Nerdy by New Year

by Jessica Bucher

  Then, my dad let a smile crack. “Don’t worry about it, Simon. We can make it work.”

  I could barely get my gratitude out before my mom was butting in with a sly smile on her face. “Is Hailey going?”

  Hailey. My mom had been dead set convinced that Hailey and I were meant to be, and as much as I was sure Hailey would have loved to hear that, I didn’t have the heart to break it to my mom that Hailey Yi bothered me to no end. And not in the cute secretly-like-her sort of way either. Hailey was conceited and lacked any real charisma. There were no surprises with her. No charm. I mean, she was fine as a friend and treasurer of Key Club, but she had been getting a little too cozy around me since the tenth grade.

  So maybe this was a stupid thing to do, but I wanted to divert all attention away from Hailey, which was the only slightly rational reason I would bring up Lucy at my family’s dinner table.

  “Actually, Lucy Caldwell is going.”

  My sister almost choked on her milk. She was the only one who knew what happened between Lucy and me. To my parents, Lucy was the girl whose mom saved our family from going homeless when she raised enough money to help my dad rebuild the shop after it went up in a fire. Her mom was still pretty close to my mom, but I had a feeling the incident didn’t make its way into their conversations.

  “And you still want to go?” Sam asked, arching an eyebrow at me.

  I shrugged.

  “Why wouldn’t he want to go with Lucy?” My mom started to get a little too curious for my comfort.

  I tried to subtly stare daggers into my sister. “We just grew apart,” I mumbled through gritted teeth. That was the story my mom knew, and I wasn’t going to let Sam ruin that.

  “Well, maybe you guys could reconnect,” my mom said, with all of her oozing optimism.

  “Not likely,” Sam muttered, staring down at her chili.

  My sister hated Lucy after what happened. Maybe even more than I did. Which was ironic because no one made my high school life hell quite as much as my older sister did. It was like she took it upon herself to pave the way for the nerd jokes that came from every direction. It was half the reason I joined the swim team, to at least have something athletic to hide behind.

  So when Sam practically went nuclear over the incident, I was surprised. It was like she was the only one who was allowed to torment me.

  “You guys used to be inseparable. Did something happen between you two, kiddo?”

  “No, Mom,” I answered. “Nothing happened between us. She just got too popular to hang out with me.”

  Chapter Four

  Lucy

  It had been a week since my first Key Club meeting. One week since Simon and I

  actually spoke to each other and not just in the vicinity of each other. I had been thinking about him a lot ever since. I used to know everything about him. Now I didn’t know much of anything. The Simon I knew never would have joined a sport, but he was one of the best competitors on the Delinki High swim team.

  And Gray? That was not the kind of guy he used to hang out with. For one thing, Gray had never seen an anime movie. It was a verifiable fact. Both Addy and I sat looking at him with our mouth’s agape when he said, “those are the cartoons with the big eyes right?” Simon, on the other hand, was a Crunchyroll subscriber. He’d even tried to start an anime club in the 6th grade. Tried being the keyword. I was the first, last, and only member.

  Key Club, however, seemed to be working out a lot better. He had experienced first hand the impact volunteer work could have on a person’s life when his Dad’s shop burned down and they had to rely on the community—and my mother, of course—to rebuild.

  It was kind of funny when you thought about it. My mom ran the local Center for Nonprofits, yet I didn’t have a single volunteer hour to my name, whereas Simon was the president of the most altruistic club in school.

  This time when I entered the library I did not pretend to fuss with the book cart. I stiffened my spine and took my place at the table as if I had been attending meetings for the whole four years of high school.

  Now that I wasn’t freaking out about an unexpected encounter with Simon, I had time to really assess the group. There was Hailey: pretty, smart, and mean as a viper. I wasn’t going to try too hard with her. The more time I could spend with Simon without her interrupting the better.

