Geek Girl (3 page)

He turns away to open the full-size fridge that stands in the corner.
He’s obviously has never had a girl over before,
I think mockingly. Then again, that could be a good thing, helping me in my game.

“You have a diet Coke?”

“Uh, no. Not down here. But I’ll bet my mom has one upstairs. I’ll go grab one.”

Before I can stop him, he turns and jogs back up the stairs, leaving me with the two geeks, who are still staring at me, jaws gaping.

“What’s up?” I say, and they both look at each other as if I have spoken in another language and they’re checking to see if the other can translate. Finally, Jim turns back to me.

“Not much.” His answer sounds like a question.

They turn away, but I’m not going to let them go.

“Whatcha watching?” I call. In true dork fashion, they can’t be rude, so they both turn back.

“Uh, it’s called
Ghost Robot of the Twenty-Third Century
.” This time it’s Brian who speaks, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

“Sounds cool,” I say, and they look at each other again. Brian’s eyes come back to me, and he finally places the dripping tortilla chip in his mouth, chewing very slowly, as if doing so will keep the noise from frightening the alien (me) and causing it to attack. I nearly laugh.

Two sets of footsteps come back down, and I turn to see Trevor, diet Coke in hand, trailed by yet another geek. He walks straight over to me.

He thumbs over his shoulder. “That’s Mark.”

“Thanks, Trev,” I say, taking the drink. He narrows his eyes at me, and I correct myself. “I mean, Trev
or
.”

Three others arrive shortly after, and we settle in for the geek-fest.

I sit among Trevor’s dorky friends, eat pizza, and watch the science fiction crap movies they’ve rented. At first, they’re uncomfortable with me there, no one talking much. But Trevor, ever the polite host, keeps talking to fill the awkward silences—making sure to look my way, so that I know I’m included in the conversation. I don’t say much, but I watch Trevor, smiling a secret smile at him whenever he looks my way, which flusters him.

Eventually though, the nerd hormones take over and they can’t temper their excitement over the movies, so they begin talking, having geek-debates over certain technical aspects of the movies and about the characters and their meanings and intentions. After a while, I forget my mission to keep Trevor off balance and begin to watch the spectacle that is this group, amused.

I also start to relax in spite of myself and actually laugh a few times at Trevor. The guy can actually be pretty funny. His mom comes down several times to replenish the snacks though they don’t need to be. I can tell by the others’ reactions that this is not normal. She glances my way each time she comes. I definitely have her on her toes.

I wait until everyone else has left before I go. Trevor walks me to the door, of course. I give his arm a squeeze again, à la the night of the dance.

“Thanks, Trev—or.” He grimaces at the obvious add-on. “I had fun.”

He glances out the door. “Did you walk?”

“Yeah.”

“Want me to have my mom give you a ride home?” he asks.

“No.” My answer is quick. “Definitely not.”

“I can’t give you a ride because my dad has my car tonight.”

“That’s okay. I survived the walk here, and I’m pretty sure I’ll survive the walk home.”

“It’s dark,” he states the obvious.

I look behind me in mock surprise.

“Wow, when did that happen? Hope it’s not a full moon.” This is in reference to the last movie we watched, which was about werewolves.

I look back at him, and he’s smiling at my (very) little joke. He has dimples, which I haven’t noticed before. Pretty cute—though they don’t cover his dorkiness.

“Can I walk you home then?”

I shrug. “Sure. Why not?”

He nods and steps outside, closing the door behind him after telling his mom where he’s going. I’m sure she’s thrilled about that.

“Can I ask you something?” he says, hands in pockets as we walk. I look at him and think that dressed as he is in jeans and a T-shirt he could
almost
pass as a non-dork—except that his T-shirt depicts one of the comic-aliens from the first movie. “Why did you come tonight?”

“You invited me,” I evade, surprised by his directness. I guess somewhat egotistically I expected him to be so overwhelmed by my attentions—or the attentions of any girl, really—that he would just be silently grateful.

“Yeah, I know. But you invited me to go somewhere with you first. Why did you do that?”

I shrug and fudge the truth. “I like you.”

“You don’t really know me.”

“Well, you’re kinda cute, I guess.” I glance over and can swear he’s blushing. “And I had fun dancing with you at the stomp. I thought you might be fun to hang out with.”

He thinks about this for a few silent minutes.

“I’m not exactly your type,” he finally says.

I stop and turn to face him.

“Trevor, do you think I’m looking to have you for a
boyfriend
?” My voice is flirty though chiding, a hint of southern belle thrown in for good measure.

He shuffles his feet, embarrassed.

“No, of course not, that’s not what I meant. I just meant . . . well, I mean—”

“Relax,” I say, cutting into his stumbling speech. “I’m teasing you.”

“Oh.” He smiles sheepishly, relieved. It does the trick, throwing him off the course of his questioning. I can see that now he’s wondering what my last comment meant. Was I teasing about
not
wanting him as a boyfriend, or about
not-
not wanting him for a boyfriend? He isn’t about to ask again.

He drops me off on my own doorstep, and just to keep him a little more off balance, I lean up and kiss him on the cheek.

“Thanks again. See you at school on Monday.”

I walk in and close the door on his stunned face. All is going well, I think.

I’m also surprised. The night was actually not horrible.

