Into the Wild Nerd Yonder by Julie Halpern
I fumble a book off the shelf in front of me. “Oh, you know, just looking for something good to read.” Barrett nods to the Enrico Fermi biography in my hands.
“Looks engrossing, dorklet.”
“I’m not a dorklet.” I stuff the book back onto the shelf. “And aren’t you supposed to be in class? Not making out with Chloe Romano?”
“Are you spying on me?” No, I want to say, I’m spying on that nerd over there. “We both got bathroom passes. I’m going back to class now, Oh Hall Monitress. Enjoy your scientific discoveries.” He pats me on the head in a big-brotherly, slightly condescending way. Grrr. I’m not a dorklet. I’m just going to sit with one.
I head over to Henry’s table with the plan that it would be rude not to at least say hello, and if he offers me a seat then I’ll take it, but only to study my precalculus. I try to be casual as I walk up, assuming he’ll see me and the conversation will begin immediately. But he doesn’t look up, and I recognize the white cords hanging down from his ears. I guess I could just sit down, or say something, or walk away really fast and pretend I never intended to sit with him in the first place. I decide on the last choice, but just as I move, Henry says, “Jessie?” Is it weird that I like the sound of his voice saying my name?
“Hey, Henry. I saw you sitting here, but I didn’t want to bother you. Are you studying? What are you listening to? Do you have lunch now?” Why am I being rambly? It’s not like I have to impress him with my coolness. Calm thyself.
“What?” He yanks out his earbuds, and I’m thankful he couldn’t hear the game of twenty questions I was unintentionally playing with him. “Um, hey, how’s it going?” Real smooth-like.
“Good. Just listening to Bob Dylan and studying for precalc. I pretend that the music helps me study, but I think it just gets songs stuck in my head and helps distract me from how stressed out I actually should be.” He smiles, and I’m surprisingly mushed by the squintiness of his eyes.
“Who do you have for precalc?” I ask and sit down across from him.
“Ms. Jersen. Last period. So hard to focus on math at the end of the day.”
“I heard she’s hard, too.” Conversation flows normally, and I figure he really can’t see the Henry dream look on my face. Phew. I relax a little. “Do you want to study? I made flash cards of the formulas.” I pull out some cards from my bag and notice that he’s smiling even bigger at me now. “What?”
“Flash cards?” he asks me with an eyebrow raised.
“What?” I ask again. “What’s wrong with flash cards?”
“Nothing, I guess. I just haven’t used flash cards since I learned my multiplication tables. But you’re the one with the straight As in math, so I won’t question your methods any longer. Quiz me.”
Wait a minute. Was I just made fun of by a nerd for being a math dork? And how did he know I was a math dork anyway?
We spend the rest of the period quizzing each other on formulas (where, by the way, I completely kick his ass). It’s sort of fun, in a studying-for-a-precalc-test kind of way. When we get up to leave, I can’t help but notice his floody jeans. Why do I care again?
“Thanks for your help. Maybe we can do this again next precalc test.” He has amazing eye contact, and I’m a tad uncomfortable looking into his blue-raspberry-Slurpee eyes.
“Sure. But I may have to charge you,” I joke. On the way to precalculus, I suddenly panic. I just helped a dork study for a math test. Wouldn’t that make me an even bigger dork?
Mike Eastman passes back the tests without any comments about how I smell today. I put pencil to paper and ace the test.
chapter 21
DOTTIE VERSED ME IN THE BASICS of Dungeons and Dragons all through study hall, but I barely heard her. My nerd exchange incident really disturbed me. It’s like how I was thinking about Polly and how pretty she is, and I was spying through the biography section, and then my brother calls me a dorklet and I end up tutoring someone who is supposed to outnerd me and where does that put me on the social food chain? I have never been anywhere on it, technically. Like, if the school had to be divided into groups based on social status, it would be so easy to say to most people, “You go over there to jocks, and you go over to the dorks, and you go over to the emo kids, and the punks, and the stoners.” And after all that sorting through the giant school strainer, I would be left hanging out by myself still in the strainer because I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. When I’m a senior, and it’s time to fill out our senior survey for most and best and biggest and hottest, I would be voted nothingest—except that I wouldn’t, because I’m so nothing that nobody would vote for me. But what if I keep heading in the direction I’m heading in—away from the punk god Barrett, away from the freshly punk skag Bizza, and toward the nerd clan? Do I want to be voted biggest geek? Highest dork to the nth power? Tutor of nerds with ugly shoes?
