The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love by Sarvenaz Tash

Author:Sarvenaz Tash [Tash, Sarvenaz]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

A

Brief

History of

Geekdom

“I LIED,” AMELIA SAYS AS she glances at her phone. “My next panel doesn’t start for another forty-five minutes, actually.” She looks up at me and smiles.

“Ah, cool,” I say, meaning it. We’re now roaming the Block behind Roxana and Devin. This is kind of the random section of NYCC, where a lot of vendors are hawking their wares and there are lots of neat toys and objects to look at. The booth we’re just walking by, for example, has something called 8-bit pixel art, where all the objects—from portraits to crossed swords—look like they come straight from a very early video game. I point out a particularly cool-looking Batmobile to Amelia.

“Awesome,” she says, and then turns to me. “Okay, so Burton Batman or Nolan Batman?” She has a mischievous gleam in her eye that I don’t understand because this is sort of a no-brainer.

“Um, Nolan?” I say, which is, of course, the obvious choice.

“See, I prefer Burton!” she exclaims, clearly delighted that I went with the other option so that she can explain her argument. Which, naturally, I make her do. “I just think there’s a certain playfulness with Burton that mirrors the original intention of the series. The dark stuff is there, but more subversive. I really like that.”

“Yeah, but Nolan also ushered in this era of the true, dark superhero movie,” I counter. “There’s so much depth to it.”

“But a lot of the humor is gone,” she argues. “And Michael Keaton? Such a bold, unusual choice for Batman. But it so works.”

“Oh . . . I see what’s going on here,” I say slowly. “You’re a hipster nerd.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” she responds, but I can see she’s genuinely amused. “And what kind of nerd are you, then?”

“Oh, I’m definitely an all-arounder,” I immediately answer, because I have given this a lot of thought. “I’m kinda into it all. Comic books, regular books, movies, video games, television. Also, you know, like, actual school.”

“Show-off.” She’s raising her eyebrows at me. “Isn’t it funny, though? How it’s become kinda cool to self-identify as a nerd? I doubt our parents had that luxury.”

“They definitely didn’t,” I say before going on to explain about my OG dad. “He’s got some stories that are straight out of, like, an episode of Saved by the Bell. I’m pretty sure there was a Kick Me sign involved.”

Amelia laughs. “No way.”

I nod. “The way he tells it, it’s a miracle he ever met and married a woman. A miracle that I’m even here. But get this, you want to know how he got the nerve to speak to my mom?”

“How?”

“They were in college by then, mind you, so I think things were a little better. But he’s in the park in the middle of campus, and he sees this pretty girl carrying this enormous book about . . . wait for it . . . Star Wars. And he realizes if he can’t get up the nerve to talk to her, then he is just a completely hopeless cause.

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