The Opposite of Geek (7 page)

Mr. Marchand is once again the bearer of bad news; my progress report will show a pitiful chemistry grade, much too low for The Board’s standards. Not a fail, thanks to James, but still: undoctorly.

But there are other far more pressing matters on the horizon, and I push everything else out of my mind …

Today is the day.

Now is the time:

3:30 P.M., and I’m pretending

to read my social studies homework,

waiting for the clock

to get to 4:00 P.M.,

so I can walk outside

and look like I almost

wasn’t going to make it.

Flawless casual-looking makeup: check.

Slightly messy but perfect hair: check.

Jeans that give good butt: check.

Lucky bra: check. (It’s not really lucky,

but after this it will be!)

Heart in throat: check.

Maybe I should check my pulse —

Be cool. I search for the bitchin’ attitude

I had in the car the day I asked him out.

Well, asked him to ask me out.

Breathe in.

Okay, go.

looking so … touchable in a blue-collared shirt, with a bouquet of daisies lying on the passenger seat. I’m in trouble.

He gets out and opens the door for me, gives me a hug and the flowers. “I know we’re just going for coffee, but I wanted to get you something.”

He shifts the car with finesse and we drive away from the school, away from my boring life as a nobody in grade eleven, and toward —

My dress is made of white linen napkins

stitched together, and the manager

of the place marries us, with the baristas

as witnesses. We have blueberry coffee

cake and chai tea at the reception.

We talk about music and Japanese food, what we want to be, what we don’t want to be.

He asks if I’ve told The Board about our date.

“It’s not really their business,” I say. I don’t say I haven’t even told them about him at all.

“Won’t they approve?” he teases.

“Who cares if they don’t? I want something just for myself,” I say, leaning in enough to make him catch his breath.

He can’t stop looking at me and I have this squishy feeling in my stomach. My chai tea and blueberry coffee cake are only half-drunk/eaten because we’ve been talking so much.

By 5:46 I realize we could go on like this all night.

“You need to go?” he asks.

“No, I’ll just make a call,” I say, and get up, pulling out my first generation phone.

“Whoa, that’s old school!” he says and grabs for it.

“Yes, I know, it’s been passed down through the family for hundreds of years.”

He laughs, examining the phone like it’s actually an antique.

“I thought everyone was born with one of
these
nowadays.” He holds out his shiny version.

I take it from him and tease, “Who says
nowadays
nowadays?”

He pokes me in the stomach and I squeal.

A few old people look up from their coffees and frown.

Before he drops me off at the end of my driveway,

he leans over like he’s going to kiss me,

instead shows me his phone.

“Guess what you are?” he says.

“Um, a great catch?”

“For sure,” he laughs. “But I mean

your ringtone. James is the Star Wars theme.

My dad is Darth Vader.”

“Really?”

He shrugs. “I was kind of pissed at him

when I programmed it, but now it fits.

He gets a kick out of it.”

He looks at me with the cutest, waiting-est

look on his face.

“Um, an ewok?” I ask,

inside thinking,
please be Princess Amidala, please

be Princess Amidala
.

He finds my name in his phone

and Natalie Portman’s voice makes me smile.

I come through the door a respectable thirteen minutes before the nine o’clock deadline and they are all sitting on the couch watching
The Muppet Show
. Really. For a second I wonder if I’ve stepped into a time warp.

“How was it?” Layla asks suspiciously, as if she knows it was not a visit to Ashlyn’s house, which is my cover.

“Fine. We went over Spring Fair stuff. Her dog just had a litter of puppies. We played with them.” I lean against the back of the couch. “Why are you watching this?”

“Your sister’s choice. It brings us back to our first days in Canada,” my dad says. “I learned English from shows like this.”

It’s oddly disturbing to see them all together on the couch, doing something so familial without me. Not that I wanted to be here at all. “Well, I’m going to do my homework. Goodnight.” I turn to go.

