The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You (7 page)

“That explains some things,” Peter murmured.

There was absolutely no way that it was true. What were the chances of having the exact same score? It defied imagination. I doubted that even our old statistical anomaly teacher could have given us the odds on it.

“It explains nothing,” I said. “Because it can't be true. West is just a—”

“A what?” He laughed, but there was no color in his face. “We're at the Mess, not Hogwarts. I'm not a gorram wizard.”

Blistering heat rose to my cheeks. I clenched my hands into fists. “Then you snuck a look at my file or—”

Cornell appeared out of the crowd moving toward the front gate, holding onto the straps of his backpack as he approached us. He frowned. “What's going on?”

“Nerd duel,” Meg answered. “Where's Harper?”

“I thought she'd be here with you guys.” His frown deepened and he rubbed a hand over his shorn scalp. “What's a nerd duel? I don't see any Magic cards or polyhedral dice.”

“The gag rule,” Peter said.

“Oh.” He swung his head to look at me and West. “Who won?”

“It's a draw,” West said numbly.

My brain was lagging, as though the proceedings had somehow shorted a circuit in my head. I had never assumed that I had the highest IQ on campus, far from it. I was above average, but not in the mad-genius range of 190 or above. And there was no logical way for Ben West to have hacked into my file. The only answer was the most impossible—we were exactly the same.

I walked away without a word, unable to endure everyone staring at me for another minute. I heard footsteps behind me and assumed it was Meg, but as I climbed the steps toward the front door, I saw West's face reflected in the window. He followed me silently into the American Immigrant classroom. We sat down in our usual seats, feigning ignorance of each other's continued existence.

I took out my binder and set it down on my desk, going over the previous day's notes in case Mr. Cline decided to spring a quiz on us. After a few minutes, Harper slid into the empty seat next to me. As I'd expected, she was more coiffed than usual. Her hair was pulled back with a handmade Batman logo headband and she smelled vaguely of raspberries.

I glanced over at her. She gave me a tentative smile that plainly said that someone had updated her on the results of the nerd duel. Cornell skulking to his seat and folding his hands guiltily on his desk confirmed this suspicion.

“Don't,” I grumbled, turning back to my notes.

“I had no plans to,” she said lightly.

“Uh-huh.” I reached into my bag and extended the
Buffy
comic across the aisle to her. “Take it and swallow your gloating.”

She took the comic and tucked it into the pocket of one of the many folders in her binder. “I'm not gloating. Just thinking.”

I rolled my eyes and did not ask her to elaborate. Whether she was thinking about Cornell or the best way to force me to keep my mouth shut, I didn't need to know.

*   *   *

For the first time, I was thankful for the Mess staff's undying love of pop quizzes and spur-of-the-moment essays. There was very little time to dwell on my morning when I was digging through my notes on the national debt of Zambia and struggling to remember the metaphorical significance of the train in
Anna Karenina
.

Of course, after I was excused from Russian Literature, I faced the long walk across campus to the cafeteria. Alone with my thoughts for the first time in hours, I considered the events of the nerd duel. Now that the shock had mostly worn off, I was left with an unshakeable determination. More than ever, I wanted to crush Benedict West. Now I knew that beating him in the ranking would be a true victory. We'd grown up in the same town. We'd had the exact same education. And, apparently, we had the exact same IQ, give or take an unknown decimal.

This was so much bigger than the monkey bars. This was the Rebels versus the Empire. This was the Doctor versus the Daleks. This was Ripley versus the Xenomorphs.

This was a real, true, full-scale war.

With the strap of my messenger bag slung across my chest, I slipped my sunglasses on and stepped into the open-air quad in the center of campus. Dozens of other students were zigzagging across the mosaic
M
emblazoned into the concrete, some scurrying out of the chemistry labs, some heading toward the library for lunchtime studying.

I spotted Kenneth Pollack shoving a small dark-haired boy against one of the many decorative sycamore trees that dotted the edges of the quad. The smaller boy went rigid as Kenneth's hands braced into his shoulders. There was a rolling backpack toppled on the ground beside them.

