Boy Proof Read Free

Max Carter and his stupid genius father.

    As a rule, I eat by myself, under a tree on the far side of the quad. But today I don’t make it past the corner table, where the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Club sit every day, unseen.
    “Egg! Egg!” Rue is shouting for my attention. She’s so loud, I can’t ignore her.
    I’m caught.
    Rue is patting the empty seat on the bench next to her with one hand and motioning for me to join them with the other.
    Martin looks up at me with his moon-round face and smiles.
    Martin is pear-shaped and doughy. His eyelashes are extremely long. He is sensitive and smart, but not as smart as I am. Rue is his girlfriend. She is thick-waisted but not really fat. She wears a scarf and a fedora hat all the time because she loves
Doctor Who,
but they don’t go with her glasses and my mom would say that the browns wash out her pale skin. I think she should at least get rid of that old fedora or get over
Doctor Who;
I don’t know which is more outdated.
    Martin and Rue are so in love it makes me sick. They are in the kind of love you want to be in. They respect each other. They give each other space. They have individual personalities but they complement each other. I envy them.
    I hate anybody in love.
    I mean, how did two such geeks luck out so young? I think Rue is just as boy proof as me, and yet she has a boyfriend and I don’t. Not that I would want Martin. Not that I care about any of the boys around here. I’m the only other girl in the club, but I wouldn’t date any of these guys even if they were the last men on earth.
    I want someone as cool as Uno.
    “Question for you, Egg,” Martin says.
    “Shoot.”
    “We’re having a debate about the most influential classic sci-fi film. I say it’s
Star Wars.
Rue says it’s
2001: A Space Odyssey.
And Hasan says
Blade Runner.
I’m sure you have an opinion.”
    Martin is so formal in his speech. He is a nerd and he has the unfortunate luck to sound all nasally like one, too. It makes me cringe.
    “It’s
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
” I say.
    “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that one,” Martin says.
    “That’s the one I meant. I change my answer to that one,” Hasan says.
    “Classic,” I say. “Plenty of films borrow from it. Message of peace and all that.”
    “Egg, why don’t you sit down and join us? Lunch is half over and you still haven’t eaten,” Rue says, patting the empty seat next to her again.
    Mental note: Take different route over to tree at lunchtime.
    “I gotta do homework,” I say, making a hasty retreat.

    “What are you doing here?” I ask Max.
    “I’m just sitting in my assigned seat,” he says.
    He’s more interested in what
he’s
doing than in me. So I bang around my books and the chair and the desk to show him how pissed off I am that he’s sitting next to me again.
    “Careful. You don’t want a repeat of this morning,” he says.
    New tactic: Take matters into your own hands.
    I push my way up to the front of the room and confront Mrs. Perez.
    “I’d like for that new kid to be moved away from me,” I say.
    Mrs. Perez has her arms crossed and she’s looking me over. She is sucking on a lozenge, which is making the hairy mole on her lip jump around. She always has a lozenge in her mouth, because she’s always screaming and her throat always hurts.
    “I place people in certain seats to maintain a certain order in the classroom so that I won’t have to yell as much.”
    “I had an incident with him this morning in Global History.”
    “Well, you won’t have one here in my class or I’ll fail you, even if you are one of my most gifted students.”
    Mrs. Perez is one tough cookie. That’s what I like and hate about her.
    “Well, he stinks,” I say.
    “Get over it.”
    The bell rings and she turns her back to me and picks up her stack of graded papers. I skulk back to my seat and sit down next to Max. I sniff loudly and make a face. He doesn’t even smell today, but he