The Opposite of Geek (4 page)

Svelte bodies jumping

to Moroccan hip-hop beats

They gorge on penne

Now I know, as one of the initiated, that swim team parties are the weirdest things invented. They occur after the meet, during the day, there is no alcohol (visible to the naked eye) and no weed (once again …) and everyone is SO DAMN HAPPY and devours plates of noodles. There really is a trampoline, but it’s called a tramp because Becca’s sister is an elite gymnast and in the biz it’s called a tramp — like
skank
for my mum’s generation. They jump and jump. No one pukes up their pasta. These people are machines. Front-crawling, giggling, iron-stomached machines.

Nemiah has left me in the middle of the lawn and taken off with Shay and a few other swim girlies, and I stand there like a tree waiting for her to realize she forgot me. I imitate cedar and Douglas fir for ten minutes. Then maple for ten minutes more.

I know I look like a fool.

A foolish tree.

People brush past me, trying not to stare. How could she leave me here? Bitterness rises in my stomach and I make a move. To the bathroom.

I can think in there, on the toilet with the lid down. It’s fuzzy pink. Okay, breathe.

I have to find Nemiah. She’s probably looking for me.

In the kitchen, Shay’s filling balloons with water. Aha.

“Is there a battle?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

She glances my way and shrugs. “If you say so.”

“Those — are you going to throw them?”

She ties one off. “That’s what they’re
usually
used for.”

I can tell I’m a noxious underground insect to Shay, but I dig myself a little deeper.

“Do you know where Nemiah is?”

Shay puts the water balloons in a tub and walks toward the deck. “At this second? Not sure.”

I follow, waiting long enough that I look like I’m not following. I fail.

Shay turns and gives me a look that hisses
don’t follow me
.

I glance around. This is about as much female hostility as I can take in a day. I feel a little shaky. Nowhere do I glimpse Nemiah’s long, dark ponytail. It’s all I want to see in the world.

by the rhododendrons,

crouching with other girls

like they’re hiding.

Something flashes past

and splooshes water —

a balloon. Shay runs to them

with her ammo,

squealing. She says something

to Nemiah, handing her

a balloon. I watch, waiting

for her to get up, leave

the fun and games

and tell me it’s stupid,

she’s going home with me

to hang out, just us.

But she looks at me

for a second, back at Shay,

and back at me, motioning

with her hand. “Come here,”

she mouths. Shay’s busy

fighting the good fight.

My gut drops. She’ll never

believe me if I tell her

how bitchy Shay was.

I wait one more

second, but a water bomb

hits her on the head,

and she shrieks, grabbing

at Shay to get out

of firing range.

I take two clumsy

steps backwards.

Then another, and

another.

Soon I’ve walked

all the way down

the driveway

and onto the road.

My ears ring like I’ve been at a concert.

Did that just happen?

I feel hazy, a little dizzy.

I walk down the cul-de-sac, where the grade twelves’

cars are parked, all shiny and borrowed,

along the sidewalk.

I wander the neighbourhood looking for a bus stop and thinking how Nemiah’s new friends will all glare at me on Monday. I don’t care. She left me.

She
left
me
. I’m officially pissed off and hurt.

I stomp out onto a main road and try to find a landmark I recognize. All strange houses, strange cars, nothing I know — damn, I should have asked where the hell we were. Finally a bus comes by and I race ahead of it, looking for the bus stop. Guess who gets there first?

I sit at the bus stop for half an hour. An old man plunks down next to me. He smells overwhelmingly like cat food.

Right now I’d even take Layla for conversation.

I call home on my cell, but there’s no answer so I sit there and try not to smell cat-food-man or get gunk on my jeans from the bench.

I get home two hours after I left the party. Naturally, my parents were out shopping until just before I got there.

My mum questions me lightly, but I don’t give much away. She asks if I want to help make a trifle for a dinner party they’re going to. I like custard and cake, so I say okay, but I feel like a kid who’s left out of the playgroup and is placated by the grown-up with some unimportant job. Placing slices of banana between custard and brandy-soaked cake.

Ingredients:

One controlling mother

One strong-willed daughter

Detailed history

A sprinkle of hormones

A lot of tension

A few misunderstandings

Directions:

Marinate the first two ingredients in the history for sixteen years. Sprinkle in the hormones and tension and watch the mixture bubble up. Stir in a few misunderstandings. Pour everything into a pan and bake in a 350-degree oven for as long as you can stand it. After a while, you’ll have a hot mess that will continue developing flavour the longer you leave it.

Crunch like breakfast bones

milky morning spoon droplets

time makes things soggy

And here’s a real one that kind of cheers me up. Kind of.

First winter rain —

even the monkey

seems to want a raincoat
.

