A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions (9 page)

She continued. “‘Subsection F says that a doctor's note, if on hand, will prevent disqualification, should any contestant need to recuse themselves from participation, and a'”—
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh
—“‘substitute, the next contestant in the scheduled order of appearance, shall be required to assume the role.'”

“WHY ARE YOU EXPLAINING ALL THIS TO ME?” I yelled.

“You mentioned toast.”

“Have I also mentioned ax murdering?”

Q smiled. A moment later, Beanpole looked up from her phone.

“I found it!”

“Found what?” I asked.

“The definition. Online.” She silently read the screen of her phone. “Yep, okay, I now know what a planet is.”

“You now know what a planet is? Like, didn't they cover that on
Sesame Street
?”

“What I mean is that I now know that what I thought I knew is what I really now do know,” she replied.

Sure, there was plenty of stuff in that last sentence that would have given me ample justification for jamming a few printed pages from the study guide down Beanpole's esophagus, but we had a competition to get ready for, so I simply went along with it.

“Okay, Beanpole,” I said, heaving a sigh. “So what's the answer?”

“Can you repeat the question, please? I forgot what you asked.”

My cheeks started turning as red as a Flamin' Hot Cheeto.

“You're funny, like cartoons,” Q said as she picked up a peanut.

“Please tell me you are not going to eat that,” I said.

“Aardvark.”

“If her doctors say it's okay, she has to trust the science,” Beanpole replied. She slowly began to wave her arms in the air like she was moving her hands through invisible water. “Be one with the peanut.”

“Be one with the peanut?” I said. “That's your advice?”

Beanpole stood on one foot, waving her limbs. “We are all one with the peanuts of the universe.
Ommmmmm
.”

“Here goes nothing,” Q said, hoisting the lumpy tan shell. “Down the hatch.”

A part of me wanted to reach out and take all the nuts from her and eat them myself, so that I wouldn't have had to watch her immune system do a “Call the paramedics!” hula dance for us right then and there. On the other hand, if I prevented her from eating those peanuts, there were plenty more in the world, and she just would have gotten another batch for herself later.

Really, what could I do but sit back and watch the fireworks?

Q popped the peanut into her mouth and began to chew. Beanpole and I stared, waiting for her nose to melt or her liver to catch fire or something like that, but nothing happened. Nothing at all. Q just chewed and chewed with no visible effects whatsoever.

“You do know that you're not supposed to eat the shell, right?”

She stopped crunching. “You're not?” She thought about it for a moment. And then started crunching again. “Oh, well. Adds an interesting texture.”

“Be one with the peanut,” Beanpole said, waving her arms. “Accept the universe's peanuts the way they are.”

I swear, both of them were cuckoo. Yet nothing happened. Q ate her whole bag of peanuts, shells and all, and made it through the rest of the day without so much as a sneeze. And Beanpole, with her two different size feet, had reduced the tripping, falling, and bonking by about a millionfold.

Maybe there was hope for the two of them. Of course, our real war was yet to come.

F
or the next four nights, the three of us turned up the study heat. I mean, sure, at first I really didn't want to put in the gigantic effort, but once I realized how great it would be to entirely whomp the crud out of the ThreePees, I became an aca-dorkic learning machine. And my NFFs were right there with me. Beanpole, Q, and I met after school each day from 4:15 to 10:00 p.m., just cramming and cramming and cramming away.

I was also cramming cupcakes, but hey, as all athletes know, carbs equal energy.

The thing about all the cramming was, it worked. Well, kinda. What I mean is that we started to get better. Of course we couldn't learn everything there was to know about the Septathlon in eight days' time—not even close—but after hearing test question after test question, we not only absorbed a bunch of material, but our instincts began to sharpen, as if we could feel which answers were wrong and which answers were right.

Basically, the practice sessions took us from being entirely abysmal to being mediumly bad, a significant improvement, considering where we had started.

To be fair to our moms, since they had to make dinner for the three of us and drive us home at the end of the night, we'd decided to rotate houses for each of our sessions. Beanpole's house was ideal because it came with a full catering staff, and Q's house was tough because Q's mom was always coming in to make sure her hemoglobins weren't break-dancing; and on Wednesday night, I would have done anything to avoid its being my house's turn.

There was just no escaping it.

Of course, my fellow dorkmeisters had been to my house lots of times, but not since the long-lost hole-filler had started popping up. Overall, I'd done a good job of avoiding him—not replying to his text messages, coming home late, and so on—but for tonight's study session I needed to make sure I'd have a zero-contact evening with Mister Blast-from-the-Poppa-Past.

Basically, I figured we'd dash up to my room, lock the door, and have my mom slide a pizza under the door when the coast was clear.

