When Good Geeks Go Bad Read online

  Olivia and her friends are being noisy in the background. I think I can make out some mild exclamations and shrieking along the lines of “oh my god”, but I don’t pay any attention.

  “Well,” I begin happily, delighted I can do my big reveal, “what it is, is—”

  “Oh my god!” Olivia’s screech just got louder and it feels like it might be directed at us. Me.

  Ignore it.

  “Anyway,” I continue.

  “Is that…? I think it is!” Olivia stands up and takes a step towards me, squinting. “Oh no, I don’t believe it.” She addresses her friends, who are looking at her, confused.

  “Anyway…” I attempt again. I’m starting to feel quite uncomfortable.

  “Oh, this is tragic!” Olivia shouts gleefully. “You guys –” she pauses dramatically – “Ella has drawn on her rubbish shoes to try to make them look like Jay-Shees!”

  OK, I may not be such a genius.

  They’re coming over. Of course they are. Olivia’s friends circle me, shrieking with laughter and pointing at my feet. Everyone nearby stops what they’re doing and stares. I’m not going to lie: this feels like a low point.

  “So weird,” giggles Olivia’s friend, Sasha.

  “It doesn’t look very convincing,” says Olivia’s friend, Grace. “You can totally tell they’re not real.”

  People at nearby desks strain to look at my shoes, smirking at each other.

  “Look, I wasn’t trying to make them look real,” I explain crossly. “I was trying to make a point to my dad.”

  “Ah, let’s leave her alone,” says Olivia finally. “It’s not her fault she’s the opposite of cool.” They giggle.

  “And then some,” mutters Sasha.

  “Look, let’s just live by this rule of thumb,” proclaims Olivia. “Don’t do whatever Ella’s doing, and you should be fine.” Her friends laugh and they all walk off back to their desks.

  “Well, that was embarrassing for you,” says Debbie.

  The rest of my day passes in a blur of feeling mortified but annoyed as I decide I will construct a list of enemies. Olivia is the only one on the list. But who says you can’t have a one-person list? I mean, even the Count of Monte Cristo had to start somewhere.

  Yes, that was a casual Count of Monte Cristo reference, thanks for noticing. That’s right, the one from the famous story about revenge. Have you read it too?

  OK, look, full disclosure: I haven’t actually read The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s looooong. But I have listened to some of it on audio book. Then I had to give it back. Well, I mean it automatically un-downloaded back from my BorrowBox app, because I forgot to renew it. But, you know, I got the gist. I think.

  I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that I am a card-carrying member of the library. (Because that’s how libraries work. They don’t let you take books out without a library card. I never understand why people describe themselves as card-carrying members of things they don’t need cards for.)

  So yes. That’s right, Jas and I are also geeky nerds, and we like going to the library. We don’t go on about it loads, because, you know, our school was in Special Measures and we got a sense that there wasn’t much of a Count of Monte Cristo vibe about the place. We’re not idiots.

  But I do love the library. Jas and I have taken out books on hypnotism (turns out we couldn’t hypnotise each other); body language (if you point your feet at someone, it means you fancy them – sounds mad, but apparently it’s true because it was in a book); and biology (did you know, the platypus is a mammal BUT it lays eggs?! What the hell is going on there?!).

  So, anyway. I now officially have a list of enemies, and Olivia is top of the list. I hate Olivia. I used to just try to avoid her, but now I want to actively get her. I don’t know how, though.

  The Count of Monte Cristo inherited a massive fortune off this old bloke he made friends with in the prison he was wrongfully sent to. That just doesn’t feel like the type of thing that happens in Peston.

  For one thing, my town is inland, so even if someone told me where their secret fortune on a tiny island was, the chances are I wouldn’t very easily be able to find it. And, for another thing, there are no rich benefactors in Peston. Our town’s motto is “Try Again”. (They dress it up in fancy Latin, Iterum conare, but it doesn’t exactly instil confidence.)

  But still, I’ll show her. She will rue the day she crossed me. Rue and lament it!

