Into the Wild Nerd Yonder

  On our way out, Barrett stops to look at me for a second. “There’s something different about you,” he says.

  I want to tell him that today I leave the house a free woman, open to the possibilities of new friendships and happier times. Instead, I just say, “I parted my hair on a different side.”

  Barrett grunts like he’s thinking about something else. “I don’t want you talking to Van,” he says, “even if he talks to you. I could beat his ass after what he did to Bizza.” I feel a twinge of ugh that Barrett is acting protective of Bizza and not me. “He has no respect for girls at all.” I realize he’s spouting Chloe speak and don’t feel as bad. Plus, I really wouldn’t mind Van having his ass beat. When I was younger, I used to take tae kwon do. It was so major kicking boys’ butts when we sparred. I quit when I got boobs and felt too embarrassed to do jumping jacks (pathetic, I know), but I always wished that I had kept it up. Sometimes I envision myself in situations, usually after someone has obnoxiously knocked my books out of my arms or stepped on a brand-new pair of shoes, where I execute a brilliant roundhouse kick and totally take some pud-hole down. I catch myself in that moment, clenching my fists in the middle of a crowded hallway, and wonder if anyone knows I’m thinking violent thoughts. In a way, I’m a little jealous of Barrett. Not that I want to get into an actual fight, but it must be empowering to believe that you can kick someone’s ass. And Barrett can definitely kick Van’s. I doubt he will, though. Not when he’s trying to get into college and someday marry Greenville High’s top candidate for homecoming queen. Plus, he’s above that.

  My shoulders are back, and my head is up as I walk through the halls to my locker. I refuse to worry about what may happen if I see Bizza. Confrontation, even when I’m completely in the right, isn’t my idea of a good time. Especially with Bizza, who I know will try to turn this into something I did to make her do what she did. And she probably doesn’t even care. She did call about a thousand times yesterday, but maybe that was to recap every Krispy Kreme moment of her Van Blow Job Extravaganza. For a moment, I slump in disgust, but then I regain my superstrong Wonder Woman posture and head to first period.

  Polly is beaming a “guess what I did this weekend” look my way. She is wearing an uncharacteristically tight, low-cut shirt that shows off her surprisingly bouncy cleavage. The pathetic side of my brain thinks, If I had boobs like that, maybe I would have been with Van instead of . . . But before I can finish that thought, the empowered side of my brain smacks the pathetic side and says, Van is an asshole. Did you really want to be doing what Bizza did with him? And besides, your boobs are great!

  After English, and much wiser in the sexual ways of the band geeks, I make sure to take the direct, not the avoid-Bizza-at-all-costs, route to gym. I’m having a particularly vivid and violent fantasy where I throw Bizza through one of the courtyard windows and scream, “How’s your haircut now, bitch?” when I’m snapped away by the hilarious sight of Dottie Bell and her nerd herd dressed in full medieval garb. I walk up to her. “Hey, Dottie. What’s with the fancy?”

  “Jessie! You noticed. No one else has said anything. To our faces, that is.” The crew laughs. There are six people, one of which I recognize as Dottie’s boyfriend, Doug, and another as Kent Holt, this kooky guy from my science lab. He’s always getting our science teacher, Mr. Roland, to freak out by pretending he spilled acid on his hand. “We’re preparing for Fudwhalla,” Dottie continues. I look at her blankly. “It’s this insane, live role-playing weekend in Wisconsin that’s in a few weeks. I’m going to be a baroness.” As she says this, her posse bows. I think of how opposite her royalty would be to Chloe Romano’s homecoming queen. “We want to make sure our costumes are comfortable enough to wear all weekend, so we’re taking them for a test run.”

  “What’s the verdict so far?” I’m genuinely intrigued. Amusing clothes are my passion, after all. Dottie sticks her hands down the front of her dress and pulls out bunches of crumpled toilet paper.

  “Not so great, I’m afraid. We borrowed these from Philip’s cousin who worked at a Renaissance Fair over the summer. They don’t fit very well.”

  “And they reek,” notes one of the guys in the back.

  “I wondered what that was.” I pretend to fan away some stink. “Not really,” I say when it looks like they’re taking me seriously (complete with numerous armpit sniffs).

  “I was planning to talk about your sewing gift during study hall. Maybe proposition you for some help?” Dottie looks at me, hopeful.

