Revenge of the Geek (26 page)

“I know,”Charlie said.

I wondered what would happen. Finn, Charlie, and I had been a trio ever since the seventh grade. If the two of them started dating—or if they started dating and then broke up—what would that do to our friendship? But I tried not to dwell on it too much. Things would happen as they happened. There was no way to predict how it would all unfold.

Chapter Twenty-eight

O
ver the next week, talk of Nora’s plagiarism continued to swirl around Geek High. I got tired of hearing about it. Nora had been so quiet and shy, most people hadn’t taken the time to get to know her. But everyone knew I’d been friends with Nora—and quite a few of them had also heard that she and I had had a falling-out even before her plagiarism was discovered. As a result, I was constantly peppered with questions about what Nora had been like, and had I suspected what she was up to. I shrugged most of these questions off. I didn’t feel like talking about it.

Gradually, things in my own life got back to normal. Through Hannah, I found out about an Orange Cove High junior named Patrick Shaw. He was a nationally ranked junior tennis player, and was currently helping to organize a charity tennis tournament to raise funds for leukemia, which his little sister had been diagnosed with six months ago. I contacted Patrick, and he agreed to be interviewed for my student-athlete profile that would eventually appear in the second issue of
The Ampersand
.

Candace didn’t accept my short story for publication in the first issue—after the plagiarism debacle, she decided to temporarily omit the fiction feature—but she told me she would absolutely consider my work for future issues, which was encouraging.

The most startling development happened after school one day. I was on my way out to the student parking lot when I saw Charlie and Finn standing near Charlie’s old station wagon. They didn’t notice me—they were talking so intently, I don’t think they’d have noticed a full brass band marching by—and then, suddenly, Finn leaned over and
kissed Charlie
.

I promptly dropped my car keys. Luckily, Finn and Charlie didn’t hear. The last thing I wanted to do was interrupt them. I scrambled for the keys and then hurried to my car before they noticed me.

“Oh, my gosh,”I said under my breath. “Way to go, Charlie!”

I climbed into Bumblebee and drove home, smiling all the way. Charlie hadn’t told me when she was planning to talk to Finn, or what she would say when she did, but obviously it had worked. And somehow, the idea of the two of them together didn’t weird me out anymore. Even though they’d been friends forever, and even though they bickered constantly, something about the two of them together just seemed right.

As Hannah might say, it was a good match.

I pulled into the driveway of the beach house. My mind was still so full of thoughts of Charlie and Finn that at first I didn’t see the girl sitting on my front doorstep, her shoulders slumped and her arms wrapped around her bent knees.

It was Nora.

All of my fizzy, happy thoughts instantly vanished.

What is she doing here?
I wondered.

As I parked Bumblebee and climbed out, my pulse was humming. I couldn’t tell if it was from anger or nerves, or a combination of both. Why would Nora come find me, of all people? I was the friend she’d betrayed. After all that she’d done, what could she possibly have to say to me?

Nora stood as I approached. She was wearing a black T-shirt over faded denim cut-offs and scuffed canvas sneakers. It was almost exactly what she’d been wearing the first time I laid eyes on her.

“Hi,”Nora said. She stood with one arm down at her side, and the other crossed over her body.

“Hi,”I said, stopping a few feet in front of her. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you,”Nora said.

“What about?”

“Everything,”she said. “Can I come in?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want her in my life, and I certainly didn’t want her in my house.

“Please,”Nora said. “I won’t stay long. I’ll just say what I’ve come to say, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

Finally, I shrugged and gave a curt nod.
We might as well get this over with
, I thought. And I had to admit, I was curious to know what she would say.

As usual, Nora recoiled from Willow’s exuberant greeting at the door. I’d once wondered why Nora disliked Willow, and why Willow was never as friendly to Nora as she was to our other guests. Now, in light of all that had happened, it seemed like it was an early warning sign I should have paid more attention to.

I petted Willow’s head, and then said to Nora, “Let’s go back to my room.”

I led the way, Willow at my side, Nora trailing behind. Once we were there, I closed the door behind us. I was glad Hannah wasn’t home from school yet. She’d have been dying to know why Nora was here, and would probably have eavesdropped at the door.

I dropped my backpack on my desk.

“Have a seat,”I said, gesturing toward the desk chair.

Nora obediently sat down. I sat cross-legged on my bed, facing her, and waited.

“You probably hate me now, huh?”Nora said.

I didn’t say anything. I just continued to look at her.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you do. I know I deserve it,”Nora said. “You were the first person who was nice to me at Geek High. And, in return, I was pretty awful to you.”

“Yes, you were,”I agreed.

Nora fell silent, staring at the floor in front of her. After just a few moments of this, I started to feel my patience slipping. If she’d come here for sympathy, or if she somehow thought we could be friends again, well, she was dead wrong on both counts.

“Nora, why did you come here? What did you want to say to me?”I finally asked.

She shrugged miserably. “I just wanted to apologize.”

“Fine. Then apologize,”I said.

“I’m really sorry, Miranda,”she said.

I nodded. “Thanks, but I don’t forgive you.”

Nora nodded and bit her lip. “I sort of figured you wouldn’t.”

“I thought we were friends,”I said.

“I thought so, too,”Nora said.

“Then why did you do it? Why did you submit that story to Candace, when you knew how badly I was hoping to have my short story picked for publication? And why did you tell Charlie that I like Finn?”I asked.

Nora shrugged again. “I don’t know, exactly. I think I was just jealous of you.”

This took me by complete surprise.

“Jealous? Of me?”I said. “Why?”

