Summer of the Geek (17 page)

“No, not the book. Why you’re upset.”

“Oh.” Amelia looked away and began wrapping a long tendril of hair around one finger. “My mom didn’t tell you?”

“She said you’re changing piano teachers.”

At this, Amelia looked up sharply, her eyes slanted with anger. “And I get no say in it! None at all. It doesn’t matter that I want to stay with Miss Kendall, who’s been my teacher forever. My mom just announces that I have to start taking lessons with this Ian Gregory guy, even though he lives in Miami, because he’s famous.”

“Miami?” I asked. “How often will you have to go down there?”

“Twice a week!” Amelia said. “Which means I’ll be spending hours and hours in the car, which is time I won’t have to practice.”

“Have you tried talking to your mom about how you feel?” I asked.

“Duh,” Amelia said, rolling her eyes at me. “That’s why we’re fighting. She won’t listen to me.”

“Sometimes when I get upset, it’s hard to find the right words to express what I’m feeling. When that happens, I think it helps to write it down—the reasons why I’m upset, what I think the best solution to the problem is. You could try doing that,” I suggested.

“What’s the point? My mom’s already made up her mind,” Amelia said.

“Maybe. But maybe she’s more open to hearing your side than you think. And even if she doesn’t ultimately agree with you, at least you’ll know that you made your best case,” I said.

Amelia thought about this, still curling her hair around her finger. Her hair was straight as a pin, unlike my unruly, wavy mess. In fact, she had the sort of hair I’d always coveted—glossy and thick, the kind that always looks perfect in a ponytail.

“I suppose I could,” Amelia said slowly, as though agreeing that my idea had merit was physically painful for her.

“And if you’re still worried about talking to your mom, you could always just show her what you wrote,” I suggested.

Amelia went to her desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a spiral notebook and a pen. She sat down, cross-legged in the middle of the floor, the notebook balanced on her lap. Then she looked up at me expectantly.

“What should I say?” she asked.

I sat down next to her. “Why do you want to stay with your current teacher?”

Amelia considered this, tapping the end of the pen against her knee. “She always tells me the truth about what I need to work on, but she’s never mean about it.”

“So you trust her,” I said.

“I trust her. Yeah, that’s exactly it.”

“Write it down.”

Amelia obediently scrawled the words into the notebook.

“What else?” I asked.

“She’s supportive,” Amelia said. She thought for a minute. “And when she explains something, it makes sense to me. Should I write that down, too?”

“Definitely. She’s supportive and you like her teaching style,” I said. “Those both seem like really important points. What else?”

By the time we’d finished, Amelia had a detailed list of all of the reasons why she preferred to stay with her current piano teacher. I thought she made a compelling argument. We headed downstairs, but Mrs. Fisher had already left for work, leaving a note on the counter to let us know she’d be home a bit later than usual and that there was sliced turkey in the cold cut drawer for lunch. Amelia’s shoulders drooped.

“I wanted to show her my list now,” Amelia said.

“Look at this way—you’ll have extra time to plan your strategy,” I said.

“What strategy?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Huh?”

“This gives you more time to figure out how to best approach your mom,” I explained. “You were just fighting, right?”

Amelia nodded.

“Well, now you’ll both have time to cool off. If she’s anything like my mom, by the time she gets home, she’ll be feeling bad that you fought and will want to make up with you. So if you catch her in the right mood, she might be more receptive to hearing your side of things,” I said.

“Wow. You’re really good at this whole dealing with the parents thing,” Amelia said, looking impressed.

I shrugged modestly. “I’ve had a lot practice with parental conflict,” I said. “My parents are divorced and I have a stepmother.”

“Do you fight a lot with your parents?”

I considered this. “My mom and I used to argue a lot when I was younger. But I live with my dad now, and he and I have never fought as much. Then again, we’re also not as close as my mom and I are.”

“I hardly ever see my dad,” Amelia said.

“Why?” I asked.

“He travels a lot for business. And when he is home, he’s always jet-lagged and wants to be left alone so he can rest.”

“Could you talk to him about the situation with your piano teacher?” I asked.

Amelia shook her head. “There’s no point. He’ll just take my mom’s side. I’m better off trying to convince her.”

We were both quiet for a minute. “Do you want to go to the pool?” I finally asked. Then, remembering that she hadn’t practiced at all that morning, I said, “Unless you’d rather practice. It’s up to you.”

Amelia thought for a minute. “Actually, I’d sort of like to go swimming. Will Dex be there?”

“He’s off this morning. If there’s enough wind, he was planning to go parasurfing.”

“What’s that?” Amelia asked,

“It’s sort of like surfing—you’re on a board, riding the waves—but you also wear a parachute. When a burst of wind comes, it lifts you right off the water,” I said. “It’s pretty cool.”

“Do you do it?”

I laughed and shook my head. “No way. I’m a total klutz. I can barely stand on a regular surfboard.”

“Can we go watch him?”

“Sure, why not? The beach where he usually surfs is right near the pool. We’ll go see him, and then go for a swim. I’ll make some sandwiches that we can take with us. How does that sound?”

“Great!” Amelia said, and she ran upstairs to change into her swimsuit.

A
melia and I biked over to the public beach. The boardwalk arched up over grass-covered dunes, and it wasn’t until we reached the top that we could see the ocean, vast and dark and shimmering where the sun touched upon it. It was a windy day with big waves churning toward the shore, so there were a lot of surfers out, both the regular kind and a smaller number of parasurfers. I immediately picked out Dex’s blue sail flying high above the others.

