The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love Read online

  “Yup,” Casey says, swinging his backpack over his shoulder and heading for his bedroom door.

  “Just how am I supposed to do that?”

  Casey shrugs. “I leave the method up to you. But those are my terms. Take them or leave them.”

  I follow him out, stunned. Maybe I was wrong about Casey and romance after all. Maybe every geek not only has a price, but a girl who makes him crazy, too. As evidenced by the fact that he would even think to lump a date with a real-life person in the same category as some cards and a comic book (no matter how awesome they are). Maybe he’s as far gone as me.

  That’s my own excuse, anyway, for immediately trying to figure out how to get my super-popular, athletic, senior stepsister to agree to a date with someone who, in her parlance, would inevitably be a junior dork. My mind churns for our entire way to school.

  Chapter 3

  Planning

  and Scheming

  and Thinking and

  Praying

  “WHAT, GRAHAM?” CALLIE GLARES AT me over our boxes of Chinese food. Her mom, Lauren, picked some up on the way home from her office. My dad has only just gotten in about five minutes ago himself. Home-cooked meals at the Posner/McCullough house are an extremely rare occurrence, and the proximity of Number One Chinese Kitchen to Lauren’s office means my weekly diet consists of Shrimp Chow Fun probably more than is good for my arteries.

  “Nothing,” I say as I stab some more of the greasy noodles with my fork.

  “Why do you keep staring at me?” She’s still in her maroon soccer uniform, and her bright red hair clashes spectacularly with the jersey. “Are you in love with me or something?”

  “Ewww,” I say automatically. Technically, Callie and I aren’t related, of course, but that would still be seriously gross.

  Her brother, Drew, snickers next to her. Drew and I are in the same grade, and that’s exactly where our similarities end. We’ve never even had a single class together, since I’m in honors everything and Drew . . . well, let’s just say Drew plays football, lacrosse, and baseball proficiently, but he attends class a little less proficiently. I’m still not sure he’s ever handed in a single stitch of homework, though, to be fair, I didn’t know him before the fourth grade. Maybe he aced finger-painting and then decided that was enough of a scholarly peak for him.

  I take it back. The McCulloughs and I do have one other thing in common: bizarrely, we all have red hair, though mine is a deeper auburn than theirs. When Dad and Lauren first got married, Roxana got a kick out of calling us the Weasleys, but within a few months she stopped because even a ten-year-old could tell that shared red hair does not a real family make.

  I stare at the logo that decorates our takeout boxes. It’s a number sign followed by a thumbs-up illustration, which is why Roxy and I always call the Chinese place Hashtag Like Restaurant. We’ve decided its slogan should be: An Eatery Ahead of Its Time.

  Roxana. Robert Zinc. Casey. Callie. That seems to be the flowchart I’m stuck with. I have to make this work somehow.

  “I hung out with Casey today,” I blurt to no one in particular, figuring maybe at least planting the seed of his name will be a start.

  There’s a long pause that my dad finally fills with, “How’s he doing?”

  Plotting how to get his hands on Obi-Wan, an evil part of me wants to respond, but I settle for “Good.” And then struggle to follow that up with anything meaningful.

  Dad nods and smiles. Nobody else registers that I’ve said anything.

  “How was practice?” Lauren asks Callie and Drew.

  “The new forward is really good,” Callie says. “I think we’re going to beat Harborfields this weekend without a problem.”

  “At least somebody will,” Drew grumbles. “The lax team is bullshit this year.”

  “Watch the language, please,” Lauren says mildly, which is pretty rich considering how many times we all hear her swear on her frequent after-hours conference calls.

  I zone out, mentally starting to add items to my “Things Roxana Loves” list instead of listening to sports stats that literally mean nothing to me.

  John Hughes movies

  White chocolate Hershey’s Kisses

  Micron markers in all six nib sizes

  Anything on BBC America

  Robert Zinc

  Robert Zinc

  ROBERT. ZINC.

