Geek Abroad (26 page)

“Hey, Miranda!”Leila said, waving to me. “We were just talking about the lineup we should use for states. I think what we did this past weekend worked well, don’t you? Me first, then Kyle, Nicholas, Sanjiv, and then you last?”

“I don’t know,”Kyle said dubiously. He shot a sideways look at Sanjiv, who was noticeably less animated than the rest of the team. “Maybe Sanjiv should switch to third, and Nicholas or I should go fourth.”

Sanjiv’s shoulders slumped and he sighed audibly.

“Well . . .”Leila said, considering this. “That’s a thought.”

Just tell them
, I thought.
Tell them and get it over with
.

I drew in a deep breath, and was just about to say
I have some bad news
when Sanjiv suddenly spoke.

“I’m not going to finals,”he said flatly.

There was a stunned silence, and then everyone began to talk at once.

“What do you mean?”Nicholas asked.

“But you have to,”Leila said.

“Dude, if you don’t go, we’re disqualified,”Kyle said.

I didn’t say anything. I just sat there, trying to take it all in. But suddenly, it dawned on me that this was the answer to all of my problems. If Sanjiv dropped off the team, then I was off the hook. Kyle was right—with only four remaining members, the Geek High MATh team would be automatically disqualified from state finals. And I wouldn’t be the one letting everyone down.

“I’m sorry,”Sanjiv said, his voice still oddly hollow. “I know what this means for the rest of you. But I just can’t do it. . . . I can’t get up there in front of everyone again....It’s just...too...too...”He paused and stared down at his hands. His fingers were long and bony, and oddly feminine-looking. “Too humiliating.”

No one said anything for a long, awkward moment. Leila and Nicholas both seemed stricken, Kyle was angry, and Sanjiv was just marinating in misery. I looked around at them, at my ragtag team, and thought of how much we’d accomplished that year just by making finals. How if we let it end here, if we let Sanjiv quit now, how very wrong that would be. Sanjiv might spend the rest of his life regretting his decision. It could undermine his self-confidence for years to come.

Before I thought through what I was saying—what it would mean for me personally—I opened my mouth and the words tumbled out.

“Sanjiv, you’re
not
dropping off the team. We won’t let you. And there’s no reason for you to. You’re a fine player. You rarely miss a question during practices. The only problem you have is with your self-confidence. You just have to start believing in yourself the way we believe in you,”I said.

I looked around at my teammates’faces . . . and immediately hoped that Sanjiv didn’t. Because I didn’t see a whole lot of confidence there. If anything, Kyle, Leila, and Nicholas all looked dubious, as if they weren’t at all sure that Sanjiv wouldn’t choke at the state finals, just as he’d choked at our match against Dolphin Prep.

But, amazingly, Sanjiv seemed to be perking up at my vote of confidence in him. His head rose and his shoulders straightened, and I could swear that there was a hopeful gleam in his dark brown eyes that hadn’t been there a moment earlier.

“Really?”he asked.

“Really,”I said firmly. “You can do this. I know you can. We’ve come this far, and we’re not quitting now.”

There was a long, pregnant pause. I could feel everyone’s eyes shifting from me to Sanjiv, as we waited for his verdict.

Finally, Sanjiv sighed. “I don’t know why I’m agreeing to do this. . . . But okay,”he said.

“Yay!”Leila cheered, and Kyle and Nicholas looked relieved and happy.

“Miranda,”Sanjiv began. But then he stopped, and looked embarrassed.

“Yes?”I asked.

“Would you . . . I mean, do you think you could . . . I could really use your help on square roots,”Sanjiv said.

I knew how much it cost him to ask me for help. It had always bothered Sanjiv that I was better at math than he was. And as much as I wanted to help him, I wasn’t sure how I could. Square root calculations came easily to me, the answers popping into my head effortlessly. It wasn’t something I could teach him to do. But Sanjiv needed my help. I’d do whatever I could.

“Absolutely,”I said. “We’ll start working on them today.”

