A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions Read online

  Essentially, I am short and squat, and Beanpole is tall and thin. I am sarcastic and skeptical; Beanpole is cheerful and optimistic. I am moody, indecisive, and greatly lacking in self-esteem; Beanpole is outgoing, generous, and ready to try anything. If it’s true that opposites attract, then she and I are magnetized.

  “Aw, you can’t give up on yourself, Mo,” Beanpole said. “Remember, you’re all you’ve got.”

  “Yeah, and you just happen to”—Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh—“have a lot.”

  I glared at the girl sitting next to me, the one who had just made the comment.

  “Especially,” she added, grinning from ear to ear, “when it comes to the size of your butt.”

  Remember the Allergy Alice girl I mentioned, the one I’d saved? Well, that is the third member of our flock. Q is her name, at least that’s what I call her, and she is…well, how do I say this nicely?

  Q is a freak.

  I’d started calling her Q a few months ago, because calling someone Allergy Alice every time you want to speak to her is just too much of a mouthful; she needed a shorter name. Besides, everything the girl says or does is a mental, medical, or social mystery, like some sort of giant question mark, so the name Q made sense.

  And that Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh sound? It came from the NASA-approved scuba tank she always carried around with her.

  All right, it isn’t a real scuba tank. In reality, it’s an inhaler filled with protein inhibitors that are supposed to keep her pancreas from oozing out her ear or something like that.

  Essentially, Q has a few allergies, but only to small, rare, hard-to-encounter things—like water, air, and grass. Fact is, I’ve seen a few weirdwads in my day, but Q is the strangest, most offbeat, most peculiarest kid I’ve ever met.

  It’s what I most like about her. Q is who she is, and she is it all the time. She just doesn’t care what other people think.

  Q wears scarves in eighty-eight-degree weather—and doesn’t care what other people think. Q attaches a tissue dispenser to her belt loop—and doesn’t care what other people think. Q uses a spork to eat her lunch, finding “the functionality of a spoon-fork combo both efficient and environmentally conscious.”

  What guts. I mean, who at this school just can be who they are without worrying about what everyone else thinks? Sure, Q is a kook, but she is also the kid least likely to give in to peer pressure, which, when I really think about it, might make her the least kooky kid on campus.

  Bizarre how that makes sense, right?

  Anyway, put together, me, Q, and Beanpole made up the Nerd Girls. Feared by all we were not.

  “Aachoo!” Q sneezed and then pulled out a tissue from her belt-loop holster. Lunch for her today consisted of boiled carrots and skinless apples with a few wheat-free, gluten-free, flavor-free crackers tossed in for good measure. Some kids are lactose intolerant; Q is any-element-on-the-periodic-table intolerant.

  “Is this bothering you?” Beanpole asked, holding up a tuna sandwich that had been made in the shape of a bald eagle.

  Beanpole’s mom always prepared her daughter’s food around themes and motifs. Today’s were courage and bravery.

  Don’t ask.

  “No, it’s not the sandwich,” Q answered. “It’s all the dust in here.”

  For some reason, Beanpole had decided that the three of us should eat lunch indoors today. Way indoors. Like inside-the-art-classroom indoors. I had stopped asking questions about stuff like this a while ago, figuring that, hey, when you’re friends with whack jobs, you do wacky things.

  “You need to leave?” Beanpole asked.

  “Nah,” Q replied. “Aside from this lumpy chair, I like the atmosphere.”

  “You’re sitting on a paintbrush,” I informed her.

  “Oh.” Q lifted her rear, picked up the paintbrush, and looked at the bristles. “I was wondering why my tush felt all prickly.”

  A moment later, Q put the paintbrush right back underneath her butt.

  “You’re still gonna sit on it?” I asked.

  “It’s kind of like a bristly massage,” she replied. “And tingles are good for my pulmonary circulation.”

  Yup, every day a new adventure.