Do you maybe wanna hang out tonight?” he asks me tentatively on Friday after another week of my blatant flirting, surprising me. I thought I would have to be the all-out pursuer. This might not take as long as I had originally thought.

“Can’t. Family night and all that,” I tell him.

It’s the truth. This foster family insists on Friday nights together, stupid family games or going to a brainless G-rated movie or some other equally lame waste of my time. But I have to go along because I’m not ready to be shuffled off just yet. I would really miss Ella and Beth. Plus, I now have this new project to keep me busy.

“Wanna go party on Saturday?” I ask.

“Can’t, it’s the third Saturday of the month.” Like that should mean something to me. At my confused look, he clarifies. “I have to be at the senior center that night. You could come if you want.”

“Okaaay.” I’m fighting making the gagging motion—seriously, the
senior center
? But I guess there are sacrifices to be made if I’m to succeed. So I say, “Sure, why not?”

His eyebrows rise in astonishment, but he doesn’t comment on my obviously unexpected answer.

“I’ll come pick you up.” At my look, he says, “It’s too far to walk.”

He has that look on his face, the one people get when they want to say something but also don’t want to say it. My instinctive defenses come up.

“What?” I ask, a little defiantly.

“Nothing, it’s just . . .”

“Just what?” I demand again, after a few moments of silence in which he appraises me, apparently trying to guess my reaction.

“Well, I used to be over in your neighborhood quite a bit, mowing lawns.”
Well, of course,
I think. What a perfect geek summer job. He probably did it for free as some kind of charity work. “And I don’t remember ever seeing you.”

“Maybe because I’ve been there less than a year.”

“Oh,” he says, face clearing, mystery solved. “Did your family just move here?”

“No, as far as I know they’ve lived there for years.”

“But . . .” Now Trevor looks really confused, brows pulled together, and I realize he doesn’t know. I’ve just always assumed everyone knew I was a foster kid, as if it were tattooed on my forehead in bright, glowing neon.

“I live with a foster family, Trevor. Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I guess I didn’t.” His forehead is still puckered.

“You can back out if you want.” I try to sound flippant, uncaring, but truthfully it always hurts to be rejected because of this thing that is beyond my control, even if it is just a geek rejecting me. Reject me because of my looks or my attitude, my behavior or even my laugh—that’s fine. But
this
I have no way to change.

His brows crash together more tightly.

“Why would I want to back out?” He sounds genuinely curious.

“Because I’m, you know, a . . . foster kid.” I try, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep the hurt out of my voice.

“Is that contagious or something?” he asks, and it takes me a minute to realize he’s
teasing
me.

“Could be,” I finally say nonchalantly.

He shrugs and his face clears. “I’ll take my chances.”

⊕⊗⊕

“The
senior
center?” my friends choke out between laughs. “You are going above and beyond!”

“Never let it be said I don’t commit,” I tell them.

⊕⊗⊕

Saturday comes, and Trevor picks me up at six o’clock sharp. He comes to the door to get me. My foster mother is so overjoyed to see such a polite, clean-cut person here to pick me up—instead of the usual riffraff, as I’ve heard her call them when she thinks I’m not listening—that she is positively beaming. She doesn’t even ask where I am going or give me a time to be home. I’m sure she knows she doesn’t need to. Everything about Trevor cries out “rule-follower,” so there isn’t any doubt he will have me home long before curfew.

We walk outside and there in the driveway sits the coolest car ever.

“This is yours?” I ask, awed.

“Yeah. It’s old, I know.” He shrugs. “I’m restoring it, though it will probably be about as worthless restored as it is now.”

“Are you kidding? A 1973 Chevy Nova four door, right?” I don’t wait for his answer. “No doubt it would be worth more if it were an SS Coupe, but seriously cool as is. V-8?” I ask.

“Yeahhh,” he draws the word out slowly, looking from the faded orange car covered with spots of gray putty that look like oversized chicken pox, to me.

“You surprise me, Jennif—I mean, Jen.” He smiles.

I just shrug, excited to ride in his car. I know cars from one of the foster families I lived with where both the father and the son were car fanatics. As usual, I feel a shard of regret when I think of them. They were my third foster family—and I had hoped they’d be my last.

The first two foster families came before I knew the game like I do now. I was still struggling with the circumstances that had put me in foster care to begin with, and neither family turned out to be fond of a paranoid, insecure girl who hoarded food and shoved a chair under her doorknob at night for security. Both had turned me back in, like a used car, or a broken toy, or unwanted wedding gift. I pretended it didn’t matter, though it was heart-wrenching rejection.

The third family I came to was different. Consisting of a mother, father, and their only son, they took me in and treated me as if I’d always been a part of their family. Their son became an immediate brother, teasing and torturing me like a real little sister, but always with that underlying sense of love and security that came in true families. Not in
my
real family, of course, but in
normal
 
families.

That’s where I learned about cars, spending hours in the garage with them, listening and learning. The TV was always on car shows or races. It was the first place I’d had a sense of security, of really belonging.

I thought I’d stay there forever.

Then the mother developed a fast-moving cancer. When it became obvious she wouldn’t live, the state removed me from their home, from
my
home. She died within six months of the diagnosis, and in spite of my pleading and my foster father’s efforts, the state wasn’t about to put a teenage girl back into a home with two males and no females.

That was when I decided to take control back. From that point on, it became
my
decision how long I would stay with any given family, and
I
would cause the circumstances that made the family turn me back in.