Dating on the Dork Side

Chapter 3-2

Elle sighed.

My tutoring genes kicked in before my social stupidity genes could click off. “Actually, they threw it into the harbor, and the Tea Party was a different kind of protest. But yes, the American colonists boycotted English goods, including tea. A boycott just means you refuse to buy or associate with … something.”

At that moment I realized that every girl in the room was staring at me like I had a giant neon dork sign flashing on my forehead.

“Okay. Uh, thanks for the clarification, Camy.” Elle said. She looked around the room, holding every girl’s gaze for a second or two. Then she went in for the kill.

“Until the boys at our school make this right, we boycott … them.”

The girl with the sketchy grasp of American history raised her hand again. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “We don’t buy anything from the boys, so what is it we’re supposed to stop doing?”

Elle pressed her lips together and I saw her mouth the words, Oh, honey. Out loud, she said, “We stop doing it. And not just that. There will be no kissing, no hugging, no handholding. No contact of any kind.”

Silence. Then whispers. That won’t work. They’ll find some other girls. They’ll find some ... skanks. Prairie Stone skanks.

“But we can still hang out with the guys, right?” Clarissa began, her words pushed together in one long ramble. “I mean, if it’s just—”

“This is stupid.” The heels of Sophie’s boots cracked against the floor one at a time. “It won’t work. Some guys will always be assholes. It’s the way the world works.”

Elle surveyed Sophie before turning her sights on Clarissa. “So, you want to keep hanging out with these boys? Are you sure about that?”

“It’s just a stupid website, and homecoming’s only a few—”

“Would you like to see your page?” Elle asked.

“Would I ... what?”

“Like to see your page on the wiki,” Elle repeated. “Would you like to read what these wonderful specimens of the male gender have to say about you?”

I held my breath. The previous night I’d made an awful (although Elle had called it wonderful) discovery. She’d wanted me to find more evidence of what she termed “asshattery,” so she’d asked me to concentrate on Clarissa’s page. Thanks to their on-again, off-again, who-knows-what-again relationship, our prime suspect, Aiden Tuttle, made a regular appearance there.

At the beginning of summer, things definitely had been on again between Clarissa and Aiden. With the page littered with endless comments to each of Aiden’s posts, I had a hard time deciphering what exactly had happened. Then, as I minimized the comments, it became clear. During one of their dates, Aiden had posted live and continuous updates about his “progress” on the wiki. I stripped out the comments and sent the whole thing to Elle. Two minutes later, my cell phone rang.

“Oh, my gosh,” Elle said, over and over again.

“I know,” I responded, each time.

I had my own reasons for not liking Clarissa. She was one of those girls most people happily admitted they didn’t like—as long as it was in quick whispers behind the locked doors of bathroom stalls. Because all Clarissa had to do was wrinkle her nose in your direction for your social status to plummet.

But no one, not even Clarissa, deserved Aiden’s messages. Not even the mild one posted at 10:26 p.m.:

Dude, I’m in, up close and personal with victoria’s secret.

And no one deserved the eighty-seven lurid messages in the comment thread beneath it, either. So when Elle asked Clarissa if she wanted to see her page on the wiki, I knew just how serious that question was.

“Yeah, sure.” Clarissa tossed her head and added, “Bring it on.”

Elle nodded to me. “Camy, why don’t you show everyone what happened on June twelfth?”

Clarissa jerked her head toward me. I think, maybe, she knew what was coming. She stood there and took it anyway. For a moment, I felt sorry for her. For a moment, I almost liked her again.

Up on the screen, the new slide came into focus. Elle had told me to title it “The Date.”

“Damn,” someone whispered.

“That isn’t—” Clarissa began, but something that sounded like a sob swallowed her words.

“True?” Elle suggested. “Would it matter either way?”

“What’s the big deal?” Sophie said. “Guys were saying way worse things about me in sixth grade.”

“Camy?” Elle said.

My second cue. Elle had reasoned right. We needed both Clarissa and Sophie on our side, or the whole plan would fail. A few girls squirmed in their seats and a few got up to comfort Clarissa. Everyone stopped when Sophie’s wiki page flashed on the screen.

It wasn’t pretty. While innuendo and speculation were present on most of the pages, the comments on Sophie’s page read like a scoreboard of s****l favors. After the first couple of entries, I’d stopped reading, and believing, most of what was posted there. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day to do that many things with that many boys.

If Sophie was bothered by what she read on the screen, she didn’t show it. Not at first, anyway. She kicked up her feet again and rested them on the chair. A second later, her boots hit the floor. She leaned forward, then stood and clomped over to the screen as if she needed to see the words up close.

“What the ever-loving hell?” She traced the comments with a finger, lingering on the names of each guy, snorting and shaking her head. Then she turned toward the girls in the room.

“I’ll go through your list and I’ll be glad to tell you who I’ve done,” she said. “I’ll even tell you which one of your boyfriends I want to hook up with next. But I’m telling you this right now. I never touched The Ab. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t even show up in his dreams.”

“Oh, please.” This from Clarissa, who’d recovered her voice.