  I gazed around the art room. Paint cans, half-finished ceramic sculptures, fans to dry papier-mâché projects, all kinds of cheerful, arty-farty stuff filled the space. Just out of curiosity, I picked up some dweeb’s nearly finished coffee cup and noticed that it was decorated with yellow smiley faces.

  “You know,” I said philosophically, “I don’t see why kids our age are always supposed to be cheery and blissful and popping with joy all the time. I mean, the only thing I’m popping with is zits.”

  Beanpole, however, wasn’t listening. Instead, her eyes were glued to her phone. She checked for a new text message.

  Nothing.

  “Can I just say, for the record, that I love my new phone?” she remarked. “Alice, do you love your new phone?”

  “The plastic casing makes my ears itch. I have to talk on”—Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh—“speaker with it.”

  “May I continue with the point I was trying to make?” I asked as I reached for the apricot I’d packed for lunch.

  Well, the apricot strudel.

  “We need to be on guard against an attack from the snob-wads.”

  “It really bothers me that my mom doesn’t go out,” Q interjected, nibbling on a carrot. “I mean, she has absolutely no life outside of worrying about me. It’s like her entire existence revolves around me.”

  “Are we not going to discuss the ThreePees?” I asked.

  “That’s because she loves you, Alice,” Beanpole said. “And she’s concerned that something might happen to you.”

  “I’ll take that as a no,” I said, even though neither of them was acknowledging me.

  “But I’m stronger than she thinks I am,” Q said. “I mean, I’m not an invalid.”

  “You get light-headed from corn,” I said, jumping into their conversation. Hey, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right? “Not exactly the stuff of Supergirl there, Q.”

  “Well, I need to do something. She’s sacrificed enough for me these past couple of years. Too much.” Q paused and considered it. “Yep, I’m gonna do something.”

  “What?” I asked. Almost nobody on campus knew the real truth about Q, but Beanpole and I did. There had been an accident, a terrible car crash, in which Q’s father and sister had died. Q’s mother wasn’t in the car at the time, but Q was. Right in the backseat. Incredibly, she survived.

  But she was the only one. Stuff like that’ll mess you up.

  “I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Q told us. “But I’m gonna do something. I have to. It’s my mom.”

  Q used to hide her emotions and bury her feelings, but ever since she came clean about the guilt of surviving, and feeling as if the car accident were her fault, she’s turned into some sort of fountain of honesty. At least among us, that is. To the outside world, Q is still a semi-odd recluse, but with Beanpole and me she is a straight shooter. Like for example, if she likes your purple T-shirt, she’ll tell you, “Cool purp shirt.” But if she thinks your green flip-flops look weak, she’ll tell you, “Lame-o foot canoes…Try a new set of toe kayaks.”

  Yeah, sometimes you have to decode what she’s talking about, but still, she tells it like it is. Me, I struggle with honesty and expressing my real feelings. I mean, my mom could put on forty-five pounds and walk around the house knocking picture frames off the table with her butt, and still I’d say things like, “Put on weight? Nope, haven’t noticed a thing. But perhaps you could pass the doughnuts.”

  Sarcasm’s more my thing. I blame television.

  “You know,” I said, thinking about this, “I say we make a pact to be truthful with one another. Really honest. Beanpole, tell me something honest.”

  Beanpole raised her eyes and thought deeply about the question. “I love my new phone.”

&nbs
p; “How profound. I see Nobel prizes in your future. Q, how ’bout you?” I said. “Tell me one honest thing, just one truthful thing about this whole mixed-up, crazy universe.”

  “Your gluteus says Aardvarks on it,” she replied. “Aardvarks is a”—Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh—“funny word.”

  I stood, put my hands on my hips, and turned to show the lettering on my backside.

  “Might I point out that these are the new, Capri-style school athletic pants I’m wearing?” I answered. “You know, trying to show some school spirit over here.”

  “Aardvarks.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Aardvarks.”

  “Less funny the second time.”

  “Actually, it was the fourth,” Q answered. “Accurate statistics are important to me.”

  Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.

  “Aardvark. Fifth time.”

