The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love (2 page)

On Friday morning, it's time to launch Phase 2 of the plan's
centerpiece: the Robert Zinc panel. Before school, I bike over to my friend Casey Zucker's house. His parents are backing out of their driveway when I get there, on their way to their teaching jobs at Stony Brook University. I wave at them.

I find Casey up in his room, putting an enormous amount of white glop in his hair and running his hands through it until he's created vertical black spikes that would look right at home on a medieval mace. Casey discovered hair product about six months ago. I guesstimate another six months before he figures out he doesn't need to go through a bottle a week.

“NYCC. Zinc. Here's the deal.” I don't waste time with preliminaries.

“Ugh. Don't even get me started, dude.” He immediately goes over to his desk and hits a key on his computer to fire up the monitor. A spreadsheet fills the enormous display, each of its cells filled with minuscule font. “I had
everything
planned out weeks ago and the panel has messed up my entire schedule. I might even have to skip out on a Jim Lee signing
and
a Joss Whedon meet-and-greet.”

“Or maybe,” I say, leaning against his dresser and staring at his neat bookcase full of plastic-wrapped comic books, “you won't.”

“It's not ideal,” Casey continues. “I'll give you that. But . . . I do have to learn to be a little more flexible. I suppose.” He sighs as he clicks on something on his spreadsheet and deletes it.

“
Or
you can just stick to your original plan that you've spent months perfecting,” I counter again.

Casey finally turns around in his desk chair, one eyebrow raised. “All right. What's going on?”

That's the problem with having the class valedictorian as one of your best friends. It can be pretty hard to try and slide something by him.

“I have a proposal,” I say. He continues to stare at me, and I know my best bet is to just be straight with him. “You stand in line with me to get the Robert Zinc wristbands, and then let me give your wristband to Roxana. In exchange”—Casey guffaws, but I don't let that deter me—“I will give you my pristine Issue Number One of
Giant-Size X-Men
.”

We stare at each other across Casey's room. It's a good offer. Nay, it's a great offer. The issue was a gift from my dad and I checked its value just before coming over today. It's worth well over a grand these days.

“A, ‘Pristine' is stretching it,” he finally says. “It's an eight point five, tops.”

Now it's my turn to guffaw. “Excuse me, but do I need to show you the paperwork again? This is a really interesting time for your photographic memory to fail you.”

“B, you are insane,” Casey says, ignoring me, “if you think I'd bail on seeing Zinc.” He puts his computer to sleep and gets up to find his backpack.

I sigh. I really thought the
Giant-Size X-Men
offer would hold more water with him. “Okay, then, what do you want?”

“Nothing,” Casey says without flinching. “I'm not missing Robert Zinc.”

I watch him carefully put two textbooks into his bag and zip it. There's no way I'm ready to give up.

“There has to be something you'd miss him for,” I say. Every geek has a price, something my dad, the OG—Original Geek—taught me long ago.

Casey's dark eyes stare into mine, and in a moment I'm pretty sure he's finally achieved his lifelong ambition of developing a mind-reading serum. Because he brings up the OG too. “Your dad's Obi-Wan figure.”

For an insane moment, I actually consider it, and the notion that I can somehow get my hands on it, all heist-like, and then just
hand it over
to Casey. But this is real life, not
The Sandlot.

“I'm inheriting that in about sixty years. Maybe come talk to me then.” Even though I know I'll never give it up, even then. The 1978 double-telescoping Obi-Wan figure, untouched and in its original box, is my legacy. Not to mention, whenever I do get it, my dad's ghost would definitely haunt me were I to just give it away.

“How about . . .” I have a sudden flash of brilliance. “My full Legends Awakened set?” Value-wise, this has nothing on Obi-Wan, of course. But sentimentally, it was one of the few things Casey didn't own when we were kids, and he wanted it . . . bad. It just so happened that those Pokémon booster packs came out during one of the years when both of his parents were on sabbatical and working on their respective academic books. It was a good year for us to play video games and eat as much sugar as we wanted with zero to no parental
supervision. A bad one for Casey to get a single birthday present he had asked for, partially because Mr. and Mrs. Zucker were too distracted and partially because money was pretty tight that year.

