Geek Charming (31 page)

“If you ask me, she’s overreacting a little,” said Steven.

The two of us looked at him like he was crazy.

He shrugged as he reached into his pocket and took out a handful of the Hershey’s Kisses that he had stockpiled from the dishes that had been laid out around the family room. “What? People make mistakes.”

“Yeah, but usually when they’re going to screen a movie before an audience, they check to see if it’s the right one,” said Ari.

“Still, you have to admit,
my
cut looked great up there on the screen,” Steven went on. “The pacing was awesome.”

I sighed as I rubbed my arms in an attempt to get warm. For a few weeks I had been granted entrance into the inner sanctum of Castle Heights society, but that was now a fading memory. Once again I had been thrust back out into the cold. Or at least as cold at it got during an unseasonably warm November in Southern California.

chapter thirteen:
dylan

Thanks to Josh—my
ex
-best friend—it turned out my wish had been granted: the documentary
was
like a real-life
Laguna Beach
. Except that he had cast me in the role of the bitch.

After I locked the door behind him and his stupid geek friends, I stood in the foyer and forced myself to breathe. At that moment I wished
I
had an inhaler. To say I felt betrayed and humiliated didn’t come close to describing how I felt. No—it was as if I was
beyond
betrayed and humiliated.

As I slowly walked back to the family room, I prayed that when I got there I’d discover that this so wasn’t a big deal. Wasn’t Lola always telling me I tended to overreact? And back when we had been going out, Asher had said that all the time, like when I got all mad when he had called fifteen minutes before he was supposed to meet Daddy and me at the country club for dinner and said he couldn’t make it because he had just scored a ticket off Craigslist for an Ultimate Fighting match.

Before I walked in, I took a deep breath. “Keep it together,” I whispered to myself. As I walked into the room, everyone immediately shut up. “Hey, does anyone want to watch a
real
movie?” I asked, trying to sound like what had happened was no big deal. “Something fun and uplifting, like a John Hughes one?”

No one answered. Instead they just stared at me like I was one of those actresses that kept showing up on the cover of the tabloids because of public freak-outs.

Okay, so maybe it was a bigger deal than I had thought.

I sat down and picked up a container of Twizzlers. “Don’t tell me you guys haven’t figured out that what Josh put together was just his way of taking out all his anger and frustration on us popular people because he’s such a geek.”

“What do you mean ‘us’?” asked Lola. “We look fine.
You’re
the one who comes off as a bitch.”

I shoved a stick of licorice into my mouth as fast as I could. “Well, that’s just because he’s secretly in love with me and he finally got it through his thick head that I was never going to feel that way about him,” I replied with my mouth full.

“You always think everyone’s in love with you,” said Hannah accusingly. “But they’re so not. I mean, look at Asher—you keep saying how you guys were going out for two years but the truth is you barely ever saw him.”

Even though it was full of licorice, I couldn’t stop my mouth from opening, which meant some of it fell out. I couldn’t believe of all people, Hannah—the person who was always nagging me about whether we were best friends or best best friends—would talk to me like that.

“Yeah,” agreed Lola. “And if we’re being really honest here, the only reason you were—note the past tense, please—the most popular girl in school is because you happened to be dating the most popular guy in school.”

I picked the licorice off my shirt and put it in a napkin. “That’s so not true!” I cried. I looked around at everyone. “Right?”

No one would look me in the eye.

“Right?” I asked again.

All I got in response were some coughs.

“I can’t believe you guys are going to let some total geek control you like this,” I said.

“Maybe he’s not a geek,” said Lola. “Maybe
you’re
the geek.”

If I hadn’t had such good manners, I would’ve punched her in the nose right in front of everyone. Or at least ripped her new blouse.

“At least he doesn’t sit there and pass judgment on people for what they’re wearing, and who they date, and what kind of car they drive,” added Hannah.

What had gotten into her? “Okay, well, then if I’m so horrible, what are all you guys doing here?” I demanded.