“Great, thanks,”Sanjiv said. He smiled weakly and looked around at us. “I guess we’d better get started. We’re going to need all the practice we can get.”

The next day, I waited outside the Mod Lit classroom for Mrs. Gordon to arrive before class began.

“Hi, Miranda,”Mrs. Gordon said, smiling warmly at me. She was carrying our essays on
1984
, marked and ready to be handed back. Her hair was pulled up in a messy ponytail, and there was a coffee stain on her yellow blouse. “Coming to class?”

“Yes. I just have something I needed to tell you in private,”I said. I explained about the MATh team, and how if I didn’t go to finals, the whole team would be disqualified, and how I couldn’t do that to them, even if it meant that I would miss the Winston Creative Writing Contest finals.

Mrs. Gordon was disappointed, but she smiled and said she understood.

“I know you didn’t ask my opinion, but for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing,”she said.

“You do?”I asked. My disappointment over missing the writing contest felt heavy, pressing on my shoulders and twisting in my stomach. It was as though not only had I received the worst news of my life, I’d had to deliver it to myself. I sighed. “No one else thinks that I am.”

I’d told my dad, Hannah, and Finn my decision, and all three had been first startled and then skeptical at the wisdom of it. Even Sadie had sent me an e-mail urging me to rethink my choice.

“I do,”Mrs. Gordon said firmly. “You’re making the brave choice. The selfless choice. That’s the kind of person you are, Miranda, and you should be proud of that. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks,”I said. Her words had lifted some of the sadness weighing on me.

“Come on. Let’s get to class,”Mrs. Gordon said. “Oh, hi, Charlie, you’re just in time.”

I turned and saw Charlie there, standing just behind me.

“Hi,”I said, before I remembered that we weren’t speaking.

“Hi,”Charlie said.

She glanced away then, as we all turned to walk into the classroom. But I’d gotten the definite feeling that before she’d turned, Charlie had been looking at me thoughtfully. As though she were just recognizing me after being away for a long time.

And I’d noticed something else: Charlie’s eyes were rimmed with red, as though she’d been crying. I wanted to ask her what was wrong, but I didn’t act fast enough. Charlie moved away and sat down next to Tabitha. She didn’t look up at me again, and insteadfocused her attention on getting out her books and laptop. I sat next to Finn, as usual. But throughout the rest of the period, as we talked about the symbolism in
Native Son
, which we had just started reading that week, I couldn’t help glancing over at Charlie. Once or twice, from the way her eyes flicked quickly away, I could have sworn that she’d been looking back at me only a moment earlier.

Chapter 22

The Mu Alpha Theta State Finals were held in a huge carpeted ballroom on the second floor of a hotel in downtown West Palm Beach. There was a stage at the front of the room, where the moderator’s podium and two team tables were set up. On the table, in front of each chair, there was a microphone and a buzzer that lit up a red light when hit.

St. Pius had already faced off against Pine Hill Academy in the first round of the quarterfinals, and Austin Strong’s team had easily won, moving forward into the semifinals. The Geek High team was up next, competing against Hibiscus High from Gainesville. We’d never gone up against this particular school before, but word was that their team was good, mostly because they fielded a large bench, and so had the luxury of being able to pick and choose their best players.

Our team was milling around with the rest of the gathered crowd, receiving final well-wishes before our round began. I was standing with my dad, the only spectator there on my behalf. Finn couldn’t come—he was on a business trip to California to meet with representatives of a gaming company—and Charlie still wasn’t speaking to me. Hannah had surprised me at breakfast by making a halfhearted offer to come with us. I’d thanked her but told her she’d probably be bored out of her mind. At this, Peyton—filing her talonlike nails while she read the real estate section of the newspaper—had snorted in a nasty way. Peyton was still furious at Dad for canceling their trip to the Keys that weekend. She certainly didn’t offer to come with us, not that I wanted her there. The Demon could lower the temperature in a room ten degrees just by walking into it.

“Good luck, honey,”Dad now said, squeezing my shoulder reassuringly. “Break a leg!”