I wish I could be like Bizza, ever the slutty, poseur skank that she is, because at least she can just decide to do something and go for it, screw what anyone else thinks. I mean, I could have been the one up in Van’s bedroom with a shaved head, doing the deed, if I weren’t such a nobody (and if I wasn’t squeeged by the idea of a BJ, or if I wasn’t afraid of what shape my head would turn out to be without hair. What if it was lumpy?). Well, I’m going to decide to do something. And that something is: nothing. I am not going to pursue the ho route that Bizza has taken, and I’m not going to play the drums and become a band geek, and I most certainly am not going to join Dottie and Henry (who needs to get out of my dreams) and a bunch of other dweebs to play Dungeons and Dragons, furthering my downward spiral into the position of First Official Dork. There. Decision made.
But what a lonely decision it is.
chapter 22
I MOPE MY WAY HOME, LISTENING to Elsewhere. Even in death, the character manages to find love, and it’s so beautiful and so sad that I end up crying most of my walk home.
Dad is in the kitchen making corn bread to go with our chili dinner, and when he sees my face all puffy and red, he stops what he’s doing and hugs me. “What’s the matter, pumpkin?”
I sob, partly because of the ending of Elsewhere, but mostly because, as I put it so eloquently to my dad, “I don’t want to be a nerd.”
Dad chuckles a little but catches himself when he figures out I’m serious. “What makes you think you’re a nerd? You don’t look like a nerd to me.”
I’m tempted to make some snotty comment about how he’s not the best judge of nerd character, but I really do need someone to talk to about this. “I’m not a nerd yet, but there is definite potential for a nerdo-morphosis.”
“Does this have something to do with your fight with Bizza? You don’t need a friend like her to be cool, you know.”
“I don’t need a friend like her, period,” I say defensively. “But without Bizza, that means I have to find new friends, and the ones I’m finding aren’t exactly what you or anybody else would call cool.”
I expect my dad to be annoyed with my angsty bitching, but he surprises me with one word. “So?’
“So what?” I ask, confused.
“So, why do you need cool friends? It seems to me that your ‘cool’ friends”—he uses finger quotes, which I guess is where I learned it—“weren’t very cool to begin with. And from what I’ve witnessed in this house over the years, Bizza was neither cool nor nice. Always telling you what to do, making you feel like you weren’t good enough.” Dad angrily stirs the corn bread batter and mutters incoherently on about Bizza. I am taken back by how pissed he sounds. I have never heard Dad say anything bad about my friends, and with the way he’s talking, it sounds like he may have been holding back for a while.
“What’s the deal, Dad?” I try to stop his mumblings before he stirs the corn bread into soup.
He takes a deep breath, dips his finger in the batter, tastes it with a satisfied nod, and pours it into a pan. “Jessie, you know I love you. And you know I would never say anything to try and influence y
“You’re boring me, Dad. Is there a point to this?”
“Bizza is a bitch. That’s all I’m saying.” He puts up his hands in surrender mode, then heads to the stove to stir the chili in its giant pot.
“Daaaaad,” I elongate the word in a scolding way, but also with an underlying laugh. My dad is the Nicest Man on Earth. When my friends’ parents can’t be bothered to take us to the movies, he drives. When it’s time to pick a vacation, he lets us choose the place. Even when he’s talking about his worst, most turdly students, he does it in a fair and nice-ish way. Never has he sworn in front of me, and never has he given any reason for me to doubt the fact that he, too, was among Bizza’s many admirers. “You think Bizza’s a bitch?” He doesn’t speak, but nods his head vigorously at the stove. I hope the grungy cap stays on his head. “Then why did you always invite her on our family trips? And with us out for dinner?”