  God, I really have to figure out a way to get this Callie/Casey thing to happen. The night is a total wash in that regard, but as far as I’m concerned, the deal with Casey is on. It has to be. Before bed, I put my Giant-Size X-Men and Pokémon deck aside on a high shelf in my closet, ready to hand them over as soon as NYCC ends. The important thing for now is that Casey knows I’m as good as my word and that I’ll figure the Callie situation out . . . somehow. I wonder if I can bribe her by offering to trade rooms. She has complained about the size of her closet more than once, and mine is definitely bigger. I stare woefully at all my carefully stacked board games, video games, and boxes of comic books. Man, the things a geek will do in the name of love . . .

  I don’t see Casey much over the next week. This is the first year we actually don’t share any classes, plus he’s been preoccupied with preparing for the PSATs. Casey is gunning for a National Merit Scholarship. Stony Brook is a pretty good school and he could go there for free thanks to his parents’ jobs, but Casey is a man with Ivy League dreams and always has been. I know he’s determined to get all the scholarship money his freakishly enormous brain can finagle.

  In the meantime, the other crucial part of the plan involves making sure Roxana can cut school on Comic Con Friday.

  In my experience—by which I, of course, mean brainstorming plotlines for The Misfits of Mage High—the simplest plans are often the best ones. And since this isn’t a story I’m writing that needs obstacles thrown at it every five seconds to keep it interesting, I don’t see why the simplest plan shouldn’t just flat-out work.

  Roxana will tell her parents she has school, followed by a dress rehearsal for the play, where the pit orchestra would of course need their star viola player. That will give her from 7 a.m. until about 7:30 p.m. to be away from home without anyone raising an eyebrow. But of course, instead of school, she’ll be taking an early train into the city in the morning, having the most unforgettable day of her life, and then catching the 6 p.m. train back home.

  “Easy peasy,” I say as I spear a Tater Tot at our cafeteria table. We’re going over our plan one more time. “But just remember to have the cab to the train station pick you up a few blocks over.”

  “Oh, no need for that.” Felicia, Roxana’s girl best friend, flips her long, silky black hair over her shoulder. “My brother said he’d drop us off at the station.”

  I stare at her. “Us?” I ask. There is no way Felicia Obayashi has any interest in Comic Con.

  She grins back at me, gracefully piercing a piece of lettuce with her plastic fork. “You’re getting Miss Goody-Two-Shoes here to cut class, lie to her parents, and spend a day in New York City? Of course I’m going to be there.” She carefully flicks her wrist, and right before my eyes, her piece of lettuce folds and gets plopped into her mouth without smearing a jot of the shiny pink stuff she wears on her lips. I’ve suspected Felicia of practicing ninja mind tricks for years, and not just because she’s of Japanese descent, either, but because I’m doubtful that there’s a nonsupernatural way for someone to be so pretty, so smart, so talented, and so popular.

  “Um . . . so you need tickets to get into Comic Con . . . ,” I start.

  Felicia looks at me with a pitying expression. “Duh. I don’t know if you know this, Graham, but other people know how to use the Internet too. Anyway, I think it’ll be fun to see Roxana all in her element. Plus hot guys in spandex, right? That might happen too?”

  “Um, right.” I shift uncomfortably on my bench. Not for one second have I expected that it would be anyone other than me and Roxana and occasionally Casey roaming the NYCC
floor together. I don’t know how having Felicia hanging around is going to work into my plans. I mean, I don’t have a problem with her or anything. Felicia’s just always been the mysterious wild-card element of Roxy’s life for me. They’ve been stand partners in orchestra since the fourth grade, but she’s always seemed one step ahead of Roxy socially and at least ten steps ahead of me. I know she’s had several boyfriends already; I think she’s gone to prom as both a freshman and a sophomore. There’s a part of me that’s always known that Roxana must confide stuff in her that she wouldn’t tell me, as a guy. It never bothered me before this summer, though—when I realized that I didn’t want to be just a guy, but I wanted to be her guy. Felicia must have some insight into that. The question is, would it be insight I want? Or is Roxana hopelessly in love with some jocky senior football player I could never be?

  “Just don’t forget,” Roxana tells Felicia with a gleam in her eye, “there are also plenty of regular guys in spandex too. In fact, the ratio of hot to nonhot bodies in tight clothing might not be what the superhero movie industry has led you to believe.” She plops the rest of her feta and cucumber pita sandwich in her mouth and grins at me.

