Revenge of the Geek (2 page)

“Nope,”she said. “It’s safe, as far as I know.”

“Good,”I said.

Emmett looked curious, but he just shrugged, and we all headed over to Sunshine Burger. Ten minutes later we were sitting at a table with our trays. Emmett and I had ordered exactly the same thing: a double-decker cheeseburger, large fries, soda, and a chocolate shake topped with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. Hannah had a salad with grilled chicken and low-calorie dressing on the side. After eating three bites, she groaned and pushed back her tray.

“I’m stuffed,”she said.

I had just taken an enormous bite of my double-decker, so it took me a few minutes to chew and swallow before I could respond. “How can you be stuffed on two lettuce leaves and one tiny piece of chicken?”

“Hannah always eats like a bird,”Emmett said, beaming at her as though there were nothing more marvelous than the ability to survive on a few sticks and twigs.

I rolled my eyes, instantly irritated. One of the many, many things I liked about Dex was that he never minded that I had as large an appetite as he did. This was quickly followed by the now-familiar pang of sadness that thinking of Dex always caused recently. He’d been gone for only four days, and it already felt like forever. We talked every day on Skype, but it wasn’t the same as feeling the warmth of his hand entwined with mine or breathing in the freshly-laundered-clothes smell of him. I wasn’t going to see him in person until he was home for Thanksgiving break. How was I going to make it until then?

“Miranda?”Hannah said, interrupting my sad thoughts. “Did you hear me?”

“What? No.”

“I didn’t think you were listening,”Hannah said accusingly. “I
said
Emmett wants to come to the movies with us. Is that okay? I know we were supposed to be having a girls’day out.”

“Fine with me,”I said. “Emmett can be an honorary girl for the day. As long as he doesn’t mind getting pedicures with us.”

But now Hannah and Emmett weren’t listening to me. They were staring at each other with matching goopy expressions. I could have stood on the table and belted out a rendition of “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),”complete with Beyoncé’s dance moves, and it still wouldn’t have gotten their attention.

“You’ve got a stray hair,”Emmett told Hannah, sweeping the offending lock out of her face and tucking it behind her ear for her.

Hannah giggled and tipped her head coquettishly. “Maybe I should cut my hair short so it stays out of my face. I’ve always wondered how I’d look with a really, really short style.”

“Don’t do that. I like it long,”Emmett said, gently pulling on one of her silver-blond locks.

“You don’t think I’d look pretty with short hair?”Hannah asked.

“You’d look gorgeous no matter what,”Emmett said. He took her hand and brushed his lips against her knuckles.

“Gag,”I said.

Hannah and Emmett both looked at me. They seemed startled to find me sitting at the table with them.

“Seriously,”I said, “this is nauseating. You’re going to have to stop it now before it ruins my appetite.”

“Ignore her,”Hannah told Emmett. “She misses Dex, so she’s feeling bitter about love.”

“I’m not bitter about love,”I said, stung. “I happen to be very pro-love.”

“How is Dex doing? Have you talked to him?”Emmett asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, I talked to him last night. He’s fine. His roommate’s cool, and he said that everyone on the lacrosse team gets along.”

Dex had sounded really upbeat when I talked to him. I knew he’d been nervous about starting at a new school far away from home, where he didn’t know anyone. It had been too great an opportunity for him to pass up. The Brown Academy had one of the top high school lacrosse programs in the country, and a lot of the lacrosse players who went there ended up getting recruited by universities such as Princeton and Cornell. I knew it was important to him to do well at his new school, and I was glad that he was adjusting to being there. But a smaller, not-so-nice part of me had hoped that he’d be missing me too much—as much as I missed him—to settle in quite so quickly.

“Are you all ready to get back to school tomorrow?”Emmett asked.

I nodded. “Actually, I can’t wait. I’m on the staff of
The Ampersand
this year.”
The Ampersand
was Geek High’s award-winning magazine. I’d secured a coveted writer’s spot on the magazine at the end of my sophomore year. “How about you?”

