How to Date a Nerd

Chapter 14 - How to Confess to a Drunk Girl

What am I supossed to do when the best part of me was all of you?

What am I supposed to say when I'm all choked up that you're okay?

Chapter 14 – How to Confess to a Drunk Girl

 

I discovered why grounding became the most popular form of punishment in America. You’d literally kill yourself out of boredom. It gave me more time to think and go emo on everything that had happened. Seriously, I’d been thinking more about pain and suffering now. And it wasn’t just because my arm was jagged up.

And there was this problem about my new album. Seemed like my producers wanted a new kind of sound. Something I hadn’t done before. New kind of sound my butt. I’d rather be killed than caught dancing. Maybe something upbeat. Something more fun. And with substance. Erase pop. And ballads. Rock, maybe. Might as well put the emo in me to good use. Sighing, I threw the blank piece of paper on the floor. Nothing worth writing in my head. And I couldn’t use my guitar or my piano without my left arm anyway.

It’d been three days since Sarah and I talked. Not sure why, but Freddy still hadn’t showered the house with bullets. So that must mean Sarah didn’t say anything about the school incident.

In the living room, Nathan kept skimming the pages of the local paper. He might not be vocal about it but he was freaking out. Not to mention super scared about the possibility that Lynch had spotted us and seen our faces. So far, there wasn’t any news about the school incident. The Ferguson brothers might not be that smart, but they were sly enough to slink away from troubles like these.

“We going to jail yet?” I sneered.

Nathan tossed the paper away. “Unluckily, no. Too bad. I heard the chilli in there is to die for. Plus the gruelling manual labor would be good for my abs,” he muttered through a mouthful of jellybeans. “Freddy came looking for you, by the way.”

My feet got stuck on the floor. Gulping, I sat on the couch. Ugh, crud.

“What did he want?” I asked keeping my cool. Relax, I told myself.

My brother just shrugged and tossed a red jelly bean into his mouth. “I reckon he wants to hang you upside-down from that tree in their front yard and gut you down with a rusty butchering knife. But I might be wrong. He mentioned something about a plan. Not sure. Something about dinner with you and Dad. Said to tell Dad to bring some wine. Maybe he’d smash the bottle on your head when it’s empty.”

Ah, that plan. So Freddy didn’t come to kill me. Or maybe he was saving that for later.

* * *

“Sit down,” Emma said smiling at me and Arthur.

I smiled back and thanked her. No idea if she knew about the plan but she seemed nice enough. If she had an idea that I’d been teaming up with her husband in some sort of scheme to shock-treat her daughter’s amnesia, she would’ve kicked us out of the house three seconds ago. Dad handed her the bottles of wine we brought in for the dinner. I just hoped everything went well this time around. With the adults watching, I couldn’t really do much. So I’d better be more careful. There wasn’t any room for more mistakes. My three months was ticking and fast.

Sarah came down from her room after being called twice. Like the first time we’d come for dinner two years ago, she didn’t seem all excited about it. She just eyed at us blankly like she wanted to be anywhere else but there.

Seriously, my encounters with her two years back had been a big painful whack on my ego. I mean, I’m Leon Walden. Girls scream and chase me within a mile radius of detection and she just screamed at me with a lame “I don’t want your stupid tickets!” At first, I was just really taking aim at making her life miserable. But after all, Sarah was the only girl who treated me like a normal person. Like I was somehow me and not just some imaginary guy people see in TV or posters.