  My cheeks burn a tad. My gift? I have a gift? My moment of glory is stolen by the bell. “Gotta go!” I tell Dottie and her followers. “If I’m the last person changed, Ms. Honalee makes me do laps.”

  “We’ll talk later.” Dottie leads her troops away. As I pass, I make eye contact with one of the guys I don’t know. He has unruly, curly brown hair and electric blue eyes that seem to be smiling at me. I hesitantly smile back before I turn away and run to the locker room.

  At lunchtime I make some effort in my quest for new friends. Every day, Polly sits at a table filled with her fellow marching bandmates, many of whom I know from various smart-kid classes. I approach the table tentatively, a friendly smile on my face, and say, “Mind if I join you?” The band geeks look at one another questioningly, until Polly says, “Of course, Jessie! Scooch down, Chip.” Chip Eddelson is a gangly, redheaded, big-gummed tuba player, and I hope he doesn’t know it’s me who threw tennis balls into the marching band practice area last year just to see if I could land one in his tuba (I could). At six foot four and approximately 110 pounds, I don’t know how he manages to even hold up a tuba. I sit next to Polly, and lunch conversation flows with a mix of band and dating chatter. Polly explains, “We’re together for so many hours and so many bus rides that practically everyone in the band has dated each other at some point.”

  “We’re very incestuous.” Chip arches his eyebrows at me, and I look down, desperately hoping he’s not trying to bring me into his tubalicious lair. “I heard from someone that you play the drums, Jessie. You should try out.” More like he’s trying to recruit me.

  “Well, um, with my homework and my sewing, you know, I just don’t have time for much extracurricular stuff.” I weakly try to talk my way out of it. I haven’t exactly had the best luck with bands.

  “But the extracurricular stuff is the best part,” Chip sleazes. Definitely not tubalicious.

  “Chip, don’t scare Jessie away with your band wet dreams.” Saved by Polly. “And anyway, Jessie, you know what they say: the bigger the instrument, the smaller the . . .”

  “Hey! My mom chose the tuba for me! I wanted to play the flute. Or the piccolo!” Chip unsuccessfully backpedals.

  “How manly of you,” Polly retorts. And conversation (thank god) moves away from my involvement in the band to other, less me-centered topics.

  At the end of lunch, I’m happy to have found a new group of people to eat with. Without my full commitment to the band, I can’t see us hanging out outside school situations, but I’m at least trying to open up my possibilities.

  I’m on a new-friend high when I run into Bizza in the hall. She looks less annoying than usual, without black eye makeup and her “trademark” kilt. Actually, she looks pretty crappy (and I’m not just saying that because she sucks). If it’s possible, her buzz even looks like she didn’t fix it today.

  She catches my eye before I’m able to avoid her, and she walks up to me, slouched. “Hey, Jess,” she says with a desperate smile.

  “Hey,” I respond coolly.

  “I tried calling you yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I jump in quickly, trying to move this uncomfortable conversation along.

  “I hope you’re not still upset. It was no big deal. . . .” She’s not as ballsy as she normally is, but it’s still so Bizza to not apologize, but to make it seem like I’m the one making something out of nothing. I don’t speak.

  “What are you doing after school?” she asks. An
interesting turn: Bizza asking, not telling me what I’m doing. Still, I don’t feel like talking to her.

  “I have to get to study hall.” I walk off, leaving her to end the conversation by herself.

  I’m halfway angry, half pumped with pride when I sit down next to Dottie. She’s changed out of her medieval garb, which I’m kind of happy about. I like talking to her during study hall, but that outfit was pretty extreme. Plus, I don’t see how she’d fit into the desk.

  She starts talking at me the second I sit down. “Here’s the deal, Jessie: Fudwhalla is in three weeks, and we desperately need new costumes. We’ll pay for all of the materials, and Doug said he could make you something to make up for your time. He’s wicked with a lathe.”

  “A what?”

  “Woodworking.”

  “Oh. I don’t know, I really only sew skirts. I mean, besides a couple of aprons and some curtains. I don’t know if I can make whole costumes.”

  “You totally could!” Dottie is uncharacteristically animated and speaking too loudly. The study hall teacher’s subtle “ahem” makes her take it down to a yelling whisper. “Can you follow a pattern?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “That’s all we need! You’re a fantastic seamstress, Jessie. Just look at your hem!”

