2. “Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.” - Bill Gates.
Chapter 2
“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.” - Bill Gates.
Dylan
“ W hat, so they just let you go?” my best friend Hailey whispered, her mouth hanging open as she stared at me in disbelief.
“Would you keep it down!” I hissed as I looked around the algebra lab. The other people in the class were either fiddling with their phones, taking selfies, or doodling on the books, on the table or directly onto their skin. Pretty much doing anything but looking at poor stuffy old Mrs. Henstridge as she droned on about linear and quadratic equations. The one thing that I did not want to do was let one of these mindless drones overhear some juicy locker room gossip and have it come back to bite me in the ass later.
“Not that I am not relieved,” she said, giving me a tight smile, “but every time those guys have had you in their sights, you normally end up stuffed in a locker or with food dumped over your head like they did that time at the lunch table.”
“I mean, let’s not forget I did spend some time in the bottom of a laundry hamper surrounded by mud, sweat, and god-knows-what stained jockstraps and football kits.” I narrowed my eyes at her.
“You’re right,” she smiled. “You’re a little trooper.” Her hand gently stroked my back, but suddenly came to a stop.
“What’s the matter?”
“You did shower all that funk off right?”
I shrugged noncommittally, chuckling as she gagged and wiped her palm on the thigh of her stonewash denim patched jeans.
Hailey Graham had approached me on the second day of first grade, after spending the first day watching me awkwardly try to talk to the other boys in my class before sidling away to rock gently on the swings, my fingers trailing along the bare metal chains on the bright yellow swing set.
I remembered a slow drizzle had started, the clouds thickening and moving quickly across the sky. A small breeze had picked up, moving and shifting the wood shards that served as the floor to the swing set in the playground.
“Hippo is the only cool animal cracker,” she’d stated matter-of-factly, as she plonked herself down on the swings next to me.
“Huh?” My seven-year-old brain had not yet become adept with the odd way her thoughts were formulated and the random questions or statements she tended to throw out into the universe randomly. That particular skill I would not develop for a few years.
“The hippo is the only cracker that has the most cracker.” She’d pulled out a familiar small red bag from her pocket and opened them. She’d emptied the crackers out onto her lap and organized them all facing up. “See, you would think it would be the elephant or the rhino or even the gorilla, but you would be wrong. The thin parts of the cracker take up a lot of space. The fat belly of the hippo actually means you get more cracker.”
She’d popped the hippo cracker in her mouth and munched happily away. “You want one?” she’d asked around a mouthful of crumbs. I’d nodded and held out my hand. “Now I can’t see another hippo, so I’m going to give you a rhino. I won’t even bother with the giraffe because well… you know.” I hadn’t known, and I still didn’t know to this day, but I’d nodded along with her reasoning.
“So, we are friends now, okay?” I’d gotten the impression it wasn’t so much a question as a statement of fact without the possibility of debate. Hailey was and has consistently been forward and forceful in her pursuits. That was one of the many reasons so many people loved her, and were very confused as to why I of all people was chosen as her best friend. Her relatively high social status and my connection to her did nothing to elevate my own or save me from anything that was coming my way, however.
Flashforward to us now, we were sat in Algebra class, and not much had changed. People turned in their seats to offer a head nod to Hailey and to give me a quizzical who the fuck is that again? look. There was something sobering about realizing you were an extra and not even a side character in someone else’s movie.
“So what did Austin say to you anyways?” Hailey’s foot nudged my calf.
“Nothing of any importance.” I shrugged. “He asked if I was okay, told me to wait around, and asked to hang out.” I rushed out the last part.
“He asked you to what?” Hailey’s voice boomed over the class. Her wide eyes and excited expression suddenly tightened as she realized the volume of her previous outburst. She turned slowly to the rest of the class and put her hands up. “Sorry everyone, something happened on Angel last night, and Dylan was just filling me in.” She smiled sweetly at the teacher before gesturing for her to finish.
Mrs. Henstridge was very clearly only in this profession for a paycheck that would let her get by and not for the academic advancement of those she taught. She seemed to fold in on herself under Hailey’s smile before turning back to the chalkboard as suggested.
