Nerdy by New Year

by Jessica Bucher

  Her other hand reached up to rest on mine, her eyes softening a little, but she still didn’t move away for what felt like twenty minutes, but I think it was closer to ten seconds.

  “Thanks, Simon.” Finally, she unleashed that smile again, but it didn’t do anything to dispel the tension between us. Our faces were so close, I could smell the spearmint of her gum, and I realized that any other guy would have probably leaned forward to kiss her. The moment was practically calling for it, and for all I knew, she could have been waiting for it, but then again...she did just say she wanted us to be friends. So, talk about mixed signals.

  I was a huge wimp, so I pulled my hands away slowly, and I must have been imagining things because she almost looked disappointed as she turned toward the door. Before she jumped out of the SUV, she said over her shoulder, “I’m looking forward to Saturday.”

  “Me too,” I called back as she stared at me from the curb in front of her house.

  “Night, Simon.”

  “Night, Lucy.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Lucy

  My job at the refuge was not to babysit Nora’s injured hawk, but I couldn’t seem to go there without visiting at least once. The Owl Lady, who insisted we call her Thelma and not ma’am, was keeping the hawk in a hack box on top of the office module.

  I wasn’t allowed to let it see me. According to Thelma, red-tailed hawks weren’t much different than us. If the young bird got used to the idea that I was there to take care of it, it would never learn to take care of itself. For this reason I had to wear a ridiculous hawk hand puppet every time I reached inside the box to place food. I don’t think the hawk was fooled into believing my puppet was the real deal, but it was better than her seeing my hand. Despite the puppet, my poor hand was covered in tiny nicks. Who knew something so small could be so vicious in pursuit of food? I didn’t mind though. I could endure a few cuts here and there if it meant the bird was eating. At first, it hadn’t responded to any type of feeding and Thelma and I both worried it would starve itself to death rather than adapt.

  The hack box was like a nest with a lid to keep predators out. Thelma fed it for now, but she told us that was only temporary. Soon it would begin to take short ventures out to hunt. Once it had demonstrated it could hunt on its own, Thelma would leave less and less food in the hack box, until eventually it didn’t come back at all. The thought made me a little sad. I knew the point of the refuge was to rehabilitate the birds, not turn them into pets, but the idea of letting go was still hard. Maybe this was the real reason Nora refused to volunteer here. She had a terrible time letting go of animals on the farm.

  I had been on the roof for twenty minutes when I heard Simon pull into the gravel lot. He’d been around me enough to know to look on the roof if he didn’t see me out on the property. He waved from down below, a smile etched into his features and a coffee in his left hand. Thelma was out picking up a rescue this morning, which meant it was up to us to put food out on the platforms for the other birds. Red-tailed hawks, as it turned out, weren’t the only raptors in the area who needed a slow return to the wild. Thelma had released several other species in the past months and though they no longer slept in boxes, they weren’t independent hunters just yet.

  I thanked Simon for the coffee, savoring the sweet hot taste of a gingerbread latte. Thanksgiving was only three days gone and already Olsen’s Coffee House had swapped the pumpkin spice for gingerbread and peppermint.

  “How’s your baby?” asked Simon, squinting up at the roof.

  “Small, cute, but not as fluffy as I would like,” I answered, warming my hands on the cup.

  “You could tell all of that from staying on the blindside of the box?” He asked, his lips twisting in a skeptical smile.

  “I may have peaked once or twice,” I admitted. “But she didn’t see me.”

  “Uh huh,” said Simon, his voice taking on that teasing tone from when we were kids.

  “Yes, uh huh!” I said, smacking him in the shoulder. A week ago, I would have been scared to make physical contact. But ever since he’d forgiven me, I felt ten times lighter. That stupid screenshot was finally behind us, and I was optimistic about what our future might look like.

