Welcome to my experiment in public drafting, otherwise known as a serial novel! Find out more about the L.A.O.S. here, including ways to join in the fun, or start from the beginning. Please remember, this is copyrighted material; you may quote a couple of sentences in a review, but otherwise all rights are reserved.
Chapter 1 Part A
When your IQ is so far off the scale that scientists are
lining up to create new tests to measure it and Mensa is knocking on your door,
there are only two ways to go in life. You can embrace your nerdly glory and
live a life condemned to exist on the fringes, without any real human contact,
or you can pretend. Or you can be an arrogant jerk like Greg, but he’s
practically an entire category to himself no matter which way you slice it.
Like any other normal teenager, I just wanted to belong.
Okay, at first it was frustrating that the rest of the class would take hours
to understand what I’d figured out in three seconds, but that was easily dealt
with: I just ignored school altogether. My real education happened in my spare
time anyway; school was just somewhere I had to be, with people who I
desperately wanted to like me.
They didn’t, of course. I mean, to begin with they accepted
me and all, but there was always this vague sense of unease, like they knew I
was hiding something, but couldn’t figure out what. And then bloody Mr Hangley
had to perform what was tantamount to abuse on that poor, unsuspecting tangent
secant theorem, and I couldn’t help myself: before I knew what I was doing, I’d
opened my big gob and corrected him, and once the words started they just kept
pouring out, a torrent I’d been hiding inside for so many years that when they
finally spilled over, they flooded everyone within a five mile radius.
Actually, I can only vouch for the fact that they drowned my
classmates, and very nearly Mr Hangley, who stood staring at me like I’d grown
horns and started tap-dancing naked on the desk. Which, thinking back, may have
been the smarter thing to do.
After that, there was no going back.
Megan cornered me right after class, fists on hips and eyes
flashing. “What was that, then?” she demanded.
I did my best to shrink, to blend back into the crowd – but
the crowd was no longer there. Instead, guys I’d just half an hour ago called
mates were edging away from me, pointing and whispering, and I stood out like
I’d always known I’d eventually have to, raw and naked and alone. So,
eloquently, I shrugged and tried to pretend like I had no idea what she was
talking about. Like lecturing your maths teacher on the subtleties of advanced
trig was normal.
“I’m serious,” she said, tossing her hair. Man, you do not want to get Megan riled up. I swear,
she’s part terrier or something, because once she’s latched onto something she
does not let go, and she is scary. “What was up with that?”
“With what?” I snapped, shoving midgety year sevens aside so
I could stomp away. Sure, that’s right, I thought. It’s not enough that my
cover’s blown and I’m back to being Chris-fit again, bloody brunette Barbie has
to come and rub it in, just to make sure I got the point.
“Your dazzling display of brilliance,” Megan said archly,
tagging along at my shoulder.
I ground my teeth, staring fixedly at the far corner of the
building, around which ladies never durst trod.
“Come off it, Chris,” she said, doing that hair-toss thing
again. How do girls do that while they’re walking? How do they not lose their
balance? I’ve seen even the most uncoordinated of girls manage the hair-toss
feat without a problem. It must be another one of those mysterious things they
get taught at Girl School.
“That was no act,” Megan continued. “You can’t possibly have
made that up on the spot. I mean, anyone who knows anything at all about
geometry could see Mr Hang-me was wrong from a mile away, but the cross
products? Even I hadn’t thought about
how that connected.”
Somewhere in all of that, I’d trailed to a halt, eyes wide
and mouth gaping, frozen halfway through a step. Quickly, I wiped my mouth on
the back of my sleeve and quit the zombie impersonation. “What the hell?” I
said. “You understood that?”
Megan shot me a scathing look that left me cowering. “Just
because you’ve been too busy trying to be a dick to notice the rest of us.” She
did that ‘tsh’ thing that girls do when they’re exasperated and stalked away,
leaving me once again doing my zombie act at her back.
“Wait, what?” I said, hurrying to catch up. “The rest of us?
The rest of us what?”
Megan pressed her lips together and glanced sideways at me.
“You’re not the only smart kid in the school, you know.”
“I…” I trailed off. I’d been going to say that I knew that,
of course – only clearly I didn’t. All this time I’d thought I was the only
freakazoid hiding out in this teenage shark pit, alone and misunderstood, when
really… I shook my head like a dog twitching away a fly. “How many?” I asked as
I tagged along at Megan’s shoulder. I had no idea where she was going, but she
hadn’t told me to get lost yet, and that was something.
Megan murmured something too soft to catch, then stopped,
hands fisted at her sides, staring at me.
I caught myself shrinking away from her again and forced
myself to straighten. Geez, I was twice her height, and even if she was smart enough to understand what I’d
said back in maths, I was still arrogant enough to know I was smarter than her.
I didn’t need to shrink from her.
“Four,” she said, laser-sights blazing. “Five, if we’ll have
you.”
“If you’ll… have me?” Once more, I found myself wrong-footed
and gaping. I should have realised then what that meant, but no guy jumps to
the conclusion that a tidgey girl half his size could whip him arse over nostrils
with his own intelligence and then run three times around the metaphorical
block before he’d even got his feet under him again. I’m not saying it can’t
happen – bloody hell, Megan is a monster
– I’m just saying it’s not expected,
all right? I’m not sexist. Megan’d eat me alive if I was.
“Yes, if we’ll have you. And just because you’re smart,
don’t think we will. You’ve been enough of a dickhead the last three years that
Greg’ll blow his nut when he sees you tagging along.” She spun around and
marched off again.
“Wait, what?” I
said, beginning to feel that that might be a fairly standard comeback to any
conversation Megan was in charge of. “Tagging along to what?”
“You’ll see,” she said primly, turning a corner and
shouldering her way through a glass door.
For a millisecond, I froze, mouth open like some gobbing
goldfish, staring at the door. She had not
just gone through that door without opening it. No way. I blinked. No, of
course she hadn’t; there she was, holding the door open for me, impatience clearer
than daylight. Of course she hadn’t gone through the door. Dimwit.
“Come on,” she
said, continuing her march down the corridor. Before I could open my mouth and
make an idiot of myself yet again – which would be what, like ten times in as
many minutes? Dude, seriously: what was going on with the world? – she stopped
outside a classroom door and took a deep breath. Her commando-queen façade
slipped for a moment and she shot me a nervous glance. “Ready?”
I shrugged. “As I’ll ever be.”
Amy Laurens (c) 2012
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