Dating on the Dork Side -- SAMPLE

Ladybug, Ladybug

I wouldn't say my friend Rhino hated school. The word hate requires far more passion than Rhino had ever worked up about an educational institution. Dislike, maybe. Disdain. I'm sure he could conjure up a dozen other D-words to describe how he felt. So of course, in a cruel twist of fate, he lived just a block away from Olympia, Minnesota's only high school.

On crisp autumn nights, you could hear the football games from his house. Every year, the homecoming committee used his street as a staging area for the parade. Last fall, as convertible after convertible arrived to carry homecoming royalty, Rhino had turned to me and said, "I'm being punished for something I did in a past life, right?"

He forgets that when we were little, we loved it. All of it. Rhino wanted to be the drum major. I yearned to wear a long gown, to sit on the trunk of a convertible. Once, Rhino wove a paper chain crown for me. With it on top of my head, I practiced waving at an admiring crowd.

Middle school had quickly demolished what was left of those wispy fantasies. I was never going to be popular enough to make it into the homecoming court. I'd even convinced myself that it didn't matter. But I still didn't see the point of treating school like it was a jail sentence.

Things could be worse. Much, much worse.

And today, they were. Because standing in Rhino's garage was ... Jason. Yes, that Jason, the one with the stupid nickname. For a second I considered Mr. Dawson's opening lecture in Advanced Earth Sciences that morning. He'd talked about the Butterfly Effect, the theory that an insect flapping its wings in the Amazon jungle could cause a tornado thousands of miles away.

I stared, open-mouthed, and couldn't help wondering: Just how big would a butterfly's wings need to be to make the jocktastic Jason appear both in the tutoring room and in my nerdy best friend's garage on the same afternoon? In most cases, pretty freakin' huge, I thought. But in this case, you had to account for Darren.

To really understand Rhino, and why Jason "The Ab" Abernathy might be standing next to him, you don't need to know much about earth science, but you do need to know a little about Rhino's family. It was Rhino's older brother Darren who defined the Rineholds. Darren, the superstar athlete who'd led Olympia High to not one, but two state baseball championships.

If you took everything that was Darren and held it up like a photograph, Rhino would be the negative. He was dark where his brother was light. He shined in ways most people didn't notice. The saddest part? Hardly anyone could see Rhino for the amazing person he was because they kept expecting to see Darren instead.

No matter how different the brothers were, there was one sacred thing that connected Rhino to Darren, and both of them to Jason. That thing was baseball. I always wondered if Rhino loved the game the way I love football. Maybe he simply loved his brother. For the record, Darren is pretty cool.

Whatever the reason, Rhino started keeping team stats when he was just a seven-year-old tag-along and Darren was a Gopher League All-Star. When his big brother joined the middle school and then the high school team, Rhino followed with his scorebook. After Darren graduated four years ago, Rhino kept at it. He can do things with statistics that make my brain hurt.

Over the years, Rhino and Jason developed an odd sort of friendship. At first, I cringed whenever I saw them together, certain Rhino was being set up for a massive fall. But then I figured it out. There's one thing I know about athletes: they're superstitious. As long as Rhino was the one keeping track of RBIs and extra bases, then Jason would no more body slam him into a locker than toss out his own pair of lucky socks.

That afternoon, the two of them were huddled over a card table strewn with printouts from Rhino's computer. Neither boy noticed me standing there in the driveway. And standing there.