  “True,” I say, smiling back at her. “Think more Chris Pratt and Seth Rogen before the personal trainers.” I’m being paranoid. There’s no way this girl is crushing on a high school cliché. I know this girl. And now a tiny piece of feta cheese is stuck at the corner of her mouth and I desperately want to reach over and brush it off.

  But Felicia beats me to it by indicating the corner of her own mouth to Roxy. “Fair enough,” she says. “But one thing’s for sure, I am not missing out on Roxana Afsari’s Day Off.”

  Roxana looks nervous but retorts with, “Well, now I know not to take my father’s 1961 Ferrari, then.”

  “What are you talking about? We’ll just run it in reverse to get the speedometer to turn back,” I say.

  “And hijinks will be sure to ensue.” She crumples up her sandwich’s tin foil and stares at it before looking back up at us. “Seriously, though, guys. Getting caught cutting and lying is not an option.”

  Felicia rolls her eyes. “We know. Relax.” She elegantly places a cherry tomato into her mouth, chewing and swallowing it before continuing. “Graham would never let you get in trouble, so if he’s planning it out, you know you’re good.”

  Huh.

  Felicia isn’t looking at me, and she doesn’t act like what she said means anything earth-shattering. But I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little flattered that she thinks that highly of me. Maybe she does know something that Roxy told her in confidence . . . and maybe it’s something in my favor after all.

  Chapter 4

  Geeks

  in

  New

  York

  THE GOOD THING ABOUT HAVING an OG for a dad is that not only will he allow you to take a day off from school to attend NYCC, but he’ll even drop you off at the train station the day before to go spend your night standing on a line. Lauren may raise an eyebrow as she sees me and my enormous backpack standing in the front hallway at 7 p.m., but even she doesn’t say anything except to “be careful.” Callie tells me to try and avoid being trampled by a nerd stampede, but I doubt she’d be too concerned were that to actually happen. Drew just blinks blankly at me and then dismisses me from his mind as he goes back to texting what is likely some grammatical atrocity to his girlfriend.

  Casey’s parents are pretty hands-off when it comes to this sort of stuff, probably because they know their son is way more anal about his schoolwork than even they would be. I know he’s prepared as much as possible for his day off from school by speaking to all of his teachers and getting his homework done ahead of time. Which is why I can’t figure out why he seems so distracted on the car ride to the station. He barely says two words to me or to my dad, even after Dad asks him if he’d mind getting Peter Mayhew’s autograph on his behalf. Dad ends up giving me the cash for the autograph, along with the photo he wants signed: a two-shot of Chewbacca and Han Solo.

  We buy our tickets, board the LIRR, and sit at the end of the car where the red and blue seats face each other. We’re going against the rush-hour crowd, most of whom are heading home from their city jobs, so the train is pretty empty. I wait until we’ve passed a few stops before I hand the Mayhew photo over to Casey and finally break the silence. “So, what’s up, Case?”

  “What?” Casey responds, barely even looking at me.

  “Oh, nothing,” I say. “Just that you’ve been planning this weekend for the past six months and you look as excited as you would going to a pep rally. So what’s up? What happened?”

  He sighs into his window, his breath depositing a small blotch of condensation. “I had an appointment with my guidance counselor today,” he mutters.

  “Yeah?” I’m confused. I can’t imagine Casey ever having the bad kind of guidance counselor appointment. It’s not like he’s ever been in trouble. Seriously, not ever. Not even a mistaken cut slip or attendance snafu.

  “You know . . . where they told us our class ranking.”

  “Oh, right,” I say. I had mine yesterday, and so did Roxana. Mrs. Buchanan told me I’m currently sitting at number eleven in our junior class. Roxana is at number nine. She had a grand old time teasing me about being two places ahead of me on our bus ride home, mostly by repeating “Number nine, number nine, number nine” in a loop à la the Beatles. Casey has to be at number one . . . wait, doesn’t he? I look over at him, and suddenly everything clicks into place. “You’re not . . .”

