Diehard Fangirl

Chapter 4

NOTE: The new book will be published under a different name and with changes to content. But I thought I'd continue posting the current draft for thoughts, comments, feedback. Looking for some "fangirls" who might want to be profiled in the book as well as sequels. DM me if interested...

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I hate math. 

It just stinks. And the only thing worse than math is my teacher who has this thing about blood and germs. As soon as someone gets a cut, she immediately sends them outside to wait while she writes the pass to go to the nurse. Then she sprays the place where the victim had been seated with Lysol and dims the lights because, as she tells it, “Germs hate the light.”

One time, I told my mom about this weird phobia that Mrs. Strayer has and, sure enough, Mom shook her head as she reached for her cell phone. She’s a Googler. If anyone raises a question or makes a statement that has the slightest possibility of not being true, she’s on it, like a monkey on a banana. Alex always rolls his eyes and threatens me when I say something dumb that triggers her compulsion to research stupid stuff like that.

“Why’d you feed the monkey?” he always whispers. 

Today, however, at school, I got cut during gym. We were playing volleyball and that Leslie Murphy kicked the ball right into my ankle, only the ball missed and her shoe didn’t. I think she did it on purpose. The good news was that I got to sit out the rest of the gym period, playing on my iPhone. 

Now, however, I’m sitting at my desk in the worst math class ever. To make time pass faster, I scroll through my iPhone to see if Ian King uploaded any more videos. When I see that he hasn’t, I watch his old ones, letting them loop over and over again. I must have sighed, thinking that he is the most adorable boy on the planet, because I sense a heavy silence fall over the room. People are staring at me and I’m afraid my obsession with the videos has been discovered.

That’s when I look up and realize that Mrs. Strayer is staring at me, too, her eyes bulging out of her head and her hands on her hips. She looks like she’s ready to explode. 

“What. Is. That?” 

It takes me a moment to realize that she is talking to me. But as she turns around and stares...just.at.me…I realize that I am doomed. 

I also realize that there are only two choices…honesty vs. play dumb. I quickly decide that the former would mean no smartphone for the rest of the day (and that would definitely be bad) while the playing dumb might buy me some time.  

“I’m sorry,” I say innocently. “What?”

She lifts her arm and points at me, only she’s not pointing at the phone that I’ve pointing at my leg. “Is that blood?”

I almost breathe a sigh of relief. She didn’t catch me scrolling through the videos. She is more concerned about the scrap on my leg. “A volleyball accident,” I explain, shifting my weight so that my leg is now more visible to Ms. Strayer. At the same time, I manage to slip the phone covertly into my bag so that its safety is ensured. 

“Wait outside!”

I gather my things because I know the routine. Once sent to the nurse from Strayer’s class, you can’t return until the next day. I stand in the doorway, half in and half out of the classroom as she writes the pass, hands it to Tommy Linn to bring to me and starts darkening the room. 

And that’s when I say it. The words just blurt out of my mouth, as if I have no control of my lips. “You know germs breed faster in the dark, don’t you? So when you dim the lights,” I hear myself say, “you’re just making it worse.”