Amelia and I sat on towels and ate the turkey sandwiches I’d packed. We watched the surfers, who were mostly teenage guys, with the exception of one or two girls and a few men my dad’s age. They took turns paddling out through the surf to wait for the best wave to ride in on. Dex and the rest of the parasurfers were a bit farther out, and they were clearly the most talented surfers out there. They jumped and flew through the air, nimbly touching down on the water before leaping back up again. Even if I hadn’t known which sail was Dex’s, I would have been able to pick out his coppery red hair, which gleamed in the bright sunlight.

And then I saw someone else I recognized. My heart skittered for a moment before sinking like a rock.
Wendy Erickson
.

Why was it that wherever Dex was, Wendy just happened to show up in the very same place? I wondered. Was it a coincidence, or by design?

I watched her through narrowed eyes. Today, Wendy was wearing a long-sleeve surf shirt over tiny orange bikini bottoms, and her hair was tied back in a single thick braid. Surfboard in hand, she headed confidently into the water, where she jumped on and paddled through the surf until she was close enough to the parasurfers to call out to them. I couldn’t hear what she said—or what any of them might have said in response—but even at this distance, I thought I could see Dex’s teeth flash white in a smile.

Wendy sat up, straddling her surfboard, and looked back over her shoulder. A large wave loomed behind her. She deftly jumped to her feet and leaned forward, extending her arms out to either side for balance.

A not-very-nice part of me was silently rooting for her to be swept right off her board by the wave. I wanted to see her emerge from the ocean with bits of seaweed stuck in her hair and mascara running down her cheeks. But, disappointingly, Wendy rode the wave in looking like a pro. She reached the shore and leapt off her board, cheered on by the surfer guys, who clearly all had massive crushes on her. Wendy smiled broadly at them, and waved like a newly crowned beauty contestant.

I glowered, bending my knees in front of me and wrapping my arms around them.

“What’s wrong?” Amelia asked.

“Nothing.”

“You look like you just swallowed your tongue,” Amelia observed.

“How flattering.” I stood up and shook the sand off my towel. “Come on, let’s go to the pool.”

“Don’t you want to wait until Dex finishes?” Amelia asked.

I shook my head. “No, that’s okay. He probably won’t come in for ages.”

The truth was, I didn’t want to see Dex and Wendy together again. Every time I saw the two of them in the same vicinity, I had the stomach-sickening realization of what a perfect couple they must have made. Also, I wondered if Dex knew Wendy would be at the beach today, and, if so, why he hadn’t mentioned it to me when I spoke to him the night before. Was this yet another planned meeting, so he could talk to Wendy about whatever it was he felt comfortable telling her, but not me?

“Hi, Miranda.”

I looked up from the towel I was folding, and saw Wendy looming over me, looking annoyingly pretty. She’d put on mirrored sunglasses, and I could see my reflection in them, looking distorted with an oddly big head.

“Hi,” I said. Then, worrying that I sounded as unfriendly as I felt, I added, “I saw you surfing. You’re really good.”

“Thanks,” Wendy said. “I didn’t get much of a chance to surf while I was at school. It was nice to get out on the waves again. I keep telling Dex how much he’ll miss it.”

“Miss what?” I asked, confused.

“Surfing,” Wendy said.

“You mean when he goes to school?” I asked. Like me, Dex was going into his junior year of high school, so he wasn’t going to college for another two years. So why was she bringing it up now? Was it just a way to remind me that she and Dex had long, secret conversations about his future?

She needn’t bother, I thought bitterly. It wasn’t like I was about to forget.

Wendy nodded. “Especially if he’s in the Northeast. You can’t surf much when there’s three feet of snow out.”

My throat felt prickly, as though I’d just swallowed a pinecone. So Dex was confiding to Wendy about where he was planning to apply to college. He and I had barely discussed it. I knew he was hoping to get a scholarship to a school with a strong lacrosse program, but it would be at least another year before recruiters started contacting him.

“He’s got a lot of time to surf between now and then,” I said.

“You think so now, but the summer has a way of going by quickly,” Wendy said. “I’m only going to be here for another five weeks before I have to head back. Although I’m not going directly to school. I have a few photo shoots scheduled in Manhattan before the semester starts. Speaking of which, how did Hannah’s casting call go today?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her.” Then I frowned. “Wait—how did you know she had a casting call?”

“She told me last night. She called for some last-minute advice—what she should wear, what to expect. I used to work with her agency, before I switched to one in Manhattan,” Wendy explained.

Typical. Just when I thought Hannah was someone I could trust, she had turned to the enemy for advice.

“Anyway, I’m going to head back out and catch a few more waves. Are you waiting for Dex?” Wendy asked.

“No, we’re going over to the pool,” I said. I looked down at Amelia, whom I’d forgotten until just that moment. She was standing to one side, looking up at Wendy with frank interest. “This is Amelia. Amelia, this is Wendy. She’s a . . .” I hesitated. “A friend of Dex’s.”

“Hi, Amelia,” Wendy said, smiling broadly at the younger girl.

“Hi,” Amelia said.

“Do you want me to give Dex a message for you?” Wendy asked.

“No,” I said, and then realized that—while perfectly true, the last thing I wanted was for Wendy Erickson to pass messages between Dex and me—I’d been a bit to abrupt in my refusal. “I mean, sure, just tell him we were here and I’ll talk to him later,” I said.

“Okay, will do,” Wendy said. “Bye.”

And with one last friendly smile and wave, she turned and headed back to her surfer friends.

“She’s really pretty,” Amelia said admiringly. “I think she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Well, in real life, I mean. I suppose there are movie actresses who are prettier. But not by much.”

I was so not enjoying this conversation. I stuck my rolled-up towel and the remains of our lunch in my backpack.