A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions Read online

  However, there was a need to huddle up and scheme. We knew it. The ThreePees gathered on the left side of the infamous Grover Park fountain, and me and my wolf pack huddled up on the right.

  “Our next grenade has to be big,” I said.

  “Nuclear,” Q insisted.

  “I like how you’re thinking,” I said.

  When the final bell rang, we exited the campus and walked to my house, mapping out our plan for revenge.

  “It’s gonna have to be one for the history books,” I said.

  “Hey, since he helped us before, maybe we could ask your brother, Marty, to make their telephones explode?” Q suggested. “Like when they answer a call, BOOM! Exploding brains.”

  “You might have something there,” I told her. “Not sure about the death thing, but permanent maiming sounds entirely reasonable.”

  Beanpole shot me a look, yet remained silent, her lack of words expressing all we needed to know about her feelings on the matter. She’s one of those hippie-dippy types, a kid who believes in things like peace over conflict. But look where that had gotten us. If today had taught us one thing, it was that you just can’t make nice-nice with dragons.

  “Maybe we could go with toenail removal or facial scars?” Q said. “Or tooth chipping, like down to the nerve? I mean, orthodontic pain is always a good one.”

  “You kind of have a cruel streak, don’t you?” I said.

  “What can I say?” Q replied. “Those witches”—Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp. Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp—“bring out the best in me.”

  “Okay, officially, I have to say that I’m not comfortable with all this revenge talk. I mean, where does it end?” asked Beanpole.

  “When they’re pulverized,” I replied. “See, what we need,” I said as I unlocked my front door, “is some good old-fashioned—”

  I froze. Stopped. Went ice cold.

  There was a voice.

  “Hi, dimps, long time no see.”

  My stomach flipped, and I went white as a swirl of vanilla frozen yogurt. Beanpole turned to Q and mouthed the words “Who’s that?”

  Q shrugged. “Dunno.”

  My mom approached.

  “Hey, Boo,” she said in a warm, comforting tone. “You remember your father, don’t you?”

  Beanpole’s and Q’s jaws dropped. They began whispering.

  “Her father?”

  “But didn’t he run out on them years ago?”

  I stared blankly.

  “Girls,” my mom said to Beanpole and Q, opening the door, “can you maybe give us a few minutes, please?”

  “Um, sure, Mrs. Saunders,” Beanpole said, taking Q by the arm and leading her away. “Come on, Alice. Uh, let’s go.”

  A moment later, the door closed softly behind them. Beanpole and Q decided to head home, leaving me with my parents.

  Thank God for Saturdays. No school. No teachers. No ThreePees.

  Of course, there was still YouTube with its newly posted “Nerdvarks in an Art Blizzard” video for all the world to see. But thankfully, all the world didn’t feel like seeing it.

  Brattany’s Internet attempt to humiliate us didn’t catch on. Fact is, it’s hard to make a video go viral on YouTube. I mean, there’s just so much stuff out there already, and people add even more kooky stuff every day, so it’s impossible to know what will become YouTubally popular. Sure, the ThreePees were able to get a whole mess of views the last time they humiliated me at school, but this time their paint tornado video didn’t score many views at all. Only fifty-four people had seen it. And I’m sure that at least ten of those clicks were me and Beanpole and Q trying to watch ourselves to discover what had really happened when we were caught in the art-i-cane.

  “I think we’re going to be safe from international moron celebrity status,” I said, turning away from the desktop computer in Beanpole’s bedroom. “It’s not getting many clicks at all.”

  Beanpole’s house was, to say the least, a unique environment. Once inside, I’d always felt, I dunno, uncomfortably comfortable. Like, too cozy. Maybe it was the snowy white carpet? Maybe it was all the ergonomic furniture? Maybe it was because Beanpole’s mother was some kind of Martha Stewart loony bird on interior-design steroids?

