Dating on the Dork Side -- SAMPLE

Bingo!

When I turned back to the tutoring room the space felt oddly vacant, as though Jason had taken something crucial with him when he left. But I had what I wanted now: a blissfully empty room.

Strange as it sounds, I like tutoring. I started in middle school as a homework buddy for the little kids at Olympia Elementary three days a week. It was fun. Then, the year my parents' marriage got rocky, it felt almost like compensation for the little brother or sister I'd probably never have. When my group kept acing all their spelling tests, the guidance counselor suggested peer tutoring as the next logical step.

But there was one more reason I liked spending time in the tutoring room. In those first weeks of school, when it was too early for anyone to need serious help with their schoolwork, it was mostly just me and the sights and sounds of football practice. Those were the moments I lived for. Up there, I was free to watch as long as I liked. And watch I did.

I focused my gaze on quarterback Gavin Madison warming up his arm. He looked good this year. Oh, who was I kidding? He looked good every year. When he launched a pass to one of the wide receivers, my fingertips tingled in anticipation, as if the ball were headed straight for me.

That's not as crazy as it sounds. Once upon a time, I'd played in the same youth football league as Gavin. My body still remembered how it felt to reach for the ball, to grasp it and tuck it in tight, to run with it down the field. But my football career had ended in eighth grade at the bottom of a pile-up. I sighed and resisted the urge to touch the scars on my knee.

As much as I was enjoying the view, something gnawed at me. Instead of admiring Gavin's form, the spin he gave the ball, or—okay, I'll admit it—the way he looked in those tight football pants, I turned toward Jason's blank monitor. It was like a dare, just sitting there, taunting me. With a click and the fizz of static, I turned on the computer.

The more I thought about it, the stranger Jason's appearance in the tutoring room seemed. I mean, really—jock + tutoring room + first day of school? The combination didn't add up. It was like he'd brought a negative integer into the equation. At least, that was what my friend Rhino, the math genius, might say.

Surely Jason hadn't felt an overwhelming urge to start a research project on the first day of school. So why else would he have sought out a computer? A few unsavory options entered my mind. Did I really want to get an eyeful of cheerleader types modeling their Spankies, or whatever skeevy fantasy tripped that boy's trigger? What if it was worse? What if I got caught looking at something that could get us both in trouble?

The first option was a definite possibility; the second, not so much. Sure, Rhino had hacked the school's firewall. He could do the same to the grading system if, through some bizarre twist in the space/time/school continuum, he ever needed to. But he was not only good at math, he was a techno-genius. I was pretty sure something like that was beyond the abilities of anyone nicknamed The Ab.

That didn't stop me from checking the browser's history files. The listing was short: the school home page, this year's open gym schedule, the Minnesota High School Athletic League. Those last two made sense. Jason was an athlete. Maybe they'd changed something about high school baseball rules over the summer. According to Rhino (who knew everything about the sport), Jason was devoted to the game.

I was about to give up when a final site caught my eye.

The Hotties of Troy.

True, the mascot for Olympia High was a Trojan warrior. But pulling up a website called The Hotties of Troy on a school computer? I knew better than that.

I did it anyway.

All I got for my daring was a login screen.

But one with a familiar name in the user ID field: jasona. Oh, it was just too tempting. My fingers itched to try, and I quickly filled in the password field. Baseball? Cheerleader? I even tried the old standby: password.

Nothing. Then the obvious hit me. I typed theab.

Bingo.

I squeezed my eyes half shut, finger over the mouse to close everything ... just in case. When nothing raunchy happened, I opened my eyes all the way, feeling a bit of pride swell in my chest. Hacking? It was kind of fun.

The site appeared to be the sort of place where a group of people contributed information, a wiki: a living, breathing (well, virtually) encyclopedia. The sidebar contained a list of pages: recently updated, most-accessed, hottest of the hot. Every single page was labeled with a girl's name. A girl who went to Olympia High, which made her, I guessed, a Hottie of Troy. So, what we had here was a living, breathing girl encyclopedia?

Of all the chauvinistic, sexist, and utterly stupid things.

Stunned, I sat back, not sure what to do. I clicked the home icon. The main page contained instructions for the computer illiterate and a general chat board, with messages like:

bro, Call of Duty throwdown tonite at teh abs

Yeah, it wasn't exactly a brain trust. Returning to the home page refreshed the sidebar as well. The girls' names rippled and changed position. At that moment a new one popped up on the recently-accessed list.

Camy Cavanaugh

I'm pretty sure my heart stopped. For several seconds I sat, frozen, until footfalls in the hallway yanked me back to reality. Matching Jason's earlier panic, I minimized the browser and brought up Excel. The footsteps got closer, a clipped stab against the linoleum. A teacher, I guessed. I plugged a fake formula into the spreadsheet. It took every ounce of willpower not to look at the wiki, not to click the Camy Cavanaugh page, not to see what someone had written about me.

Author Note: Just a reminder that this is only a sneak peek at the latest book I wrote with my co-author, Charity Tahmaseb. It's available now on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Dating-Dork-Side-Charity-Tahmaseb-ebook/dp/B018KMNBI2/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1448932740&sr=1-2

Have you ever written  with a co-author before? You should try it; it's fun! Charity and I met in an online writing class. We'd known each other for a few years before we tried writing a book together. When that first book came out (The Geek Girl's Guide to Cheerleading) we had a party to celebrate its release into the world. That was only the second time Charity and I have met in person. She lives in Minnesota and I live in Indiana. We do all of our work (and all of our gossiping) online ;)