“The . . . army . . . of . . .”
Nothing. Finally, he concedes, sounding dead as he ends with: “Italy, guys. The army of Italy.”
He looks around, clearly begging for just one person to be like, Damn, Italy! It was right on the tip of my tongue. We respond by staring at him with the glassy eyes of the truly, perhaps even fatally, bored.
“So then, in 1808, he declared that the king of Spain would be his brother, Joseph Bonaparte—”
Snickering from the first-tier popular boys in the back.
“Boner-aparte,” says Gideon, putting his comedic stylings to sophisticated use.
They openly crack up. As he laughs and leans back in his chair, Jason tosses his pencil down on the desk for emphasis and further disruption.
“Guys. Please. Please. I’m begging you,” beseeches Mr. Kercher.
The back of Mouth-Breather Leslie’s head lowers a little, guiltily. She’s a Girl Genius, so she knows the answer—but it’s easier not to speak up. She’s one of those girls whose hair always seems to be hanging in her face in a half-literal, half-metaphorical sort of way. Even if she shaved her head it would still be like that. She does take pity on him, though, and raises her hand tentatively.
“Leslie. Yes.”
“Does the Napoleonic Code still affect certain regions of Europe?” she whispers. “I think I read that somewhere.”
Mr. Kercher looks at her gratefully.
“Excellent. Yes, Leslie. Some jurisdictions of Europe as well as Africa and . . .”
As he goes on, my pen begins to rattle as I feel Dylan Dinerstein start methodically kicking my chair. (We all sit in those awful Frankenstein-y metal desk/chair mash-ups from the eighties, so everything’s connected.) Eventually my pen rolls across the desk and falls.
Instead of telling him to cut it out, I choose the path of least resistance and yank my whole desk and chair farther away from Dylan. It makes a loud, rude noise.
“Yo, Scarlett, did you just fart?” yells Jason.
The other guys snicker, and there are some giggles around the room. Immediately my heart starts pounding like a Biggest Loser contestant’s, but it’s better to ignore him than to dignify it with a response.
I turn around very slightly to look at Gideon, who is not laughing but stubbornly refuses to meet my eye. But then Gideon looks up, smirking, back in the game.
“Nah, I think it was Leslie, man,” he says.
Everybody laughs. Leslie slumps even lower, her head down.
Mr. Kercher holds up his hands. “Guys. Guys.” Nobody listens.
It’s one thing to pick on me, but Leslie can’t stand up for herself.
I wheel around and snap, “Nope! Totally me. Really impor-tant investigation, Jason. Thanks for spreading awareness.”
“Everybody just calm down,” says Mr. Kercher.
Jason just gives me a Crazy bitch stare, infuriatingly blank and slack-jawed.
“Nothing?” My eyes dart over to Gideon, who still refuses to look at me. I get louder.
“You have nothing to say?”
Mr. Kercher finally loses it, banging his palm down on his desk.
“Scarlett, that’s enough!”
He sends me to the front office, where I get a pink detention slip to forge Dawn’s signature on.
As Ave, the Girl Geniuses, and I walk past the Populars to get our lunch trays, Ashley studiously pays no attention to Ave. You’d think they were strangers, not sisters, but there is no sibling loophole for breaking the MHS caste system.
Gideon heads for a table at the nuclear center of a group of loud jock guys, chatting with Mike Tossier in the dulcet tones of loud bro. He glances at me, and I give him my best glare. He looks away. I wonder, again, what the hell is going on—why Ashley would pick Gideon, loaning her much-curated social life to him. Either he struck some kind of Faustian bargain or Ashley is actively trying to ruin my life.
We sit down at the designated Girl Genius table with the other lady misanthropes. A few fey, antisocial boys who look twelve sit here too, for good measure.
“Yes, this is my cheap-ass poor-person lunch,” I announce when I sit down with my tray, and they laugh, like they do every time. I used to try to hide swiping my reduced-lunch card, but eventually I realized I can neutralize it with jokes, make people feel more comfortable and less like I’m some walking PSA.
“Hey, Ave?” I ask.
“Yeah?” She pulls out a bag full of almonds and pops one in her mouth.
“Have I told you lately . . . that I love you?”
Avery rolls her eyes, crunching. “What do you want?”
“Can you do my take-home test? It’s due next period.” I yank it from my folder and hand it to her. She pulls out a ballpoint—the true sign of a math genius, not picking a pencil—and starts efficiently scribbling in answers, moving from equation to equation without missing a beat.