Casey brings his hands together and looks down into them, as if divining the answer there. I think I may have just hooked him and congratulate myself on my late-blooming genius. “And the
Giant-Size X-Men
?” he asks.

“Yes. Fine,” I agree, feeling relieved that our negotiations are at an end.

Only, he pauses again, still examining his hands, which he's now rubbing together exactly like a cartoon villain.

“Come on, Case,” I finally plead, trying to appeal to his heretofore nonexistent romantic side. He didn't seem particularly fazed when I told him a month ago that I was in love with Roxy. In fact, I think his exact reaction was to tell me that my lack of concentration was costing us the Warcraft raid. But I plunge on anyway. “I have to tell Roxy how I feel, and this is the perfect opportunity. You know how she feels about Robert Zinc.”

His eyes narrow. “You know how
I
feel about Robert Zinc.”

“And you know how
I
feel about Roxana . . .” I trail off. I should've known better. This line of beseeching isn't going to get anywhere with Casey.

Or so I think. “Okay, throw in one more thing and I'm in,” he says, finally staring up at me again with a gleam in his eye.

I draw in a sharp breath. “What?”

“The
X-Men
Number One, Legends Awakened, and . . . get Callie to agree to a date with me.”

My jaw nearly hits the floor. “Callie? Callie . . . McCullough?” I say numbly. As if we know any other Callies beside my stepsister.

“Yup,” Casey says, swinging his backpack over his shoulder and heading for his bedroom door.

“Just how am I supposed to do that?”

Casey shrugs. “I leave the method up to you. But those are my terms. Take them or leave them.”

I follow him out, stunned. Maybe I was wrong about Casey and romance after all. Maybe every geek not only has a price, but a girl who makes him crazy, too. As evidenced by the fact that he would even think to lump a date with a real-life person in the same category as some cards and a comic book (no matter how awesome they are). Maybe he's as far gone as me.

That's my own excuse, anyway, for immediately trying to figure out how to get my super-popular, athletic, senior stepsister to agree to a date with someone who, in her parlance, would inevitably be a junior dork. My mind churns for our entire way to school.

“WHAT, GRAHAM?” CALLIE GLARES AT
me over our boxes of Chinese food. Her mom, Lauren, picked some up on the way home from her office. My dad has only just gotten in about five minutes ago himself. Home-cooked meals at the Posner/McCullough house are an extremely rare occurrence, and the proximity of Number One Chinese Kitchen to Lauren's office means my weekly diet consists of Shrimp Chow Fun probably more than is good for my arteries.

“Nothing,” I say as I stab some more of the greasy noodles with my fork.

“Why do you keep staring at me?” She's still in her maroon soccer
uniform, and her bright red hair clashes spectacularly with the jersey. “Are you in love with me or something?”

“Ewww,” I say automatically. Technically, Callie and I aren't related, of course, but that would still be seriously gross.

Her brother, Drew, snickers next to her. Drew and I are in the same grade, and that's exactly where our similarities end. We've never even had a single class together, since I'm in honors everything and Drew . . . well, let's just say Drew plays football, lacrosse, and baseball proficiently, but he attends class a little less proficiently. I'm still not sure he's ever handed in a single stitch of homework, though, to be fair, I didn't know him before the fourth grade. Maybe he aced finger-painting and then decided that was enough of a scholarly peak for him.

I take it back. The McCulloughs and I do have one other thing in common: bizarrely, we all have red hair, though mine is a deeper auburn than theirs. When Dad and Lauren first got married, Roxana got a kick out of calling us the Weasleys, but within a few months she stopped because even a ten-year-old could tell that shared red hair does not a real family make.

I stare at the logo that decorates our takeout boxes. It's a number sign followed by a thumbs-up illustration, which is why Roxy and I always call the Chinese place Hashtag Like Restaurant. We've decided its slogan should be: An Eatery Ahead of Its Time.