– Bashō

I forgot with all my own drama that my sister is dating a grade seven boy. His name is Wes (no last name apparently) and he took her to see a romantic comedy and they ate popcorn and held hands. Yes, they had a gaggle of friends around them, but still — I’d kill for any of those scenarios right now.

She arrived home at nine-thirty-two, a smile stretched across her face, her makeup still pristine, and my mum gave her a hug that meant both
My baby’s growing up!
and
You’re two minutes after curfew!

I watched from the couch and finally she sat down beside me. “Thanks for your help,” she said.

“Did he kiss you?” I prodded.

She stared at the TV as it flashed.

“Did he?”

She blinked in that satisfied way a python does when it’s digesting a baby warthog. She squeezed my hand. “I’m in love,” she said. And even though I knew in my cynical, older-sister mind that this was not love, I squeezed back.

Here is how I see it:

Nemiah should call me. I did nothing wrong, nothing any normal jilted person wouldn’t do, walking out of a party that wants to eject me anyway. It’s up to her to apologize.

Here’s how the rest of my weekend went:

No phone ringing. No knock on the door, no paper airplanes through my window. Only Layla practising her revolting dances and swooning about Wes, and my parents talking about Middle East struggles and what to have for dinner.

Here’s what I expect at school:

She’ll come up to me, maybe a little awkwardly at first, and say she’s sorry for not being a better friend at the party and can we hang out, just the two of us, after school? We’ll talk about boys and our least favourite classes and buy licorice on the way home.

She ignores me.

Flat out and completely. She is flanked by her new posse — Shay in pole position. They breeze by me in the hall, and I’m embarrassed to admit my mouth hangs open for a few seconds after they pass. Time stops.

My lungs are empty and I can’t fill them.

What just happened?

She’s my sister-in-life, my best friend, my rock in this hell we call school. And I’m dead to her?

I rush to the washroom and sit in the nearest stall, waiting to wake up.

Was I wrong not to call her?

Should I be the one to apologize?

Why do I always end up sitting on the toilet?

My hands are cold and I rub them on my jeans. I know I have a class to get to, but I can’t remember what it is.

“Gretchen?”

I spy unfamiliar sneakers under the stall door. I get up and walk out into the cruel world. It’s Ashlyn. All blond and flower-print-collared-shirt. She looks concerned.

and I feel like the biggest loser in school. Everyone Nemiah and I ever talked to knows that we’re not talking (why aren’t we talking?!) and they all have a side. Unfortunately, most side with the swim team — they’re cuter. Nina Chambers and Leanne Soper conveniently become invisible whenever I walk down the hall. I guess that puts them in the opposing corner, or at least neutral, which for me is just as bad.

Ashlyn becomes my personal crutch for the day. For some reason she stayed with me in the bathroom until the second bell rang and I was late for class. She finds me at lunch and offers me her yogurt.

“I just know what girls can be like,” she says, as if she’s beyond us all. Then she smilingly adds, almost as an afterthought, “You’re helping with the banquet later, right?”

This day has passed like a dream — no, a nightmare — and I can’t believe I’m scooping hummus into glass bowls resting on doilies of which my grandmother would be proud.

I have been socially coerced into labouring as a server for the badminton team’s victory dinner. I need Ashlyn, I realize, if I am to save any kind of reputation from this mess I’m in. Her Blondness smiles at me from across the gym, where she serves punch and giggles with skinny-cute Asian boys on the team.

Everyone knows I am humiliated. Everyone knows I am alone. I just don’t know
why
. I call my house on my two minute break and explain why I’m not home yet. They’re pumped that I’m helping.

As the badminton team finally wanders off school grounds to find a better party, we begin to clean up. Ashlyn gets me stacking paper plates smeared with dinner remnants. After a minute I duck under the tablecloth when no one’s looking and stay there until a stupid grade nine rips the cloth off and reveals my cave.

I don’t get offered a ride home.

He’s a hockey player. He eats wheat germ muffins and his mother is a yoga instructor.

Layla tells me this the morning after I’ve spent all night by the phone waiting for Nemiah to call. (More on the depression, anger and bitterness later.)

She announces that they like the same
everything
 — music, sports drinks, cereal, blah blah blah. I want to choke on my toast and disrupt the bliss of the moment: my cute sister smiling through her Cheerios, her hair shiny and her pink t-shirt mocking my pyjamas.

“Why aren’t you dressed?” my mum asks me.

“I think she’s depressed,” says my concerned sister.

Their rhyming forces me to bolt to my room.