“He asked you to what?” she whispered fairly loudly in my ear, the heat from her breath warming the skin on my neck. A flush of goosebumps ran down my spine making me shiver. “Where is he anyways?” she asked to no one, while looking around the Austin-less classroom. Austin had somehow managed to scrape together enough credits from his last semester to move up to AP Calculus. I’d noticed as the class had begun that he hadn’t taken his normal seat behind us with Carlee. I had just assumed he had gone off somewhere to high five or bump chests with Garrett somewhere While screaming bro at the top of their lungs.
“He asked me to stay and hang out, so I got my ass out of there.” I bit through my teeth, picking up my pen and making a rather large show of paying attention to the board.
“Woah, woah, woah now!” Hailey slapped her hand down on mine, which was resting palm down on the table. “Do you mean to say that the hottest guy in school asks you to hang around and you what? Just walked away.”
“Well…”
“And not just that, but haven’t you had like a big gay crush on Austin since uh… forever?” Her fingertips began to dig into the back of my hand frantically.
“Well, I wouldn’t say crush…”
“Dylan, baby honey, remember you used to doodle yours and his initials into covers of your sketchbooks.” I cringed at the memory of twelve-year-old me discovering I liked boys after watching Prince Eric in the Little Mermaid and wishing that I could magically wish myself to be a mermaid and have Austin as my Prince Eric, valiantly saving me from the evil clutches of a Garrett/Ursula hybrid.
“I guess I was just a little thrown and covered in ball sweat,” I grimaced.
“Why didn’t you stay and see what was up?” Her fingers prodded into my side.
“Because,” I said, batting her hand away, “he is just another dumb jock who would sooner kick my ass that actually spend time with me.”
“I don’t know about that,” a deep voice whispered in my ear. I dared not turn my head as I knew he was so close that our cheeks would touch, and that would be game over for me. My spine stiffened as that familiar scent wafted across my face. I fought every natural innate urge I had to greedily inhale and keep his scent for myself. His breath was sweet and spicy like peppermint. My eyes shifted to Hailey, her own wide and unblinking. A wide smile formed on her face as she stared at the man whose face was currently only an inch from my own. “I think I just wanted to hang out with you, but I got turned down. Can you believe that, Hailey?”
“I honestly can’t believe anything at the moment.” She barked out a laugh.
I moved my head away from his and turned to face him. A teasing smile played on his lips as he gave me a quick wink.
“I… well um… What I meant to say was… I was trying to…” I stammered out words, the end of each of my sentences swallowed up by the next.
“No, no,” he shook his head quickly. “You meant what you meant. I’m a just another gorgeous big dumb jock huh?”
My face felt as if it had suddenly ignited into bright flames. “I mean that could mean a thousand different things.” I threw up my arms in an odd surrender and craned my neck to search for the help of my best friend. “Right Hailey?”
“I don’t know.” She clicked her tongue inside her cheek. “Dumb jock is quite harsh.” I mouthed the word traitor at her as she preened like the cat who got the cream. “How are you, Austin?” Hailey leaned across him and smiled.
“I’m good, although a little hurt.” His mocking voice earned him a withering glare from yours truly.
“Okay, have we finished with the ‘making fun of me’ portion of this little play?” I leaned forward, resting my head on the wooden desk in front of me and squeezing my eyes shut tightly, hoping against hope that if I prayed long enough, they would both disappear.
“Okay, okay,” Hailey’s hand rested between my shoulders. “I’m just going to run to the bathroom anyway. Austin, do you mind keeping my seat warm?” I turned my glare towards her as she shrugged, moving quickly towards the door. I felt Austin slide into the seat next to me. Without even turning, I could feel his gaze burning into the side of my face. Beads of sweat began to form at the small of my back as my heart decided it was the right time to test out the durability of my ribcage by thrashing itself against it.
“Are you looking for an apology?” I sighed. I’d never known Austin to be an out-and-out bully like the rest of the jocks on the football team, but he had also never heard me insult him behind his back before either. I knew I needed to keep a healthy level of wariness about me, just in case he decided that being insulted by a nerd on the lowest rung of social ladder was not something he was willing to accept.
“Why would I want an apology, Dylan?” His teasing smirk left his face almost immediately, replaced by visible confusion on his brow.
“You know, because of all that,” I mumbled, waving my hands between the both of us.