Roxana. Robert Zinc. Casey. Callie. That seems to be the flowchart I'm stuck with. I have to make this work somehow.

“I hung out with Casey today,” I blurt to no one in particular, figuring maybe at least planting the seed of his name will be a start.

There's a long pause that my dad finally fills with, “How's he doing?”

Plotting how to get his hands on Obi-Wan
, an evil part of me wants to respond, but I settle for “Good.” And then struggle to follow that up with anything meaningful.

Dad nods and smiles. Nobody else registers that I've said anything.

“How was practice?” Lauren asks Callie and Drew.

“The new forward is really good,” Callie says. “I think we're going to beat Harborfields this weekend without a problem.”

“At least somebody will,” Drew grumbles. “The lax team is bullshit this year.”

“Watch the language, please,” Lauren says mildly, which is pretty rich considering how many times we all hear her swear on her frequent after-hours conference calls.

I zone out, mentally starting to add items to my “Things Roxana Loves” list instead of listening to sports stats that literally mean nothing to me.

John Hughes movies

White chocolate Hershey's Kisses

Micron markers in all six nib sizes

Anything on BBC America

Robert Zinc

Robert Zinc

ROBERT. ZINC.

God, I really have to figure out a way to get this Callie/Casey thing to happen. The night is a total wash in that regard, but as far as I'm concerned, the deal with Casey is on. It has to be. Before bed, I put my
Giant-Size X-Men
and Pokémon deck aside on a high shelf in my closet, ready to hand them over as soon as NYCC ends. The important thing for now is that Casey knows I'm as good as my word and that I'll figure the Callie situation out . . . somehow. I wonder if I can bribe her by offering to trade rooms. She has complained about the size of her closet more than once, and mine is definitely bigger. I stare woefully at all my carefully stacked board games, video games, and boxes of comic books. Man, the things a geek will do in the name of love . . .

I don't see Casey much over the next week. This is the first year we actually don't share any classes, plus he's been preoccupied with preparing for the PSATs. Casey is gunning for a National Merit Scholarship. Stony Brook is a pretty good school and he could go there for free thanks to his parents' jobs, but Casey is a man with Ivy League dreams and always has been. I know he's determined to get all the scholarship money his freakishly enormous brain can finagle.

In the meantime, the other crucial part of the plan involves making sure Roxana can cut school on Comic Con Friday.

In my experience—by which I, of course, mean brainstorming plotlines for
The Misfits of Mage High
—the simplest plans are often the best ones. And since this isn't a story I'm writing that needs obstacles thrown at it every five seconds to keep it interesting, I don't see why the simplest plan shouldn't just flat-out work.

Roxana will tell her parents she has school, followed by a dress rehearsal for the play, where the pit orchestra would of course need their star viola player. That will give her from 7 a.m. until about 7:30 p.m. to be away from home without anyone raising an eyebrow. But of course, instead of school, she'll be taking an early train into the city in the morning, having the most unforgettable day of her life, and then catching the 6 p.m. train back home.

“Easy peasy,” I say as I spear a Tater Tot at our cafeteria table. We're going over our plan one more time. “But just remember to have the cab to the train station pick you up a few blocks over.”

“Oh, no need for that.” Felicia, Roxana's girl best friend, flips her long, silky black hair over her shoulder. “My brother said he'd drop us off at the station.”

I stare at her. “Us?” I ask. There is no way Felicia Obayashi has any interest in Comic Con.

She grins back at me, gracefully piercing a piece of lettuce with her plastic fork. “You're getting Miss Goody-Two-Shoes here to cut class, lie to her parents, and spend a day in New York City? Of course I'm going to be there.” She carefully flicks her wrist, and right before my eyes, her
piece of lettuce folds and gets plopped into her mouth without smearing a jot of the shiny pink stuff she wears on her lips. I've suspected Felicia of practicing ninja mind tricks for years, and not just because she's of Japanese descent, either, but because I'm doubtful that there's a nonsupernatural way for someone to be so pretty, so smart, so talented, and so popular.