Going Geek (17 page)

W
hitney sits poised to type on her laptop. “I know it feels like we just got done with Halloween, but as we all know, Rally Weekend is fast approaching, and with the number of guests we'll be hosting, we need everything to be flawless. The main events are obviously the Friday-night pep rally and bonfire, and on Saturday night the Cotillion. And with all the sports going on, all we need is to come up with a few things to offer those people who won't attend any of the above.” The entire table shares a knowing smirk.

Olivia raises her hand. “I've received a few emails about the Cotillion ticket price being too high.”

They've priced tickets at a hundred and fifty dollars a pair, bumped up from a hundred last year. Single tickets are eighty-five, not that anyone buys them. I suppose it's mostly safe to assume people have that much money, but still. Yet another reason for me to be glad I'm not going.

Whitney shakes her head. “Don't worry about it. People gripe about the price every year, but they always come.”

“For the nonrallying, what about a poetry reading?” Lila asks. “Or how about a chess tournament?”

“I like how we periodically support alternative activities when it's convenient to our agenda,” I say.

“Your holier-than-thou shtick is getting tired,” Whitney snaps back.

Everyone ignores us. “Lila's on the right track, but the hard part is getting people to be responsible for anything,” Elizabeth says. “Most of the active planners want to do the Rally Weekend stuff, not get stuck hosting the…other stuff.”

“Skylar, you actually don't need to be here,” Whitney says. “Since Abbot did the Halloween thing, we took you off the schedule for Rally Weekend.”

“What? No, we have something to propose, and we want to do it,” I say. “Abbot will host an underground dance club in the black box theater.”

Lila snorts. “Isn't one dance enough? And that doesn't exactly sound like the type of thing that will appeal.”

I narrow my eyes. “People will love it. Trust me.”

“It really doesn't matter whether it's a good idea or not,” Whitney says. “Abbot got bumped from the schedule. You're not back on until winter term.”

This is news to me. “Didn't you just say that we're having trouble getting people to step up?”

Elizabeth nods reluctantly, sneaking a sideways glance at Whit.

Whitney meets my stare. “Since Rally Weekend is crucial in so many ways, we decided to assign some of the more seasoned planners to these events.”

“I'm quite confident we can handle it,” I say. “Besides, we're offering up a fun, inexpensive, uncomplicated option. We can use the sound system that's already there, and I have the DJ and all the music.”

“Where'd you find a DJ?” Whitney demands.

“Don't worry about it. We don't even need decor. The atmosphere in there's perfect for what we're going for. We'll just use a couple of the spots.”

Everyone looks at Whitney for the final say. I can barely refrain from doing an exaggerated eye roll. “Sorry, but no,” she says. “It sounds too derivative.”

I can't believe what I'm hearing. “Was Ghouls and Graves too successful for you? Is that it?” I'm asking in an ironic way, but when anger flashes in her eyes, I realize that she's afraid of the competition. Right then I know there's no way I can win this battle. At least not in any straightforward way.

“Unbelievable,” Opal says when I fill everyone in. “She's stonewalling us. What do we do about that?”

I groan, feeling the onset of a massive head-and-face ache. “We have to go over her head somehow.”

“Do you have a copy of the bylaws?” Raksmey asks.

“Yeah, I can email it to you when I find it,” I say.

“Go look now,” Raksmey says. After just a few weeks of being my SAT tutor, she mistakenly believes that she has authority over me in all areas.

“No,” I say, glaring at her. “It can wait.”

“Come on. I know her password,” Opal says. The two of them flit out of the common room, exhibiting zero qualms about breaking into my personal email account.

I clutch the sides of my face and massage my temples.

“Do you really think we can make this work?” Bettina asks.

“Yes,” I say. “In the way that your art brought something totally unique to this school, I think that Raks's club kid
-
hipster aesthetic will do the same.”

“Anyway, what do we have to lose?” Samantha says.

“A lot, actually,” I say. “I've thought about this. If we can engage the people who feel left out by all the staid drivel that the Calendar puts on, we'll have made a difference. We all deserve to feel like we belong here.”

Bettina and Jess look at each other. “We didn't even have to bite her,” Samantha says. I think she's kidding.

“God, you guys, ease up,” Jess says. “Maybe it was rough going at first, but getting pushed out of your dorm senior year would be really traumatic for anyone.”

“Thank you, Jess,” I say.

“And then she had to grapple with the fact that she's not one of the cool kids anymore,” Jess says.

“What?” I say, indignant. “I'm still cool. Just not, you know, popular.”

Jess shoves my arm, laughing. “That's like me saying, ‘I'm still rich, just cut off from my family money.' ”

I snort, but Samantha looks at Jess with concern. “They still haven't gotten over that?”

