Dating on the Dork Side

Chapter 1-2

“Oh, Camy, you’re here?” Ms. Pendergast said, but her tone was more: Why are you here?

I shrugged. It wasn’t like I could tell her how much I liked the view.

“I guess so, but I think ...” I let the sentence trail off, not sure what I was thinking. That I wouldn’t be here long? That I couldn’t wait until she left so I could check out the strange girl wiki? That I had, in general, no clue what was going on?

Ms. Pendergast adjusted her leather tote, then shot me another look.

“I admire your dedication, but I don’t really think you need to stay. Is that”—she pointed a manicured finger at the computer screen—“something you could do at home? I was thinking of locking up and leaving early.”

“I’m just checking to make sure the new video tutorials got loaded on all the computers this summer. As soon as I finish, I’ll shut everything down and turn off the lights.”

Ms. Pendergast sighed and dropped her bag onto a desktop. “Camy, you know what they say, don’t you?”

If by “they” she meant Jason and the rest of the users of the Hotties of Troy wiki, then no, I didn’t know what they said. But I was bursting to find out and would, if I could just get Ms. Pendergast and her tote bag to leave the room.

“All work and no play makes …” She gave up, apparently deciding I was too lame to understand. “There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” she said as she walked toward the windows. “It’s a beautiful day. Get outside. Enjoy yourself.”

I could hear Gavin calling a sequence of numbers on the football field below. How could I explain that being alone here, with my skybox view, counted as enjoying myself? I couldn’t. As if to prove her point, Ms. Pendergast pulled the last window closed and flipped the lock just as Gavin called, “Hut!”

She turned toward a row of computers next and stabbed at the power buttons. Her eyes were on her task instead of me when she said, “You can’t just watch life from the sidelines, you know.”

On any other day I might have marveled at the stiletto-shod Ms. Pendergast tossing out sports metaphors. Today that seemed no stranger than the rest of it. It was no weirder than finding Jason in the tutoring room, and definitely less odd than my name turning up on the Hotties of Troy website.

I closed Excel and logged off before powering down the other computers on my side of the room. All the while, I wondered: What was the URL of the wiki? Could I remember it so I could log in from home later? And was I really so pathetic that even a teacher could sense my loser status?

Ms. Pendergast locked the door behind us, dashing any hope I might have had of sneaking back in once she’d left. She shifted her tote from one shoulder to the other.

“It really is good you’re so … dedicated,” she said again. “But it’s your last year of high school. Don’t forget to enjoy it.”

She left me with those words ringing in my ears. I waited until the last click, click, click of her heels had faded, then tried the door, but the handle rattled under my grip.

I thought about texting Rhino. I’d never seen him pick a lock, but I bet he could do it. I imagined his lanky frame stooped over the doorknob, dark strands of hair falling into his eyes. Rhino would come if I called. He always did.

We’d been friends since preschool and we’d seen each other at our worst. I was sitting in the front row of the bleachers at the T-ball game when Rhino struck out, lost his helmet, and knocked himself unconscious with his own bat. In eighth grade, he came to my rescue after the girl I thought was my best friend ditched me in the restroom at the Spring Fling, leaving me half naked and with no way to get home.

What now? My plans for a perfect first-day-of-school afternoon were completely blown. Should I walk to Rhino’s and ask for his help, or head home and hack Hotties by myself? Hang off the chain link fence and gaze at Gavin?

Maybe Ms. Pendergast was right, I thought as I headed down the stairs. So far, I hadn’t enjoyed a single minute of senior year.

I wouldn’t say Rhino hated school. The word hate requires far more passion than Rhino had ever worked up about an educational institution. Dislike, maybe. Disdain. I’m sure he could conjure up a dozen other D-words to describe how he felt. So of course, in a cruel twist of fate, he lived just a block away from Olympia, Minnesota’s only high school.

On crisp autumn nights, you could hear the football games from his house. Every year, the homecoming committee used his street as a staging area for the parade. Last fall, as convertible after convertible arrived to carry homecoming royalty, Rhino had turned to me and said, “I’m being punished for something I did in a past life, right?”

He forgets that when we were little, we loved it. All of it. Rhino wanted to be the drum major. I yearned to wear a long gown, to sit on the trunk of a convertible. Once, Rhino wove a paper chain crown for me. With it on top of my head, I practiced waving at an admiring crowd.

Middle school had quickly demolished what was left of those wispy fantasies. I was never going to be popular enough to make it into the homecoming court. I’d even convinced myself that it didn’t matter. But I still didn’t see the point of treating school like it was a jail sentence.

Things could be worse. Much, much worse.

