The Opposite of Geek (5 page)

Ashlyn announces we will make her favourite food in the entire world, ever, on Wednesday, as the cooking club gathers around her like kids to the kindergarten teacher. She revels.

Garth, a puny kid in grade nine who, it’s rumoured, eats, sleeps and breathes Dungeons and Dragons, takes the chair next to me. (The rumour goes he wants to change his name to Thor.) At least he’s okay in the kitchen. These days my criteria for suitable acquaintances has gone out the window. Garth/Thor makes a joke about what’s really in the brownies. A couple of innocents stare blankly.

“We’re practising these white chocolate–cherry brownies because I have a surprise for you.” Ashlyn giggles. Garth/Thor and I groan in unison and instantly feel a bond. “We’re going to have a stall at the Spring Fair!”

I look around at all the empty expressions and Ashlyn maniacally grinning. “What the hell’s that?” I ask. There are grunts of agreement around the room; I feel the power.

Ashlyn looks shocked. “The Spring Fair? Fundraising for the senior class trip? Games, rides, food, fun for all ages? Ring any bells?”

Garth/Thor pipes up. “Why should we slave for them?” More grunts, a few table-slaps. Ashlyn’s kindergarten class has officially rebelled.

“We give them a cut of the profits, they’re buying the ingredients,” Ashlyn explains. We’re not buying her logic. “It’s a partnership. We can use the money to get new equipment — or go on a field trip!”

I put my hand up. “Well, at least we get in free, right?” I step forward. “I’ll sell stuff if we get to take turns on the rides and games.” I look around and realize I could take over as leader of the pack (who knew?). “We deserve a reward for our brownies.” The cheers around me feel like warm honey — well, not really, but they feel good.

Popularity (at school): nil

Popularity (outside school): minimal but respectable

Boyfriend status: nil, but nobody’s perfect

Chemistry grade status: la la la, I can’t hear you

Hope for the future: faint but growing

We are solid, easy, fresh air in a stuffy room, and hilarious — no one makes us laugh like we do.

Dean makes me a playlist that spells out words by the first letter of the song’s titles:

C
ome On with Me, The Crones

R
ich Enough, Betty and George

A
llison, The Games

S
hut Up, The Cosmic Turkeys

H
ow Are You?, Tender Flesh

N
ot Now, Not Ever, Call Me Crazy

B
eautiful, Rock Paper Scissors

U
nderneath It All, Flavour

R
each Me, Stanley Shepard

N
oodles, Not The One You Want

I try not to read into it.

The rain lets up for a day and we get the most beautiful, almost-warm morning, on which I walk to school feeling like maybe things will be okay. Maybe I don’t need Nemiah.

I consider asking Ashlyn if she wants to go for coffee sometime. She’s been looking low lately — it’s going around that she and Luke are having issues.

A squirrel runs across the road toward me and stops, chewing a nut.

I pick up an acorn and throw it to him. He scampers off, but a minute later, when I look back, he grabs the one I threw and zips up a tree.

She’s been dumped. I won’t say I expected marriage or anything, but at least it could have lasted a month. I guess grade seven doesn’t work like that. She got 3.2 weeks and four sort-of-dates, but one doesn’t count because it was a walk home from school.

She sits at the breakfast table and moans about heartache and loss. I want to shake her and say, “You don’t know squat about those things — try losing your best friend!” but I don’t; Mum’s at the sink trying not to offer advice.

Layla slumps off to school and, on the order of our mother, I catch her up in the driveway and try for something cheery: “I’ll watch that music show with you tonight.”

She looks ready to cry. “That was Wes’s favourite show!” Gag-fest. She sniffs. “Can you paint my toenails for me?” I wonder what would happen if I answer literally. (Technically? Yes. Do I want to? No.).

“Yeah, all right,” I say, and she looks at me gratefully.

I am Super Sister.

Lanky wrong jeans boy

Exhales smarts like fog on glass

Has the coolest laugh

She finds me in the hall when I least expect it — think fast. Hard to do at 8:14.

“How are you doing with James?” she asks, all smiles. I try to smile back as I tell her that I think I’m getting it.

She nods, murmuring about Mr. Marchand knowing his star chemistry student can tutor anyone out of a black hole. Then she asks excitedly, “Did you read the poems?”

I dive into the security of poesy and feel much safer. “I’m really jealous of her sexy line breaks,” I say. “And there was this one image —”

“The frog in the pond?” Her face lights up.

“Yes!”

“Wasn’t that gorgeous? I almost cried. And the way it connected back to her mother …” She looks like she’s going to swoon.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She straightens up. “I’m okay. Oh, and she’s going to be at a poetry slam next month, if you want to check her out.”

“Poetry what?” I’ve never heard of this before, but just the sound of it makes me think I’ll love it and be embarrassed by it at the same time.

“It’s a performance poetry contest on Commercial Drive. Every Monday.” She looks at me from under her thick bangs. “You’d love it, Gretchen. Maybe you could go with James.”

“James isn’t into poetry — and we’re not together.” I don’t know why I have to say this — we are friends and I could totally ask him and Dean to go with me. “I just don’t know if performing poetry is my thing.”

“You don’t have to perform anything,” she says. “Just go and watch. It’s poetry that will blow your mind.” She unperches herself and turns to go. “And keep up the chemistry work, right?

with James/Dean I get to be myself.