After three false tries, a huge lump in my throat, I call Nemiah the next morning. It’s early, barely eight. She doesn’t have swimming on Tuesdays. Leaking through my wall is the sound of Layla butchering a pop song. I thump the wall but she doesn’t hear me. Nemiah’s phone rings and rings. I count eight, nine, ten.
Pick up pick up pick up.
“Yello?” It’s her mum. “Hi, Ms Hershey,” I say. “Is Nemiah home?” Her phone’s being switched to the other ear. “Well, hey, Gretchen. No, she’s gone. She said you might call.” “She did?” Nemiah’s mum clears her throat. “Yeah, some nonsense about you guys having a fight. You okay?” The tears prickle the back of my eyes and I will them not to show in my voice. “I’m fine. I guess I’ll see her at school.” There’s a radio crackling in their kitchen. “She’s been acting strange, Gretchen, ever since the weekend — don’t know why.” I want to ask her about it, what Nemiah’s told her mum, but my voice will crack. “I better go,” I say. “Thanks.” The numbness in my hands creeps up my arms as I put the phone down. Layla has turned off her music. The silence kills me, and I wish it was still blasting so I could be drowned out — stupid, useless person that I am, friend of no one.

Something comes over me halfway through math — a whim of stupidity, desperation — and I text Nemiah, who has cozied up to a girl from the swim team: beige hair, too much eyeliner.

Nemiah hears her phone beep, I know it, but pretends not to, and it sticks out of her bag for twenty minutes as I use my ESP to make her check it.

Finally she does, just as Mr. Stubbin asks if there are any questions about the homework. Someone in the back asks something stupid and Mr. Stubbin drones out an answer.

Nemiah reads the text, shows it to eyeliner girl, and they giggle together as the bell rings.

Scrape of chairs, thunder of feet and chatter of voices. I am frozen in my seat. I wonder what part they were laughing at: the part that pleads for her to meet me after school to talk, or the part that says she’s still my best friend.

I really

really don’t feel like

dealing with chemistry,

but James is there

when I get to the library.

His green t-shirt reads

Thank God for Science!

and this time I have no patience

for his sense of humour.

I slouch.

He opens my textbook

for me, because all

I can do is stare blankly

at the table.

“You okay?” he asks.

I shrug. “Yeah, why?”

“You seem down.”

“I’m fine.”

“I heard —” he starts,

then stops.

“I’m sure you did,” I say.

He closes my textbook.

“Screw this.

Let’s get out of here.

I’m done with this place.”

We go to Carter’s Deli, which is owned by James’s uncle. I’ve never heard of it, even though it’s not far from my neighbourhood, but it’s amazing. It rocks fifties counters and black and white lino. We sit by the window with subs packed with meat. I feel like a guy.

James jokes with his cousin, who’s eighteen, works here, also not my type. But they’re both nice. It feels easy.

They both have brown shaggy hair and bad acne, except Cousin’s is healing. Cousin has a long gangly frame like James’s, but it has filled out some — maybe there’s hope. Cousin has a good smile, deep blue eyes unframed by glasses. The two of them joke about working in a deli, being cousins, Star Wars, which is Cousin’s obsession — “Sci-fi in general, but Lucas’s films in particular,” James informs me. I look at him more closely as he laughs. He never laughs at school. It suits him.

After an hour, it starts to rain and I wonder if I should call a parent. “I’m off now,” Cousin says. “You guys want a ride?” His actual name is Dean. (Jokes about James Dean plagued their childhoods. And they’re surprised I know who James Dean is. “Come on,” I say to their obvious approval, “he’s classic.”)

We hop in Dean’s clunky hatchback, Lucy, the smell of french fries rising from the seats. I don’t care — I’m having fun. I’ve even (almost) forgotten about Nemiah. We butcher rock songs as we drive (mandatory singing in Dean’s car due to his broken stereo).

He glances at me (riding shotgun) and chuckles. “You’re one of the boys now, Gretchen. Sure you can handle it?”

“She can handle it,” James says behind me. “She’s pretty hardcore. She knows how to butcher a whole pig.”

I whip my head around to see him grinning. “That’s such a lie! Where did you hear that?”

He shrugs. “Made it up. But it’s based on hearsay I overheard outside the Foods room. Is it even remotely possible?”

“It does put you in a whole new light,” Dean says. “Like maybe you’re this fly-by-night butcher girl who has a thing for kidnapping older guys. Whatcha think, James?”

“But I’m not driving,” I point out. “And there’s absolutely no truth to that pig thing. Who even does that?”

“A butcher,” James/Dean say together.

Before I know it, we’ve hung out three days in a week.

It’s always a blast. James becomes this witty, kind-of-shy, kind-of-silly guy who makes inexcusably cheesy science jokes (“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate!”) but listens, really listens, to whoever is talking. It makes you feel like you’re the most important person at that moment.

Dean is loud, funny and always opening the door for me, even when James teases him about it. Dean has Star Wars ringtones on his phone and has a light sabre tattooed on the inside of his index finger. He shows his affection for James by pushing him into the road — when there are no cars coming. It’s actually a lot sweeter than it sounds.

I forget about the soul-crushing loneliness of last week and live in James/Dean world.