“Because you have
everything
. You have friends and a cute boyfriend and a beautiful house. You’re really smart, and everyone at school likes you. Everything’s just so easy for you,”Nora said. Her words came out in a burst, as though they’d been pent up inside of her for so long.

I just stared at her. I spent so much of my time being jealous of other people, it hadn’t really occurred to me that someone would be jealous of me.

“Really?”I said.

“Yes, really. I don’t have anyone. My parents don’t even want me to live with them, and my grandmother barely tolerates my presence in her condo. No one wants me,”Nora said. Tears were now leaking out of her eyes.

“It’s not like my life is so perfect,”I said. “My stepmother and I barely get along. And, yes, I have a great boyfriend, but he lives in a different state.”

“So? At least you have a boyfriend! I’ve never even been on a date,”Nora said.

“What about Marcus?”I asked.

Nora looked down at the floor, her cheeks flushing.

“I made him up,”Nora admitted. “I was trying to impress you.”

Aha!
I thought. It was just as I had suspected.

“I didn’t like you because you had a boyfriend. I liked you because you were fun to hang out with and nice. Or, at least, I thought you were,”I couldn’t help adding.

“I thought it would give us something to talk about. You know, if we both had long-distance relationships. I’ve always been really bad at talking to new people,”Nora explained. She wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hands. I grabbed the tissue box off my night-stand and handed it to her.

“Thanks,”Nora said. She took a tissue and dabbed at her eyes with it.

“I just don’t understand why you turned on me,”I said. “Did it make you feel better when you knew Charlie and I weren’t getting along, or when the story you handed in got picked?”

“Actually, no. It made me feel sick to my stomach,”Nora said.

“They why did you do it? How did it help you?”I asked.

“I don’t know. I think I thought that if I could somehow step into your life and be just like you—have your friends and your clothes and everything else—that I’d be happy,”Nora said. She shrugged helplessly and shook her head. “I know it doesn’t make sense. And I’m not trying to make excuses for what I did.”She looked up at me. “I really am sorry, Miranda. The worst thing about all of this—worse than everyone finding out that I cheated with that story, worse than getting expelled from school—is that for once in my life, I had a really good friend. And I messed it all up.”

I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. I took a tissue and wiped at them.

“And I know that you don’t accept my apology and that you can’t forgive me. But I really am so, so sorry,”Nora said.

I nodded. “Thanks, Nora. I appreciate that.”I hesitated and took a deep breath. “And I do accept your apology.”

“You do?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“But aren’t you still angry at me?”Nora asked.

Actually, my anger had faded. Which wasn’t to say that I was ready to trust Nora or to be her friend again. But I did think she was truly and honestly sorry for what she’d done. And I knew it couldn’t have been easy for her to come apologize in person.

“Not as much as I was,”I said, shrugging. “By the way, how did you get here?”

“I walked,”Nora said.

“Do you want a ride home?”I asked.

“That would be great,”Nora said. She gave me a watery smile. “Thanks, Miranda.”

“No problem,”I said, and for the first time since Nora had arrived, I smiled back at her.

Chapter Twenty-nine

I
sat outside of Headmaster Hughes’office, waiting for my appointment to see him. Mrs. Boxer—who was the school secretary, but preferred to go by her official title of Executive Administrative Assistant to the Headmaster—was sitting at her desk, typing. Mrs. Boxer was a large woman, tall and broad shouldered, with gray hair that she wore in a beehive and eyebrows that had been plucked to thin lines. I could tell from the way she kept glancing over at me that she was bursting with curiosity as to why I was there.

Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Can I tell the Headmaster why you’re here?”she asked. She had an unusually high-pitched, breathy voice.

I suppressed a smile. Mrs. Boxer loved to gossip. Anything I told her would go straight into the school’s rumor pipeline.

“No, thanks. I’ll tell him at our meeting,”I said.

“Okay, dear,”Mrs. Boxer said. Her fingers hovered over her keyboard, as though she were about to go back to work. But then she decided to take another stab at uncovering some good dirt. “It’s terrible what happened with the Lee girl, don’t you think?”

“Mmm,”I said.

Mrs. Boxer tsk-tsked. “In all of my years at this school, I’ve never heard anything like it. Plagiarizing a published story and trying to pass it off as her own. It’s simply shocking.”

She waited for me to join in with her condemnations of Nora. When I remained silent, she pressed on.

“I gather that you and Nora Lee were friends. And that you had a falling-out,”Mrs. Boxer said.

“You can’t believe everything you hear,”I said, smiling politely.

“Which part isn’t true? The part about you being friends, or the part about the falling-out?”Mrs. Boxer asked, leaning forward eagerly in her chair.

Fortunately, I was saved from having to answer this. The woodpaneled door that led to the headmaster’s office swung open, and Headmaster C. Philip Hughes stood there.

“Miss Bloom. Please come in,”he said.

Headmaster Hughes was as bald as an egg, with dark eyes that gave the impression of missing nothing, thick eyebrows, and a square jaw with a cleft chin. When he smiled, it was a close-lipped grimace that pulled the outer corners of his mouth down instead of up. I’d always found this disconcerting, as it meant that even when he was pleased, he looked disapproving.

I followed him into his large office, with its enormous desk, book-lined shelves, and fussy, old-fashioned furniture. He waved me into one of the navy blue damask wing chairs before taking a seat behind his desk.

“What did you want to see me about, Miss Bloom?”the headmaster asked.

“I want to talk to you about Nora Lee,”I said.

If Headmaster Hughes was surprised, he didn’t show it. He just nodded and waited for me to continue.

“I’d like you to reconsider your decision to expel her,”I said.

This time, I thought there was a flicker of surprise in Headmaster Hughes’dark eyes. He regarded me for a long moment, tapping his bridged fingers together.