  He shakes his head, then takes his finger and writes the number two in the fog on his window.

  “Whoa,” I say, stunned. “So then who’s number one?”

  “No idea.” Casey turns to me, his thick eyebrows fixed into a scowl. “Benji Conners? Ethan Kramer? I don’t even know how it’s possible. My average is 102.1.”

  I whistle. Casey takes so many honors and AP classes, one even in his sophomore year, that they get weighted to give him an above-perfect average. Ironically, I know having over a 100 percent average is something that bothers his math-wired brain, especially since any expression that involves someone giving, for example, 110 percent will really get him riled up.

  I don’t even attempt to tell Casey that this means he’s still the salutatorian, or that he’ll still probably get into any Ivy League school he wants. Casey Zucker is nothing if not a perfectionist. The things he cares about, namely academics, he’s deeply interested in being the best at. One time he even told me he thought it was a shame that he didn’t have an athletic bone in his body: that kind of fierce competitiveness could only come in handy on a field. It certainly doesn’t hurt him during our Friday-night Magic tournaments.

  “There’s still time to change your ranking,” I say, knowing it’s the only thing he’ll want to hear.

  He nods ferociously. “Oh, yes. But first I have to find out who’s number one so that I can strategize properly. Buchanan wouldn’t tell me,” he adds darkly.

  After a few more minutes of brooding, I mention that I’ve talked Casey up to Callie over the whole week. What I neglect to mention is that this has mostly involved me bringing his name up once or twice during dinner, with no reaction from her. But no reaction is better than a negative reaction, right? Plus I think baby steps is definitely the way to go here. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself, as my plans to make this date happen have yet to materialize beyond such infantile, minuscule, microscopic steps.

  Still, Casey seems to be in slightly better spirits by the time we get to Penn Station, maybe because his mind has already started churning with a solution for the valedictorian problem. Once we’ve elbowed our way outside, we double-check Google maps to make sure we’re headed in the right direction and then start the long, straight walk from Seventh Avenue to Eleventh Avenue.

  We see lots of tourists with cameras and shopping bags, and some harried-looking New Yorkers in suits and ties. A group of college-age girls in tiny
skirts and high, high heels wait with us at the corner of Eighth Avenue while the light changes.

  At Ninth Avenue, we see our first Spider-Man and then, like he’s heralded the cavalry, a steady stream of costumed people with badges around their necks are following him, heading in the opposite direction from us. By the time we get to Tenth Avenue, there are flushed faces and spandex as far as the eye can see, accompanied by excited chatter about the day’s experiences. I can see Casey visibly relax. These are our people.

  “Next year, we definitely have to try to be here for Thursday,” I say.

  “Especially if I’ve gotten in early decision,” Casey agrees. “Senioritis, here I come.”

  I snort. Senioritis for Casey will probably mean exactly that: cutting one extra day to attend New York Comic Con.

  As we get closer to the Javits Center, I start to see that more and more of our spandexed brethren haven’t come here alone. In fact, a lot are coupled up, holding hands with significant others, laughing together, secure and happy in a geektastic world all their own. I want that to be Roxana and me so badly. I pull on the straps of my backpack and stand up a little straighter. This is my shot to make it happen, and I’ll have to rise to the occasion to the best of my powers. My sadly human powers, I think as I spot a Wolverine and Jean Grey play-fighting each other, each with one set of Wolverine’s claws.

  The organizers will be giving out the Robert Zinc wristbands from this building at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. Tucked away to the side of the front door, I start to see a snake of people who’ve made themselves comfortable there. Some have chairs, blankets, and even tents, and most are sitting down. I take a deep breath. There was a small part of me that thought maybe we’d be two of the first people in line, but if this is the Zinc line, and I’m growing more and more certain it is, based on the costumes I’m seeing, we aren’t. Not by a long shot.

  “Robert Zinc?” I ask a boy clad in a holey black shirt and wearing a faded mustard-yellow leather jacket, even though I already know the answer. He’s dressed as Charlie Noth, the down-and-out sci-fi writer who meets the mysterious alien Althena in The Chronicles of Althena.