“Because you always serve good party food?” asked Robbie Shapiro, who could’ve stood to lose a pound or ten.

“And because there was nothing else going on tonight?” suggested Lisa Eaton.

I stared out at the people who, until ten minutes ago, I had considered my friends. I couldn’t believe they could just turn on a dime like that. “So what are you saying?” I asked, my voice shaking. “That you guys think I’m as hideous as the documentary makes me out to be? That none of you want to be my friend anymore?” I bit the inside of my cheek. Even though I hadn’t been able to control myself earlier, there was no way I was going to start crying again.

Instead of everyone quickly saying “What are you talking about—of
course
not! Of
course
we’re your friends!” which is what you would’ve thought they would’ve said to the most popular girl in school, they were all quiet.

Except for Lola. “The camera doesn’t lie,” she said with a shrug.

So much for not crying,
I thought as the tears started rolling down my face. “Well, then maybe you should all leave,” I managed to get out.

I didn’t have to ask twice. They got up so fast and started for the door you would’ve thought the In-N-Out burger party truck had just pulled up outside.

Hannah and Lola hung back. Thank God they had come to their senses and remembered they were my best friends. As I turned to them, for the first time in what felt like forever, I allowed myself to smile.

They, however,
weren’t
smiling. “You know, after seeing Josh’s documentary, it makes me wonder what
else
you’ve said about us when we’re not around,” said Hannah. I hadn’t seen her this PO’d since her father’s secretary had forgotten to mail her Princeton application and she missed the early-admission cut-off date.

“And I don’t know who died and made you in charge of everything,” said Lola. “Listening to you up there, you’d think that we were just your dumb backup singers or something.”

“You know, if it weren’t for Amy taking pity on you all those years ago, you’d still be wearing ugly clothes and eating lunch by yourself,” said Hannah.

“And instead of spending your time shopping, you’d be . . . volunteering at cat shelters,” added Lola.

“Sometimes I wonder if Lola and I made the right decision when we chose sides that day,” said Hannah. “Amy may have her issues, but somehow I doubt stabbing her so-called best friends in the back on film is one of them. Come on, Lola, let’s go.”

As the two of them stomped out of my house, I sank down into the couch and began to
really
cry, but not before grabbing every half-filled bowl of popcorn, chips, and pretzels to keep me company now that I was officially friendless.

 

I didn’t stop crying all weekend, except for the fifty or so times I called Lola and Hannah to apologize, but it didn’t even matter because they didn’t pick up. The only person who called or e-mailed me was Josh, but I just deleted all of his messages without listening to or reading them. I couldn’t believe I had been such a fool for thinking we were friends—all he cared about was getting into USC and it didn’t matter who he hurt in the process. In fact, he’d probably do really well in Hollywood for that very reason. What made me even madder about the situation was that I found myself missing him. Hannah was right—even though Josh wasn’t my boyfriend, I had spent more time with him in the last month than I had with Asher in the last year.

But how could you miss someone you hated? Because I did hate Josh Rosen. More than anything.

And yet I also really missed talking to him on the phone, singing Neil Diamond songs with him and eating his fries.

The whole situation was so confusing that I had to stay in bed all weekend. The only time I felt better was when I was lying down with the covers over my head. Daddy was in Napa Valley on a wine-country tour with Amber and I was all alone anyway, so I didn’t have to deal with anyone asking me what was wrong. When Monday rolled around, I still wasn’t ready to face people, so I told Daddy I was sick and needed to stay home from school. As he had a big meeting that morning, he was too busy to check and see if I was lying when I said I had a 105-degree fever, so I spent the day researching boarding schools online.

But on Tuesday I knew I couldn’t put off the inevitable anymore.

Usually the week before a major school social event, all conversation centers around dresses and after-parties. Except when the most popular girl in school has been thrown off her throne and kicked to the curb. Then it’s about her. Or, rather, me.