  The two of us had a system worked out for feeding the raptors. I would hold the ladder while he climbed to the top of each platform to place the food. I didn’t mind the height, but I was terrified of the dead rodents. I was willing to make the sacrifice for my little hawk friend, but carrying dead rodents up a ladder, over and over again? No thanks. Once we had put food on all four platforms we went from enclosure to enclosure changing out waters. It felt a little like doing rounds in a hospital, or so that is how I imagined it would be after watching countless medical dramas. By the end of each shift, my body was beat from crossing the large span of property over and over again. It was a wonder Thelma had lasted as long as she had with that limp slowing her down. If I had known I would like it so much, I would have volunteered years ago.

  By eleven, all of our work was done, leaving no legitimate reason for Simon and I to spend anymore of our Saturday together, yet I was reluctant to watch him climb into his Mom’s car and leave. Lately, I had been feeling reluctant to see him go a lot.

  “Maybe we could hang out sometime?” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth as he placed his hand on the car door.

  “We’re hanging out now,” said Simon, tilting his head to the side.

  “Yeah, I...totally...” And then all the coherent thoughts flew from my mind faster than the hawks swooping down on the platforms above us.

  “I just meant—” my voice trailed off as I tried to think of the right thing to say. What did I mean? Was I trying to ask Simon on a date? I didn’t do that! I didn’t ask boys on dates, they asked me! I could feel the blood rushing to my face, my breath coming faster as I stumbled over the right words to bail myself out of the situation.

  Fortunately I didn’t have to because Addy’s SUV came tearing into the parking lot just in time to rescue me.

  “That’s my ride!” I said with awkward enthusiasm then sprinted over to Addy before Simon could ask what the heck just happened.

  “Anxious to leave much?” asked Addy, taking one look at my flushed face as I climbed into the cab.

  “Tell you about it on the drive,” I laughed.

  “Looking forward to it,” said Addy, spinning a donut of dust around Simon as she pulled back out of the parking lot en route to Nora’s.

  Simon

  Was Lucy just asking me out? Not like out, out, but she was definitely trying for something. Mulling over it on my drive home, I came to the conclusion that Lucy probably had plenty of people to hang out with, but she wanted to hang out with me. And since we already hung out plenty, feeding dead rats to birds, I could only assume what she wanted was something more, and the high from that realization practically carried me home.

  Once I pulled into the driveway, I found my dad in the garage working on the old Harley that he managed to tinker with when he had the time.

  “Hey, son,” he called as I hopped out of the car. My dad didn’t invite me to help him in the shop anymore, not since the time I accidentally released the brake on his old Chevy and we had to chase it down the drive to catch it before it ran into the neighbor’s hedges. Now, he just invited me to hang out with him and grab him a wrench or two.

  “Hey, Dad. Whatcha doin’?”

  “Oh just giving the ol’ bike a sprocket and chain replacement.”

  I wasn’t going to pretend that I knew what any of that meant, so I answered with a simple, “Cool.”

  “Volunteering at the owl place again?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Feeding dead rats to birds. What every teen dreams of doing with their Saturday,” I said as I jumped down from the bench to grab a pop from the garage fridge.

  He let out a chuckle, then glanced at me again with a quizzical expression, like I surprised him.

  “What?”

  “It’
s for a girl, isn’t it?”

  I let out a very awkward cackle that didn’t at all sound like I was confidently denying that accusation.

  He smiled back at me. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  “We’re just friends,” I said, but I had to hide my smile behind my Cola. I wasn’t going to tell him otherwise—not yet.

  “Sam told me you had a girl over to study after school. Just friends, huh?”

  “We were studying. Geez!”

  “Well, you know the rules. No girls over when we’re at work. Can’t have the little ones seeing you smoochin’ in your bedroom.”

  “Dad!” I stood from the bench to leave. My parents and I did not have these conversations, and I wasn’t about to start now.

  He bellowed with laughter from behind me. “Okay, okay, come back. I won’t give you a hard time anymore.”