“Well, I did destroy about five hundred thousand dollars' worth of inventory. Wholesale.” Jess has a rueful smile, but I can tell she's not kidding.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“Thanks to Opal's influence, Jess is a conscientious objector to her family's furrier business,” Bettina explains.

“Yeah, so she spray-painted an entire warehouseful of minks,” Samantha crows.

“Some of them were fox and rabbit,” Jess says. I can tell she's still pretty proud of her stunt. “And that's when they cut me off.”

“That's crazy. On both sides,” I say, wide-eyed.

Jess shrugs. “They think I was just rebelling because they sent me away for school. They also let me spend a night in jail, to scare the crap out of me. It wasn't exactly shattering, though, because, let's face it, Barrington's hardly the big bad city.”

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Jess is old money. No wonder nothing ever fazes her. “How do you pay for everything?” I know it's nosy, but she doesn't seem to mind.

“I work at an indie movie theater in the summer and on winter and spring breaks. The owner's a cool guy, and he lets us in for free when we're not on the schedule. As you know, I love movies, so it's pretty painless.”

“So you're kind of in the same boat I am?” I'm trying to understand how she feels about her whole life changing. Okay, so clothes clearly weren't her thing, but there had to be something.

“Not exactly. My education is guaranteed to be paid for, and my big brothers slip me money sometimes. Especially the one who doesn't work in the family business. He gets it.”

“But don't you miss anything?” I ask. “Or you have school and movies and that's enough?” Whit would be lost without her money. She once ordered a new laptop from her phone while we were running.

Jess rolls onto her stomach, her brow furrowed in concentration. “I miss traveling. My parents go away every summer and leave me home with our housekeeper. At least Lucy's chill. She's lived with us since I was in third grade.”

“What about all your friends? Don't they pity you?”

“Ha! The ones I still have kind of do,” Jess says.

“That, more than anything, is something I just could not take,” I admit.

“Oh, your old Lincoln friends pity you, just not so much that they'd actually want to do anything to help you,” Jess says.

“Seriously. Do you really need friends like that?” Samantha asks. “I mean, keep your fucking pity. Not everyone gets to live in a bubble their whole entire lives.”

“Or wants to,” Bettina adds.

I guess I never thought of it that way.

By the time I venture upstairs, Opal and Raks have printed out the bylaws and spread them out all over the floor. There are so many pages, you'd think the Calendar was a UN committee. “Got it! Right here,” Raksmey says.

They glue their heads together for about five minutes, and then Opal claps her hands. “Simple! We just have to get approval from the school president.”

I groan. “That's not going to be easy.”

“Marshall's still torn up about Whitney?” Opal asks. Marshall Buck, school president, is Whitney's ex-boyfriend. Even though she's less than kind to him, he's not over her, and everybody knows it.

“There must be a way to persuade him,” Opal says.

“I'm willing to try, but I don't want you guys to be disappointed if he doesn't help us,” I say.

“Don't be such a bummer,” Raks says.

“He'll see our side of it,” Opal agrees.

I would give anything for their confidence.

O
ne afternoon Raksmey and I plot the official public debut of Club Raks over a couple of pizzas at Andrea's. This is also my way of thanking her for helping me with the SATs. I'd tried to buy her an iTunes gift card—just a token—but this was the only form of payment she'd accept from me. Anyway it's way cheaper than a prep class or a professional tutor would've been.

“But we're not going to call it Club Raks, are we? That's just our own nickname for it, right?” she asks.

“Why? Getting cold feet? Not confident enough in your skills to attach your name to this?”

She knows I'm just messing with her and smirks. “Not at all. I'm just worried that it won't mean anything to anyone.”

“It will when it's over. Besides, I like that it's our little inside joke. Do you have a plan yet?”

“I just want it to be a big, happy, inclusive celebration where everyone loses their minds,” she says.

“Okay. That's…descriptive.” I bite into a steaming hot slice and pull stretchy strings of melted cheese away from my mouth.

“I want everybody to dance and not feel self-conscious,” Raksmey says. “You know how at most dances everyone moves around like they know they're being watched and judged?”

I laugh. “Yeah. Because they are.”

Raksmey nods. “Well, I want the opposite of that. So it has to be kind of hard to see, so that people can really go off in there. Maybe we could get a strobe instead of using the spots.”

I don't want to break it to her that a big selling point with our plan is that we can do this whole thing on a shoestring budget. “I might know someone who has one, come to think of it,” she says.

“Really? Just lying around in their dorm room?”

She gives me a look. “You'd be surprised at what those boys in Thatcher get up to.”

