Talk Nerdy to Me by Tiffany Schmidt

Author:Tiffany Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2020-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

21

As Merri and I drove to the Knight Lights’ Martin Luther King Day service project on Monday, I was on high alert. Like her parents’ dog before thunder, my ears were figuratively perked in anticipation of the storm. I was waiting for Merri to know something was up with me, or for Curtis to slip and make some joking-not-joking comment about us dating-not-dating.

We entered the Knight Light lounge and approached the table where our group of mentors and adoptees were getting ready to fill bags with toiletries for a homeless shelter. Everyone greeted us with smiles, so at least Friday’s Convocation humiliation had erased any lingering anger about my lunch tirade.

I glanced suspiciously at Curtis as I sat, but he was busy telling Sera about an iLive vid channel devoted to melting objects.

“Eliza, can I ask you a question?” Lance was Curtis’s best friend. The fact that he needed permission for whatever he was asking had me reaching my foot under the table to stomp on Curtis’s.

“Ow!” squeaked Rory.

“Oh, sorry!” I winced, then turned to Lance. “What is it?”

“Not to sound stupid . . .” He paused. Lance was the least academic among us, and in any other Hero High group, the wary expression on his face might be warranted. Not here. We waited for him to finish. This group, this “Lunch Bunch” or whatever—they were the best part of Hero High.

Lance fiddled with a stack of toothbrushes. The table in front of us was piled with toothpaste, soap, socks, granola bars, playing cards, and more. Our task was assembly-line style: Curtis opened a baggie and passed it to Huck, who put in deodorant and passed it to Rory for soap. We continued around the table: Toby, me, Merri, Hannah, Sera, and Lance, each adding something before Lance’s adoptee, Dante, sealed the full bags and stacked them in a box.

Lance finally asked, “Are your parents really in Antarctica? I didn’t know anyone but polar bears lived there.”

Polar bears only lived at the North Pole, but that wasn’t relevant and I could be sensitive too. I choked back that correction. “It’s not many people—especially during the winter—but yes, my parents are there.”

“I looked it up,” Curtis said. “We’ve got a couple active research stations down there—but there are, like, forty other countries with their own stations too.” I tilted my head at Curtis, but he matched my curiosity with his own. “Are your parents at McMurdo or Amundsen-Scott?”

“Amundsen-Scott—the South Pole Station—mostly. But they travel between there and McMurdo while it’s still summer.”

Lance held up a finger. “Uh, it’s January twenty-first.”

“Southern hemisphere’s summer,” clarified Curtis—and I was glad he had, because I never managed to correct people without it sounding like an insult. “It’s different at the pole. They get twenty-four hours of sunlight for months, then months of no sun.”

The bags moved between us as quickly as the questions. Sera was next. “How cold is it?”

“In austral summer, the average temperature is negative eighteen degrees at the pole.” I’d jumped to answer before Curtis could.

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