  Deep breaths, Maureen, I told myself. Deep breaths.

  “Well, what’s wrong with being an Aardvark, anyway? I like being an Aardvark,” Beanpole declared. Then, to emphasize her point, she stood like George Washington about to make a speech at Valley Forge. “After all, I am who I—” BAM! Beanpole smashed her head into a shelf on the wall, banging her noggin so hard I thought she’d given herself a concussion.

  Oh, yeah, in case I forgot to mention, Beanpole is prone to accidents the same way I am prone to cookies.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m okay,” she declared, sitting down and rubbing the top of her cranium. “I’m okay.”

  “Can you guys please just tell me one thing?” I asked. “And be honest.” I hesitated, reluctant to say the words aloud, even to my closest friends. “Do these pants make my thighs look, you know, like turkey drumsticks?”

  Beanpole studied my legs. “You mean like the kind injected with hormones to plump ’em up?”

  I glared.

  “No, not at all,” Beanpole said, backpedaling. “Not at all.”

  “You are so unconvincing.” I reached for my backpack. “All right, can we leave now, please? We’re not even supposed to be in here.”

  “But they never lock the door,” Beanpole said.

  “The lock’s busted,” Q said, smelling her carrot stick before taking another bite. “Whole school knows it.”

  “That doesn’t mean we’re allowed in here,” I said. “And why do you smell your carrot sticks before you eat them?”

  “Aardvark.”

  “Well, if we get caught in here,” I said, “you know we’re going to get into trouble.”

  “Not if we don’t mess anything up,” Beanpole said.

  “Aardvark. Ninth time.”

  “Why are you, Barbara Beanpole Tanner, the number one rule follower of the century, defending our presence here?” I asked. “Besides, the bell’s going to ring, and I don’t want to be late for class. Now, come on, enough with this. Let’s go.”

  “We can’t,” Beanpole replied, remaining seated. “Not yet.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She looked down, clearly hiding something.

  “Beeeanpole…”

  “Because I invited the ThreePees here to eat lunch with us, so we could bury the hatchet.”

  “You did what?!” I shouted. Q’s eyes popped wide open. This was clearly news to her, too. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “’Cause I wanted to make peace between us all,” Beanpole said. “Kids at the same school should get along.”

  Q reached for her inhaler and took a few slurps. Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh. The ThreePees had already tormented her enough to last a lifetime, maybe even two, and even though Q had come out of her shell around us—people whom she trusted—all her life she had been ridiculed by divas like the ThreePees, kids who cared more about their pedicures than they did about global warming, and it had scarred her. After all, it’s one thing not to care what other people think about the way you dress and act; it’s totally another to be the piñata that brats like to smash with nastiness simply for their own entertainment.

  “I already agreed that I’d let bygones be bygones,” I said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “That’s not peace,” Beanpole replied. “The tension is still off the charts whenever we’re near them. I mean, just look at what happened with the Slam Book.”

  “But I don’t want to eat lunch with them,” I said. “I don’t even want to go to the same school as them. I just want to, like, NOT deal with them. Ever.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Beanpole answered. “This is why we need to meet and clear the air.”

  Q remained silent.

  “Not a fan,” I said. “Not a fan at all.”

  “Well, you can’t always avoid things when you have issues with people in your life, Maureen,” Beanpole said in a motherly tone. “No offense, but it’s kind of immature.”

  “Immature? Me, immature? How would you like an injection of Twinkie cream up your nose?”

  “Well, if that’s not a mature way to handle conflict resolution, I don’t know what is,” Beanpole replied.

  “Is that why you keep checking your phone?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they’re late,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “And it doesn’t make sense, either, ’cause we’ve been planning this for, like, three days.”

  “Planning what for three days? Lunch?”

  “Kiki said they needed three days,” Beanpole told me. “To get it all set up.”

  “Get what set up? Beanpole, this doesn’t make any sense.”

  Then suddenly, it did. Once we heard the door close, followed by a loud CLICK, that is.

