Geek Girl (10 page)

“Jen, wait.”

Trevor catches up to me at the end of the driveway.

“Let me drive you home.”

“That’s okay. It’s a nice day. I can walk.”

“Can I walk with you then?”

“Free country,” I say, walking away, leaving him to follow.

“You okay?” he asks a few silent minutes later. He has that concerned look again.

“Look, Trev, if you’re gonna walk with me, then no heavy conversation, okay?”

“Okay,” he agrees, but the mood has been dampened and it’s a quiet walk home. He leaves me at my door with a quick kiss.

⊕⊗⊕

I’m lying on my bed, bummed about how bad this day has turned out when my foster Sue comes in, wearing the straw hat. She’s obviously been out working in the yard. She’s been trying to be a little more interactive lately but not overly intrusive, which makes it hard for me to be resentful about it.

“You don’t look too happy,” she states the obvious.

“Yeah, Trevor just told me he’s going to be gone in a couple of weeks.” I decide to skip the whole other issue that has depressed me. “I’m looking forward to a long, boring week hanging around here while he’s gone.”

“You’ve gotten to be pretty good friends with him, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Carol called.”

“Who?”

“Carol—Trevor’s mom.”

Funny, I haven’t really ever thought of her as having a name. It’s somewhat ironic that she shares a name with
the
Mrs. Brady. I speculate idly whether her middle name is June.

“What did she want?” I wonder if she called to tattle on my slip of the tongue.

“She called to invite our family to go camping with them.”

I gasp, sitting up and turning to face her.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, Pat and I think it sounds like fun, but we decided it should be your decision. I don’t know how you feel about camping but thought you might like to go if Trevor was going.”

This is an amazing development—an adult who asks my
opinion instead of telling me what I should want. I think about saying no just to see if I really can wield that kind of power, but I don’t want to blow the chance to
not
have to spend a week waiting for Trevor to get home.

“Sure, why not?” I say, thinking that Trevor would appreciate that response.

⊕⊗⊕

“A
tent
?” I’m horrified.

“What did you expect? A wilderness hotel?” Pat holds out his hand for one of the tent stakes I’m holding.

“No.” I know I’m pouting, but I’m definitely not happy. “But at least maybe a
trailer
or something.
Anything
with a solid roof and walls.”

Pat looks up at me and gives me a sardonic look.

“I feel certain that you’ll survive this experience.”

“Yeah, easy for you to say. It’s not you sharing a tent with the cheerleader,” I mumble.

“What was that?” he asks distractedly as he pounds the stake into the hard ground.

“I said it’ll be on your head if I don’t. They probably throw people in prison when they allow their foster kids to get eaten alive by a bear because they only have tents to camp in.”

Pat laughs at that. I don’t think he’ll be laughing when they take his badge away for child endangerment.

“Okay, grab the other side of that pole and help me set this up.”

Once we have the tents set up and all of our equipment stowed and organized, we gather at the Hoffmans’ camp to cook dinner together. Trevor can see I’m in a bad mood and tries to tease me out of it. Not even an excited hug from my buddy Todd helps.

Trevor even does his Schwarzenegger impression because usually that makes me laugh. To be honest, even now I have to bite the inside of my cheek to hold back the smile trying to break out.

“Not gonna work today, Trev. I have to sleep in a
tent
with the
cheerleader
. Double whammy.”

“You have to sleep with whom?”

“The cheerleader.”

He looks blank.

“
Tamara.
”

“She’s coming?” He perks up at the news, and I glare daggers at him. He laughs.

“I love your jealousy,” he says.

“I’m
not
jealous of her.”

“Riiight.” The word is drawn out and cynical.

“Hey, Trevor, why don’t you and Jennifer come and help us with these potatoes?” Mrs. Brady/Cleaver calls out chirpily, looking perfectly campy in her hiking boots and plaid vest.

“She likes to be called Jen,” I hear Sue tell her from inside what they are all cheerfully calling “the supply tent,” and my brows raise a little at her defense of me.

“Oh, right. Trevor told me that. I keep forgetting.”

I’ll bet you do.

We peel potatoes until I want to scream and then have to wait eons until we finally eat my first ever Dutch oven–cooked meal. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. The only thing that sours it is the arrival of the cheerleader just as we’re finishing up. She should have been home from school sooner but was on some kind of mini-vacation with some friends. I wish she could have stayed just one week longer—or two months, two years, whatever.

Trevor ducks into the tent he’s sharing with Todd and comes back out with a guitar. I’m shocked; I didn’t know he played the guitar. He comes and sits near me, and I watch the cheerleader get up on pretense of stretching, only to reseat herself much closer to Trevor on the other side.

He starts messing around, jumping from song to song, not really playing, just goofing. Then with a slantwise grin at me, he starts jamming “Great Balls of Fire.” I didn’t even know it was possible to play that on guitar.

His father gets into it, and the two of them sing loudly with overdone twang in their voice, Todd joining in on the “Great Balls of Fire” words. They’re kind of amusing. When they finish, everyone else claps, the cheerleader the loudest, but I only smile my secret smile for Trevor when he looks at me to gauge my reaction.

“Trevor will now be taking requests,” his father announces in his best DJ imitation. Of course, the cheerleader is the first to jump on that.

“Oh, Trevor, do you know ‘Father Abraham’?”

I roll my eyes at the geekiness of her request, but as Trevor is a true geek himself, he of course knows it, and everyone joins in—except for me. Then his father jumps into the bear song, which Trevor immediately picks up on.

