A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions (16 page)

“No offense, sir,” Logan replied, “but putting me on a team like that, well, it would be kind of stupid.”

I could tell by the fact that Mr. Piddles didn't answer that he might have actually agreed with Logan on that one.

I pushed open the door to the girls' restroom, a bunch of thoughts swimming through my mind. Logan was coming to support me? I was being summoned to Mr. Piddles's room to talk about the coach who wasn't really our coach? Q wanted me not to get involved in doing anything about the fact she looked ready to hurl up her endocrine system?
Sheesh
, couldn't a kid just take a pee without so much drama?

I disappeared into the stall, feeling as if my bladder were about to burst. But when I finally sat down, nothing happened.

I tried to concentrate.
Oh, come on, come on,
I said to myself. I had to pee so bad I couldn't even do anything.
Sheesh
, I hated when that happened.

Then, a moment later…
Ahhhhh
.

What gives more relief than a good tinkle?

B
y 4:15, Beanpole and I had shown up at Q's house dressed in our Aardvark uniforms, ready to head out to the Civic Center. Q, however, was locked in the bathroom.

“She's not feeling well,” Mrs. Applebee informed us. “And she's not going.”

Not going?

The door flew open. “I'm fine!” If Q hadn't been sporting the complexion of a seasick earthworm, I might have agreed with her. “And I am going. Be ready in a sec.”

“You are going nowhere, young lady.”

“Mom, I'm healthier than you think.” Q pushed her way past the three of us. “Everyone is counting on me,” she said as she zipped into the bedroom. “Dressed in a minute.”

Bam!
The door slammed shut, the hallway silent.

“She doesn't look so good,” I said softly.

“She's a tiger,” her mom explained, a look of great concern
on her face. “Takes after her dad that way.” Mrs. Applebee checked her watch. “And once she gets fixated on something, there's just no talking to her.”

Uh, hello, welcome to my world, I thought.

Neither Beanpole nor I said anything as Q's mom debated what to do. “We've been fighting for the past several…I don't even know how long now,” she informed us. “She thinks I hover too much, but she's not well.” She checked her watch again, then picked up her purse. “I'll get the car started and meet you girls out front. If I know Alice, she's going to be there tonight even if she has to swim through a lake of alligators to do so.”

Shaking her head with a look of
I must be nuts to permit this
, Mrs. Applebee went out the door that led to the garage. I turned to Beanpole with a
Should we do something?
look in my eyes. No, Q wouldn't listen to her mom, but she might listen to us.

Beanpole looked up from her cell phone, where she'd been tapping away, and shrugged. “You know there's no way that Alice is not going to prove to her mom that she's capable of taking care of herself.”

“But where'd she get this crazy idea from, anyway?” I asked.

“From you.”

“From me?” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Beanpole replied. “When you started to believe in her earlier in the year, she started to believe in herself.”

What?

“Oh, great,” I said. “Now I'm inspiring people. Tell me, has this world become so pathetic that I'm some sort of shining light?”

“Guess so, Captain,” Beanpole said with a smile.

“Don't call me that,” I said. “I mean, it's not like any real responsibility comes with the title, anyway.”

The door to the bedroom flew open, and Q appeared, blazing with strength in her Aardvark uniform, her facial features looking as if she'd just been exposed to nuclear radiation.

“Ah, my prize pupil,” I said.

“Come on,” she responded matter-of-factly. “Let's go.”

“Are you sure you don't want to bring some peanuts for the road?” I asked. “Or perhaps gulp down another jug of cashew sludge? What about an almond butter–macadamia nut milk shake covered with pecans, walnuts, and pistachios? I mean, it seems only fitting, doesn't it?” My sarcasm was too clear for her to miss.

“Oh, there is one thing,” she said.

“Yeah?” I asked. “What's that, Q?”

“There are no definitions provided in the Academic Septathlon, so no need to ask.”

“There aren't?” Beanpole replied, rattled by the news.

“Don't worr—” Q began to cough. “Don't worry, Barbara. You'll be fine.”

“Wait,” I said. “When did you find this out?”

“The first day,” Q answered.

