How Genius Girl Saved My @$$
How Genius Girl Saved My Ass
By Garry McNulty
Copyright 2011 by Garry McNulty
Cover Copyright 2011 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Also by Garry McNulty and Untreed Reads Publishing
Eric and Derik: Two Clones Searching for Love
Mom and Dad Aren’t Getting Along (Now That Mom’s a Zombie)
How Genius Girl Saved My Ass
By Garry McNulty
It all starts with the chemistry exam that I completely blew. As we’re coming out of the classroom, I’m whining about how tough the questions were, and Toby, my roommate, isn’t saying anything. So I know he did rtsfine. Of course, he stayed in the dorm and studied the night before, while I went out and partied. Isn’t college supposed to be fun? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.
Anyway, I tell Toby I’ll catch up with him later because I’m on my way to see my super-hot girlfriend, Lana. After failing my exam, I’m looking forward to getting plenty of sympathy from Lana. And by sympathy, I mean plenty of smooch-smooch, boink-boink.
She’s sitting there waiting for me on a campus bench under a big tree. I told you how hot she looks, right? Well, on this afternoon, she really has it going—perfect blonde hair, pouty glossed lips, glowing complexion, a skirt showing plenty of leg, and a top displaying just the right amount of cleavage.
I sit down beside her, put my arm around her, and kiss her on the lips. Why waste time, right? Lana, however, presses the palms of her hands against my best blue polo shirt and pushes me back.
As I’m wondering if her hands are clean, she says, “Ryan, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Talk to me, baby.” Sometimes you have to listen to them for a while.
“I want to break up,” she says.
Okay, I wasn’t expecting that. “You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re not seriously thinking of throwing away something as special as what we have.”
“Let’s face it, Ryan, all we’ve had going is sex.”
Now that really hurt. I had lavished six weeks of pure devotion on this woman. However, if she wanted to take the narrow view, so be it. “I think I can live with that,” I said.
Lana’s sitting there grimacing. “To be honest, Ryan, the sex hasn’t been all that great.”
To a guy, this is the verbal equivalent of a hard kick in the testicles. The pain is just as excruciating. “It hasn’t?” is all I can manage to blurt out.
She just sits there shaking her head no. Finally, she says, “Besides, I need more time to focus on my modeling career.”
“What modeling career?”
At this, she gets all nervous and jumps up. She puts her hand over my mouth so I can’t say any more, and she kisses me on the cheek. “Bye, Ryan. Poor dear.”
Then she gives me this look of pity and starts walking away. I should have summoned up a little pride and said something like:
Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll survive just fine, bitch!
Instead, I shout, “Lana, I love you! You hear me? I love you!”
It gets worse. I hear a voice in the bushes shout, “And cut! That’s perfect!”
I look over and see this g"Tid see tuy in a V-neck sweater coming out of the bushes, followed by a cameraman and a sound man. I mean what the hell?
Meanwhile, Lana comes flouncing back, all smiles, and says to the guy with the V-neck sweater, “Was it really perfect, Flip?”
He puts his arm around her and says, “Lana, honey, you were fantastic!”
I’m still sitting on the bench, hoping this is some weird dream. Maybe a big piece of space debris fell from the sky and hit me on the head, and I’m in some kind of coma.
Lana ushers the bushes-guy over to me. “Ryan, this is Flip Flanders, the emcee of
You Got Dumped!
You know—the reality show? We’re going to be on national television! Isn’t it
wonderful
?” She literally jumps for joy when she says this.
Flip Flanders grabs my hand and starts shaking it. “Nice job, Ryan.”
Finally, a ray of hope this nightmare is ending. “You mean this was all pretend? We’re not breaking up?”
“Oh, no, honey,” she says, “we’re finished. We have to protect the integrity of the show.”
“Absolutely,” Flip says. Then he waves the camera and sound guys in closer. “So tell America, Ryan, how do you feel about the breakup?”
I sit there speechless, looking confused and depressed. And really stupid.
*
The very next night, I’m on national television, and the students in every dorm lounge on campus are laughing their asses off. At me. Why did I have to end it so pathetically, shouting, “Lana, I love you! You hear me? I love you!”? And of course, they all recorded it so they could play it over and over again.
I might have scored some pity sex from a few of the other women on campus if Lana hadn’t spouted off about the sex not being that good—a total lie, by the way. I’m pretty sure I’m very good at sex. I’m at least average, I know that.
