The Queen Geek Social Club by Laura Preble

Author:Laura Preble
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

9

SHERLOCK HOMES (or If You Lived Here, You’d Be Rich by Now)

In my extreme joy about the Anders situation, I forget totally about The Dinner, so when I hear the front door open, my dad’s keys jangling in the lock, and then a female voice, I freeze and get a stabbing feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Becca puts a hand on my shoulder. “It will be fine.” She puts up one finger, the universal signal for “wait a minute,” and silently opens my bedroom door, sneaks into the hall, and peeks around the corner. She scurries back within minutes with a report.

“Okay.” She sighs heavily, then leads me to the edge of the bed. “You might want to sit down.”

“Oh no.” I park on the edge and lean over with my head in my hands. I feel like throwing up.

“Yeah, oh no. Good news first: She’s not really old, kind of pretty, seems fairly intelligent from what I could see.”

“That’s the good news?”

“It gets better.” She scratches her scalp between the spikes and bites her lower lip, a sure sign that this is a bitter piece of news. I rarely see Becca unable to find the right words. “Brace yourself. It’s someone you know.”

“What?” I sit bolt upright. “Someone I know? Like who, Briley from next door?”

“Gross. It’s not that bad.” She pounds an open palm on a closed fist and takes in a loud breath through clenched teeth. “All right, this is like taking a Band-Aid off an old scabby wound. The best way is to do it quickly. Your dad is dating Ms. Clarke.”

“Ms. Clarke? Who is—” But then the lightbulb illuminates with a blinding flash, and I suddenly remember who Ms. Clarke is. She’s a second-year biology teacher. At my school. She’s a teacher.

“You’ve got to be wrong. There’s no way Dad would date a teacher from my school and not tell me.” This eases my mind for a second; I hope I’m right, but of course, deep down, I know that this is like those morons on the Titanic who kept saying the whole thing was a publicity stunt to sell ice cubes.

“Yeah, but what if he doesn’t know she’s a teacher at your school?” Becca is whispering now. “What if he met her somewhere else, and doesn’t know about her job?”

“I guess.” Great. The best day of my life (the Anders call) is also the worst day of my life (the Dad-dating-a-teacher thing). Why is it that life seems to put those two things together so often? What I say is, “Let’s just go get it over with.”

“That makes sense, I guess.” Becca leads the way, opening the door with a sense of impending doom. We trudge down the hallway into the living room, and there they are, my dad and a teacher, sitting together having a friendly drink. It’s enough to make a girl run away from home.

“Oh, hi, honey.” He jumps up, totally nervous, and spills a little of his white wine on the carpet before he sets the goblet down.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.