather Part II was Coppola’s masterpiece, spending it at the movies with girls who smell good definitely warrants the bringing of the inhaler. Not because I was nervous. Just in case I was allergic to any perfume they may be wearing.

  “Wait! Just one more picture!” Mom said, chasing me outside with her camera.

  “Mom, please go back inside,” I pleaded as a hipster couple walking past our house gave me a strange look. “Now, please, if possible.”

  “Honey, it’s very important to honor the special moments in life. I was just reading an article in the New York Times about how ours is one of the only cultures that has forsaken ritual—”

  “That’s great, Mom, but can we talk about it tomorrow?” I asked, practically running to the Neilmobile. The problem was it wouldn’t start, which, sadly, was becoming a common occurrence ever since I had run out of gas the week before. Unlike the car’s namesake, who continued to get better with age, as shown by his CD 12 Songs, the Neilmobile was losing its mojo.

  “Just great,” I said, after the occasional sputtering of the engine turned to complete silence.

  The other problem was that Mom’s beat-up old Volvo—which we called the Mitchellmobile, because of its Joni Mitchell bumper sticker—had gone into the shop that morning because its brakes were failing, and wouldn’t be ready until Monday.

  I looked
over at the Geekmobile, which was the car I used when I needed to make Geek Gang house calls. I was in luck because I hadn’t had time to return it at the end of work that day. Mrs. Spivakowsky, the old Russian woman at my last stop, had made me sit there for twenty minutes digesting the baklava and milk she had force-fed me even though I very nicely told her that I was pretty sure the twenty-minute rule was for swimming and not driving. Other than the fact that it says GEEK GANG in huge letters on both doors and it’s a blue-and-yellow Mini Cooper—which makes it resemble a clown car—it’s not so bad. But I could only imagine what Dylan would have to say about it. Since Du-par’s, she’d called me a few times about documentary stuff, but we had ended up staying on the phone talking. I had never met someone who had so many opinions.

  “So usually we spend our Saturday nights at a party,” yelled Dylan into the camera as we waited in line at the Arclight movie theater with every other high-school girl in the city to see the latest teen romantic comedy where a spoiled rich girl and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks fell in love after lots of misunderstandings. Because we were in such a public place, I had decided to nix the sound boom and lights. I liked the idea of shaking it up and giving it a Marty Scorsese/au naturel look, but that meant that Steven and Ari had nothing to do. Steven didn’t care, as it gave him the opportunity (and freed both hands) to shovel popcorn in his mouth, but without having a giant light or a camera to hide behind, Ari looked pretty miserable. When you were six feet (and still growing) like he was and had ears that stuck out, you didn’t exactly blend into the crowd.

  “Can you step closer to the camera?” I yelled.

  “Sure,” she said. “Like this?” she yelled as she stepped up so close she almost smacked me in the nose again.

  I stepped back a foot, knocking into a very large bald man.

  “Whoops,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  He didn’t look amused, so I quickly moved to the side, this time almost knocking into a woman in a wheelchair. I hadn’t counted on filmmaking being so dangerous.

  Once I was no longer in danger of hurting anyone or getting my butt kicked, I put the camera back up to my face. “So you were saying . . .”

  “I was saying that because the only party going on tonight was Ashley and Britney Turner’s—”

  “Which is so B-minus/C list—” said Lola as she moved in front of Hannah, almost edging her out of the frame.

  “—we decided to save our energy for next weekend, which is when Lisa Eaton is having her Halloween party,” finished Dylan.

  “Sorry. Hold on a second,” I said as I put the camera down. I turned to Steven, who was standing next to me shoveling popcorn into his mouth, and gave him a look.

  “What?” he said with his mouth full.

  “Their voices are going to be drowned out by the sound of you crunching,” I said. “Plus, it’s rude to talk with your mouth full.”

  He shoveled more of the box into his mouth. “Since when did you become the Polite Police?” he asked between crunches.

  “Forget it. Just . . . do you think you could not eat until we’re done?”

  “Dude, I haven’t eaten all day,” he replied.

  “You had a Double-Double and fries from In-N-Out an hour ago,” said Ari, who had put his hoodie up and was slouching in an attempt to make himself blend in more.

  “You know what? Maybe I should just go—” Steven said with a scowl.

  “Fine. You can eat—just go do it away from the mike,” I said.

  “Um, hello?” said Dylan. “Can we get back to work?”

  I put the camera back up to my face. “Okay. So you were saying . . . ”

  Hannah moved back into the frame and used her hip to push Lola back. For girls who were supposed to be, as Hannah was always saying, best best friends, they sure were competitive. “We were saying that we were saving our energy for next weekend. Especially since Lisa Eaton’s brother is going to be home from Stanford that weekend. I’m going to hit him up and see if he can talk to the admissions people for me.”

  Lola rolled her eyes. “Talk about using this thing as an opportunity to make it all about you,” she said under her breath. Man, these popular girls might look all delicate, but they most definitely played for keeps.