  No one has ever called me a seamstress before. It feels so official, like I don’t just sew for fun; I sew because I’m good at it. I look at my hem and follow it around with my thumb, the way Van had once done so seductively. My skirts aren’t just cute like everybody has so generically told me; they’re well made. My stitches are even, my hem straight, my zippers undetectable. But whole costumes? “I’ll think about it,” I tell Dottie.

  “Maybe if you come to D&D on Friday, we can convince you.” I know she sees the apprehensive look on my face. “It’s not as dorky as it sounds, Jessie. Really. I think you’ll like it. Everyone is really nice. . . .” I drift off as she continues her sales pitch and think about that guy with the curly hair. He did smile at me. I wonder if he’ll be there. Without tights, of course. “And there’s tons of food.” She’s still going.

  “Okay,” I say with just the slightest hesitation. It can’t hurt. I don’t think.

  “Wow. Excellent. I’ll give you all the details on where and when later on. Cool.” She looks genuinely happy, and I feel good that I have definite plans for Friday night. That jerky voice in my head pipes up before I can stop it and says, You’re going to play Dungeons and Dragons with a bunch of nerds on a Friday night. Are those really the kind of new friends you want to be making?

  I glance over at Dottie, who flashes me the thumbs-up. Am I ready for this to be my new social life? I remember Barrett’s reaction when I first told him I was talking to Dottie in study hall. I believe he used seventeen variations on the word dork. But it’s not exactly like he’s hanging out with the coolest people anymore. I mean, Chloe’s cool in the popular, homecoming, hottest-girl-in-school kind of way, but not in the freakster, hair-dyed, giant-shoes kind of way that Barrett taught me to covet. Maybe he will be better at accepting my Friday night plans than I expect. Maybe even better than me.

  chapter 17

  I STUDIED AFTER SCHOOL IN THE library until they kicked me out, hoping it was long enough to avoid the punk nasties. Barrett started his new job at the movie theater right after school today, training—with benefits, I’m sure—with Chloe Romano.

  My walk home is long, but my backpack is lighter than normal after I ditch my finished homework in my locker. I listen to Elsewhere on my iPod as I walk with my hands on the front of my thighs, trying to stop the wind from grabbing onto my skirt in a Marilyn Monroe-esque gust. The narrator has me completely immersed in this life-after-death world, where some people can speak directly to animals. We’ve never had the joy of a real pet, due to Barrett’s severe allergies. The only pet we ever had was a Beta fish named Bernard. He was purple, red, and pink, and looked so fancy to me as a kid in his perfectly round bowl. I don’t know what my parents were thinking when they made it my responsibility to clean his bowl. Two weeks after his arrival, Bernard floated belly up in his scum-covered water. But he was so young! So beautiful! I couldn’t get rid of him just yet. So he stayed in the bowl. For weeks. Once the water evaporated, Bernard decayed quickly on the scum-colored rocks at the bottom of the bowl. I kept him just outside my window ledge so no one would notice. My dad finally discovered him when he was pruning the trees in our front yard. I wonder what Bernard would have said to me if he could communicate. I’d like to think that as he faded away, his forgiving fish soul would tell me, “It’s okay, Jessie. You are just a young girl. My life was a short but happy one. Godspeed. I see a bright light ahead. . . .” But what he probably would have said was, “Why didn’t you clean my bowl, bitch?”

  When I arrive home, a little sweaty but stress-free, I find Doc Mom in the kitchen rolling matzo balls between her palms and dropping them into a giant pot on the stove. The air smells chickeny.

  “It’s a tad warm out for soup, isn’t it? You usually don’t get matzo ball cravings until at least after Halloween.”

  “My throat’s a little sore. I think I’m getting a cold. Damn kids. If they’re sick, their parents should keep them home.”

  Mom definitely sounds like she’s getting something; she’s not usually this cranky about her students. “Do you want some help?” I ask. I love rolling mushy food between my hands. Cookie dough is my number one favorite (particularly when it has chocolate chips, which act like little hand-massagers), but the sticky goo of the matzo balls is pretty nice, too.