Marshall Buck is tall, broad, and muscular, with fine white-blond hair that looks like down. From his striped rugby shirt and jeans right down to his Y chromosome, he is the prototypical Winthrop school president. Whitney dumped Marshall at the beginning of last year for a fling with a lacrosse player. Marshall was so devastated that he hasn't dated anyone since. From what I've heard, he's attempted to mend his broken heart by throwing himself into crew, water polo, and of course the Student Council.

“What's up, Skylar?” he asks as I slide into the seat across from him at the Student Council office. Naturally he has a wooden placard with his name and title etched into it perched on the edge of his desk.

“This is nice,” I say, pointing to it. Can't hurt to appeal to his ego.

“Thanks. The staff got it for me.” And by “staff” he means the rest of the Student Council. But my bet is that he bought it for himself. He's the kind of guy who will one day get himself a
WORLD'S BEST DAD
mug for Father's Day to keep on his giant mahogany CEO desk. “What can I do for you?”

So much for warming up to it with small talk and my half-baked plan of flirting with him to grease the wheels, so to speak. Not that I even know how to flirt anymore.

“Well, believe it or not, I am here in an official capacity,” I say. “My dorm wants to plan something for Rally Weekend, but we got bumped from the schedule.” I know appealing to Marshall's concern for the underrepresented isn't the way to go. Instead, I focus on how Winthrop should be grooming the next generation and that Raks is only a junior and should be given the chance to step up.

“Her name hasn't come up before,” Marshall says.

“Exactly. But she's a top student, has real leadership potential and excellent organizational skills, and she could be your discovery.”

He gives me a knowing look, and I wonder if I went too far. As far as I recall, his bullshit detector was never that finely tuned. One flattering word or charming smile from Whit would get her almost anything she wanted.

“You put me in an awkward position,” he says. “No one has used that clause in the bylaws in almost fifteen years. I looked it up.”

“Even better,” I say. “You're a pioneer! A visionary!” Okay, I'd better stop it, because now he's smirking at me. “Well, it is a way to leave your mark anyway.”

Marshall sighs. “People will assume I'm doing it to dog Whitney.”

I don't have the heart to break it to him that the only person who still thinks about him and Whitney is him. “No one will think that,” I say. “In fact, since there's no reason not to approve this, people might assume that your not doing it is because of her.”

“What happened between you two?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say, too quickly. “I guess since we don't live in the same dorm anymore, it's only natural that we grew apart.”

Marshall's at least pretending to peruse my letter of request. “Is it Lila?” he asks. His casualness is so studied that I assume he'd heard the same stories from Whit that I had.

“No. She's a bit of a handful and kind of possessive, but Whitney and I aren't getting along for our own reasons.” I watch him flip my letter over and back again. “You have the added ammunition that Abbot was supposed to be on the schedule. Everyone knows you're a stickler for rules and that you believe in doing the right thing.”

He smiles, but it's perfunctory. “Okay, you've appealed to my vanity three times”—four, but who's counting?—“which means I at least owe it to you to consider this thing. Leave it with me, and I'll email you by the end of the week.”

Dang. I thought I had it in the bag with that last one. But I know better than to push it. He shakes my hand before I go, which I think means he'll take it seriously.

“I thought you said you'd be able to woo him to our side,” Jess wails when I give everyone the update.

“I never said anything remotely close to that! I said we used to be friendly and that I might know a few tricks to talk him into it.”

“That definitely suggests an ability to woo,” Opal agrees.

“He said he's thinking about it. That's not a no, so let's stay positive.” I check my email for the fourth time. It feels good to be checking for a reason other than hoping that either Leo or one of my old friends will be reaching out to make amends. Maybe I'm finally starting to move on. I turn to Raksmey. “I'd have your set list ready just to be on the safe side.”

“Are you kidding? It's been done for a week. I bought a ton of new stuff, and it is off the hook!” She rubs her hands together in gleeful anticipation.

“Raksmey! We're supposed to be doing this under budget,” Jess says.

“Don't worry, I'm underwriting the whole thing,” Raksmey says. “If I tried to hand in those expenses, you'd probably fire me.”

“Probably?” I say. “Why do you need new songs? You have a million.” Seriously. She has a separate computer just for music.

“I told you. For a real dance party, you need just the right progression. It has to build at the right time, with room to breathe….”

As she blathers on about her vision, I realize that it is going to be a huge disappointment to her if this doesn't come together. To Raksmey this isn't merely a way to upend the Calendar or level the social playing field at Winthrop. It's about creating an unguarded moment for everyone to remember. If only the Calendar were made up of such generous, nonegotistical people.