“Yeah, I’m ready to get back, too. I came up with a great idea for the science fair. I’m hoping to go back to nationals this year,”Emmett said. Emmett had won the state science fair every year that he had entered. His sophomore year, he’d placed second in nationals for developing a system for purifying water in developing countries. “I’m working on a new way to power cars with solar energy,”he continued. “The technology has been out for a while, but no one’s perfected it.”

“Wow. That would be amazing,”I said, impressed.

“I just need to figure out how I’m going to construct the canopy, and how the solar cells will be set up,”Emmett said.

It was Hannah’s turn to roll her eyes. “Only Geek High students would be looking forward to school. I wish summer vacation would last forever,”she said. She checked her watch. “The movie’s going to start soon. We should probably head over to the theater.”

“Let me just finish my burger first,”I said, taking another large bite and following it with a slurp of chocolate shake.

Hannah wrinkled her nose. “I thought you said you lost your appetite.”

I shrugged. “I have to get my energy back after all that shopping,”I said, popping a fry into my mouth.

Chapter Two

I
parked my ugly yellow car in the student lot behind Geek High, hoping no one would see me. While I very much appreciated the car, which my dad had given me at the end of the summer, there was no getting around it: the car was truly hideous. It was short, stubby, and neon yellow, with amateurishly painted black racing stripes down the sides. Still, an ugly car was better than no car at all, and it was a nice, freeing feeling to be able to drive myself to school for the very first time.

Grabbing my backpack, I climbed out of my car and shut the door. The locks on the driver’s-side door didn’t work, but I didn’t think there was any danger of anyone stealing it.

“Oh. My. God.”

I cringed. I recognized the voice even before I turned to face Felicity Glen. She was the person I had most wanted to avoid, so it figured that she’d be the first person I’d run into.

“Is that your car?”Felicity asked, hooting with laughter.

I squared my shoulders and turned to face her. Felicity was annoyingly pretty. She was petite, with fine bones, dark brown hair, and catlike green eyes. Her full lips were curved in an evil smile as she looked from me to the yellow car and back again.

“As a matter of fact, it is,”I said, trying for an air of breezy indifference.

“That is the ugliest car I have ever seen,”Felicity said.

“Why do you think your opinion would mean anything to me?”I asked.

“You’re going to pretend you like driving that thing?”Felicity asked, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in it.”

“I guess I’m just not as superficial as you are,”I said.

“That’s for sure,”Felicity said. “Just look at the way you—”

I knew she was about to say
dress
, but then she looked me up and down and a frown darkened her face. I was wearing a navy and white striped tank top that tied behind my neck with my new khaki cargo miniskirt. The tank top on its own wasn’t strictly dress code compliant, so I’d brought a cotton navy cardigan to wear over it for when I got out of the heat. Hannah, of course, had helped me pick out my outfit for the first day of school. Actually, it had been a little insulting, as Hannah had insisted on not only selecting my clothes, but then actually laying them out on the floor with accessories—a trio of silver bangles and a necklace with a bird-shaped pendant—so that I wouldn’t make any mistakes while dressing.

I’d always thought that there wasn’t any point in getting all dressed up just to go sit in a classroom all day. But I had to admit, it felt pretty good to silence Felicity Glen.

“What were you going to say?”I asked sweetly. “Something about the way I dress?”

“Whatever. I don’t have time to stand around talking to you all day,”Felicity said, turning away. “And your car is hideous!”

I laughed at her departing back.

“Should I be worried that you’re standing here by yourself, laughing?”Charlie asked, appearing beside me. “You’re not having a nervous breakdown, are you?”

Charlie was one of my best friends. She was thin and her short, spiky hair was bright green. Today, she was wearing a purple tunic with a pink satin skirt over a black tulle underskirt. Somehow, Charlie managed to make it all look incredibly stylish.