“You mean to tell me that for the past few weeks you've known that a contestant can't ask for a definition, and yet you're just telling us this now?” I asked. “Why?”

“It made you funny like a cartoon.” She grinned and raised her inhaler.
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.

“Okay, so if what you're eating doesn't poison you, just know that after this whole thing is over, I am going to make you a nice warm bowl of rattlesnake-venom soup.” Q's grin grew larger. “I can't believe that this whole time you've just been messing with me.”

“Aardvark. Seventeenth time.”

“Come on, guys,” Beanpole said, looking at her phone. “We'd better go. There's traffic.”

The three of us exited the house. I shook my head in disbelief. “You're like the nerdwad of the century,” I said, but the truth was, I felt better. I mean, if Q's sense of humor was still intact, that sort of meant she wasn't going to croak, didn't it? Of course, I wanted to murdalize her, but how was that different from almost any other day?

Q jumped into the front seat, Beanpole and I jumped into the back, and we all clicked our seat belts shut.

The look of disapproval on Mrs. Applebee's face was too obvious to miss.

“Nerd Mobile, onward,” Q directed.

Mrs. Applebee glared at her daughter. Q didn't make eye contact with her, though. Instead, she stared straight ahead, prepared for another standoff.

“Um, Mrs. Applebee,” Beanpole said, staring at her phone, “I don't think you should take Highway 4 to the Civic Center.”

“What, she's going to take the back way and go down Seventeenth Street?” I asked sarcastically. “That's, like, two or three extra miles and another ten to fifteen minutes, with the stop signs. We're already late.”

“I trust my trusty phone,” Beanpole said, turning her cellie around to show me. “And it says the highway's jammed.”

I looked at the map. Where there was bad traffic, the roadway on the screen was red. Highway 4, however, was not just red; it was red and black, with stripes and a big exclamation point in the middle, which could only mean one thing:

An accident. A bad accident.

“Whaddya think?” Beanpole said.

I checked the time on my phone. It was already 4:43. “We'll be cutting it close.”

“But if we take the highway, we might not make it at all,” Beanpole replied. “And Seventeenth Street is pure green right now, no traffic at all,” she added, proudly holding up her phone. “Let's vote. Who says the back way? Raise your hand,” she said.

And then, to show her enthusiasm for taking the back way, Beanpole's hand screamed to the sky. “I vote for…
Ouch!
” She smashed her wrist into the roof. “Don't worry, don't worry, I'm okay.” Beanpole cradled her arm. I swear I thought I'd heard a bone crack. “Remind me to try and remain at one with the universe, accepting things as they are today, okay, Mo? I'm a little excited right now.”

“Whatever you say, Nerdy Lama.”

“Back way,” Q chirped, casting her vote. Slowly, I nodded in agreement.

“Okay, back way it is,” Mrs. Applebee said. “Assuming we should even be going in the first place.”

“Which we should,” Q replied.

After another shake of her head, Mrs. Applebee began to drive, and we set out for the Civic Center, making it just in time.

And when I say just in time, I literally mean just in time. We walked through the doors at 5:26. Kiki looked as if she were about to have a heart attack. She frantically waved us up to the registration table, and we scurried over to meet her.

“Grover Park Aardvarks, all here,” Kiki said breathlessly to the seated woman. As it turns out, the lady in charge of officially verifying the registration of each of the Academic Septathlon participants was also the Supreme Judge of the night's proceedings. Her name was Miss Terrier, a woman in her fifties who was as thin as a rail and dressed in a smart, conservative, bluish-gray business suit. Her small glasses and pointy nose made her look like some kind of cross between a Harvard PhD and an evil stepmother from a terrifying fairy tale. “Quick, give her your papers,” Kiki instructed.

“What papers?” Beanpole said, a puzzled look on her face.

Kiki froze.

“Ha-ha, just kidding.” Beanpole pulled out the official forms and handed them to Miss Terrier. “We're the Aardvarks,” she said, perky and proud. “Nice to meet you.”

Miss Terrier glanced at the clock sitting on the registration desk in front of her.

5:28.

