A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions Read online

  On Tuesday, I was almost fooled into eating a chocolate-chip cookie made with horse laxative, which most probably would have sat me on the toilet for a week. However, at the last minute, I was warned about them by Logan Meyers, the blond-haired, blue-eyed Greek god of middle-school boys.

  “Hey, Maureen,” Logan whispered, just before the bell rang to dismiss us from social studies. “They did something to some cookies today.”

  “They did?” I said nervously, knowing exactly who he was talking about. “Thanks,” I told him.

  “Don’t mention it,” he replied with a bright white smile. “Besides, when you really think about it, cookies are stupid.”

  Earlier in the year, I admit, I’d had a HUGE crush on Logan. But after we did this project together for Mr. Piddles’s class, where Logan made, like, four hundred fart jokes while I did all the work, I began to see that a girl should like a boy for more than just his looks, even if he is hot like a jalapeño pepper.

  “I mean, I’m more of a video-game guy myself,” Logan continued, as if he hadn’t already told me this about a zillion times. “Video games are not stupid.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks, Logan. You really saved me.”

  “I mean, even the stupid video games are not stupid, you know?” he said.

  “Indeed,” I said, closing my notebook, looking for a way to end the conversation.

  “Like, this stupid school doesn’t stupid-appreciate how not stupid video games are. Am I right or am I right or what?” he argued.

  “Preach it, brutha. Preach it,” I said, hoping that if I agreed with him he’d let the whole thing go.

  “Thank you,” he said, happy to see that there was at least one person who could really understand where he was coming from (even though I had no idea where he was coming from).

  Logan wandered away. As he did so, one thought, one inescapable, unavoidable, never-to-be-disputed fact, filled my brain.

  He’s got a cute butt.

  I blame genetic programming for random zone-outs like this.

  After I managed to avoid Tuesday’s booby-trapped cookies, Wednesday and Thursday were free of pranks, but when lunchtime came on Friday, it was Game On once again.

  Q’s eyes darted from side to side, looking around to make sure no one was watching us. The outdoor courtyard, where we always ate lunch, bustled with activity. Boys punched other boys, then ran off. Girls played with their phones while gossiping or doing homework. A few kids flirted. Nothing out of the ordinary, just another Friday on campus. Once Q felt the coast was clear, she reached into her backpack.

  “I got the goods right here,” she whispered.

  I cranked my neck to see what she’d brought.

  “Exploding pens. The kind that, when you press down to write, they will”—Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh—“blast a squirt of ink into the person’s face.”

  “Niiiice!” I said.

  “I got them at the magic store down on Harris Street,” Q continued. “But how are we going to get them into the ThreePees’ hands?”

  “Good question,” I said as I gazed across the courtyard. Just as we were huddled around the table trying to come up with a way to really stick it to the ThreePees, it seemed they were also huddling to try and figure out a way to stick it to us.

  “Can I just officially say that I don’t like any of this?” Beanpole remarked. “I don’t like it at all. I mean, every time I sit at a desk I check for tacks or ‘Kick Me!’ signs or glue. It’s making me crazy.”

  “Hey, glue,” I said. “Good idea, Beanpole.”

  “Yeah,” said Q, her eyes glowing with possibilities. “Maybe we could glue the witches to a park bench, cover them in corn kernels, spread maple syrup over their faces, and import some Australian crows to eat out their eyeballs!”

  “They’ve wounded you, haven’t they?” I asked.

  “More than you know,” Q replied.

  “How come I don’t think you two are really listening to me?” Beanpole asked.

  “We’re totally listening, Beanpole,” I said, getting ready to ignore her again. “Just go play with your phone or something, while we figure this out.”

  “I’m not getting it till this weekend,” she said. “By the way, have you heard from your dad again?”

  I pretended not to hear the question. “So, the ink that will be squirted, is it blue?” I asked Q in regards to the magic pens.

  “Deep purple,” she answered. “Think grape juice.”

  “Niiice,” I said.