Sophie spun on her. The girls sitting in front of Clarissa ducked. “You got something to say, Delacroix? Then come over here and—”

“Ladies.” Elle held up her hands. “You’re venting your anger at the wrong gender. We could keep going through examples, or…”

“Or what?” Sophie spat.

Clarissa’s gaze traveled the room, each girl, one by one, falling under her scrutiny. “Or we could go through the list,” she said.

Sophie glanced at her. Something passed between them, a brief moment of understanding, and Sophie nodded.

By four thirty, we’d read through dozens of comments. Some recounted tales of hanging boogers and various embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions that had occurred through the years. One thread covered leg shaving—or lack thereof—and came complete with Photoshopped images of girls’ heads atop Sasquatch bodies. An entire page of comments listed who wore padded bras. Another suggested who should wear them. Quite a bit more time was focused on who would do what and when. Finally, there was an especially painful discussion of Lana Greene’s allegedly hairy n*****s.

No girl in the room was left unscathed. Not even me and my fantastic smell.

Sophie, back in her chair, leaned across the desk and whispered, “You’ve got to lend me your deodorant.”

“So, what do we do?” The question came from Clarissa, who sounded like she’d had all her normal bitchiness knocked out of her.

I felt as shell-shocked as she sounded. We’d just gone through a lot of words about a lot of girls. In the aftermath, we now had this one thing in common. The wiki was some sort of secret guy tribunal, judging every girl’s worth by her smile, eyes, hair, and assumed body measurements.

“I’m going to show you what we do,” Elle said.

That was my third cue. I hopped up from the computer and let Elle sit. My heart fluttered uncontrollably. She logged in to f*******:, everything still projected on the screen for all to see.

“Good,” she said. “He’s online.”

She opened a message session with Gavin, a single command that said:

Watch my profile.

Then she changed her status from In a relationship with Gavin Madison to Single.

“What are you doing?” one of the cheerleaders said. Actually, she shrieked, her voice rising with her next words. “We have a game tonight!”

“He’s a big boy,” Elle said, her voice impassive, almost bored. “He can deal.”

A message from Gavin popped up on the screen.

Gavin: wtf?

Elle: You saw it.

Gavin: are we breaking up?

Elle: way to keep up. Are you on the honor roll?

I braced for a string of obscenities, but they never came. Gavin’s icon just vanished. When Elle checked his status again, he was no longer online.

“Uh,” said Clarissa. “That was a little harsh, don’t you think?”

Elle closed f*******: and The Hotties of Troy reappeared.

“Should we see what happens to my page?” she asked. She clicked on her name. There on top was a new entry with just one word:

bitch

High school football in Olympia is a big deal. The whole town (minus Rhino) comes out for every home game.

Maybe it was habit. Maybe I was superstitious. I don’t know. But before each game, I walked row three of the track that surrounded the field. I can’t remember ever not doing it. Tonight, I’d gone a quarter mile when Mercedes Washington dashed up to me. She was perky and petite, but came equipped with a powerhouse engine. The rows of braids on her head swayed and danced with her every move. She never stopped—cheerleading, gymnastics, and in the spring, tennis.

“Oh, my gosh, Camy.” Mercedes clutched my arm. “I did it. I dumped Lukas right before he went into the locker room, and now I can’t breathe.” She waved her free hand in front of her face. I wanted to suggest that if she paused between sentences, the whole breathing thing might work itself out.

Before we left that afternoon’s secret meeting, Elle had extracted a promise from each girl with a so-called significant other: All dumping would occur before first bell on Monday.

Oxygen deprivation aside, Mercedes didn’t look too broken up about the breakup. Lukas had been another one to give play-by-plays of dates. He was also the second string quarterback for Olympia High. Something told me tonight’s play-by-play would suck, on so many levels.

“So.” Mercedes caught her breath. “Are you okay? Did you dump Rhino yet?”

Did I ... what? My mind churned for a few moments before I found the right combination of words.

“One,” I said. “I’m not going out with Rhino. Two, he wasn’t on the list.” Yeah, like Rhino would ever be on that sort of list. I imagined his disgust if he heard about the wiki. The rant would almost be worth breaking my promise to Elle.

“Oh!” Her face lit up. “That’s right. He totally wasn’t on the list. Wow. An actual nice guy. I don’t think I know one of those.”

Nice? Rhino? Sure. Only if Machiavelli was nice. I tried to hide my smile, but Mercedes took my look as complete agreement.

“I’ll be sure to tell him that,” I said.

“Great. You know, I—” Her eyes darted sideways and I followed her gaze.

In the center of a group of cheerleaders, Elle was sending Mercedes her own eye message.

“Gotta go. My leader, she beckons.” Mercedes did a little bow with a flourish and ran off.

I laughed. Who knew Mercedes Washington was so clever?

The air cooled. I felt it on my cheeks, that first cold bite of autumn. I untied the fleece hoodie from around my waist and slipped it on. Dew came next, the night heavy with it. I tipped my face toward the sky, closed my eyes, and felt the weight of it against my lashes.