Anyway, that night I’m sitting on the very same bench where Lana blindsided me the day before. It’s dark, except for a thin slice of moonlight. I’m slugging down a bottle of cheap wine poorly concealed in a brown paper bag, and I’m contemplating suicide by alcohol poisoning. Along comes Tracy Chyvers, better known on campus as Genius Girl.
She sits down beside me. “Ryan, I can help you.”
“That’s very kind, Tracy,” I say, “but I don’t fool around with unattractive women. A guy has to have standards.”
It’s not like I was insulting her. She’s a genius, for crying out loud. She has to know she’s one hideous 22-year-old. Yet, for some reason, she acts all offended.
“Don’t flatter yourself, asshole! List="assholeten to me. How would you like to travel two days back in time?”
“And get humiliated on national TV all over again? No thank you.”
“Could you be any more freaking stupid?” she shouts in my ear.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I didn’t want to say,
Yes, I could be more stupid.
But saying,
No, I couldn’t be more stupid
, didn’t sound right either. I set down my wine bottle and gave her a blank stare.
“You’d have a chance for a do-over, dickwad! You could just not show up to meet her, or show up and dump
her
ass on national television.”
Okay, I may have been a little slow catching on. In my defense, that was some real rot-gut wine I was drinking, and I may have incurred some temporary brain cell damage.
*
So Tracy drives me out to this pitch-dark, unpaved road. I hear brush and tree branches rubbing up against the sides of her minivan. It’s all pretty creepy. I know she’s some kind of astrophysics genius, but all that knowledge in your head at one time can’t be good. And it’s a known fact ugly women resent guys like me who date hot-looking women.
I’m thinking,
Is she going to murder me with a hatchet and cut me up in small pieces and marinate me?
Then I’m thinking:
Maybe she’s going to chain me to a wall and make me her love slave. And later, I could break free and escape and write a book called, I Was an Ugly Girl’s Sex Slave and make a million dollars.
And I’m thinking that wouldn’t be so bad.
At that point in my thoughts, we’re a mile or so in from the main road and her headlights are shining on the door to an abandoned mine. A big sign reads:
Keep Out! No Trespassing!
Tracy says she bought the mine by selling some of her invention patents. Genius Girl.
She unlocks the door and turns on all this multicolored, futuristic, laser-type lighting. There’s a sleek, one-seat, race car with no tires sitting on a pair of rails that runs through a tunnel circling around the place. Genius Girl had obviously done some serious renovating. She tells me to sit in the vehicle.
I climb into the sleek, little race car, Tracy has me buckle the seat belt, and she places a motorcycle helmet on my head. I should point out that none of this is making me feel particularly safe.
Before I can reach a conclusion on that, I’m flying around the track at a jillion miles an hour.
Tracy had babbled on about the colored lights having something to do with a gravitational force that could bend space or some damn thing. All I know is, I threw up twice in my helmet and almost choked to death on my own vomit.
The race car, time capsule, or whatever the hell it is, comes to a halt at last, and I stumble toward the door, dizzy as all get-out. Once outside, I barf one last timce one lase.
Time Travel Tip: Avoid consuming large quantities of cheap wine before traveling.
Genius Girl had given me a cell phone on the ride to the mine. I pull it from my pocket and press her pre-set number so she can give me a ride home. Except, now, it’s two days earlier, and she’s shouting at me on the phone, “What the hell are you talking about?”
I explain and Tracy comes to get me. We compare notes on when I left and when I got back, and it was exactly two days earlier. She’s all pleased with herself. The fact that I threw up twice in my helmet and almost choked to death on my own vomit didn’t seem to concern her at all.
*
After Genius Girl drops me off at my dorm, I make my way down the hall to my room. It’s so late even the party animals are asleep. When I tiptoe into my room in the dark, Toby wakes and sits up in his bed.
“Who’s there?” he says.
“It’s me, Ryan.”
“What are you doin’ all dressed, man? I thought you were asleep.” He looks over at my bed and gets this weird look on his face.
So I look over and see there’s someone in my bed. I flip on the light, and I see it’s me. That is, it’s present-time me. Genius Girl never mentioned this possibility.
Toby’s clearly not taking it well. “Is this some kind of out-of-body experience? ’Cause if it is, it’s freakin’ me out. Get your spirit ass over there and back in your body.”