  “Cheer up,” says Jas, as we walk out of the school front gates and continue on to the street through the throng of pupils and parked cars. “Come back to mine – I’ll get my mum to make us chocolate milkshakes?”

  “That sounds – oh—” Holy … Soap Opera. I stop dead, unable to find my voice. “That’s … my –” Jas stops next to me, looking concerned – “Mum.”

  There, on the other side of the street, just standing there, apparently waiting, is my mum. What the hell? I can’t believe it.

  My mum waves at me from across the street. Timidly at first, then more grandly.

  “Oh, yeah,” says Jas, surprised. She glances at me and opts not to wave back either.

  Mum looks exactly the same as she always did: same thick black hair tied back in a ponytail; same red lipstick and dangly gold hoop earrings; same long beige trench coat.

  I thought she left because she was meant to be finding herself? She can’t even find a different coat. It’s like she’s not even trying. I mean, experiment with a perm or something?

  How is this more important than me? I want to scream. This abject, continuing same-ness? It makes a mockery of the whole “going on a journey” excuse for leaving. I mean, obviously the sooner my mum gets a new coat, the sooner she can come back. Or have me back. Whatever. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s how this works.

  “Ella!” My mum starts calling and waving. “Ella!”

  Something twists, then loosens in my stomach and I’m suddenly worried I might cry. I can’t quite find my voice.

  “Ella? Are you OK? What do you want me to do?” Jas whispers.

  Mum crosses the road and approaches us. “Ella, I’ve missed you so much!” she gushes. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I was coming. I thought I’d surprise you! Is that OK? Hi, Jas.”

  The old familiar smell of her washes over me. It would be comforting if I wasn’t feeling so jilted: She hasn’t even changed her perfume? Outrageous.

  “Hi,” says Jas carefully.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” Mum repeats. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking. What are you thinking?”

  I’m thinking: If I burst into tears outside my school gates, are my peers more likely to assume I am:

  (a) Cool and interesting, with darkly mysterious problems?

  (b) Insane and laughable, and an ugly crier?

  “I’m sorry,” continues my mum. “I wanted to see you; it’s been…” She trails off. “Hard,” she finishes. “But I’m free now! Shall we do something? I have to be somewhere at eight, but—”

  “No,” I hear myself say.

  What? This seems like a bold move for someone like me.

  “No?” Mum clearly wasn’t expecting that.

  “I’m very busy too,” I elaborate. “I have plans with Jas.”

  I am not just a toy that Mum can pick up and put down whenever she feels like it. I am a person. A human person.

  “Plans?” queries Mum.

  “Big milkshake plans. It’s been in my diary for longer than five seconds, and when I make a commitment I stick to it,” I say pointedly.

  “Oh. OK,” says Mum. “I’m really sorry, Ella. How about… I’ll come next Monday after school? Mondays are good for me. Usually. Unless – anyway … until eight.”

  “Well.” I still sound weirdly cocky. “OK. Thanks. That would be lovely.”

  “Ella has had a bit of a shock, Mum,” Jas explains as we sit at her kitchen table and Jas empties her family’s biscuit tin on to a plate in front of me. They always seem to have re
ally awesome biscuits, often Jammie Dodgers. “So please can you make us a cup of tea or a chocolate milkshake?”

  Well, I don’t know about a shock exactly, but I am full of adrenaline. I can’t believe my own nerve telling my mum off like that. And, technically I lied: we’d only had our milkshake plan for exactly five seconds.

  “Oh dear, what happened?” asks Deepa, Jas’s mum.

  “She can’t talk about it yet because she’s still processing it,” says Jas.

  “Of course,” says Deepa respectfully. I can’t tell if she is much nicer than every other adult I know, or if she just isn’t taking the apparent crisis of a thirteen-year-old that seriously. “What would you like?”

  “Please may I have a chocolate milkshake?” I say in a small voice.

  “And, Mum? Please can you make us a proper one in the blender with real ice cream?” asks Jas.

  “OK, I’ll do a proper one.” Deepa smiles, as if these demands are adorable and faintly amusing, rather than a massive faff for her. My dad almost never uses our blender, as he thinks it’s not worth how fiddly it is to wash it up afterwards.

