Natalie and the Nerd Page 8

  “Do you drive?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says. His eyes meet mine and it sends a weird flurry of butteries through my stomach.

  “What kind of car?” I ask.

  He taps the paper in front of me. “If you want an answer, you have to do another worksheet.”

  I groan and shoot him a dirty look. “So mean to me…” I mutter under my breath.

  “I am not mean to you,” he says, sounding frustrated, but when I look over at him, he’s smiling.

  We do another worksheet and I get my answer. He drives a charcoal gray Lexus IS 250, which he says is not as cool as it sounds because it’s seven years old and it used to be his dad’s car before he upgraded.

  I still think it sounds pretty cool. A Lexus? Mom’s car is so old and crappy we don’t even park next to a Lexus at the store because it’s embarrassing by comparison.

  We go on like this for the next hour, me blowing through the worksheet questions as fast as possible to get another answer out of him.

  I learn that he has one dog named Rex, who is a German Shephard they rescued from a shelter. He lives with his parents who are still married, and also his grandfather who moved in with them after having a stroke two years ago. His mother is from Mexico and his dad is from Washington. He has one little sister named Lola, and fourteen cousins who he grew up seeing almost every day.

  I keep my questions light, never asking if he has a girlfriend even though I’m dying to know the answer. After each worksheet, the question dances around my tongue, but I refuse to say it out loud. Because if I do, that’ll mean I might maybe care a little bit about Jonah’s dating life, and I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t. I don’t care at all.

  I like Caleb.

  I like guys who aren’t nerds.

  Jonah is both a nerd and also not Caleb so I can’t like him.

  I finish another worksheet just before our two hours is up. Jonah grabs his bag and slings it over his shoulder as I pack up my stuff, shoving it into my backpack. I stand up and face him, noticing how he’s just tall enough for me to be eye level with his lips. He’s the perfect height to give forehead kisses, I think.

  I quickly shove the thought away.

  “You have one last question,” Jonah says. “What’ll it be?”

  I can’t help myself. I have to know.

  “Was that pretty comment in your notebook about me?”

  His eyes widen for a split second. “Yes,” he says after a moment. “But I veto any follow up questions from now until forever.”

  He starts walking toward the door and I stand here a minute, watching him walk away. My chest aches in the weirdest way. It took a lot for him to admit that just now, even though we both already knew the answer from the moment I first saw his dog-eared comment on my appearance. And it takes even more for me to admit something to myself now.

  I think I have a crush on him.

  Chapter 12

  An entire week goes by with me doing a good job of keeping my new crush to myself. I’m still unsure about it, and wondering if I’m just suffering from delusional tutoring-induced emotions. Would I have liked Jonah if I never had to tutor with him?

  Hell no.

  So maybe all this studying is just rotting my brain.

  The only good thing about being forced to go to tutoring and paying attention in class is that I’m not solely worried about the store anymore. I’m still stressed about it, and I still work there every day after school, but it’s not the number one thing on my mind. Between the store, studying, and thinking about Jonah, there’s barely any room for sleep.

  But on Tuesday morning, I know my thoughts are about to spill over and come rushing out of my mouth because people can only keep these things to themselves for so long. The thing is, I need to make sure I control what I say instead of letting it escape accidentally. So I decide to tell April about my crush. She’s the one who first pointed it out, after all. She is the best person to talk this through with me.

  Only…as we’re walking to school, I keep chickening out. I want to tell her, I do, but I can’t make my mouth say the words. The thing is, even if I do have a crush on Jonah, I can’t act on it. We are totally different people in very different social circles. He hangs out with the band nerds and fellow smart people and I keep to myself since I’ve lost most of my friends over the last year. I focus on the store and nothing else.

  I don’t even have time for a boyfriend.

  “Are you okay?” April says as we approach the front doors of the school. “You look like you’re going to puke.”

  “I might puke,” I say and she jumps back. I laugh. “No, not like literally…”

  “So you’re figuratively going to puke?” she says, giving me a look.

  I shake my head and tuck into an empty part of the front lobby. “I need to tell you something, but only because I can’t keep it to myself.”

  She lifts an eyebrow. “Okay now I’m intrigued.”

  I take a deep breath and prepare to embarrass myself. “I think you’re right. I think I might like Jonah.”

  “What!” she squeals. Her bright blue eyes seem to turn into glitter as she grins so big I can see all her teeth. “I knew it!”

  “Shh!” I say, grabbing her hands before they can clap together excitedly. “The whole world doesn’t need to know.”

  “But are you going to tell him?” she says, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

  “No,” I snap. Now I’m regretting telling her because this is all just too mortifying.

  “Oh come on,” she says. She puts her hands on my shoulder and looks into my eyes like she’s giving me some serious Yoda advice. “There’s nothing wrong with liking Jonah.”

  At that very instant, the guy we’re talking about walks up behind her. His eyes shine in greeting and his lips part like he’s about to tell me good morning, just like he did the last couple of times I saw him before school started.