And today, they were. Because standing in Rhino’s garage was … Jason. Yes, that Jason, the one with the stupid nickname. For a second I considered Mr. Dawson’s opening lecture in Advanced Earth Sciences that morning. He’d talked about the Butterfly Effect, the theory that an insect flapping its wings in the sss jungle could cause a tornado thousands of miles away.

I stared, open-mouthed, and couldn’t help wondering: Just how big would a butterfly’s wings need to be to make the jocktastic Jason appear both in the tutoring room and in my nerdy best friend’s garage on the same afternoon? In most cases, pretty freakin’ huge, I thought. But in this case, you had to account for Darren.

To really understand Rhino, and why Jason “The Ab” Abernathy might be standing next to him, you don’t need to know much about earth science, but you do need to know a little about Rhino’s family. It was Rhino’s older brother Darren who defined the Rineholds. Darren, the superstar athlete who’d led Olympia High to not one, but two state baseball championships.

If you took everything that was Darren and held it up like a photograph, Rhino would be the negative. He was dark where his brother was light. He shined in ways most people didn’t notice. The saddest part? Hardly anyone could see Rhino for the amazing person he was because they kept expecting to see Darren instead.

No matter how different the brothers were, there was one sacred thing that connected Rhino to Darren, and both of them to Jason. That thing was baseball. I always wondered if Rhino loved the game the way I love football. Maybe he simply loved his brother. For the record, Darren is pretty cool.

Whatever the reason, Rhino started keeping team stats when he was just a seven-year-old tag-along and Darren was a Gopher League All-Star. When his big brother joined the middle school and then the high school team, Rhino followed with his scorebook. After Darren graduated four years ago, Rhino kept at it. He can do things with statistics that make my brain hurt.

Over the years, Rhino and Jason developed an odd sort of friendship. At first, I cringed whenever I saw them together, certain Rhino was being set up for a massive fall. But then I figured it out. There’s one thing I know about athletes: they’re superstitious. As long as Rhino was the one keeping track of RBIs and extra bases, then Jason would no more body slam him into a locker than toss out his own pair of lucky socks.

That afternoon, the two of them were huddled over a card table strewn with printouts from Rhino’s computer. Neither boy noticed me standing there in the driveway. And standing there.

At last, I tried, “Uh, hi?” because that had worked so well in the tutoring room.

They both jerked back. Rhino recovered first.

“Hey, Cams,” he said. “Jason stopped by to pick up a pair of Darren’s old cleats and we decided to look over the stats for the incoming freshmen.”

“State,” Jason added. “We want to go to state.” He didn’t sound all that pumped about the prospect. Jason gave the printouts another look, stroked his chin like he was considering something earth-shattering, then he said to Rhino, “See ya, bro.”

They did that fist bump thing boys do, then Jason wandered down the driveway, a haphazard path that put him close enough that he could—I swear I’m not making this up—sniff me. Again.

It was getting kind of creepy.

Jason’s SUV belched to life, the engine loud, the blast from the stereo even louder. He felt the need to leave a patch of burnt rubber behind as he rumbled down the street.

“So,” I said to Rhino once the exhaust had cleared. “You guys.” I crossed my fingers. “Like this now? BFFs? I bet you’re planning to room together in college next year. He’s probably penciled you in as best man at his wedding already.”

“Shut up,” he said in typical Rhino fashion. “You are aware that I would never attend any school that would accept the likes of The Ab, right? Besides, there isn’t a girl on the planet dumb enough to marry him.”

Rhino might be a genius, but he didn’t know much about girls. Just one day into the school year and Jason already had a posse of freshman flirts following him through the cafeteria. I thought of the girls in my own class. The shy ones he never noticed, the popular ones he both flattered and tormented.

There was something about The Ab, though. He was big and goofy, with dark blond hair and slightly darker eyebrows, which, combined with those killer blue eyes, was actually kind of cute. I’d never crushed on him, but I knew plenty of girls who had.

“Last first day of school?” I asked, just to get a rise out of Rhino.

“Four years too late.”

I stuck out my tongue at him. “Come on, did you really want to go off to college without me?”

He didn’t smile, but his eyes narrowed in a squint that I knew, from years of studying his face, was affection. That squint was also, in part, how he’d gotten his nickname. I should mention that his parents did give him a perfectly normal first name. It’s Ben. But back in grade school, before glasses, Rhino squinted all the time. And his nose? Well, he still hasn't grown all the way into it, though it was looking more Romanesque. He’s kind of grumpy too, if not actually wrinkled like a rhinoceros. And when he charges? Even I get out of his way.

The nickname fit, so it stuck.

Just then, something tiny and red flashed in his tangled hair.

“Hold still,” I told him.

I stepped closer, just a breath away from him, and went up on tiptoes. I parted the strands with my finger, half expecting to find that Amazonian butterfly, but a ladybug crawled onto my nail instead.