  Actually, Beanpole’s mother is cool. But I did nickname her Department Store Mom, because she always does everything in a way that seems department-store perfect. She sews sweaters from yarn balls, stitches her own curtains, and the food she prepares is like stuff you’d see on the Cooking Channel. Really, to walk into Beanpole’s house is to walk into a home where there is always a glass of chilled lemonade, always the fragrance of a scented bathroom soap, and always the love of a supportive parent ready with a kind, warm, understanding smile.

  The house is like ice cream: on the one hand, it’s the best dessert ever, but on the other hand, when you have too much of it, the sweetness just makes you want to puke.

  “But why would he come back now?” Beanpole asked.

  I knew it was only a matter of time before she began nagging me about my father.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “And why would your mother let him in?” Beanpole asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “And what do you think he wants?” she continued.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “And where has he been?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” I replied. “Now, can you stop asking me so many questions?”

  “Well, I could stop asking you so many questions if you could start giving me some honest answers, now, couldn’t I, Mo?” Beanpole crossed her arms and stared at me like she had just made a really good point. “I mean, weren’t you the one talking about how we should be honest with each other, anyway?”

  “Was that another question?”

  “Depends on what you mean by the word question,” she answered. “Technically, I think it was a statement.”

  “And technically, I think your brain is a roll of toilet paper.”

  I wasn’t trying to be a grumped-out crank, but jeez Louise, back off already. Couldn’t she tell I was freaked out about the whole thing? I mean, I hadn’t seen the guy since before first grade, and now it’s like, “Oh, by the way, your long-lost dad is back, let’s all bake a pie together.” The whole thing made me feel like no matter how much I breathed in, I could never really get a lungful of air, and when I get like that, I don’t want to talk about it; I just want to coat my tongue with cupcake batter and pretend none of it is really happening.

  Q stared at me.

  “And what fantasmical comment about this whole situation might you have to offer?” Arms crossed, I waited for a reply.

  Slowly, she raised her inhaler and took a slurp. “Bugs Bunny was”—Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh—“a wascally wabbit.”

  “I see,” I said, nodding my head. “And oh, look, you fixed your scuba tank,” I remarked. Q’s portable deep-sea diving unit was now functioning quite properly again. “Tell me, was the trip to Planet Freakwad to get new parts a fast one, or was there traffic?”

  “Aardvark.”

  “Her mom had a spare inhaler,” Beanpole explained. “And did I tell you? Good news! Mommy said she would replace my phone. What’d your mom say about your new pants being ruined?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “You didn’t tell her what happened, did you, Mo?” Beanpole asked.

  “Well…other things were going down.”

  “Oh yeah, like, what other things were going down?” Beanpole inquired, making yet another attempt to get me to spill my guts.

  “Hmm, let’s see,” I answered. “Some cookies went down. A slice of cheesecake went down. Oh yeah, and a double-scoop banana split with rainbow-colored sprinkles went down, too. Extra whipped cream, of course.”

  “Hmmpft,” Beanpole said, shaking her head. Seeing that she was getting nowhere with me, she crossed the room and began looking through her closet.
/>   Some kids arrange their sweaters by style. Beanpole arranges them by the temperature outside. For every eight degrees, the thickness of the fabric as calculated against the estimated provision of warmth determined the hanger color on which the item would rest.

  For example, if it was going to be anywhere between sixty to sixty-eight degrees outside, the clothing options hung on green hangers. If the temperature was to drop to fifty-nine degrees, the clothing options rested on navy blue. And so on and so on and so on.

  From Jamaican sunshine to polar winters, Beanpole had a color-coded hanger for every type of weather circumstance known on earth. And for each season, she’d rotate her closet so that the most likely clothing needs would be closest to the entrance of her closet door. One day she even hoped to be featured in Out of the Closet magazine.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Out of the Closet magazine was a homosexual publication.

  “Mo, I think you’re thinking with your amygdala,” Beanpole said as she rifled through some pullovers.

  “My what?”

  “The emotional part of your brain instead of the logical part. I read in a magazine about how this happens all the time to kids our age,” she answered. “’Cause if you were thinking with the logical part of your brain, you’d recognize that it’s logical for friends to share secrets so they can work out their issues.”