  “Thanks, Mum,” says Jas, and they briefly beam at each other. For about the millionth time I wish I was Jas’s sister and this was my wonderful family.

  “You’re in shock; you need sugar,” says Jas, handing me a chocolate bourbon. I thank her and start nibbling it. No Jammie Dodgers today. I’ll definitely add them to the shopping list when they adopt me.

  “Hey, Mum, how come you’re making them chocolate milkshakes?” Jas’s brother, Nav enters the kitchen. He is two years older than us and is the brashest of Jas’s brothers. Her oldest brother, Manu, is four years older than us, but quite shy and quiet.

  “Do you want some as well?” asks Deepa.

  “Yes please.” He sits down at the kitchen table, then yells over his shoulder. “Hey, Mum’s making chocolate milkshakes in here! Proper!”

  “No yelling!” yells Jas’s dad, Ajith, crossly entering the kitchen.

  “You’re yelling,” says Nav.

  “I never yell,” replies Ajith. Then he and Deepa talk in (I’m assuming) Tamil to each other, except the word “proper”, which is in English, and then they both chuckle and look at us affectionately.

  I assume they’re speaking Tamil because that’s the language they speak the most. I think I remember Jas telling me that in the part of India her dad is from they had to learn Hindi at school, but they preferred speaking in Tamil. I should pay more attention. I’ll probably need to know this if there’s an adoption exam.

  “Ella, is it true you put Tippex on your shoes to make them look like Jay-Shees?” Nav asks me.

  How does his year know about it? That’s so unfair. “Um, no. Maybe,” I say defensively.

  “Why did you deface your shoes?” Ajith asks me, sitting down at the table as well.

  “Um. I don’t like them, I suppose,” I say.

  “Nonsense!” he responds grandly. “You are very lucky to have shoes!”

  “Oh no, here we go,” says Jas.

  “When I was a boy in India.” Nav does an impression of his dad.

  “When I was a boy in India,” echoes Ajith, either not realising or not caring that he is being mocked by his family.

  “Let me guess, you were very poor and you couldn’t afford shoes?” suggests Nav.

  “I was very poor growing up,” agrees Ajith.

  “My turn to guess,” says Jas. “You couldn’t afford shoes, so you had to train yourself to just float along the ground or something?”

  Everyone bursts out laughing, including Ajith. “I got very good at floating,” he laughs.

  “Called it,” says Jas.

  “No, look, of course I could afford shoes,” says Ajith then. “How do you think I went to medical school with no shoes on? My point is I appreciated my shoes.”

  Nav groans and rolls his eyes back in his head. “Oh, that was the lesson.”

  Deepa turns on the blender, momentarily silencing our discussion. She starts pouring out the milkshakes into glasses. “Does Manu want some?” she asks.

  “I shouted and he didn’t come, so no,” decides Nav. “More for us.”

  “He is upstairs studying,” says Ajith. “He is sensible; he doesn’t want a silly chocolate milkshake so soon before dinner.”

  “Are you having some, Dad?” asks Nav.

  “Yes,” replies Ajith. Everyone laughs again. “I am old now. It doesn’t matter if I am silly,” he explains.

  I let the soothing noise of Jas’s family chatting and laughing wash over me, as I drink the delicious chocolate milkshake. Somehow I feel warmed, even though this drink has real ice cream in it.

  I feel much better as I finally say goodbye to Jas, and head home to my single-parent family. I wonder idly if the Chandrasekhars would maybe let my dad live above the garage or something once they’ve adopted me, so he doesn’t get too lonely?

  “Hello, Ella!” says Dad jovially, arriving home from work. Then, “Alexa! Radio Four.”

  “Hi,” I reply despondently.

  “Oh, you look a bit sad. Alexa! Volume down.”

  “Dad, you don’t need to shout at Alexa. She hears you at normal volume.”

  “Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding—”

  “Alexa, off!” I snap crossly.

  Dad takes off his shoes and stacks them carefully by the back door. Dad works in an office where the council process … whatever boring stuff they have to process. (He has explained it to me, but it’s kind of forgettable.) He seems to neither like nor dislike his job, and on Fridays they take it in turns to bring in cake.