“If you think I’m upset about you calling me dumb then you clearly haven’t spent much time around me and my friends,” he laughed. I hated how much of an effect the sound had on me, warming a deep part within my chest, sending tingles outwards down my arms to my fingertips. His laughter was.
“Clearly,” I deadpanned.
“Well let’s just say ‘dumb’ is almost a non-word,” he explains. “My pet name for Blaine Rogers is ‘giant cunt’ so yeah, we don’t have to worry about that.”
A sharp laugh escaped my lips before I could hold it back, putting my hand over my mouth. “Fair.” I nodded. “So, what do you want?”
“Right to the point huh?” Austin reached under the desk behind him and grabbed his backpack. Opening the zip, he pulled out a familiar giant green textbook and slammed in down on the table in front of him. “I need your help.”
Now it made more sense; he needed my help. “You’re taking AP English?” I asked, unable to mask the surprise in my voice.
“Yeah, some of us dumb jocks read and write too,” he smiled.
“Okay, so what do you need my help with?” I asked quickly, so as to not insult him for a third time.
“It’s a prerequisite for a course I want to take at college.” He clicked his finger against the cover of the book absentmindedly, his stare was trained on me. “I need to do good in this class, and I’m told that you’re the person to ask for help.”
“Man, I can’t do you essays for you.” He tried to interrupt but I didn’t let him. “I have worked too hard on myself to risk it all for some jock.” Okay, so that’s the third insult. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
“Sure you did.” A slow easy smile spread across his face, an almost appreciative twinkle in his stare as it raked across my body. He chewed on his bottom lip as his stare comes back up to meet mine. “I don’t want you to do my essays for me, Dylan. I want you to tutor me.”
“Tutor you?” I barked out a laugh “Seriously?”
“Yes seriously, Dylan.” His tapping on the cover of the textbook resumed. “This is really important to me.”
So here was my quandary: I could say no and kick myself for turning down maybe the only opportunity I would ever be granted to spend one-on-one voluntary time with one of the popular jocks in school without that ending in a massive wedgie for me, or I could say yes and get to spend time with someone who, for some time now, had become the main lead role in the majority of my wet dreams. I lived for studying, and the idea of two of my most favorite things in the world, studying and staring at Austin Ridge, could be merged into one boner-inducing activity was definitely appealing.
“Austin, I take my studies seriously,” he started, but stopped when I raise a hand to halt him. “I will tutor you, but I expect you to take it seriously as well. I really don’t want to be wasting my time.”
He pressed his hand over his heart while he held the other up in salute. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were a Scout?” I asked with a shit-eating grin firmly etched on my face.
“Only when I was little.” He smirked. “I didn’t like it as I grew up. I like the Beavers though.”
I bit my bottom lip till I tasted the first sweet drops of blood to stop the bark of laughter from escaping my throat, my eyes filling with tears as I clutched the flesh on my thigh. His face filled with horror at his dirty proclamation and at the obvious laughter building within me. I managed to compose myself as the people immediately around me started to watch the curious wheezing coming from the nerd to their right.
“Well,” I started, “that’s great for you. Can’t ever say they have interested me, but horses for courses.”
“You know what I mean.” He rolled his eyes.
“Okay Austin, I will tutor you.” His face immediately filled with a happiness akin to that of a kid on Christmas morning, which warmed my heart in ways I didn’t want to analyze too deeply in the middle of an algebra class. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fancy looking fountain pen, popping the lid off between his teeth. He reached forward to grab my wrist, the heat from his skin almost searing against my own. He pulled my arm towards him, cradling it against his firm chest. I was way too close to him now; his warm breath blowing freely against my own exhalations. He pulled up the sleeve of my shirt and began to write on the soft flesh of my forearm.
All too suddenly he let my arm go and winked at me. “There, that’s my home number. Give me a ring later, about 7pm? We can set something up.”
My breath caught in my own throat and for a moment I panicked that I’d forgotten how to breathe. He watched me with amused curiosity as I barely nodded my head. He smiled at me once more and stood. “Thank you so much, Dylan.” He leaned across the table, bringing his face back close to my own. “This is going to be fun.” And with that he moved towards the front of the class. Only then did I realize that so were the rest of the people in the room. The bell must have gone off while I was lost in his proximity, and I’d simply not heard.
“What’d I miss?” Hailey rubbed her palm against the soft curls on the top of my head.
So much, Hailey. So much.