  “I’m not hiding any secrets,” I said.

  “Hider.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “Issue avoider.”

  “I’m not an issue avoider.”

  “Are too, are too, are too,” Beanpole said, with all the maturity of a fourth grader.

  I turned to Q. “Would you please talk to her?”

  “Wascally,” she said. “Very wascally.”

  I sighed. “Okay,” I said. “He did say one thing.”

  “I knew it,” Beanpole replied, shooting out of the closet. “I just knew it.”

  “He said he wants to fill some holes.”

  “Fill some holes?” Beanpole asked.

  “Yeah, fill some holes,” I said. “He says he has a lot of holes to fill.”

  Beanpole thought about it for a moment. “What does that even mean?”

  “Have I yet to mention the words I don’t know anywhere in this conversation?”

  “Sheesh, it’s like pulling teeth with you, Mo,” Beanpole said, heading back to her closet. Perhaps a tank top had mistakenly wandered into the arctic apparel section or something. “You’re so, I don’t know…bottled up.”

  “I’m not bottled up.”

  “You’re ketchup.”

  “I’m not ketchup.”

  “You’re worse than ketchup,” Beanpole said. “You’re like restaurant ketchup with the burger getting cold and nothing coming out of the bottle as the french fries get soggy.”

  “Ketchup makes my eyelids twitch,” Q said, informing us of yet another fascinating factoid. “But whole-grain mustard is a good source of omega-3.”

  “I’ll start a blog,” I replied.

  “All right, all right, I have an idea,” Beanpole said, jumping onto the bed for some girl-chat time. “Clearly, you’d feel more comfortable if I shared some secrets with you first, so I’ll tell you something about me to get us started, okay?”

  “Not okay.”

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “I don’t want to hear your secrets, Beanpole.”

  “I never poop at school.”

  “What?!”

  “Neither do I,” said Q.

  “Yeah,” Beanpole confirmed. “Like, even if I have to go really bad, I hold it until I get home. Just something about the idea of making a school doody that gives me the creepies.”

  “I’m afraid of toilet water,” Q confessed.

  “You’re afraid of toilet water?” Beanpole asked, wrinkling her nose. “Like, what about at your house?”

  “We put those little thingies in the tank to turn the water blue,” she explained. “Calms my colonic nerves.”

  “Has it ever occurred to either of you that some secrets are meant to be kept to yourself?” I asked.

  “Also, sometimes,” Beanpole continued, apparently feeling as if we were really getting somewhere now, “instead of clipping my toenails, I bite off the edges.”

  “You chew your own pedicure?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty limber,” she answered. “Wanna see?”

  “Not really.”

  Too late. Before I could say another word, off came Beanpole’s shoe.

  “You know, you really don’t have to—”

  Beanpole swung her leg around to demonstrate how she could nibble her toenails, but in her zeal she accidentally knocked over a giant pink alarm clock, which fell directly on her foot.

  “Ouch!” she exclaimed. The clock lay sideways on the floor, going beep, beep, beep. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m okay.”

  “Am I karmically paying for some kind of past-life debt right now?” I asked of no one in particular.

  “You should give him a chance,” Q said. The room went silent. “I mean, he is your dad.”

  I stared. Q stared back. I stared some more.

  “Oh, great,” I said. “No guilt there.”

  “I’m just saying,” Q answered.

  The three of us sat quietly, each of us lost in her own thoughts. Why couldn’t things be simple again, like when I was in first grade? When you’re seven years old, life’s biggest problems are all about toys and candy and bedtime. When you’re thirteen, they’re all about, well…everything.

  “Is there any way we can get back to plotting the devastation and destruction of the ThreePees?” I asked. “I mean, isn’t that why we’re here?”

  “Maybe we should use ketchup,” Beanpole suggested, a ton of sarcasm in her voice. “The restaurant kind.” With a disapproving look, she reentered her closet, grabbed a pair of navy blue high-tops, and placed them inside an empty cardboard box that sat beside her dresser.