“We’re due a progress report soon, aren’t we?” my mum says.

I shrug. “I guess.”

“And we’re really pleased to hear about the initiative you’re showing with the Food Club. Good leadership skills.”

I know where she’s going with this.
These are all traits of a good doctor. We couldn’t be happier that you are cramming yourself into the box we picked out for you!

“Yeah, well …” I keep inching backwards, hoping they’ll get distracted by Miss Piggy.

“By the way,” Dad says. “My friend Harold — you remember him? — he says he’d be happy to have you visit him when he’s working in the hospital so you can ask some questions and learn a little about what he does. Being an anaesthetist is very lucrative.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’m going to go now.”

“That’s very nice of him,” Mum says. “Isn’t it, Gretchen?”

“Yes, it’s very nice of him. I’m tired, so …”

Finally something funny happens on the TV and Layla howls. I don’t wait around to finish my sentence.

It was so dreamy, so amazing, so adjective adjective adjective!

There aren’t words in the English language, or any other, to describe the way he leaned in, so slowly, the shudder of Lucy a background hum. The way his clothes smelled, the coffee on his breath, his lips, so close.

I think I blacked out from that kiss — but maybe not — I remember the feel of our mouths together, the warm wet (way better than behind the portables). I felt shivery and fevery, goose pimply. He smiled into my neck as we hugged.

I could feel it, and I wanted to drive away with him. It was like we could have lived off that feeling for the rest of our lives.

At 9:37, seven minutes

after incoming calls

are disallowed (except Nemiah’s

back in the age of that friendship),

there’s a knock on my door,

and I look up from my social studies text

to see Layla holding the phone out.

It’s Ashlyn.

Bless Ashlyn and all her weirdness

for her good timing.

She’s calling to whine about Luke,

but also to blab about

the Spring Fair. I let her

talk while I finish the last two

comprehension questions.

I don’t want to be rude — after all

she called just in time

to make my cover story appear true.

In the end, I agree to help all day

at the baking table so she won’t

lose her mind without me.

Friends help each other, right?

It has arrived faster than I expected, with all the excitement of a medieval execution. Everyone is thrilled to bake enough brownies to kill an army and then hawk them behind a table like a seller at ye olde carnival. And, amazingly, the fair’s not for another ten days. There’s still lots of procrastination time, but we are all in the Foods room to see how efficient we can be. I wonder if this is like the pep talk the swim team gets.

Coach Ashlyn paces and throws out words like stamina, perseverance and silicone oven mitts. She pounds her fist into her hand and for once, everyone is listening instead of looking to me. I’m a little proud of her, actually.

We organize ingredients, roll up our sleeves and get to work. Garth/Thor is on chocolate chip duty and I wrangle the little-brains so they don’t mistake baking powder for flour. It all goes like clockwork.

Ashlyn is so happy she wears a perma-smile. “It’s going to be so amazing, don’t you think, Gretchen?” I agree as I help avert an egg-cracking disaster.

“Hey,” she says, “you want to come to my place tomorrow night? I’d love to go through some other recipes I found online. And you’ve got to see the puppies — they’re the cutest things ever!” I glance around, hating to let her down in so public a place.

“Maybe,” I say, and then make a huge mistake. “I might be doing something with my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?”

Garth/Thor stands behind us, his hands full

of melting chocolate chips. “Gretchen

has a boyfriend?”

Ashlyn turns to me.

“You have a boyfriend? Oh my god!

Is it someone I know?”

I try to back away, but a little-brain says,

“It’s James Tarden in grade twelve!”

There are giggles. Snickers. All baking ceases.

“Some people saw you two leaving school

a bunch of times,” says the little-brain.

“Is he the guy with the t-shirts that tell

everyone they’re so much stupider

than him?” someone calls.

“Oh my god, are you two going out?”

I am speechless for a moment, and then

I am overwhelmed with fury.