“Because, honey, I knew you wanted me to.”
I guess he was right, although there were more than a few times that life would have been better sans Bizza. “Then why didn’t you ever say anything before?”
“Jessie, honey.” Dad sits down at the kitchen table and pats the chair next to him. I sit. “As your father, as much as I wish I could, I can’t pick your friends. Just like I can’t pick your clothes or your music or your nose—”
“My nose?”
“Pick your nose. That was supposed to be a joke.” I roll my eyes. “Do you see what I’m saying? You chose Bizza as your friend, and I had to accept it. Now, if you were planning on marrying her—”
“I’m not a lesbian, Dad.”
“That’s a whole other conversation. But I’m just warning you that I will tell you if I don’t like whoever you decide to marry. In a hundred years or so, when you’re ready to get married. We can discuss sex in another hundred and fifty years.”
“No, Dad, we can’t. But thanks for the weird talk.”
“Anytime.” I stand up to leave when Dad asks, “What makes you think your new friends are going to be nerds anyway?”
I sit back down to brace myself. Dad will be the first human being I tell, which makes everything one hundred percent official. “Ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons?”
“D&D!” Dad yells, and tosses his head back with a nostalgic laugh. “I haven’t played since college. I used to love it. I didn’t know you kids still played.”
“We kids don’t. Or at least haven’t. I’m supposed to go over to this guy’s house tomorrow night for my first adventure.”
“Good times. Good times.” Dad doesn’t seem to notice the confusion in my voice as his brain skips down memory lane. “Man, we used to play all night. That’s one of the best things about going to college, by the way: no one to tell you to go to bed. We’d start at dinnertime, order a pizza, drink, order another pizza. . . .”
“Dad, spare me the debauchery.” I already knew that my dad wasn’t squeaky clean in college thanks to his marathon Just Say No speeches. I had a friend, number one in his class, on his way to working for NASA. Hit the bud, and soon he was bottom of his class in Poultry Science. Even the chickens didn’t want him. Stay away from drugs, or sleep with chickens!
“Good point. You don’t need drugs or alcohol to enjoy D&D. That’s the beauty of it. You can become a completely different person in a different time and different place. . . . It’s insanely fun. I’d still be playing if your mother hadn’t made me quit.”
I shudder at the thought of my dad and a bunch of other middle-aged men sitting around our kitchen table playing D&D on Friday nights. “Why’d Mom make you quit?”
I wait for the answer Because only dorks play Dungeons and Dragons, but instead he says, “Ah, took too much time away from our relationship. She never got it, and honestly, I think she was a little jealous.”
“Of what?”
He does that hat lift-off thing again. “Yeah, well, I was still playing after college when we both began teaching. She hated that I was spending my Friday nights with a bunch of people who weren’t her. Plus, well, there was Simone.” He says this name dreamily, to the point where I’m totally creeped. He notices my revulsion and clarifies, “Simone was the only female who played Dungeons and Dragons with us. Mom seemed to think I had some sort of crush on her.”
“Did you?” I had to wonder with his far-out look.
“No, no, of course not. But I did always think it was cool: the lone girl at the D&D table, kicking troglodyte butt with the rest of us.”
“You’re scaring me a little, Dad,” because you sound like such a freak, I want to add.
“You’ll see. D&D is a blast. How long has it been since you lost yourself in play? Why should little kids get to have all the fun? Plus, you’ll be one of the only females there, I assume?” I nod. “Prepare to be ogled, my dear. But not too much. One hundred and fifty years, remember?” Dad stands up, ruffles my hair, and goes back to chili cooking.