“The other day,” his father booms in his baritone and points at Mrs. Brady/Cleaver, who immediately echoes him.

“I saw a bear.” Now he points at the cheerleader who happily echoes the words in pitch-perfect tune.

“Out in the woods.” He points at me, and suddenly everyone is quiet, even Trevor. I look at him, and he gives me a challenging look, brows raised, daring me.

I look over at the cheerleader, and she is triumphant in her certainty that I will make this miserable for everyone, so I look at Trevor’s dad and echo him blandly. He laughs along with my fosters and moves on to the next person.

I don’t sing along any more than that, but when I look over at Trevor, he smiles happily at me. The cheerleader is sullen—both good things.

⊕⊗⊕

The next morning when I crawl out of the cold, damp death trap, it’s to see Trevor and his dad jogging past. Trevor sees me and stops. His dad slows a little, turning to jog backwards for a few steps.

“See you two at breakfast.”

Trevor helps me up off the ground, and I feel self-conscious about my plain gray sweats and bed-head hair.

“Don’t let me interrupt your run,” I say.

“We’re done. We were just headed back to camp.”

“You jog a lot?”

“Almost every morning with my dad.”

“Huh. That’s something I didn’t know about you.”

“Just another of my secret talents.” He grins, waggling his eyebrows comically.

I reach up to smooth my hair. “I look like crap,” I complain.

Trevor pulls his ball cap off his head. He plops it on my head, smoothing my hair back behind my ears.

“I think you look cute,” he says. I groan.

“Why do you say such mean things to me?” I ask.

“Come on, let’s go get breakfast,” he laughs.

Two hours later the cheerleader emerges, looking like she
is
staying in a wilderness hotel with all of the accompanying conveniences like mirrors and hair equipment, makeup perfectly in place. I am makeup free since I have no idea how to maintain my look while living primitively.

“Let me show you a camping trick I learned when I had longer hair,” Sue tells me later. She pulls my hair back into two braids, then puts a triangled bandana over the top. She hands me a mirror, and I’m surprised. It’s not really my kind of look, but definitely not bad—kind of biker-chick. I can deal with that.

After lunch, everyone decides to go for a hike. Even the cheerleader, though from the reaction of her parents, I can tell this is unusual. Sue took me a week ago to get hiking boots, showing me how to break them in. Apparently it didn’t work so well; I end up with three blisters by the time we are at the peak.

“Here,” Trevor says, kneeling down in front of me as I sit on a rock. He pulls my boots off, covering the blisters with some kind of cream and bandages.

“I thought you were supposed to pop blisters,” I moan miserably.

“No, the skin forms a kind of natural protection. Can you make it back down?”

“Do I have a choice?”

His dad finds me a walking stick, and the cheerleader pouts about the attention I’m getting. She’s in peak physical condition, so she doesn’t have anything to complain about, as can be evidenced by the healthy glow emanating from her. Even Todd is doing better than me, not winded at all and chatting happily. He had worried over my blisters, patting my hand, until the blisters were covered with bandages. He then promptly forgot about them.

I’m slowing them down going back to camp, so I tell them to go ahead and I’ll catch up. Trevor elects to stay with me, as I knew (hoped) he would. Unfortunately, so does the cheerleader. Because of the stick, Trevor can’t really walk next to me, so she uses this opportunity to sidle up next to him, the narrowness of the trail forcing closeness. I seriously consider stabbing her with the walking stick.

“So, Trevor, have you played the guitar long?” she oozes.

“Only for about two years or so.”

“Wow, you’re really good for only playing that long.”

“I’ve played the piano as long as I can remember. There’s not that much difference between the two, so it was pretty easy to pick up.”

“I’d
love
to hear you play the piano.”

Gag.

“Well, I didn’t bring it up here with me, so . . .” He trails off, and she giggles like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. I calculate the probability of causing her serious harm by tripping her with the stick. Unfortunately it’s not that steep of a trail.

Then she tucks her arm through his, and my jaw clenches. Trevor glances back at me at the gesture and stops walking, turning back toward me, which effectively breaks her hold.

“You okay, Jen? Do you need to rest for a while?”

“I’m fine,” I growl. “I don’t want to stop. Let’s just get back to camp.” I don’t want to spend one minute longer with the cheerleader than necessary.

“Okay, let me help you then.” He takes the walking stick and hands it to Tamara. She isn’t sure what he’s up to and takes it without much thought. He walks in front of me, facing away, and pulls my arms around his shoulders.

“Jump up,” he says.

“
What?
” Tamara says it at the same time I do.

“I’m going to carry you.”

“No way, Trev. I’m too heavy.”

“You don’t weigh anything. It’s pretty flat from here anyway.”

“Trev, I don’t think—”

He turns to face me, giving me a meaningful look.

“Here’s the deal, Jen. You can get on my back, or I can throw you over my shoulder and carry you that way. You decide.”

“It’ll kill you.”

“I’ve carried backpacks heavier than you on worse terrain than this. I’m not as weak as you think.”

“I don’t think you’re weak.”

The cheerleader sighs loudly, and I glance over his shoulder to see her watching this exchange unhappily. She definitely doesn’t want Trevor to carry me.

“Okay. Let’s ride,” I tell him.

Trevor is a strong walker. He doesn’t get winded or slow down, even with my weight on his back. Tamara walks just ahead of us, glancing back frequently. I decide to give her some misery. I cuddle closer to Trevor, keeping my face very close to his, whispering things into his ear to make him grin. She’s angry by the time we reach camp.