  I shrug out of April’s grip and I try to tell her to shut up before he hears anything. He’s only a few feet away, getting closer with each step. But she’s faster than I am.

  “I know you said you’d never date a nerd like Jonah, but come on. He’s cute.”

  “Morning,” Jonah says quickly, glancing at me for a split second.

  “Good morning,” I say back, but he doesn’t act like he heard me as he walks a little faster, his back to me now.

  “Oh my God,” April whisper-yells as she covers her mouth with her hands. “Do you think he heard me?”

  My heart pounds so hard I can hear it in my skull. “I really, really hope not.”

  My throat goes dry as I walk to class. All of my muscles start to ache with worry and now it’s all I can think about. Jonah was totally close enough to hear April call him a nerd. But it is loud in the hallways and maybe he wasn’t paying attention.

  Or maybe he was.

  I have no idea, and the not knowing is driving me crazy. Because of this, I make a sixty on my Shakespearian quiz in English and I don’t even hear when my History teacher calls my name three times in a row.

  By the time the final bell rings, I don’t know what to do or say when I see Jonah at tutorials. I decide to pretend that nothing happened and that everything is totally normal. After all, maybe he didn’t hear it.

  He was just passing by this morning. He was looking at me, so he probably didn’t even pay attention to what anyone else was saying.

  I’ve almost convinced myself that everything is okay until I get to our table in the library and Jonah’s sitting there with his notebook open, his foot tapping impatiently on the floor.

  “Let’s get started,” he says instead of a hello.

  I swallow the lump in my throat and sit next to him, noticing that his chair is about six inches further away from mine than usual. He opens the history textbook to the chapter thirteen study guide.

  “I’ll quiz you on the vocab words,” he says, never looking up at me.

  My heart lodges i
n my throat. I can deny it all I want, but he definitely heard what April said this morning.

  Chapter 13

  We have to reorder books two more times. I can’t believe Mom’s idea of selling books actually turned out to be profitable. As much as I like the idea of browsing a bookstore to find the perfect book for me, it turns out most people just like buying what’s already labeled as a best seller. Some of our customers come into the store and grab the number one book without even reading the back summary to see if they’d like it. People are weird.

  But I don’t mind it at all if it helps the store.

  I stand behind the counter working on my extra credit worksheets while Mom eats her dinner in the back room of The Magpie. Dinner tonight—and every night for the last week—has been peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They’re economical and cheap.

  They also remind me of Jonah.

  He’d told me they were his favorite snack food back when he was giving me answers for each paper I finished. Now, after suffering one very awkward tutoring session where he was all business and no small talk, I would give anything to go back to the way it used to be.

  I debate telling him I’m sorry and just clearing the air about the whole thing. But knowing him, and how quiet he gets about stuff, he probably wouldn’t even listen to me. He probably won’t even admit that he heard the insult from April, although it’s obvious that he did.

  I think about leaving a note in his locker, or handing it to him in the hallway. I could apologize and say I want us to be friends.

  But even that would just make the situation weirder. April thinks I should just ignore it and go back to the way things were. She says everyone eventually gets over stuff and he will be normal soon enough. But she doesn’t sit in the tutorial session with me so she has no idea how impossible it would be to go back to my normal flirty self.

  Just when he’d started opening up to me and joking around and telling me things, I’d gone and ruined it by talking about him to April. If boys and relationships were a grade in school, I’d be failing it for sure.

  I spend all night thinking about what I should do. By the next morning, I’ve decided the best thing would be to apologize. Even if he doesn’t want to hear it, and even if it’s the most awkward thing I’ve ever done, Jonah deserves an apology.

  Sure, he’s nerdy and he’s totally not the kind of guy I would date. But he’s also a good person. I hate knowing that I’ve hurt his feelings.

  I’m still trying to decide if I should apologize to him in class or after school during our tutoring session when I see him at lunch. He goes through the cafeteria line and grabs a burger and fries. I watch him carry his tray across the room to the circle table that’s filled with his fellow nerd friends.

  I decide that telling him now would be a good idea because then he’d have time to think about it before tutoring started. Maybe by then we’d be back to normal, or at least be able to pretend like we are.

  I eat my food quickly and try to listen to whatever April is talking about. As soon as I’m done, I’m going to walk over there and ask to talk to Jonah alone real quick. I’ll smile and I’ll be friendly and say it’s about my chemistry class.

  I’m about to tell April that I’ll be right back when I see a girl walk over to Jonah’s table. She’s short and petite with silky black hair and a pastel pink dress. I don’t know her name, so she must be in a younger grade than me. She smiles at Jonah and he slides over, making room for her at the table. She opens the Diet Coke in her hand and slides a straw into the bottle’s opening.

  I run a hand through my hair and pretend to glance around the room, but really, I’m watching her every move. She touches his shoulder and laughs and steals some of his fries. He laughs back with her and together they chat with his friends.

  She keeps doing this thing where she lays her head on his shoulder for a second. In the whole ten minutes I watch them, I don’t think she stops smiling once.