Our conversation has left me utterly confused. I would feel way too guilty at this point to ditch my first D&D adventure tomorrow night, but I fear that if I go, I open the doorway to nerd-dom, and there’s no going back. I decide to make a pro and con list:
The Pros and Cons of Going to
Henry’s Tomorrow Night for Dungeons and Dragons
Pros
Cons
It is Henry’s house.
Seeing Henry in his natural
habitat may curb my pervy
dreams.
Dottie is really nice.
D&D sounds fun—possible
butt-kicking fantasy
fulfillment.
It’s better than staying home
avoiding a call from Bizza.
What if Bizza doesn’t call
anyway?
Why would I even want Bizza
to call?
Are these even pros
and cons?
It is Henry’s house, and why
do I think that’s a pro?
Seeing him for an extended
period of time may burrow
him into my subconscious permanently.
If I become friends with
Dottie, will people think I’m
weird like Dottie?
If I think D&D is fun, am I
automatically a dork?
I go to bed without any satisfaction from my useless pro and con list. Why do people make those, anyway?
I fall asleep willing myself to dream of anything but Henry. I decide not to do the dream journaling anymore, since I can’t read it, anyway. I wake up at my alarm, realizing my will failed. In the dream, I’m wearing a fur outfit, but not like fur coats that rich old ladies wear. More like a caveman fur outfit. It’s nice and warm, and for some reason I know I look pretty good. I’m sitting at a table in the cafeteria, and across from me, Van and Bizza are making out while holding Bosco Sticks in their hands. Bob Dylan is playing over the PA system, “Lay, Lady, Lay,” which is a song I always liked as a kid because I thought he was saying “Lady Elaine,” like that scary puppet from Mr. Rogers’. Anger grows inside me, and from out of nowhere I grab a sword. It feels light and comfortable in my hands, like a badminton racket. I feel someone’s strong arms around my waist. I turn around into the naked chest of Henry, who’s wearing only flip-flops and yellow flowered board shorts. He whispers in my ear, “Kick troglodyte butt,” which in my dream I take to mean ram my sword through Bizza’s and Van’s cold hearts. I approach them silently and with a great roar, I swing my sword and—wake up panting and exhilarated. Not that I’d ever actually stab Bizza and Van with a sword (I mean, where do you even get a sword?), but the feeling of revenge in my dream was absolutely satisfying. I lie in bed for a couple of minutes to try and burn the memory of the dream into my brain. Revenge feels pretty sweet when you don’
chapter 23
I HAVE TO PEE, BUT BARRETT’S IN the bathroom shaving his head again. I thought he might decide to grow his hair into a Joe Normal preppie cut to blend more with his babelicious girlfriend, but he said he liked the way the buzz made him look a little mean. And so did Chloe Romano.
I pound on the door, and I know Barrett can hear me over the clippers but is choosing to ignore me. The aggression from my dream has made me a little pumped, and I smack the door open with the palm of my hand. Whump. “Damn” emanates from behind the door, and I giggle mischievously.
With the door cracked, I peek my nose into the bathroom. “Are you almost done, Buzzer? I have to pee.” He clicks off the razor’s safety guard and taps it into the sink. Taking his sweet time, he wraps the cord neatly around the clippers, stows the case under the sink, and admires his newly shorn ’do in the mirror. “I can pee just fine with you still in here, you know,” I say, my legs crossed in desperation.
“No way.” Barrett opens the door completely now, while I bust past him to the toilet. “I can’t stand the smell of pee first thing in the morning.”
“Well, mine smells like roses,” I call after him from my seat on the throne.
“Sure,” he calls back, “just like your farts don’t stink.”
“They don’t!” I protest.
We’re almost late getting to school, due to my extra-long shower where I spend way too long overanalyzing my dream. Thankfully, my tardiness allows me to blow past Char when I see her in the hall. “Jessie—I need to talk to you!” she yells, but I just turn around and give a fake friendly wave as I speed away to first period.