  To her right sat Daniel, the group secretary. I didn’t know much about him. He was quiet and wore his headphones a lot between classes, but he smiled at me warmly when I took my seat, so I had a good feeling about him. There were also the Carmicheal twins, they weren’t really twins. They were actually twelve months apart. We all called them twins anyway though because they did everything together, Key Club included. We’d all done summer league soccer a few years ago, so at least I had a working relationship with them.

  Finally, there was a girl at the far end of the table that I couldn’t pick out of a crowd if my life depended on it. She had to be new this year, or she’d used an invisibility cloak for the first three years of high school.

  Seven members, eight if you counted me.

  Simon passed the roll call notebook around the room, and I printed my name neatly below the Carmichael’s before flipping open my own book to take notes. I didn’t have the greatest memory, so I always carried a pen and notebook with me. I’d learned early on that if I didn’t write it down, I might as well consider the information dead and gone.

  “Everyone needs to turn in the $200 for D.C. by the end of the month. That fee will act as a deposit to save your spot. If you have any trouble coming up with the money, please talk to me, and we’ll see what we can do,”

  I wrote down, Pay Simon, end of November or else. Beside me Hailey Yi scoffed.

  “Yeah, you’re not going to need to do that,” she said, pointing to my notes.

  I looked up at her through a curtain of blonde hair, strongly regretting my choice to go ponytail-free this morning. I had spent most of the day shoving my hair out of my face while our ecology class did field work, and by now, it was a tangled mess.

  “Why’s that?” I asked, making no effort to hide my annoyance.

  “That trip is for club members,” said Hailey.

  “Which I am now one of,” I said, pointing to my name on the member roll call.

  Hailey rolled her eyes. “Attending two meetings doesn’t make you a club member.”

  “Doesn’t it, though?” murmured Daniel. All it took was one pointed look from Hailey to get him to drop his eyes back to the table.

  “Everyone else had been working all year,” she said with a tight smile. “Not trying to be mean, but it really wouldn’t be fair.”

  Not trying to be mean, huh? I thought to myself. Funny how that was the exact impression I was getting.

  I opened my mouth to let her know I was going on the damn trip whether she thought it was fair or not, but I was interrupted by Simon clearing his throat.

  “According to our bylaws,” he said, eyes trained on Hailey. “Lucy can participate in all Key Club activities so long as she attends meetings and completes at least twenty hours of community service.”

  Hailey cocked an eyebrow as if Simon had just handed her the perfect tool to squash my Key Club ambitions. “Alright then,” she said. “You’ve got one month to get in twenty volunteer hours. Have fun with that,” she laughed.

  Beside me, the Carmichael twins looked decidedly uneasy. I wondered if she was mean to everyone or if this was special treatment.

  “We’ve got to move on,” said Simon, careful not to look at Hailey or me. “Check your email tonight for volunteer opportunities. Colleen from the environmental club is looking for help with their annual creek clean up again.”

  There was a collective groan from the group. How bad could it really be, picking up trash along the creek bed? As if reading my mind Andrea Carmicheal raised her hand in the air. “Not it!” she cried. “My shoes still smell like mud and fish guts from last year.”

  Simon g
ave her a disapproving look, but it didn’t seem to bother Andrea. She was clearly donesville with that project. Thinking about the smell didn’t exactly warm me to the idea either.

  “I’ll be there,” said Simon, stealing a quick glance in my direction. I didn’t know if he meant to look at me, or if it was just a side effect of having spent so much time sharing private looks as children, but it was all the motivation I needed.

  “Me too.” I said. “Might as well get my first set of hours in while I can.”

  If Hailey were a pot of water, this would have been her boiling point. I had to hand it to her though. She kept her lips pursed in a tight line, despite the stream of obscenities I’m sure were running through her head. I wasn’t positive yet, but judging by the way her genuine smile seemed to be reserved for Simon and Simon alone, there was a fairly good chance that her dislike for me had nothing to do with Key Club and whether or not I had done my fair share of the work.