  Then she did it with a pair of black leather moccasins. And then a pair of one-inch heels. I gazed at her with a What are you doing with all those shoes? look on my face.

  “For donation,” she explained.

  “They look brand new.”

  “They are.”

  “Yet each a different size,” Q commented, as if she were observing a practically invisible mustard stain on the tie of the real murderer in a Sherlock Holmes mystery.

  I wrinkled my brow. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  “One’s a size seven and a half, one’s a size nine,” Q answered, as if she were saying, Elementary, my dear Watson.

  “Really?” I crossed over to the box and pulled out two brown open-toed sandals. They were two different sizes.

  “How’d you know that?” I asked.

  “Aardvark.”

  Wow, so observant. I lifted up a pair of green-and-white tennis sneakers that had just been placed by Beanpole inside the box. “Why is each of these a different size?”

  “Because I have two different size feet, silly.” Beanpole reached into her closet and held up the matching pair of green-and-white tennies. “I keep these and I donate those. Gets expensive, but my orthopedist thinks this is why I’m so clumsy. My feet are growing at different rates.”

  “That’s weird,” I said.

  “Not really,” Beanpole answered. “A lot of kids have one foot that’s bigger than the other.”

  “It’s still weird,” I said, putting the sneakers back inside the box.

  “Could be worse,” Beanpole said. “Some girls have boobs that grow at different rates. Imagine bra shopping for that.”

  Different size knockers? I looked down at my chest and realized I had better keep my mouth shut before I angered the Gods of Breastness and ended up with a watermelon on one side of my rib cage and a tangerine on the other.

  “This is why I’m going to take tai chi,” Beanpole informed us.

  “Tai what?”

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p; “Tai chi. It’s this ancient Chinese exercise martial-arts thing that uses slow movements. It’ll help me with my balance.” Beanpole slowly spread her arms wide and smiled. “I’m gonna be one with the universe.”

  Placing her palms together in front of her chest, she closed her eyes and began to chant. “Ommmmm.”

  I turned to Q. “Is she serious?”

  “I wonder if they’ll ever make a crayon color called Spinach. Don’t you think the world would be a better place with spinach-colored crayons?”

  “Do you ever answer the question you’ve been asked?” I said.

  “Beetlegunk.”

  I decided it would be silly to continue the conversation with Q. This was her way of having fun with me; the more frustrated I grew, the more entertained she became, and this time I wasn’t falling for it. Thank goodness Beanpole finally opened her eyes. “You know, I’ve been reading up. With tai chi I will learn to accept the universe as it is.”

  “I thought you said it was a martial art,” I replied.

  “I don’t really know what it is. My first class is next week,” Beanpole answered. “Maybe I’ll learn some karate too, like, Hi-ya!” she exclaimed as she jumped into a fighting stance.

  Unfortunately, Beanpole hadn’t looked behind her when she exploded into her martial-arts display, and her back arm smashed into a stack of medium-weight sweaters. Quickly trying to catch them before they fell, she surged forward but tripped over her uneven size feet…which caused her to bonk her head into a hanger, knock over eight pairs of blue jeans, lose her balance entirely, and fall head over heels into the Windbreaker section of her closet, the area that had been reserved for moderate gusts.

  I let out a deep sigh as clothing items designed for inclement weather collapsed on her head.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m okay.” She emerged from the closet, a wool sock dangling from her ponytail. “I’m okay.”

  Clearly, there was a tai chi teacher somewhere who had no idea what she was about to get into.

  Back at school on Monday, the plan was to try to get the ThreePees to eat some “complimentary peppermints” that would have caused their teeth to turn green and red. My brother was great with pranks and stuff like that—the fake wrappers made these breath fresheners look like the real deal—but Kiki and her two ding-a-lings didn’t fall for it, and they avoided catastrophe. Not sure what happened to the mints, though. They mysteriously disappeared after we left them on the lunch counter.