  Dylan, on the other hand, stood there in the middle like she belonged on a float in a parade. “I mean, I guess if we wanted to be nice, we could show up and raise the cool factor,” she said, “but frankly, I get really sick of always being the one giving and never getting in return. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, it’s sort of like how my mom likes to farm me out to all her divorced friends to hook up all their electronic equipment because there’s no husband around to do it,” said Steven as he tossed his empty popcorn box in the trash.

  Dylan pondered this. “Sort of,” she replied. “But not really.”

  “Plus she gets sick of having to answer the question ‘Are you and Asher even still dating anymore?’” added Lola.

  From the way Dylan looked at her like she was Drew Barrymore in Firestarter, this wasn’t the right thing to say.

  “Just because we’re dating doesn’t mean we have to spend twenty-four hours a day together,” she said defensively.

  “Do you guys spend any time together?” asked Steven.

  “Of course we do,” she replied. “I just happen to not be completely codependent.”

  “My mom was so codependent that she had to go to this rehab for codependence,” said Hannah.

  “Every once in a while we like to give each other room to breathe,” Dylan continued. “Which is why, yet again, he’s at some Ultimate Fighting thing in Long Beach with his stupid friends,” Dylan said. “Wait—can you edit out the ‘stupid’ part? Never mind—I’ll just say it again.” She fluffed her hair and clapped her hands together. “Take two: ‘Which is why he’s at some Ultimate Fighting thing in Long Beach with his friends.’”

  There’s something about viewing people from behind a camera that makes it so that you start seeing them differently. This thing kicks in where because you’re so focused on their faces, you realize that sometimes what their faces say versus what’s coming out of their mouths are miles apart. So when Dylan said, “Whatever. It’s fine. I’d much rather be one of those girls who gives their boyfriends space rather than smothers them,” I could tell from the look on her face that, in fact, it wasn’t fine. That it was so not fine to the point where she looked like she was about to cry.

  “I think I’m going to turn the camera off for now so I can save the battery,” I said.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Dylan agreed. While I much preferred Amy Loubalu’s dark and exotic beauty over Dylan’s blonde hair and blue eyes, when she smiled like she did then—kind of sweet and sad at the same time—she looked . . . real.

  Just then the “Sold Out” sign started blinking and a chorus of awwwws could be heard.

  Lola turned to Hannah. “I told you we should have bought tickets online.”

  “Some of us were studying because we’d actually like to get into a decent college,” she shot back.

  “We could see the new Robert Rodriguez movie,” Steven said. “It’s supposed to be awesome—total blood and gore.”

  “Um, eww,” said Lola.

  “That new dance movie looks cute,” suggested Hannah.

  The guys and I looked at one another—and we were supposed to be the geeks in this group?

  “We could get something to eat,” I suggested.

  Dylan looked up from her Sidekick. “Nope. We’re going to a party.”

  “But I thought you said Ashley and Britney’s was going to be lame?” Hannah said.

  “It is—which is why we’re going to a UCLA frat party!” she squealed. “Shannon Hall’s there now and says it’s totally happening. Omigod—this will be so cool for the documentary!”

  “All right!” said Steven, holding out his hand to Lola for a high five, which, not surprisingly, wasn’t returned.
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  The contents of my stomach shifted and I made a mental note to look up the symptom on WebMD when I got home. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea,” I said.

  “Dude, what are you talking about? It’s a great idea,” said Steven. “College girls, dude. They’re mature. They’ll appreciate us,” he said pointedly with a glance toward Lola. She didn’t notice him because along with the other two, she was entrenched in fixing her makeup. They didn’t even need mirrors to do it.

  I turned to Ari. “You don’t want to go, do you?”

  He shrugged. “It could be fun. Especially if some of the theater group is there. They just did a mime version of Rent and I have some questions about the technical aspect that—”

  “Josh, it’s going to be awesome,” promised Steven.

  Dylan flipped her head up and shook out her hair. “For once he’s right,” she said. “Why don’t you want to go?” she asked, reaching into her bag for a different pair of shoes.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to go. Of course I want to go,” I replied. “It’s just that I don’t think we should.”

  “Why?” asked Steven. So much for my best friend supporting me unconditionally, no questions asked.

  “Because tonight’s supposed to be about the documentary . . . capturing the girls in their regular Saturday-night stuff. And so to go to a college frat party, where there are big frat guys who probably don’t want us breathing their air, it’s just not the authentic inside look at Castle Heights popularity I envision. It’s a different movie. It’s Old School.”

  “But it’s a college frat party—nothing’s cooler than that,” said Lola.

  I made sure to keep my arms glued to my sides because I knew without looking that I was sweating. Big-time.

  “It just doesn’t jibe with my artistic vision,” I said.

  “It’ll be fine,” said Dylan. “Trust me.”

  There was that “fine” word again. And for the second time that night, I didn’t believe her.

  You know that old movie National Lampoon’s Animal House? The one where John Belushi crushes beer cans on his head without flinching? Well, before we even got inside, I could tell from the amount of noise coming from the house that the ZBTs of UCLA made Animal House seem like an ABC Family Channel movie. Not to mention all the beer cans and tequila bottles littering the front lawn. And the rope hanging down from one of the third-floor windows that was made of girls’ bras.