Swerving slightly, I moved toward them. Hazing was, of course, forbidden at the Mess, but that didn't mean that meatheads like Kenneth didn't occasionally rough up the freshmen. As my shoes tread against the grass, the frosh made a pathetic whimper of dissent, his round face pinched.

“I didn't,” the frosh protested. “I don't even know—”

“Kenny,” I said, coming up behind them. There were only about a hundred people in our class and Kenneth had gone to Aragon with us, so I was fairly sure he at least knew who I was. “Isn't it a little hack to push around the freshmen? It's so expected.”

If we'd had a football team—instead of basketball, cricket, and chess—Kenneth would have been a linebacker. As it was, he'd taken Peter's place on the basketball team, but he lacked the natural grace that the sport required.

“He told Cline that I cheated,” he snarled at me.

“I don't know who that is,” the frosh protested, remaining against the tree as though he hadn't realized he'd been released. “I don't even know my lunch number.”

“Kenneth,” I said, resting my elbow on top of my bag. “Cline doesn't have any contact with the lowerclassmen. He doesn't even have office hours this year. He went back to teaching poetry at the university.”

“The email came from this kid's account,” Kenneth blustered. His cheeks were blistered with impotent fury, pushing a whitehead on his chin into the foreground. “B. Calistero at Messina Academy. There aren't any other Calisteros on campus.”

“We have school email?” B. Calistero asked.

“How do you know he sent the email?” I asked Kenneth. “Cline wouldn't have told you.”

“I just know,” Kenneth said darkly. “He emailed Cline and said I copied Mike Shepherd's Ellis Island essay. They're threatening to bench me.”

Of course his outrage was unrelated to the sullying of his academic record—a mark of cheating would almost undoubtedly revoke any incoming college acceptances. No, it all came down to basketball. Why did his parents even bother writing his tuition checks?

“B. Calistero,” I said, peering over Kenneth's shoulder at the frosh. “Can you name the gentleman who introduced the back of your skull to that tree trunk?”

The frosh's eyes were wide and raced between me and Kenneth as though trying to figure out which of us was more likely to hurt him in the event that he gave the wrong answer.

“I don't,” he spluttered. “I mean, this is only my second week here. I was in public school before and—”

“It's okay,” I said, mostly to keep him from vomiting down the front of his polo. I looked back at Kenneth. “See? He doesn't know anything. And the freshmen are still turning in hard copies of all of their homework.”

“So?” Kenneth asked.

“So he doesn't know who you are and he hasn't touched his shiny new email account,” I said, a tad exasperated. Honestly, sometimes talking to my classmates made me wonder how useful the entrance exam was. “Someone probably hacked him as some kind of start-of-term prank. We are at a school for geniuses. Stuff happens.”

Kenneth considered this, his forehead indenting around a smattering of zits.

“But who would have done it?” he asked finally.

“How should I know? I'm no Veronica Mars.”

He stared at me with vacant, glassy eyes.

“She's a detective on TV. And there was a movie,” blurted the frosh. And then, in a much smaller voice, “The movie was really good.…”

I offered him a grateful smile. “Thanks, sport. Now, run and be free.”

He bobbed his head to me, scrambling to grab the handle of his rolling backpack. It leapt behind him as he charged toward the cafeteria. Kenneth watched him go.

“But I still don't know who told Cline I cheated,” he said with a smidge of petulant whine lurking underneath.

“Did you cheat?” I asked.

He blew a raspberry of disdain. “No. And even if I had, it wouldn't have been off of Shepherd. He's an idiot.”

“Well. Best of luck to you. Try to stop roughing up the newbs. They're delicate.”

“Whatever,” he grunted. “Put a few of them in line and the rest will learn not to screw with their betters.”

Gee whiz, why was it so hard to find a suitable male companion when there were gems like Kenneth around?

“Wow. You would have been a swell slave owner.”

I turned on my heel and walked into the cafeteria, where I promptly put together a spinach-and-egg salad. I found Harper and Meg whispering together at our usual table, tucked into the corner as far away from the door as possible to keep from being interrupted by traffic.