  “You know, Mo,” Beanpole said, knowing that I’d quite clearly heard her question yet chosen to ignore it, “denying reality doesn’t change reality.”

  “Well, if God didn’t want me sweeping reality under the rug, then why did he make me so good with a broom? Now,” I said to Q, “what if we put the pens—”

  Suddenly, Mrs. Chambliss, one of the vice principals, walked up to our lunch table. She was wearing a yellow sweater over a white blouse with a necklace made of topaz. While some teachers are slobs who look like they don’t even own an iron, Mrs. Chambliss always dresses with class and style.

  “All right, girls…let’s go.”

  “Where? Why? We didn’t do anything,” we protested.

  “Tell that to the principal,” she responded. Like all vice principals, Mrs. Chambliss held a black walkie-talkie in her hand, and used the antenna to point out the direction in which we needed to go. “Now, move.”

  Across the courtyard, Mr. Piddles, the social studies teacher who did double duty as lunchtime monitor, approached the ThreePees and started pointing toward the front office as well. A moment later, they were on the march.

  Kiki and I made eye contact across the courtyard, both of us knowing we were headed to the exact same place: Principal Mazer’s office.

  Well, bring it on, I thought. Bring it on.

  The six of us didn’t make a peep as we entered the principal’s office. Vice Principal Stone was in the room, wearing a striped tie—purple and black—that did not quite match his light peach shirt. He glared from the left-hand corner, looking even more hostile and uptight than usual.

  “Did I not tell you that I wanted this to stop? Didn’t I?!” growled Principal Mazer.

  “But…” Brattany said in protest, “we didn’t do anything.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Principal Mazer barked. “Then how come Mr. Stone looks like he swallowed one of Santa’s elves?”

  Mr. Stone flashed his teeth. They were green and red and frightening.

  “Eeek!” I yelped.

  “Plus,” Principal Mazer continued, “the poor man’s had diarrhea for the past seventy-two hours. Does anyone care to explain what kind of poop potion you put in those cookies?” He glared, practically with steam coming out of his ears. When Oompa Loompas get mad, watch out.

  “They did it!” Kiki shouted, pointing at us.

  “Huh? What? We did not,” I replied. “You did it!”

  “No, you did!”

  “You did!”

  “All right, ENOUGH!” Principal Mazer said. “You wanted it, you got it. You are now the official PPWBs of Grover Park Middle School.”

  There was a moment of confused silence.

  “The what?” I said.

  “The PPWBs,” Principal Mazer said. “The Personal Polishing Worker Bees.” He rose from his chair. “You’re going to polish basketballs. You’re going to polish tubas. You’re going to polish doorknobs and desks and toilet-flushing handles and gum-stained carpets.”

  “Um, how do you polish a gum-stained carpet?” Brattany asked.

  “On your knees,” Mr. Stone said, with menace in his eyes. “On your knees.”

  I gulped. Boy, those teeth were scary. And they completely clashed with his tie, too.

  “But, honest to goodness, we didn’t do anything,” Kiki said in her best I’m a little angel voice. She even fluttered her eyelashes.

  Barf, I thought.

  “Save it, Miss Masters,” the principal said. “I li
ke to think I am a man who keeps his cool and finds productive ways to reach his students, but you girls, well…Just maybe this will polish some dadgum sense into your heads.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir, but I just need a quick signature to approve the Academic Septathlon flyer,” Principal Mazer’s secretary said.

  “Come in, Mrs. Rumpkin, we’re just finishing up here anyway,” the principal told her.

  “But isn’t there some way we can avoid the PPWB, or whatever you call it?” Kiki asked as the secretary passed a sheet of paper to Principal Mazer.

  “Yeah, polishing isn’t good for my polish,” Brattany said, holding up her fingernails as if to present her manicure to the court as official evidence.

  “Sure…” Principal Mazer replied absentmindedly as he signed the sheet of paper. “Win the Academic Septathlon and all is forgiven,” he said in an offhand way.

  “Fine, we’ll do that,” Kiki said.

  “No, we’ll do that,” I shot back, not wanting to give an inch.