“Make sure she sends up ketchup, too,” Beanpole said, when I told her the plan. “The restaurant kind.”

“Har-har, you're so funny.”

When I filled my mom in on how I wanted everything to go, she said it wouldn't be a problem.

“Far as I know, your father isn't even planning on coming over tonight,” she said.

“Perfect!” I replied.

Mom furrowed her brow.

“I mean, aw, too bad,” I said. Maybe he'd taken off again and I wouldn't next see him till, I don't know…college graduation.

The college graduation of my grandchildren, that is. See, some kids, like Beanpole, are always willing to embrace change and give it a chance. Me, I don't like change; I like comfort. I like familiarity. I like leaving my house in the morning and coming home to find it just as it was.

My father represented chaos. He was gone, he had bailed on us long ago, and now he wanted to return?
Let's just keep things the way they are, huh?
I mean, Twinkies didn't just up and change their recipe; why should my dad be able to just up and change his? And if he did, why should I have to just up and change mine? Gooey white cream injected inside spongy yellow tubes of cake, a food formula that worked. If it isn't broke, don't fix it, I say.

“The coast is clear, kiddo.” My mother only called me kiddo when she wanted to make a point about something, like when she was trying to say something without really saying it. I hate it when moms do that. I mean, it didn't take a genius to see that she was none too happy about the way I was avoiding my father's reappearance in our lives. In fact, the look on her face made it seem as if she wanted to talk about it, like actually have a heart-to-heart conversation with me at that very moment. So, trying to be respectful of her feelings, I took the lead in handling her not-so-subtle hint.

“Thanks for the pizza. Extra cheese, please. Gotta go, Mom. 'Bye.”

I dashed up the stairs, went to my room, and closed the door.

Phew!
That was close.

When it comes to sweeping things under the rug, I think I was born with a broom.

Inside my bedroom, Beanpole and Q had already gotten comfortable in their usual spots. Beanpole was relaxing in the semiworn tan seat by the window, her legs crossed yoga style, while Q was sitting—where else?—in the corner of the room, knees up against her chest like a human mouse.

It was time for business, I thought. After all, there weren't that many study hours left until the qualification tournament. I surveyed my team and figured this was as good an opportunity as any for a few inspirational words to fire up the squad.

“You guys stink!” I yelled. “Now, quit slacking off and start showing some effort. And don't cry to me about my plan for all of us to stay up until midnight tonight, either. I am sick and tired of feeling like the mayor of Loserville—population YOU!!”

Focusing on the positive was a quality my mom always tried to instill in me. Clearly, as the leader of my team, I took the importance of always being an optimist to heart.

“Q!” I barked, like an army general readying my troops for battle. “Let's hear the scores of those practice tests we did yesterday, to see how we did.”

“Got 'em right here,” she said, removing a few pieces of paper from the pocket of her study binder. “Drumroll, please…Out of forty questions, I answered…twenty-four right.”

“That's it, just twenty-four?” I said. “After all that studying we've been doing?”

“You should talk,” Q said. “You only answered twenty-one right, and you don't even know any of the rules.”

“That's it, just twenty-one?” I hung my head. “I need a plate of doughnuts, a bag of cookies, and a double order of chili-cheese fries.”

“What about me? What about me?” Beanpole asked, jumping up and down, excited to think that she could be the winner. Unfortunately, she was sitting underneath a bookshelf.

CRASH!
“Ouch!”

A few picture frames, a globe, and all seven of my Harry Potter books came raining down on her head.

“Don't worry, don't worry, I'm okay,” Beanpole said.

“You break it, you buy it. Got it, Beanpole?”

“Sorry, Mo,” Beanpole said, putting everything back. “Okay, I'm ready for my score. OH, WAIT!” she said, closing her eyes. “Be one with the universe.
Ommmm
.”

“Can we get on with this, please?” I said as she chanted for oneness. “The universe wants us to quit wasting its time.”

“I need to be centered,” Beanpole replied. “When I get too excited, I lose my sense of oneness and bash into things. Okay, Alice. I'm ready.”

“And Barbara's score is…twenty-five and a half!”

“Yeah!” exclaimed Beanpole, jumping for joy. Of course she hit the bookshelf again.
CRASH!

My picture frames, my globe, and my Harry Potter collection fell on her head once more.

“Don't worry, don't worry, I'm okay.”

“I take Visa or MasterCard.” I turned to Q. “How in the world can she be the aca-dorkic stud of our team? Let me see those scores.” I took the answer sheet from Q and began to look it over. “A twenty-five and a half? How does someone even get a half point on a fill-in-the-blank test, anyway?”

“She wrote in her own answer to question seventeen, and in my opinion,” Q said, “it earned a half credit.”

“Do the rules even allow for someone to earn a half credit?”