  I ignored the evil vibes beside me and penciled creek bed clean up in my notebook. Twenty hours was a lot, especially for one month, but it wasn’t impossible. If I could get started at the refuge as soon as possible I could do a good chunk of them there, and as for the rest? I locked eyes with Simon across the table. I was going to ask our fearless leader for help.

  Simon

  Yeah, there was definitely something fishy going on here. Lucy was hell-bent on going to the D.C. conference, and two weeks ago, she probably didn’t know it existed. If I wanted to look into it too much, I would let myself believe that maybe she was being super nice to me lately for a reason, but I did not want to look into it too much, so I didn’t.

  The meeting ran pretty short today, and after that awkward encounter between Hailey and Lucy, I was desperate to get everyone working on something...so they were too busy to talk. We were finishing the signs for the holiday toy drive next month when I wandered over to where Lucy was applying red glitter to the school’s logo on a banner big enough to wrap around the gym.

  “So...um…” I stammered as I stepped up next to her. Her long blonde locks were draped over the poster, getting dangerously close to wet paint. And without thinking I just shifted them away, but then every alarm in my body started going off like Code Red: You’re touching Lucy’s hair!

  And I jerked my hand away. Facing me with a smile, she must not have noticed the contact. “What was that?”

  “Your paint was in the hair,” I muttered—like an idiot. “I mean...your hair was almost in paint.”

  Lucy broke into a fit of giggles, high-pitched and genuine. The others glanced up at us from their posters. It compelled my cheeks to actually let out a smile, against my will, of course. I wanted to remind my face that we had still not forgiven her and should not be smiling at her.

  I shook it away and remembered what I came over here to tell her. Part of my presidential responsibilities were to help the members find their volunteer opportunities, which was why I was helping her, I reminded myself. That was the only reason.

  “I was planning on going to the clean-up site after school tomorrow if you wanted to go check it out.”

  Her smile evaporated, and I got the impression that she made the commitment without really thinking about it. Hailey lifted her gaze at the table next to us, and I’m sure Lucy noticed it too.

  “Yeah, I’m in. What time?” She shot a hard glare in Hailey’s direction, a look that would have definitely scared me off.

  I cleared my throat. “4:00? I figured you’d want to change at home first. It will be kinda muddy.”

  “I can handle it.”

  A quiet snicker from one table over had Lucy rolling her eyes, putting me in a very awkward position. I almost rolled mine too because I did agree that Hailey was obnoxious, but it certainly wouldn’t have been appropriate. Why did I keep feeling the need to defend Lucy?

  “We should be able to get you a couple hours tomorrow.”

  She looked back up at me. “A couple?”

  “Well, yeah. It starts to get dark around 6:30, and we don’t want to be out there too late.”

  I could see her doing the math. We were already one week into November, and getting twenty hours in before the end of the month was going to be harder than she thought.

  “We could always spend a couple weekend days to make up more hours if you want. I mean...if you don’t mind walking dogs at the shelter.”

  “What if I had something else in mind? Like a wildlife refuge to help out at?” She looked legitimately nervous, biting her pink, glossed lip. And I had to admit, I was curious. Her mom didn’t normally do animal-related charity work, so this was unexpected. Lucy had a cause?

  Shrugging, I said, “As long as it’s registered as non-profit and someone can sign off on your hours…”

  She smiled, and again my stupid face was betraying me, and I smiled back. “Awesome.”

  “We do the soup kitchen on Thanksgiving too,” Daniel added from the back of the room.

  “Oh yeah,” I added. “That’s like six hours right there. If you want to...I mean.”

  “You guys do a lot…”

  We all sort of glanced at each other, like yeah, we’ve been waiting for someone to notice.

  “Yeah, we stay pretty busy. There’s the back-to-school drive in the fall where we collect school supplies for kids in need,” I added.