  “No, we will.”

  “We will!”

  “Stop! Nobody is going to do that,” Principal Mazer explained. “I mean, sure, I’d like to think someone from this school could win it, but Saint Dianne’s has won it nine out of the past ten years, and the last seven in a row. Heck, we haven’t even been able to field a Septathlon team for the past two or three years. Students have just totally lost interest.”

  “We’ll do it for you, sir,” Kiki said, straightening her spine like the world’s biggest suck-up. “We’ll carry the torch of school pride.”

  The torch of school pride? OMG, so pathetic.

  “No, we will carry the torch of school pride,” I insisted. “And we will carry it to the educational summit of Mount Olympus!”

  Hey, no one’s going to out-suck-up me.

  “No, we will!”

  “We will!”

  “Just be quiet a minute!” Principal Mazer ordered, covering his ears. “Holy goodness, what is with all of you?”

  He stared at the flyer, considering how to proceed.

  “Okay, here’s what I’ll do,” he said, some kind of positive-discipline lightbulb going off in his head. “We’ll have a little qualification tournament. The team that earns the right to represent our school will have their PPWB time cut in half. And if you win and beat Saint Dianne’s, you’re off the hook entirely.”

  “And the team that loses?” Brattany asked.

  “Polishes,” he replied. “Polishes until I can see my smile in every door handle on this campus, no ifs, ands, or buts. Is it a deal, ladies?”

  Kiki looked over at her two pet Chihuahuas.

  “Deal,” she said.

  “Deal,” I replied, without a moment’s thought, not giving the ThreePees an inch. Beanpole practically bounced out of her seat with excitement. Considering that she was the type of girl who actually liked homework, the thought of an Academic Septathlon totally wound her dorkasaurus clock. Q, on the other hand, showed a glint of Wild West gunslinger in her eyes. In the battle of brains, there was no one coming to the table with more gray matter than her.

  “The Septathlon is in four weeks. Our qualification tournament will be a week from Monday,” the principal explained.

  “Ten days?” I exclaimed. “That’s not enough time.” Being that I had already participated in Math-a-thon a few years ago, I knew exactly how much work it would take to get prepared for this sort of thing. Science, history, music, language arts, these Septathlon things were no joke.

  “I have toilet-paper-roll dispensers that could use some buffing right now if you prefer, Miss Saunders,” Principal Mazer said. “And let me ask, have you ever been in the boys’ bathroom on the first floor? The smell alone can turn your nose hair green.”

  I recoiled in horror.

  “No, ten days is great, sir. Easily done.”

  “Here are some study materials to get you started,” the principal said, opening up a closet. A moment later, each of us was holding a binder. Not just any binder, of course, but the biggest binder of intellectual materials ever put together. They must have been the size of two phone books, weighing twelve pounds each. I mean, brain surgeons probably need to know less to remove cranial tumors.

  “Wait,” Sofes said to Kiki. “Do we, like, have to learn this, or do we just carry it around for show, like we do with all our other schoolbooks?”

  Kiki ignored her.

  “Good luck, ladies,” Principal Mazer said. My arms practically sank to the floor with the weight of the tome. “I love that Aardvark spirit.”

  In the corner of the room, Mr. Stone glared. Clearly, he wanted us to start polishing—and I’m sure buffing out his Christmas teeth was at the top of the list.

  “By the way, girls,” Principal Mazer added, “if there is one more prank between now and the contest—and I don’t care who does it—the deal is off. Am I clear?”

  “Clear,” we said in low voices.

  “I said, AM I CLEAR?” Principal Mazer was one hundred percent serious. “It’s time for a truce, you hear? If you want to compete with one another, you’ll do it in a positive, productive manner. Now, out.”

  The six of us trudged out of the principal’s office carrying a rain forest’s worth of paper.

  Goodness, hadn’t these Septathlon people ever heard of deforestation?

  After carrying the entire academic history of recorded human knowledge to our last two classes, Beanpole, Q, and I met up at our usual spot, next to the fountain by the front gate.