“Thanks, Dad. And thanks for coming,”I said.

“You know I wouldn’t miss it,”he said.

“I wouldn’t either,”a familiar voice said.

Was it . . . ? No . . . it couldn’t be. Could it?

I spun around, and my mouth dropped open.

“Mom?”

“Hello, darling,”Sadie said, beaming at me. She held her arms open. I gave a cry of delight and charged toward her.

“What are you doing here?”I asked, as she squeezed me against her perfumey crimson silk blouse. “Are you home for good?”

“No, just for the week,”Sadie said. “I couldn’t miss watching you win the state championship, after all.”

“If we win,”I said doubtfully.

“I have complete faith in you,”Sadie said, hugging me to her again.

“Hello, Sadie,”Dad said, sounding stiff.

“Hello, Richard,”Sadie said. She looked around. “Where’s ... ?”

Sadie never said Peyton’s name. She usually just called her That Woman.

Dad turned red and looked down at the floor. “Peyton couldn’t make it,”he said.

“Isn’t that a surprise,”Sadie said tartly.

“Sadie, don’t start,”Dad said, his voice testy.

I broke in then. “As much as I’m enjoying this trip down memory lane—Miranda Bloom, the tween years—I have to go. My team’s waiting for me,”I said. I nodded over at where the other members of the Geek High Mu Alpha Theta team were congregating up on the stage.

My parents stopped glaring at each other long enough to wish me luck, and then I left them to their nostalgic fighting, making my way through the crowd to the stage.

“Is everyone ready?”I asked brightly. The team was grouped together, behind our table.

“Absolutely,”Nicholas said.

“Why not?”Kyle said, which was positively optimistic coming from him.

“Do you have a pep talk for us, Miranda?”Leila asked.

I looked at Sanjiv. His face was ashen and he was nervously licking his lips, but there was also an air of resolution about him. For better or worse, he was here to compete.

“Sanjiv is the team captain,”I said. “He should give the pep talk.”

But Sanjiv shook his head. “No. You’re better at pep talks than I am,”he said.

“Okay, well,”I hesitated, and drew in a deep breath while I thought. “We’re certainly ready. I doubt if any Mu Alpha Theta team in the history of Geek High has worked harder than we have to prepare for this day. So whether we win or lose, we can be proud of ourselves.”I hesitated to let these words sink in before continuing. “But I gave up the chance to win a really prestigious writing award to be here, and I really, really want to win. So don’t let me down out there.”

The rest of the team laughed, which broke the tension. And then the moderator switched on his microphone and said, “Will the teams competing in the second quarterfinal round match please take their seats.”

“This is it,”I said under my breath. “Good luck, everyone.”

We won the quarterfinals easily. Even Sanjiv got one question right, which seemed to give him a much-needed confidence boost. He was in high spirits at lunch, and seemed primed and ready to go for our semifinal match against Poinciana High, which was scheduled to take place after lunch.

Unfortunately, just as we were sitting down for the semifinals, Sanjiv’s dad showed up, waving around his camcorder and cheering loudly whenever it was Sanjiv’s turn. The end result was that although we were able to barely scrape by with a win in our semifinal competition, Sanjiv missed all three of his questions.

The good news: We were in the finals. The bad news: We were competing against St. Pius, who had cruised easily through its two earlier rounds to get there.

While Sanjiv bolted to the bathroom—presumably to throw up—I quickly gathered the rest of our teammates in a huddle.

“We have to get rid of Sanjiv’s dad,”I said.

Kyle nodded knowingly. “Like a poisonous dart in the neck? Or do you want to try and slip something in his drink?”

“No!”I said. I wasn’t entirely sure Kyle was joking. “I meant we have to get rid of him in a legal and nonviolent way.”

“We could tell him that he got an urgent phone message saying he had to go home right away,”Leila suggested.

“Except why would we get a phone call like that? Why wouldn’t whoever was supposedly calling him just reach him on his cell phone?”I asked.

Leila looked disgruntled. “It was just an idea,”she said testily.