  “Was that…” I said, looking toward the door. I crossed the room and tried the handle.

  “Locked,” I said.

  I glanced around. There were no other doors.

  “We’re locked in.”

  You know, I don’t really need any help when it comes to creating level-ten embarrassing situations for myself. However, the ThreePees were always eager to lend me a hand.

  How nice of them.

  Like that time I saved Q from the ThreePees, well, the way I did it was by hijacking these special peanut-butter-and-mango-marmalade sandwiches the vixens had made in order to trigger a monster allergic reaction in the new girl at school. Then, once I had the sandwiches, I quickly jammed them into my mouth so that the weapons of torment would be eliminated. Unfortunately, this act of heroism for Q turned into a personal disaster for me.

  A disaster that ended up on YouTube, thanks to Brittany-Brattany.

  Oh, the joy of seeing myself online running around the outdoor courtyard screaming, “Mmmrrfft rrmmfft dmmfft!” with a mouthful of sticky peanut butter preventing me from being able to utter an understandable word.

  The story ended well for me, though. The video went viral.

  Pah-thetic.

  Justice, though, was eventually served on the ThreePees after our school’s big talent show, when those witches ended up sucking a karmic lemon good and hard. That’s because my older brother, Marty, made their eyebrows fall out. Just before they took their official school yearbook photo, too. In the pics, their faces looked like Easter eggs designed by kindergartners on laughing gas.

  A video of that was also posted on YouTube. It was hysterical. (At least, I thought so. Our school principal, not so much.)

  Anyway, while we were thinking about letting bygones be bygones, the ThreePees were planning revenge, and now that they had double-crossed Beanpole and somehow “fixed” the lock on the door, we were sitting ducks.

  I knew it, I thought. I just knew it.

  An ominous voice cackled from above. I tilted my head backward and saw a window above the door frame. Suddenly, one, two, then three faces appeared.

  “Well…looky what we have here. Nerdwads in the art room.”

  They must have been standing on a ladder. Though the glass muffled their voices somewhat, we could still easily hear them.

  “N
ice pants, Maureen. Is there going to be a rainstorm?” Brittany-Brattany asked about my new Capris. “Or does the weather just call for thunder thighs?”

  The ThreePees let out a big, mean laugh.

  “Yeah…or lightning hair.”

  Kiki and Brattany paused, then turned to stare at ThreePee number three, Sofes.

  Some girls are not playing with a full deck. Sofes O’Reilly wasn’t even dealt any cards.

  “Huh?” Kiki asked.

  “You know, lightning your hair?” Sofes explained. “Like when you use too much peroxide-based color wash and the oxidization of the follicles creates a shade of tint that’s too light.”

  “Sofes, are you sure the chemicals you use in your hair products are safe for your brain?” Kiki asked.

  “Well, if the shampoo I was using contained pyrethrin, there might be cause for concern, but they only put that in pet shampoo, to help control fleas and ticks.”

  Kiki rolled her eyes. “Can we please get back to the reason we’re here?”

  “Yeah…payback!” Brattany lifted up her camera-phone and prepared to record us on video.

  “Oh, Nerd Girls, I hope you like art collages,” Kiki said. “Because you are about to become one.”

  “On YouTube!” Brattany added with fiendish joy.

  “But you said we were going to bury the hatchet,” Beanpole called up to them.

  “The only thing that is getting buried today, dorko, is YOU!” Kiki lifted a black device. “Under a blizzard.”

  Was that a remote control?

  “This is gonna be double-double nice-nice,” Brattany said, getting ready to hit the RECORD button.

  Kiki glanced around at all of the fans in the art room. Six of them, the big industrial kind, had been spread around, each pointing toward the center.

  Each pointing toward us.

  Suddenly I saw a sense of organization in everything. Trays of uncovered paint had been positioned in front of the fans on the left. Tubs of glitter, their tops removed, sat in front of the fans on the right. I saw feathers and strips of felt and confetti and sparkly things galore, all placed in a position where the wind from the fans would be sure to hit them.