  “This is going to be so much fun!” Beanpole said, shifting the cinder-block-size binder from her left hand to her right. “I mean, just think of the…OUCH!”

  She dropped earth’s database on her foot.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m okay,” she said, bending over to pick up the zillion-pound binder. “Just a small bump.”

  BAM! Beanpole smashed her head into the cement ledge of the fountain. Her legs wobbled, and for a second I wondered whether or not she was going to remain conscious.

  “You okay, Barbara?” Q asked. It sounded like Beanpole had fractured her skull.

  “Ouch-a-doozie,” Beanpole said, her palm covering her forehead. “Did it leave a mark?” She moved her hand so I could see the damage.

  Yeesh! It looked like she’d been struck by a meteor.

  “Nah,” I said. “Can hardly notice.”

  “Good,” she answered, rubbing her noggin. “’Cause nothing’s going to stop me from learning every piece of information in this entire book. When do we start?”

  “We don’t.”

  Both nerdwads stared at me.

  “What do you mean, we don’t?”

  I looked out into the parking lot, where a bunch of parents were picking up their kids in the carpool loop. Students screamed, a few couples held hands (ahh, teen love…barf!), and some car horns honked.

  “You heard me; we don’t,” I repeated.

  “But how are we going to win the qualification tournament if we don’t study?” Beanpole asked, not quite understanding.

  “Do you know how much time it’s going to take to prepare for the Academic Septathlon?” I replied. “We would have to stay after school five days a week to get ready. Plus, meet on Saturdays. Plus, on Sundays. It would swallow our entire existence.”

  “But you’re the one who volunteered us,” Q said.

  She had a point. But that’s because I was thinking with my abee-dah-bee at the time, or whatever that thing was that Beanpole had called it—the emotional, not logical, part of my brain. Really, I just didn’t want Kiki to get the better of me, that’s all. And when I get all riled up like that, I’m like an annoyed rhinoceros. I don’t use my head; I just get all passionate and thoughtless, and stupidly charge forward without thinking things through.

  “I got caught up in the heat of the moment,” I confessed in an I made a mistake tone. “But trust me, no one wants to do the Academic Sep
tathlon. I mean, why do you think our school hasn’t been able to put a team together for years? It takes up too much time and you have no life.”

  “I already have no life,” Beanpole said.

  “Me, neither,” Q agreed.

  “Well, I do,” I told them. “Granted, it’s pathetic, but still, I don’t want to spend every waking moment of my day until Thanksgiving break learning school stuff like a nerd.”

  “But you are a nerd,” Beanpole said.

  “This is nerd squared,” I said. “No, scratch that. This is nerd cubed. No, wait…This is nerd to the power of nerd times nerd!”

  I readjusted my backpack. The beastly Septathlon binder didn’t fit all the way inside. I couldn’t even zip the stupid zipper.

  “Polishing cleansers cause my quadriceps to cramp.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said to Q. “By next week I’m sure he’ll have forgotten all about this polishing nonsense.”

  Neither Q nor Beanpole was buying it.

  “Okay, so we’ll have to wipe down a few whiteboards, maybe mop a floor,” I said. “Big deal; it won’t be that bad.”

  “So we’re just going to let the ThreePees win?” Q asked.

  “There is no winning,” I said. “I mean, sure, we could easily trounce those witches, but whoever goes to the city championship is going to get slaughtered by those private-school girls, anyway. They’ve got coaches and experience and all that. The only thing we’d really win is a chance to lose by a zillion points and get publicly humiliated on a big stage in front of a whole lot of people.”

  “Nice optimism,” Beanpole said.

  “Just saving us the embarrassment,” I replied. After all, my entire life was about embarrassment. It was smart to play defense, to cut stuff like this off at the pass before it eventually blew up in my face. If I’d learned anything by this point, I’d learned this much: stay away from situations that hold the potential for gigantic public humiliation. Could there be an easier rule to follow?

  The three of us stood in uncomfortable silence as a car horn blared in the distance. Beep-beep.