“Green?”I asked. The last time I’d seen her—two days ago—her hair had been Strawberry Shortcake red.

“I thought I’d shake things up for the first day of school,”Charlie explained. “So, are you having a nervous breakdown?”

“No,”I said. “Just enjoying giving Felicity a smack down, thanks to my awesome new fashion skills.”

Charlie looked me over. “You are looking especially cute this morning. Did Hannah dress you?”

“No, I dressed myself, thank you very much,”I said.

“But she picked out your clothes, right?”

“Do you really have so little faith in my fashion sense?”

“Yes,”Charlie said.

“Thanks a lot,”I said.

“You’re the one who always says you were born without a fashion gene,”Charlie said, shrugging. “Have you seen Finn yet?”

Charlie’s tone was casual, but I knew better. Finn was our other best friend. Over the summer, Charlie had finally admitted to me what I’d long suspected—that she had feelings for Finn that went beyond friendship. I’d had reason to believe that Finn had similar feelings for Charlie. But it was a case of bad timing—Finn currently had a girlfriend, Phoebe McLeod, who was in Hannah’s class at Orange Cove High. He was also oblivious to Charlie’s feelings for him. I’d advised Charlie to just tell Finn how she felt about him, but so far she’d refused to do so. She was convinced that if she told Finn she had feelings for him, things between them would become awkward and strained and eventually ruin their friendship.

“Not yet,”I said as we walked up the sidewalk, which snaked from the student parking lot around the side of the school. “But I did talk to him briefly last night. He said he has a surprise for us.”

“Uh-oh,”Charlie said.

“Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction, too,”I said.

Finn was very funny and completely brilliant, but he also lacked a moral compass. His idea of a surprise could mean an announcement that he had hacked into the Federal Reserve and transferred ten billion dollars to an offshore account. He was totally capable of doing it—Finn was a computer genius who’d developed several top-selling video games. In a review, a critic had called Finn’s most famous creation, Grunge Aliens, “the most awesomely violent video game ever made.”Finn had been thrilled. Anyway, his series of successful computer games meant that Finn was set for life, and didn’t have to worry about getting into a top college or landing a good job postgraduation. So there was even less incentive for him to stay out of trouble.

“What do you think he’s done this time?”Charlie asked, as we turned the corner and headed down the walk that led to the front entrance of Geek High.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “I think I might have an idea.”

“What?”Charlie asked, also stopping. Then, following my appalled stare, she turned toward the stairs that led up to the front door. Her mouth fell open. “Please tell me I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

“I would love to. But I’d be lying,”I said.

Finn stood at the top of the stairs, beaming down at us. He was tall and pale, with light blue eyes and a faint scar over his lip, a remnant from the cleft-lip surgery he’d had as a baby. His brown hair used to be too long and shaggy. Now the sides were shaved, leaving one single stripe down the center of his head.

“He has a Mohawk,”Charlie squeaked.

“Yes, he does. And he looks like an idiot.”I looked at her. “Please tell me this has some effect on your feelings for him.”

Charlie shrugged helplessly. “I wish I could say it does. But who am I to talk? I have green hair.”

“But you could dye your hair back to a normal color tonight if you wanted to. He’s stuck with that ridiculous look until it grows in,”I protested.

Finn took the stairs two at a time and jogged out to meet us. “Hey, foxy ladies,”he said. Finn preened, turning his head from side to side to give us the full view. “So? What do you think?”

“Do you really want to know?”I asked.

Finn looked hurt. “You don’t like the new look?”

“No,”Charlie and I said together.

“Too bad,”Finn crowed. “Because I love it. My head feels so much cooler without all of the hair. And Phoebe thinks I look sexy like this.”

“That’s because Phoebe’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal,”Charlie muttered under her breath.

“What’s that? I didn’t hear you,”Finn asked. “Were you commenting on how insanely hot I look?”