Not the me who orders and cooks and cleans messes

in the Foods room. Not the me who

doesn’t upset the apple cart at home.

The fun me who howls with the boys

driving down the boulevard,

watching people watch us go by,

wondering how much they want to be us.

I was on the outside once too.

If I could bronze a moment

like my mum

bronzed my baby shoes,

it would be this:

Dean accidentally walking

through a tai chi session

in the park

on the way

to find ice cream.

Dean purposefully

joining in,

striking a praying mantis

pose beside

an old man whose eyes

were closed.

James and I hiding

behind a bush, stuffing

our hands

in our mouths

to keep from laughing.

The old man

opening his eyes,

seeing Dean in

Tortured Locust position

with his eyes closed,

and shouting so loud

Dean falls over.

I have never

laughed and run

so hard in my life.

I walk down the hall on the way to social studies and it happens: Nemiah looks up from reading something at her locker, and maybe she forgets for a second that we are not talking. She catches my eye and smiles. But then the light goes on: She’s supposed to be a bitch to me. She reverses the smile and looks away. It’s like I can hear the commentary her brain is making to her face muscles: “Cheeks up, smiling — wait! Abort! Target is not worthy of this reaction! Cheeks down, down! Avert eyes, commence Ignore Mode!”

We’re sitting in the library — one of the rare times these days when we actually act like tutor and tutee — and I’m looking for yet another way to avoid looking at chemical reaction formulas. James is wearing a t-shirt that says
Geeks Rule the World
, and has pictures of Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

“So, there’s this thing next Monday over on the Drive. I kind of want to go and I thought you and Dean might …” I don’t know how to end. Like it? Save me from myself?

“Define ‘thing,’” James says, his finger still on the formula for ammonium sulfide, “because Commercial Drive has a lot of them.”

“It’s a poetry slam,” I whisper.

“What? Speak up. The oppressive silence of the library is drowning you out.” His eyes crinkle in the corners. “Did I hear poetry?”

“Slam, yes. It’s this performance thing. Like spoken word, but there’s judges and winners.”

He slaps the table. The sound reverberates around the library like a gunshot. “You, Gretchen Meyers, are a poetry geek. Congrats on the arcane terminology. I have no idea what you just said. It’s awesome.”

I’m mortified, but I manage to ask if he’ll come.

He taps my shoulder lightly. “Hey, don’t take it personally. Embrace it. It’s your thing. Dean works that night, but I would like to be confounded and confused by a bunch of hopped-up poets on Monday. Count me in.”

Things don’t start off well for my first poetry slam. James doesn’t show at school on Monday, calls me at lunch to say he’s got the flu — so sorry not to witness me in my geek element.

Having made the stupid mistake of telling my parents about the poetry slam
(I’m going with a friend — a real one — you’ll be so proud)
, I explain that I won’t be going anymore. Mum then decides it’s her job to fill the James-shaped hole in the evening, likely because I still haven’t agreed to go for dinner with her. I can’t think of the right thing to say to turn her down. It’s actually nice of her to take an interest, considering it’s not doctor-related.

But as we pull up to the place, all I want to do is go home. I’m here with my mother. She won’t understand what’s going on — on several levels. She is wearing a sweater from the year I was born. What was I thinking?

We get a small table at the back of the café. Mum orders us hot chocolates and I try not to bolt for the door. Everyone is older than me, cooler than me, and completely without a parent.

“This should be interesting,” Mum says as she slides into her chair. “I’m so glad you invited me.”

I didn’t. You invited yourself
.

My heart is racing for some inexplicable reason. The lights dim slightly and the emcee gets up on the little stage.

later, after poets have stood up and read their stuff and the audience has sent the best ones to the final round, a guy with long hair and a goatee wins the slam and the crowd cheers. He deserved it. They all did. I want them all to go again — I want to live this hour again.

I’m not one for competition. Sports are not my thing, but poetry sports — now there’s something worthwhile.

I could be an elite poetry athlete.

I’m buzzed with the energy of the slam as we leave the café — the rhythms and voices and goosebump-inducing lines. It feels like home. This is where I want to be. I want to live here and make all these people my friends.

We walk back to the car in the cold drizzle and I forget my mum is walking beside me, I’m so pumped. I can’t wait to get to my room to write. It feels like my brain is cracked open and all the creative ideas I’ll ever be capable of are ready to be captured.

“Well, that was different,” my mother says. “I’m not sure I understood most of it, but they certainly had a lot of enthusiasm, didn’t they?”

I open the passenger door. “I thought it was amazing. I think it was one of the best nights of my life.”

She starts the car. “Well, I’m glad you had a good time.”

“No, I mean, I want to do that. I want to be a poet.”

There it is. Can’t take it back now.

“It could be a great hobby, Gretchen. I admire you for being so creative.”

“What if I don’t want it to be just a hobby?” I stare out the window at the wet streets, my heart hammering.

She pauses. “Well, I don’t think there are many poets who write for a living, sweetie. It’s not the kind of job that pays the bills. But once you get a practical training, something reliable, you can do something like this slam for fun. We’d love to come and cheer you on.”

“You totally don’t get it,” I mutter.

“What’s that?” she asks, distracted by a slow pedestrian.