  “So I was thinking of watching Reign first and then Heartland because Reign has fewer seasons,” April says. “What do you think?”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” I say, prying my eyes away from Jonah’s table. An uneasy feeling settles into my stomach. Here I thought Jonah had spent the last two days hurting from the insult of being called a nerd. But really be probably didn’t even care. Because clearly, he has a girlfriend now. How could I have been so stupid? I should have listened to my gut in the first place and never allowed myself to like a guy who’s in a total opposite social circle.

  I take a deep breath and tear my eyes away from his table. Jonah has his own life and I have mine. Our circles only connect briefly for two hours two days a week. It is so not a big deal.

  I take a deep breath and hold my head higher. Now that all the stupid crush stuff is over, I can go back to my normal life, like wondering if Caleb Brown will talk to me again in the hallways. I’ve only seen him once since that time Jonah interrupted us in the art hallway. He’d been walking with a group of football players and our eyes met from across the hall. He winked at me. And then he kept walking.

  Still, I think. Better than nothing.

  Chapter 14

  Some asshole vandalized our chalkboard last night. We usually bring it inside the store after closing up, but last night was Friday and the boardwalk had a live band playing so the place was more packed than usual. I’d had the genius idea to leave the sign outside near our store overnight so that all the people that were there seeing the band would walk past our sign and see that we sell books now. The best case scenario was that people who rarely come to the boardwalk would see the sign and remember our store and come back to buy books. I figured the worst thing that would happen is that people would just walk right by it, lost in their own world, and never see the sign.

  I was wrong. The actual worst thing that could have happened would be the giant penis that now covers the board.

  I heave a sigh and kneel down in front of it with a bottle of alcohol and some cotton balls. Luckily, I’m here early enough and it’s Saturday morning so people like to sleep in. Maybe I can fix this before anyone sees it.

  The penis is drawn in silver Sharpie, by the looks of it, and it spans the entire three foot tall chalkboard. I cover a cotton ball in alcohol and begin scrubbing at the lines. They come off with only a little effort, but when I’m finished, the alcohol has left a streak of perfectly clean black all over the board.

  So the penis is still there in a way. I can’t help but laugh a little at how stupid this is, and then I start scrubbing the entire thing until it’s perfectly clean. I’m drenched in sweat by the time the board is finished, and the sun has risen and warmed up the beach.

  I glance at the time on my cell phone and realize it’s taken me two whole hours to clean off some asshole’s idea of a funny joke. I wish we had a security camera on the store so I could find whoever did this and draw penises all over everything they love.

  I head inside and find Mom behind the counter, playing on the computer. “All done?” she says, lifting an eyebrow at my appearance. I probably look like shit since I’m covered in sweat and I reek of rubbing alcohol.

  I nod. “Where’s the chalk markers?” She hands them to me and I go back outside, but not before chugging a cold bottle of water.

  Mom has better decorative handwriting than I do, but I do my best to replace the words on the sign. I add an arrow at the bottom of it to point toward the store.

  The boardwalk has filled up with people now, mostly beach goers by the smell of the sunscreen in the air and the fact that people walk right past all the stores on their way to the ocean. I’m nearly finished with my sign when I hear a girl say, “Seriously, Jonah?”

  My head whips up. Across the way, near the hot dog stand, is the petite girl from Jonah’s lunch table. She’s wearing cut off shorts and a black bikini top with no coverup so that her boobs are on display. And her hands are on her hips while she stares at Jonah.

  My heart skips a beat. See
ing him outside of school is weirder than weird. He’s wearing board shorts and flip flops. And, well, I’m not going to say that the sight of his surprisingly muscular bare chest sends me falling to my ass on the boardwalk, but I do have to reach over and grab the wall to steady myself. Maybe I’ve just been kneeling too long in front of this stupid sign and maybe that’s why my knees are suddenly weak.

  I’m partially hidden by the sign, and there’s other people around so I’m pretty sure they have no idea I’m here watching their private conversation. Which is good because I couldn’t look away now, even if I wanted to.

  Jonah’s hair is either wet or gelled, because it’s slicked to the side like usual, only it’s a little messier than when he’s in school. I try not to stare at his chest, but damn. I had no idea he was packing such a hot body underneath those nerd outfits he wears every day.

  Here at the beach, he looks like a normal guy. With tanned skin and board shorts hanging low on his hips, I would swoon my ass off if a guy like him ever came into the store. It’s amazing how different he looks, and I’m feeling like the worst person on earth right about now for judging him based on appearance.

  Jonah called me pretty and I called him a nerd.

  I cap the chalk marker in my hand. I should go back inside. But that girl’s got her hand on her hip now as they move forward in line at the hot dog cart and she looks annoyed with Jonah. He says something I can’t hear and then they order their food. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wallet, handing some cash to Thamir, who owns the hot dog stand.

  Watching him pay for her meal is all it takes to know they’re a couple and that my fantasy of them being just friends is now just that—fiction.

  Now I go inside. Watching them any longer just feels creepy and wrong. Over the next few hours, I work in the store and I tell myself a lot of things.