Summer of the Geek Read Online Free PDF Page A

that I’d finished my short story, and even thought up a title for it— How to Get Noticed . But now I was already dreading having to go back to the Fishers’ tomorrow. Amelia’s unrelenting hostility was getting to me.
    “She refused to speak to me. She just practiced the piano the entire time I was there,” I said.
    “She sounds intense,” Charlie remarked. Charlie was short and wiry, and had recently dyed her cropped hair a deep eggplant purple. She was wearing a short-sleeved blue-and-white-striped shirt emblazoned with BOWL-A-RAMA across the front. Charlie had managed to make the uniform look chic by wearing it over a white-ribbed tank top and tying the bowling shirt at the waist.
    “She is,” I agreed. “In fact, from what I saw today, I’d say she’s obsessed.”
    “Hmm,” Charlie said. “I suppose obsession isn’t always a bad thing. I’ve done some of my best work when I’ve been in the middle of an intense all-nighter.”
    Charlie was an amazing artist. Lately, she’d been painting huge canvases that took up the whole wall of her garage (which her parents had converted into a studio for her). But Charlie was also manic-depressive, which meant that she went through phases where she didn’t sleep much and tended to stay up all night, painting frenziedly, then go to bed for days at a time. Sure, she got amazing results, but it had never seemed very healthy to me.
    “You’re not ten,” I said. “She’s pretty young to be so single-minded.”
    “That’s true,” Charlie said, taking a sip of her soda.
    “Anyway, I think I might quit. Is the bowling alley still hiring?” I said.
    “Quit?” Charlie stared at me. “You can’t quit. You have to help this girl. Teach her how to live a more balanced life. If she doesn’t have something in it other than her music, she’ll burn out before she’s fifteen.”
    “How am I supposed to teach her anything? Didn’t you hear the part about how she won’t speak to me?” I asked.
    “You’ll just have to try harder. Find a way to break through to her,” Charlie said.
    “How exactly am I supposed to save her when Amelia won’t even acknowledge my presence?”
    “I don’t know,” Charlie admitted. “We’ll have to think of something. Do you know anything about classical music?”
    “No,” I said. “Nothing.”
    “That’s too bad. Maybe you could learn enough to be able to talk about it with her. That might get her to open up.”
    “I don’t think I could possibly learn enough about the piano by tomorrow to convince her that I’m interested in it. I can’t even play ‘Chopsticks,’ ” I said gloomily.
    “You have to think of something. This is a matter of life and death.”
    “No, it’s not.”
    “Okay, it’s not. But it is a matter of happiness and personal fulfillment versus years of loneliness and isolation,” Charlie said.
    “Hello, my little chickadees,” Finn said, appearing at our table and sitting at one of the tall stools. “How’s my posse doing on this fine afternoon?”
    Finn Birnbaum was very tall and very pale, and had shaggy brown hair, mischievous blue eyes, and a scar over his mouth, now faded to a pale silver, that was left over from the surgery he had as a baby to correct a cleft lip.
    “Miranda and I have been working all day,” Charlie said pointedly. “What about you? Have you done anything remotely productive?”
    Finn was, as usual, unperturbed by Charlie’s needling. He smiled sweetly. “I was very productive. I slept until noon, thus making sure my growing body was properly rested. Then I ate three bowls of Lucky Charms and watched cartoons to stimulate my mind. Then I hacked into the Geek High server, just as a limbering exercise to make sure my mad computer skills don’t atrophy. And then I took a nap, woke up, and headed over here.”
    “How is sleeping all day, watching cartoons, and eating cereal productive?” Charlie demanded.
    “You’re leaving out the part about my hacking into