No one said anything to my face, but I could hear the whispers and giggles as I walked the halls between classes. Not even Ashley and Britney Turner would talk to me. I didn’t even bother going into the cafeteria during lunch. Instead I went to the girls’ bathroom. Luckily there was a nice, big handicapped stall for me to hang out in as I ate my protein bar and read through all the boarding-school info I had printed out.

Maybe all this time alone is a good thing
, I thought as I read about the Bradberry School for Girls in the boonies of Massachusetts. Back when I was popular and everyone wanted to hang out with me 24/7, I was always annoyed that I never had any downtime. Now that I had no one to hang out with, this was the perfect opportunity to really get to
know
myself. To catch up on all the classics that had been collecting dust on my bookshelf, like Jackie Collins’s
Hollywood Wives,
because I was busy spending my time reading magazines to figure what to wear to all the parties I used to go to. To find a hobby that I could do alone since I no longer had any geeks in my life to fix up. Maybe I would follow in Josh’s mom’s footsteps and look into something at the Learning Annex. I could even teach my own class and call it “How to Go On After Your Entire Life Has Been Blown to Bits and You’re Officially a Loser Again.” Plus, with all this extra time,I could work on my college essays since there was no way I would submit the documentary.

As I studied a photo of a bunch of pasty girls playing field hockey and tried to imagine myself as one of them (the little plaid skirts
were
pretty cute), I heard the door to the bathroom open. A moment later the smell of spicy vanilla filled the room.

Just when I had thought it couldn’t get any worse, it had. I knew that perfume as well as I knew my own: it was Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanilla Passion Eau de Toilette and I used to smell it on Amy Loubalu’s mother when she drove us to the mall. Now it was Amy’s signature scent, much like Princess by Vera Wang was mine.

I listened to Amy brush her teeth (she was one of those always-brush-and-floss-after-every-meal people, which drove me bonkers) and wondered how I was going to get out of the bathroom without her seeing me other than crawling through the ceiling like you saw people do in movies.

After the water stopped, I stood up and crept up to the door, where I watched through the crack as she carefully dried her toothbrush before putting it back into its holder. I guess I hadn’t locked the door all the way, because a moment later it opened and I went crashing through it and landed on my butt.

To her credit, Amy didn’t start laughing like I probably would’ve done. “Are you okay?” she said as she came over and tried to help me up.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, trying to scramble to my feet. I walked over to the mirror and started fixing my hair, as if falling on my butt was part of my lunchtime exercise routine.

She looked at me, then stood in front of the other mirror and started putting on lip gloss. It reminded me of when we’d hang out at Sephora and make ourselves up. Thankfully, as we’d gotten older we’d both gotten a little better at it and no longer looked like circus clowns.

“I heard what happened with the documentary,” she finally said.

I stopped applying my own lip gloss and turned to her. “I guess you probably thought I deserved it.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, as far as I’m concerned you took the Michael Rosenberg thing a little too seriously—”

“You know how difficult it is for me to let things go,” I interrupted.

“But, Dylan, that was
eighth grade
. And you never even had the decency to confront me about it. You just stopped talking to me completely.”

“You know how much confrontation scares me,” I retorted.

“But you were my best best friend,” she said.

As I looked at her, all the guilt I had never let myself feel for the way that I had acted came rushing to the surface. “I know,” I said quietly. “And you were my mine.”

She looked at me like she was waiting for me to tell her I was sorry, which I should’ve done right then and there, but it was like my mouth had been Krazy Glued shut.

“Anyway, it’s too bad that no one got to see the real version,” she said.

I turned away from the mirror. “What do you mean ‘real version’?”

“Ari told me and Whitney in history yesterday morning that the version you saw was an earlier one that Steven had put together. Apparently, when Josh saw it, he freaked out because he thought it was too much like a bad reality show,” Amy explained. “So I guess he did another version, but he brought the old one to the party that night by mistake.”