  My cheeks were still burning when I turned around and walked on the other side of the garage to pretend like I was checking out his license plate collection and not hiding my blush.

  “Hand me that five-eighth socket,” he said over his shoulder as he knelt down next to the bike. I found it quickly, as my tool-finding skills were about the only thing that had improved over time.

  “Besides, you know her. We’ve been friends since we were ten,” I said as I passed him the wrench.

  He froze for a second and glanced up at me. “The Caldwell girl?”

  “Dad, her name is Lucy. You know her.”

  “Yeah. She was a nice girl, and you know this family is grateful to her mother, but you two haven’t hung out in a long time. What changed?”

  Wouldn’t I love to know.

  “She joined the Key Club,” I answered, trying to piece it together myself. Somehow telling my dad that she showed up out of the blue to turn my senior year upside down and torture me with statements that could or could not be construed as flirting, seemed like a bad idea.

  “Interesting,” he mumbled while he tightened something on the motorcycle.

  “Yeah. She’s going to D.C. with us too.”

  My dad’s wrench-twisting froze. I watched him take a deep breath, and before he said another word, a stomachache started to form.

  “I need to talk to you about that trip, Simon.” He stood up and grabbed a rag from the workbench to wipe his hands.

  I couldn’t respond. There was no point in asking what he needed to talk to me about. I already knew.

  “Your mom and I have tried to work around the budget this year, but I’m afraid it’s just too much right now. Business has just been a little slow around the shop.”

  I hung my head to hide my reaction. I didn’t want him to see me bite my lip or swallow down my disappointment. It didn’t matter that we knew about this trip for months. Mostly I blamed myself for getting my hopes up. I knew the shop was slow and my mom’s hours were cut at work. I would never blame my parents, but I’ll admit I kind of wanted to.

  His heavy hand landed on my shoulder. “Son, I’m really sorry. Mom wanted to wait until tonight to talk to you, but I should be the one to break it to you. It’s on me.”

  “No, Dad,” I muttered, trying to hold down my emotions. “It’s okay. I understand.”

  He apologized a lot and tried to convince me that I could probably find a way to make up the money because I was smart, but my spirits were too crushed to think straight.

  I left my dad in the garage and shut myself up in my room. I hated to mope about it, but I was starting to realize that that D.C. trip had become about something way more than a tour of the capitol since Lucy showed up.

  I hated to think about Lucy going on that trip without me.

  And who she might be kissing at midnight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lucy

  It took a large quantity of french vanilla ice cream and friend therapy to talk me out of moving to Thailand after that awkward almost-asked-out-Simon incident. By the time American Government rolled around on Monday however, I had convinced myself to channel all of my energy into acting like it never happened. So I sat down next to him, all normal like, quick smile, half-wave hello, blush nowhere in sight. Pretty damn good acting really. Except Simon barely even registered my arrival.

  “Earth to Simon!” I hollered when I’d finally given up on getting his attention casually.

  “I’m talking to you.”

  Simon looked up from his textbook, an apologetic look on his face. “Sorry, I was distracted.”

  “By what? You can’t possibly be that interested in how a bill becomes a law.”

  Simon smiled. It was small, not his usual grin, but better than the worried expression he’d been wearing the past twenty minutes. “Considering that’s the purpose of the D.C. trip you should probably be more interested.”

  He had a point. On paper, I was supposed to be interested in legislature—but who was I fooling? My motivation for going to D.C. had started out as gaining Simon’s forgiveness. Now that I had it, I was looking for a little something more.

  Like, a midnight kiss on New Year’s Eve, to be precise. Not that I could tell him that.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I answered. “Would it be terrible if I admitted that I’m more interested in leaving Delinki than I am the purpose of the trip?”

  “Not terrible,” mumbled Simon. “Relatable.”

