Free Geek High by Piper Banks Page B

continued, in the same too-loud voice.
    And suddenly, my eyes widening with horror, I realized what she was doing. Felicity was talking so loudly, everyone in the room could hear what she was saying. In fact, conversations about whether MIT or Stanford had the better engineering program, or the best extracurricular activities to have on your college applications, were coming to a rapid halt as our classmates looked up, their expressions curious.
    â€œUnless, of course, he was telling you that he’s taking out a restraining order to keep you from staring at him during class,” Felicity continued.
    She’d timed it perfectly—everyone heard her. They looked from Felicity’s smug face to my white-with-shock one, and then the whispering began.
    â€œWhat is she talking about? Who is Miranda staring at?” Padma Paswan asked, gaping at me across the room. I like Padma, but she can be such a gossip.
    â€œI’m not sure. But Felicity said something about a restraining order,” Tabitha said gravely, regarding me with her big, solemn eyes.
    â€œReally? Someone got a restraining order? Against Miranda?” Padma asked eagerly. She was sitting on the edge of her chair.
    It was like a car accident. No, worse than that. It was like a multiple pileup on the highway. It was a big rig jackknifing in the middle of rush-hour traffic and turning the roadway into real-life bumper cars.
    Charlie made a noise that sounded like a snarl. “Felicity, were you raised by a wire-monkey mother?” she asked.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” Felicity asked, narrowing her eyes.
    â€œYou know, the wire-monkey baby experiment. It was a research project where they took away a baby monkey’s mother and gave it a fake mother made out of wire instead. All of the monkey babies who were raised by wire-monkey mothers became vicious and eventually went crazy. Which sort of reminds me of you,” Charlie finished.
    Padma tittered appreciatively at this. I stole a look at Emmett. He alone was ignoring the conversation.
    â€œOh, ha, ha. You’re so funny,” Felicity snarled.
    â€œI think so,” Charlie said serenely.
    â€œThey were rhesus monkeys,” Christopher chimed in unexpectedly in his robotic voice. “Harry Harlow of the University of Wisconsin–Madison conducted the experiments in 1930. He separated the infant monkeys from their mothers to study the effect of deprivation on emotional development—”
    Charlie glanced at me. She must have read the misery in my expression.
    â€œThank you, Christopher, you’re exactly right,” Charlie said, hastily cutting him off.
    Finn slipped in just before Mrs. Gordon walked into class, brandishing her notes.
    â€œThank you for joining us, Mr. Eggers,” Mrs. Gordon said to him.
    â€œMy pleasure, Mrs. G,” Finn said, grinning at her. “You know there’s nowhere I’d rather be than right here in mod lit.”
    Mrs. Gordon loves Finn, so she just laughed.
    â€œWhat did I miss?” Finn whispered to me as he slid into his seat.
    I just shook my head numbly.
    â€œGood morning. I’m assuming everyone had time to read the first three chapters of The Stranger , and came to class prepared to discuss them,” Mrs. Gordon said.
    I considered making a run for it. I could plead cramps or a sinus infection, and spend the rest of the morning in the nurse’s office curled up on a cot. And while there, I could figure out a way to escape from my life. Maybe I could run away to Alaska and get a job on a fishing boat. Because clearly things weren’t going so well here…in fact, it was hard to imagine they could get much worse.
    But Charlie—who I could sometimes swear has the ability to read my mind—whispered, “Stay where you are. If you run away, you’re just letting her win.”
    And so I stayed. Even though at that moment, I didn’t really care if Felicity won or