  Dad puts his keys and bag on the kitchen table, where I have been vaguely “doing homework” but really just sort of staring mindlessly at my phone.

  “What up, dawg?” he asks jovially.

  “Never say that again,” I instruct him irritably. Why don’t parents ever realise how uncool they are? The time for them to use urban slang is over. Ironically or otherwise. Where did he even hear that? Certainly not on Gardeners’ World.

  “Mum turned up at my school today and … wanted to hang out.”

  “Oh,” says Dad carefully. “Well, that’s good…?” he guesses. “Isn’t it…? You wanted to … see her more?”

  Live with her. I wanted to live with her. I wanted her to want to live with me. I don’t want to just see her like some visiting second cousin twice removed.

  Can’t say that out loud without offending the one parent who still wants me. I suddenly want to cry again.

  “Hmmm,” I manage.

  “I’m sorry, Ella,” says Dad. (I don’t need my body language book to tell me Dad looks uncomfortable.) “I don’t know what to say,” he continues. “I find it a bit difficult to discuss … the d— Well, the … your mother.”

  To be fair, my dad finds it difficult to discuss anything. I think that’s where I get it from. His stiff upper lip is practically petrified. I know it’s not his fault really. But he could at least offer to make me a chocolate milkshake. Proper.

  Later, on my bed, I realise I have been zoned out thinking about Mum and have scraped all the Tippex off my shoes without rubbing in my dad’s face how no one noticed about the red, and thus his point had been empirically disproven, so ha, he should buy me good shoes. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood – the red did get noticed, and not in a good way. I wonder if I’ll get sarcastic comments about where my fancy Jay-Shees labels have gone tomorrow?

  Eurgh. I can’t face it. It’s all so pointless. I lie back on my bed and spy my trainers in the corner of the room. Hmmmmm. Should I? We’re not supposed to. But where has toeing the line ever got me? Bullied, essentially.

  Maybe it’s time to see what kind of rebel* I would make.

  * May not be an actual rebel.

  In your face, Dad, I’m wearing trainers to school. Ha. No one can taunt me now.

  “Ella Hudson!” Miss Gaskew, our terrifying head of year, shouts across the entrance ha
ll. “Why on earth are you wearing non-regulation trainers instead of proper school shoes?”

  I stop in my tracks as pupils file past me, heading to their form rooms for morning registration. Miss Gaskew approaches. It feels like she’s there in two strides. Everyone streaming in suddenly gives us a wide berth. I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of you, I try to tell myself.

  Come on, Ella, just like we practised in the mirror. “I lost my … my … sprained ankle!” I stammer, much more nervously than I’d intended.

  “Well, which is it? You’ve lost your proper shoes or you’ve sprained your ankle?”

  “My … ankle,” I decide. “It’s very painful. My doctor says I need the support of these comfy trainers until it heals.”

  “I see,” says Miss Gaskew. “And I trust you have a note from said doctor to back up this fanciful assertion?”

  Fanciful?

  “Well, I…” Should I pretend to rummage in my bag? Ahh, I’ve paused too long. “I think I forgot it.”

  “You think you forgot it?”

  Ummmmm. Run with it. “Yes.”

  OK, I am a pretty terrible rebel it turns out. I’m too nervous to lie properly.

  “Well, if you’re wearing them tomorrow, you can remember it and bring it to me in my office first thing before registration. Otherwise you’ll be joining me in detention.”

  OK, the trainers thing has definitely attracted more attention than I anticipated.

  “Oh, look, Miss Goody Two Shoes broke a rule,” says Liam from BUTTS, as I enter the form room. Of course the irony is I no longer have “goody” shoes, so that nickname falls apart, but I opt not to point this out.

  “I can’t believe your nerve!” says Debbie, as I sit hotly at our form-room desks.

  “Have you got detention?” asks Kaya. “I saw you with Miss Gaskew.”

  “Only if I wear them again tomorrow and don’t bring a doctor’s note,” I explain.

  “Wow, must be because it was a first offence,” says Debbie.