  Something was off. Simon was always excited to talk about the D.C. trip. It was one of my favorite things about him, the way he got all sparkly in the eyes when he talked about it. For a brief and paranoid moment I allowed myself to think my blunder at the refuge was responsible for his change in attitude. But then I remembered the obvious. Nerd makeover or not, I was still pretty hot. Even if Simon wasn’t interested in dating me, he wasn’t likely to be a jerk about it.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “You don’t seem very you today.”

  Simon closed his textbook and looked up at me. He was chewing the bottom corner of his lip, like he wanted to tell me what was bothering him, but was afraid to all in one.

  “You can tell me, you know,” I urged. “I know we don’t have the best trust track record but...”

  Simon’s eyes went wide. “It’s not that. I promise.”

  “What is it then? Maybe I can help,” I pleaded.

  Simon began tapping his pencil on his desk, a steady, nervous rhythm that sounded disturbingly like the National Anthem.

  “I don’t have the two-hundred bucks for the deposit.”

  “Oh,” I said, immediately realizing the gravity of the situation. Everyone in Key Club was required to turn in their money by the end of the month. It was every bit as much of a requirement as the volunteer hours. My mom had already written my check. Probably everyone’s parents had.

  “I thought things were doing better at the shop,” I said, realizing with just a touch of shame that I hadn’t once asked Simon how things were going at home.

  “It’s been slow,” he said with a shrug. “It’s always slow in the winter.” He raked a hand through his hair, the other still pounding out the rockets red glare. “I should have had a back-up plan but...”

  “But you got distracted.” I finished for him.

  He didn’t deny it. If it weren’t for me and the refuge, Simon might have spent his time working toward that two-hundred dollars. Instead, all of his free time was wrapped up helping me meet the twenty-hour quota. Suddenly I felt sick to my stomach.

  “I’m sorry, Simon,” I murmured as the bell to end class rang.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll figure something out.” Judging by the look on his face, even he was having trouble believing it.

  I wanted to help, but I knew it wasn’t as simple as writing a check. Back when Mr. Hawkins had needed help rebuilding his shop, he had been very clear with my Mom. They wouldn’t accept any handouts. Help yes, charity no. It was one of the toughest campaigns my Mom ever ran. In the age of GoFundMe, she wasn’t used to people wanting to work to solve their problems
.

  What we needed was a good fundraiser. Something that would sell fast and wasn’t going to cost a lot to get started. I wasn’t the creative type. Nurturing? Sure. Ambitious, absolutely. But the ideas part, that was all Addy. Which was why I called both her and Nora over to my house for a brainstorming session.

  “I still think we should hold a date auction,” said Nora. “Or a kissing booth,” she said, a gleam in her eye. Nora was sadly well over two-hundred days from her last kiss. A drought neither Addy or I could relate to.

  “I’m against both of those,” said Addy. “I don’t want to organize that many lips. Besides, what if one of our chosen kissers doesn’t get any clients? Who could handle that sort of rejection?”

  Nora crossed her arms over her chest, “Point taken.”

  It had been an hour, and we still didn’t have any good ideas for raising Simon’s trip money. Eventually our brainstorming devolved into staring at Pinterest.

  Until Nora’s phone lit up with a text that had her snorting with laughter.

  “Spill,” said Addy.

  Nora wiped a tear from her eye. “Max has a suggestion for a fundraiser.”

  “I’ll bet he does,” growled Addy. “Let’s see what my dear brother has to contribute.”

  Nora passed the phone across the room.

  “Very funny,” Addy said, looking at a photo of the boys football team dressed as sexy librarians.

  “Oh, come on,” said Nora, “It’s a little funny. Don’t you get it? They’re making fun of those calendars where each girl is a different month. Nick is Mr. January. He’s got great legs for heels.”

  Addy pulled the phone up close to her face, taking a closer look at the gams in question. “You’re right, actually. His calves are better than mine.” I was about to remind them that we could stare at Nick’s lady legs later when Addy got that lightbulb look on her face.

  “Oh you guys, I have an idea!”