“I'm charmed.” Miss Terrier took our paperwork. We watched anxiously as she looked over the rim of her glasses to inspect our forms, making sure every
i
was dotted and each
t
was crossed. A quiet panic flooded through me as I prayed that none of us had been careless enough to have missed a line or forgotten a signature.

I think it was Miss Terrier's hair that most made me nervous. She wore it in the tightest bun I'd ever seen, not a single strand out of place. It was as if even her follicles knew they had to follow the proper rules and procedures, or they'd be dealt with in the most severe manner.

After what seemed like ten thousand hours of formal form inspection, Miss Terrier took out a red stamp and punched our documents.

“Grover Park Aardvarks, check,” she said, putting our papers in the black tray to her left. “Wait there, please.”

Phew, we made it.
We walked over to the spot Miss Terrier had pointed to, near the other teams by the stage door.

“What on God's green earth took you dorks so long?” Kiki asked as we headed to our designated waiting spot. “Another two minutes and we'd have been disqualified.”

“There was traffic,” I said.

“You should have left earlier,” Brattany said.

“We made it, didn't we?” Q said through a cough.

Kiki and Brattany took notice of Q's condition and stared at her with semihorror on their faces, as if she had the plague or something.

“If you were so worried, why didn't you text us?” I asked, trying to draw attention away from Q's appearance.

“I don't want any of your nerd numbers in my phone,” Kiki said.

“Yeah, it might lead to further communication once this thing is over, and that's the last thing we want,” Brattany said with a sneer.

“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Well, what if I told you that—”

“Can we not argue for a minute, please?” Beanpole interjected. “I mean, we're here, we're looking good in our uniforms, and we're ready to break out some Aardvark whomp-'em powder. Come on, let's do a cheer.

“We're the Aardvarks,

The mighty, mighty Aardvarks!

We're the—”

“Can the rah-rah stuff, Beanpole,” Kiki interrupted. “I'm still not over the heart attack you almost gave me.”

“Yeah,” Brattany said. “I mean, just look at that.”

We turned around and saw the Gilded Gophers from Evanton Middle School racing up to Miss Terrier's table.

“Made it,” said their coach.

“No, you did not.” Miss Terrier pointed to the clock on her desk.

“Oh, come on,” the coach replied. He was a plump, balding man dressed in a green shirt with a yellow tie. “There was a motorcycle accident on the highway. What were we supposed to do?”

“I do not dictate the regulations, Mr. Harper. I merely enforce them,” Miss Terrier responded. “Rules are rules, and five thirty was the deadline.”

I looked at the time on my cell phone: 5:33.

“But it's not fair,” one of the students pleaded.

“You can't be serious,” said another.

The Gilded Gophers were from a charter school on the east side of town, and they had come in second place the past three years in a row. This year, however, their team was filled with veterans of the Academic Septathlon, and if anyone was expected to challenge Saint Dianne's for the regional championship, it was the kids from Evanton.

“Have a heart, Miss Terrier,” Mr. Harper pleaded.

“Heart has nothing to do with it,” Miss Terrier responded. “Rules dictate my actions, Mr. Harper. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Suddenly another team raced through the side doors—the Townsend Owls—and rushed up to the sign-in table with panicked looks on their faces.

Miss Terrier, without a hint of emotion on her face, directed her eyes toward the clock on her desk.

The coach of the Owls glanced at the coach from Evanton. She could tell by the look on Mr. Harper's face that the Gophers had just been ruled ineligible. Same motorcycle accident. Same traffic to the Civic Center. Same reason for her school being late.

She lowered her head, knowing, without having even spoken a word, that her team, despite all its hard work and long hours of preparation, had just been ruled ineligible. Wordlessly, she turned to her students.

A brown-eyed girl with a ponytail began to cry. Then another student started to weep. A boy punched the air. Seeing the hurt on the faces of these kids felt like a steak knife in my heart, especially since it was a result of something completely unpreventable.

However, the pain I felt for them was clearly not a pain that was being felt by anyone else in the hall. One look at Wynston Haimes showed that. She was smiling and snickering with her teammates. After all, with Evanton out of it, Saint Dianne's chances of continuing their unprecedented winning streak had just skyrocketed.