It’s always sunny here.

We are driving to the beach to see which one of them is man enough to swim in the ocean in winter. Dean repeats his challenge — ten seconds, total body immersion, no wet suits, no crying.

James looks nervous. I try to catch his gaze, to show him it’s no big deal to back out, but he stares out the window.

“So what’s the prize for the winner?” I ask.

“Other than bragging rights?” Dean says. “Maybe a kiss from the lady. Isn’t that how it used to be done?”

“Aw, man, don’t do that.” James groans. “Are you introducing sexual tension into our group just when it was getting great? That licks.”

I must look stunned because Dean drops his jaw and winks at me. “You’re cute,” he murmurs. “No, I’m not sabotaging the group, James. It’s the group above all else, right?”

James says nothing. I am paralyzed, brain frozen. Awkward silence.

“But hypothetically, Gretchen —”

“Stop talking, stop talking, la la la!” James yells from the back seat.

“Okay, fine. We’re here anyway. But let me know what you think — you know — when you’ve thought about it,” Dean says to me, leaning in as he unclips his seat belt.

“Sure,” I manage to say, but I’m still stuck on the kiss part. Dean wants me to kiss him.

Why does that make the world stop?

After the shock wears off, I start to think about what this means. Does Dean actually want to date me, or is he just teasing me in that pull-your-pigtails kind of way we are always told guys do? And what do I want? Sure, a high school grad for a boyfriend is up there on my list of Coolness I Will Never Hope to Achieve, but do I want to date Dean? What about the friendship we have — and James? We were just getting such a cool vibe, the three of us. I can’t afford to mess that up, what with my recent friend track record.

decides it all for me. Tuesday afternoon he picks me and James up from the corner outside school. He looks the same as always but my stomach is churning, so exactly nothing is the same. I hate that.

I’m thinking about what to say that will simultaneously let him down easy and not be awkward, when he says, “Hey, Gretchen, about the kiss thing the other day.”

I only stare, trying to look unflustered.

“I was totally kidding, okay? It’s not like that with us and I respect that. We’re buddies. Let’s keep it that way.”

He glances quickly into the rear-view and I know he’s looking at James.

“I wasn’t weirded out,” I say. “It’s no problem,” relief and disappointment flooding through me.

“Okay, I need a serious dose of caffeine, people,” James says from behind me. “Beeline it for Starbucks, driver.”

Upside to this latest chemistry quiz: I actually passed.

Downside: It won’t be good enough for The Board.

Does it count if it’s good enough for me?

resemble fairy tales on acid. She thinks I should send Nemiah a letter and all will magically be well. Since she only knows we had a fight and not that I am Ostracized Girl at school, I can’t really protest. I peel potatoes into the sink as my duty to dinner while she regales me with her opinion.

“Maybe I should phone her mother,” she says.

“Don’t you dare!” I wave a naked potato to make my point stronger. “You
can’t
help.”

Layla waltzes in, peering at us hopefully. “What’re you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Mum says. “Get to your homework.”

Layla looks insulted but takes off.

I finish the spuds and make my escape.

“Wait, Gretchen.”

I freeze in hopes Mum can’t see me. Works for rabbits.

She unstacks plates. “I miss our chats,” she murmurs. “We used to be so close.”

Yeah
, I think,
when you still changed my diapers. And before you decided my future for me
.

“Let’s have dinner, just us. Maybe next week,” she says.

I say I’ll think about it, knowing she expects a yes. Knowing the conversation would be awkward and I’ll end up angry but unable to say anything.

Knowing I’ve cut her somehow.

Approaching my village:

Don’t know about the people
,

but all the scarecrows

are crooked
.

– Issa

I forget I once lusted after Luke Bremmerman at all. I swear he’s not as cute as I thought — what’s with the almost-mullet? Ashlyn, who still clings to my cooking skills (“You’re better than everyone combined!”), can have him. Her roots are growing out dark, but she has been pretty nice to me since I became a loser. She says hi to me in the hall as others look on in pity or malice. I have noted that when Luke visits her in the Foods room, he only comes when he can snarf some baking. Yes, Luke and Ashlyn sitting in a tree, I swear to god that’s fine with me.

Heart in throat —

can she be ready

to say sorry, will I

wake up in her room

after a sleepover

and it’s all a bad dream —

everything’s okay?

I turn up the volume

on the phone

to make sure

I don’t miss anything.

“Hey, Mrs. Meyers,

it’s Nemiah, I just

wanted to ask if

my yellow jacket is

at your place. I think

I might have left it there

before Christmas.

If so, could you

leave it on the porch?

I’ll grab it

tomorrow. Tha—”

I erase the message

halfway through

her thanks.

Five seconds later

I wonder if she

said anything about me

in the part I erased.

Damn.

I throw the phone

on the floor,

but I’m too wimpy

to break it.