  “If you wouldn’t mind rolling the rest of the balls and dropping them in the broth, I’ll make some tea.” Mom unties her flowery, frilly apron and passes it to me. I’m careful not to catch my hair as I tie the strings behind my neck. Patting a small lump of matzo meal out of the bowl, I roll it into a perfect circle before I toss it into the pot. A tiny splash of chicken broth sprinkles onto the stove.

  “Careful, honey, try to not make it splash.” Mom sits down at the kitchen table and waits for the tea to whistle. “How was your day?” she asks, and I wonder how many times that gets asked around the world every day.

  “Fine,” I answer, as expected.

  “We didn’t get to talk about Van’s party on Sunday. Barrett told me he quit the band, which I can’t say I’m sorry about. I’ll finally get to fall asleep at a decent hour on a Friday night.” Mom laughs uncomfortably, and I know she’s going to bring up something I don’t want to talk about. “I couldn’t exactly ignore all of those unanswered phone calls yesterday. Was it Bizza?”

  My mom has known Bizza since pre-every phase she’s been through, and she’s definitely seen both her good and bad sides. Good: How Bizza used to travel with our family every summer to Bane’s Lake and would humor my mom with a mind-numbing game of Boggle while I attacked the water slides. Bad: How Bizza lied to my mom about “borrowing” my mom’s only pair of Manolo Blahniks (which she won in a bidding war on eBay) and somehow managed to break off one of the heels before randomly tossing them back in my mom’s closet (wouldn’t you at least try to make it look like nobody moved them?). My mom accused me forever, and I finally gave in and told her I did it just so she wouldn’t be mad at Bizza. What sucked about the whole thing was that my mom knew Bizza did it (they always know), so I was doubly bad in her eyes for a) lying and b) covering for a friend who would do something like that to me. Mom seemed to be forgiving because Bizza has continued to be invited on family trips, as well as holidays and other “family only” events. Part of me wishes my mom would have been so disgusted by Bizza’s behavior that she would have forbidden me from seeing her ever again. Preferably before the onset of puberty, so I could have avoided any and all Bizza skank adventures.

  “Bizza is no longer my friend,” I declare, and I toss a matzo ball a little too violently into the pot. A giant plop of chicken soup lands on my arm. “Ow!” I yell, wiping it away.

  “Careful,” Mom says momil
y. “How long will this fight last?” She’s seen countless fights between me and Bizza, lasting from one hour to three weeks. The worst (so far) came after Bizza stayed with my family for two weeks in eighth grade while her parents took an anniversary cruise through “The Islands.” I don’t remember what the fight was about, but it might have just been exposure overload. It ended in English class when Mr. Rowley automatically paired us up for a Shakespearian parody project, and Bizza kissed my ass until we made up and I agreed to write the whole project myself (she wanted an A).

  “Forever,” I answer.

  “Wow. That long? What’s she done now?”

  I love how my mom automatically sides with me. Partially it’s because she knows Bizza all too well, and partially because, well, she’s my mom. “More like who’d she do.” I chuckle at my wordplay until I see the panicked look on my mom’s face. “Just kidding, Mom.” Moms don’t have to know everything. “Remember how I kind of had a crush on Van?” Mom sighs and nods. “Well, Bizza kind of, you know, hooked up with him.” I sag at the reminder of betrayal. What a crappy thing for a friend to do.

  “Oh, honey.” Mom stands up and puts her arms around me. “I’m sorry. But don’t worry, there are plenty of Vans on the road.”

  “Mom!” I can feel her smiling into my shoulder. Then she starts laughing.

  “I couldn’t resist.”

  “How long have you been saving that one?” I laugh with her, happy to lighten the mood and avoid more matzo ball burns.

  “Too long,” Mom answers. The teakettle whistles, and Mom pours herself a cup of chamomile tea (the Peter Rabbit cure-all). “Oh, Bizza,” Mom says to the air. “Why couldn’t you be a better friend to my baby?”

  “Your baby?”

  “You and Barrett are my babies, and you’re both growing up so fast. Barrett will go off to college next year, then you’ll be gone in two years. Where does the time go?”

  Ah, the Where Does the Time Go speech. Mom brings this one out whenever she’s feeling sentimental, like last summer when Barrett visited colleges. We always have to pat her on the back and assure her that we’ll always love her and take care of her and when it’s time, be sure to put her in a clean but not too expensive rest home that doesn’t force her to eat tapioca.