  “And we help with the Special Olympics in the spring,” one of the Carmichael girl chimed in. Like a domino effect, the rest of the group spoke up.

  “The reading program at the elementary school.”

  “And the retirement center.”

  “Freshman survival packs.”

  Lucy perked up and looked around at us, like she was just putting something together. “Just the seven of you?”

  We all nodded.

  “You need more people,” she added with an expression like she was scheming.

  But no one said anything. We all just went back to work, painting signs and planning drives while I wracked my brain trying to figure out why I was being so nice to my worst enemy.

  Chapter Five

  Lucy

  When Simon’s Mom’s SUV pulled into my driveway, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. The last time that car picked me up, the driver had been Mrs. Hawkins, her hair still wrapped in hot rollers, a big scarf covering them like the movies. Neither of us had a license back then. Now it was Simon in the driver’s seat.

  I watched from my bedroom window as he bumped his head against the steering wheel. It was hard to watch him like this, mentally preparing to be around me, when we’d spent eons never questioning how to act around one another. I’d screwed up big time. I deserved to feel uneasy, but I guess a part of me wished I was the only one that felt that way. Maybe it was unrealistic to think that Simon was over it all, but a big part of me had hoped that was the case. Every time he flinched at contact, or stumbled over his words the way he had, when he brushed my hair away from the paint, I was reminded that Simon was scarred and I’d done the cutting.

  He crossed the lawn and rang the doorbell below. I could just picture my Mom’s face when she answered the door and saw Simon Hawkins standing there. She knew everything that had happened, but I hadn’t told her that joining Key Club meant interacting with him outside of school, or that I hoped to finally gain his forgiveness.

  “Your ride is here,” croaked my Mom from below, her attempt to sound natural falling very, very flat. I took a deep breath and ran down the stairs. I’d taken Simon’s advice to heart, changing from my cute sweater dress to a pair of old jeans and rain boots with tiny strawberries printed up and down the sides.

  “You’re a little old for puddle jumping,” remarked Mom, her face all twisted up with confusion.

  “We’re helping with the creek clean up,” said Simon, eyeing my boots. “At least I think we are.”

  Recognition dawned on Mom’s face. “Ah, I meant to volunteer for that one. I’m sure they could still use a few extra hands. Mind if I tag al—?”
r />   “No!” Simon and I cried in unison. I watched his cheeks go red. He was trying so hard not to share things with me.

  “What we mean is, can we please do this one on our own? It’s my first official Key Club volunteer gig. If my Mom was there…”

  “If my Mom was there what?” Her hands were balled on her hips in typical Mom fashion.

  “Come on,” I pleaded. “You know I love you.”

  “Just not in public,” she answered, a disapproving look on her face.

  “Exactly,” I laughed, popping a kiss on her cheek, then pushed Simon out the door before Mom had a chance to lecture him for his half of that no.

  The two of us drove across town in silence. We hadn’t been alone together since before the bad thing I had done. And since we had spent two years pretending the other didn’t exist, carpooling now felt like breaking some kind of rule. I tried to think of something to say, anything to draw us out of this funk and remind Simon that I didn’t suck nearly as bad as he thought I did. If he was going to forgive me, he first had to like me. Too bad all that came to mind was sports and the weather. Neither of which would convince anyone I was fun, let alone someone who might have voodoo dolls of me tucked away in their attic. I thought about texting Nora, just to look busy but my phone was already low on battery, and if I needed fake-rescue-texting, it was probably better to save it for the end of the evening and not the drive there.

  Simon didn’t seem to want to talk either. He plugged his iPhone into the auxiliary port and hit shuffle. I grinned to myself when the Avett Brothers came streaming through the speakers. It was like the universe was on my side. They were our first concert. Mrs. Hawkins drove us all the way to St. Paul just to see them. I looked over at Simon expecting to see him bobbing along the way he used to anytime a good song played, only he hit the skip button and kept his eyes on the dashboard.