Undercover As Geek

The Mission

  ***Okay, so I'll get the copyright stuff done first. Please don't steal my book! It took FOREVER to write and if I find out that someone copies it, I'm sure I'll figure out a way to sue you.

Ha, just kidding.... Mostly. 

But seriously, please don't copy. Otherwise... enjoy!!! *****

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Sometimes I wish I could have gone back and changed it all, everything that happened. I would have said no and stood firm. My life would have remained simple and easy, and completely controllable. But when I tell myself this, that nagging voice that we all have crawls up and reminds me that if I had refused, I would have felt the effects anyway. Which is probably true. And then I would have had nowhere to turn. My heart would have shattered into the thousands of pieces that it did, and neither Willow or my parents could have patched it back together.

I think of myself as naive,  back then. It's a silly notion, seeing how that was only a few months ago. Life can change so drastically in such a short amount of time. Like when Romeo heard that Juliet was dead, or when the American or Englishman fired that bullet at Lexington and Concord, or even when you find out that the 8x in the algebra problem you're solving is actually a 38x.

I suppose my great subterfuge began in Spanish class, while I was daydreaming about my future. It really was a pitiful idea, my perfect life, very frilly and full of sick hopes. But that wasn't what made me zone back into the real world. It was more an exclamation, made by the most unexpected person I'd have thought would make it. If she wasn't so full of herself and her own happiness, I might even thank her for saying it, now that I'm finished with the entire experience.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe I should start at the very beginning, back in the dusty, stale room of Spanish class, when she said that very life-changing phrase...

__________

 "Asher McDunn has a girlfriend."

 "WHAT?! No way! Tell!"

 "Yeah! So I was talking with him at lunch, and I was like, 'Hey, Ashey, I heard you were, like, single and stuff, and I am too, so I was thinkin' about prom and....' and he totally interrupted me! He said, 'No, Hannah. I can't.'"

 "OMG! I just can't believe..."

I yawn. The two girls in front of me chat away with each other, oblivious to my presence across the table. They are what I call Plastic People: faces and hair powdered, curled, and sprayed to perfection. Barbie dolls. The one on the right is Hannah, a leader of the Plastics, her hair a dull copper-brown so artificial that I wondered if it was a wig. PP on the left is Bailey, the puppy dog, always drooling at Hannah's feet. Her hair, at least, looks halfway natural with its blond highlights, but she wears blue contacts over her dark brown eyes, giving her a creepy stare.

A poster stretches out between us, still mostly blank. I write one more sentence and yawn again. The night before had been a long one, the sound of my parents' quaint "disagreements" echoing from their bedroom. This time it had been about the microscopic crack on my mother's car window that my father hadn't fixed yet.

"Oh my gawwd."

I look up and see the pair of Plastics glaring at me. I put down my pencil.

"Uh, yes...?" I say slowly. Bailey's eyes are pretty scary. Bulgy, almost.

"What," Hannah says, and stabs a manicured finger on our poster, "is this? Barely anything's done, moron!"

I roll my eyes. "You know," I say. "It would go a little bit faster if we worked together, since this is a group project, after all..."