“You freaks!” I spit. “James is a really nice guy.”

“You
are
going out with him!” people shout.

“No, I’m not!” I yell. “It’s someone else!”

But by then the damage is done.

He stands in a jagged line of bus-waiters, brown t-shirt proclaiming the formula for some chemical I’d rather not think about. It shouldn’t bother me — he knows who he is and I respect that — but after the last hour of fending off questions about our supposed romantic entanglement, it would be better if his t-shirt was plain.

He looks around as if he’s searching for someone but his face opens into a smile when he sees me. “Hey, Gretchen. Ready for bowling insanity tonight? I’m terrible, but I’m told I’m entertaining to watch.”

I turn my back on the people staring at us. Apparently news travels fast from the Foods room.

He keeps looking over his shoulder.

“What’s going on?” I ask. “You’re acting kind of twitchy.”

He leans in, still looking around. “Pulled a prank on the lacrosse team. Tell no one.”

I mouth the word “what” and make it a question with my raised eyebrows.

The bus turns the corner and the waiters scramble to be first in line for the empty seats. James steps back and I follow.

“These guys have been accosting me for months. I couldn’t handle it anymore.” He looks down at his runners, one corner of his mouth pulling up. “Ammonium sulphide, kids.”

“Oh, god — did you poison them?”

He rolls his eyes as the bus pulls to a stop. “No — it’s a stink bomb, Gretchen. Don’t you remember anything from our lessons?” He steps into line and waves. “See you tonight.”

Grades in hand, I walk into the living room, unable to delay any longer. I know it’s better they hear it from me.

I shove the paper at them and hold my breath as they scan it. Force myself to breathe.

They’re quick to spot the incongruity.

“What happened here?” Dad says, pointing. “You didn’t tell us your chemistry grade was so weak.”

“I got a tutor. And I didn’t fail, so that’s good.”

“What kind of tutor was it? This is a very low mark.” Mum shakes her head. “Why didn’t you tell us about this? We could have found you someone professional, someone —”

“I didn’t want that. God, I didn’t want a tutor in the first place. I hate chemistry and it’s a miracle I passed.”

“Well, you’ll need to pull up this grade if you want to get into pre-med. We can find you someone. Margaret next door knows a university student who —”

“You’re not listening.” I pull the paper from their hands. “I. Hate. Chemistry. I’m going to drop it as soon as I can so I can focus on stuff I really care about …” Deep breath. “And I don’t want to be a doctor.”

They stare, of course. “But you’ve always said …”

“I haven’t wanted to be a doctor for about a decade. It was you who wanted me to be one.” I hold out my grades again. “Look: A+ in English. I want to be a writer. That’s what I love.”

“When did you decide this?” Dad says. “It doesn’t sound like you.”

“Actually it sounds exactly like me,” I say.

My mum is looking uneasily at the floor. “You did mention it, Gretchen, but you know it’s not a realistic career choice. How would you support yourself on writing?”

I scrunch up the paper and watch them cringe. “God, no one understands me but my friends.”

“And who are these friends? Is it Ashlyn?”

“It’s James and Dean, the guys I’ve hung out with for weeks. The guys who were there after Nemiah —” I stop. “Anyway, they understand.”

Mum picks the crumbled paper off the floor. “You haven’t told us about these boys. What do you do with them? Who are they?”

God, they didn’t give Layla this much third degree about Wes. “What does it matter? We hang out. They’re great guys.” Then I make a mistake. “We’re going out tonight.”

“No, you’re not,” Dad says. “We need to talk about this. You can’t expect us to let you go out after this conversation, without meeting these boys, not knowing where you’re going.”

“I’m sixteen, Dad. We’re going bowling. In public. End of story.” I start to walk away, anger filling my stride.

“You are not leaving this house, Gretchen,” Mum says behind me. “We’ll finish this over dinner.”

“No, we won’t,” I say without turning. “I’m not hungry.”