Q opened her binder. “‘In case of an emergency, such as a fire, flood, earthquake, or'”—
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh
—“‘other natural disasters, the competition will—'”

“Stop, stop, stop,” I interrupted. “I don't want to hear about how a plague of locusts will affect the stupid event. Just tell me, what was question seventeen, anyway?”

“Was that the one about who discovered America?” Beanpole asked, recalling the problem that had given her trouble. “Yeah, that question was questionable.”

“The question was questionable?” I said. “How was that question questionable?”

“Because it could have been the Native Americans, or it could have been Christopher Columbus, or it could even have been that Amerigo Vespucci guy from Italy who discovered America,” Beanpole pointed out.

Wow, I thought. She has been studying.

“So, what'd you put?” I asked.

“Read it; it's right there.”

I gazed down and read Beanpole's answer aloud.

“‘Can I have a definition of America, please?'”

Beanpole smiled big and wide.

“And you gave her a half credit for that?” I asked Q. “You're not even supposed to write words on these types of tests.”

“Aardvark.” Q popped a peanut into her mouth and ate it, shell and all.

“You know, I've already thought about what I'd tell the FBI when they start asking questions about your disappearance,” I said. “I'm just warning you. I already have an entire plan worked out that—”

“PIZZA!” There was a cry from downstairs. I froze at the sound of the voice.

“Is that…” Beanpole asked, “your father?”

“Come on! Get it while it's hot!”

Yep, that was definitely my father.

“You guys are eating family dinners together now?” Beanpole wondered aloud.

“Um…no,” I answered.

Beanpole reached for her backpack. “We'd better go.”

“Go?” I said. “You can't go. We have about a thousand hours' worth of work to do.”

“We'll start early tomorrow,” Beanpole said, gathering up her stuff. “Besides, it's been a long week. I'm tired.”

Q reached for her book bag, too.

“You're not going to stay, either?” I asked.

Tears began welling up in my eyes. I was scared, and both of them knew it. But they also knew that giving my father a second chance was something I needed to do, even if I didn't want to listen to them tell me that over and over, each in her own unique way.

“I wonder if peanuts would taste good on steak,” Q said. “Or pork. Maybe I'll make a peanut-pork pie tonight.”

“You can't avoid him forever, Mo,” Beanpole said in a gentle, caring voice. “I mean, even ketchup eventually comes out of the bottle.”

“That's not what I was hoping to hear,” I said.

“You'll be fine,” Beanpole replied. “After all, he's your dad.”

I looked at Q. The sadness in her brown eyes said everything. She missed her dad. Terribly. And she would have given anything just to hear him walk through her own front door one more time, shouting, “PIZZA!”

Yet, as we all knew, that would never happen for Q. However, as I had tried to explain to her before, her dad and my dad were not the same dad. She'd had the kind of father that a kid would eagerly buy one of those cheesy Father of the Year coffee cups for. Me, I had the kind of dad that made me eager to buy my mom a Mother of the Year coffee cup. Plus, I would give Mom picture frames and balloons and silly little refrigerator magnets, too. That's the kind of dad I had.

“Doesn't matter,” Q told me. “You only get one, Mo. In this world, you only get one.”

She put her bag of peanuts away. Seeing that there was no way of convincing either of them to stay, I walked them to the front door with a lump in my throat the size of a recliner chair.

“Are you sure you don't want to sleep over?” I asked, making one final attempt to change their minds. “Or better yet, I could sleep at one of your houses. Really, I'd be no bother. I mean, Q, we could just move your Darth Vader machine off to the left and—”

“Go have some pizza, Mo. We're there if you need us,” Beanpole said, cutting me off. “But right now, you need us to leave.”

Since there was still plenty of light left outside, they decided to walk.

“'Bye,” I said, waving like some kid saying, “So long,” to his favorite pony as they took it to the glue factory.

“'Bye,” Beanpole called out.

“Aardvark.” I couldn't tell from where I was standing, but I think Q was crying. “Fourteenth time.”

A moment later, they were gone. I took a long, deep breath, turned around, and went inside to join my “family.” We met in the dining room. However, I wasn't hungry. And if ever there were a sign that something was wrong with me, I am sure that that was it.

“Yay, Giuseppe's!” my sister Ashley said. Ashley was eleven, had sandy brown hair and a lean, strong physique. Gymnastics was her thing. She loved tumbling and jumping and swinging from stuff, and even though we sometimes fought like birds and squirrels, I had to admit she was pretty good on the balance beam.

“Giuseppe's has the best pizza ever,” she exclaimed, grabbing a slice.

“Extra cheese, kind of well done, just like you guys like it,” my father said, handing me a slice as if he knew all sorts of precious little fatherly things about me.