I set my tray down across from Harper, doing my absolute best to ignore how she and Meg had stopped speaking at the sight of me. I was sure that they'd been discussing the nerd duel and I had no intention of prompting them to continue.

“Why, Miss Harper Leonard,” I said, cracking open a can of cola. “I didn't expect to find you here. Shouldn't you be claiming your position as the senior class's Second Lady?”

Meg tittered into a potato chip. “Does she count as the Second Lady if Peter's still single? I mean, if the president doesn't have a First Lady, doesn't that automatically make her First? There isn't any precedent for it in history. James Buchanan used his niece.”

I laughed. “Maybe we could vote on an incumbent if Harper isn't feeling up to the job.”

Harper couldn't stop herself from giving her glasses a telltale adjustment of embarrassment. “We're just going to the harvest festival together. It's not like he's my boyfriend now.”

“Well, there hasn't been enough time for him to pin you.” I smirked.

“I've never considered how dirty that sounds.” Meg giggled. “Pinning.”

“We don't have pins,” Harper said.

“Oh, we could find some pins.” I said. “If that's what it takes to get this show on the road.”

“Again,” Meg said with a snicker. “Dirty.”

“Anyway,” Harper said loudly. She gestured to my heaping plate of greens. “What kept you?”

“Oh, I had to stop Kenneth Pollack from braining some frosh. Nothing particularly interesting.” I paused and took a bite of salad. “Explain to me again why you didn't go sit with Cornell when you got here? He bought you comics yesterday.”

“Four comics.” Meg nodded. “That's totally like a dowry's worth of comics.”

Harper pushed a pizza crust around her plate with her index finger, letting it slide through a smear of orange grease.

“Because,” she said, “I'm not his girlfriend. And the student council is starting to plan the winter ball.”

I caught a piece of spinach as it tried to escape my lips and shoved it back in. “The what?”

Meg's face lit up like a kid on Christmas who descended the stairs to find a unicorn sitting next to the tree. “You haven't heard?”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “I've had three pop quizzes today, so unless this winter ball is being thrown by Tolstoy or the struggling people of Yemen, no. I don't know anything about it. Aren't we still waiting for the harvest festival?”

“Yes,” Harper said. She also seemed to be dangerously excited about this news but was holding it back better than Meg. “But you know how there's a lull between the harvest festival and the spring fling?”

“The lull known as finals?” I asked.

“Right,” Meg said. She braced her hands on the table and leaned toward me. “They're adding a third dance this year.”

“Why?” I asked.

In the name of us having a “normal” high school experience, the Mess allowed us to have the spring fling and the prom. The spring fling was more of a sock hop—no formal wear, lots of punch. Meg, Harper, and I usually went to it as it was more group dancing and less requiring of a date than the prom. We'd spent junior prom eating candy and having a movie marathon in my bedroom.

“It'll be more like prom than the spring fling,” Meg said, hurt by my lack of enthusiasm. “It's formal, but it'll be here on campus instead of at the fancy ballroom downtown.”

“And there's going to be a live band,” Harper added.

“Do you think they know the Electric Slide?” I asked between bites.

Harper and Meg exchanged an unamused glance. I could feel their combined excitement for this exercise in torture pounding against my temples. Or maybe that was a stress migraine.

I allowed myself ten seconds of mental cursing and temper tantrum throwing before I said, “You're going.”

“Of course we are,” Meg said. “It's an important school event. We went to basketball games.”

“And stopped,” I said.

“The tickets won't be that expensive,” Harper said. “When Noni was telling me about it in Latin, she said that it wouldn't be more than twenty-five apiece.”

“Do you have any idea what I could do with the money I'd be wasting on a prom dress?” I asked, lowering my fork. “I could buy my
Doctor Who
figur—”

“Trixie,” Meg interrupted. “This is our senior year. Wouldn't it be nice to have one night where you got dressed up and—”

“And?” I asked, turning on her swiftly. “What am I going to experience at some dance that I can't feel right here in my uniform? I will go to the harvest festival because I like costumes and kettle corn, but there's no way you two are going to talk me into going to a ball.”