Shaking his head in self-disgust, he went to his desk and sat down at the computer, being careful to duck beneath the slanted wooden beams that sloped overhead. He’d cracked his skull even more lately as he had shot up a foot in the last couple of years.
The room was small and cramped. As a result, Brendan had to keep the place meticulously tidy. His sister’s room was liberally carpeted with dirty clothes and half-eaten food. Brendan had always been a neat freak. His cleaning habits gave Delia further fuel for her nerd insults, but Brendan didn’t care.
The slanted roof was plastered with movie posters, mostly sci-fi films. A small bookshelf held comic books and paperbacks. His bed was small and narrow, tucked under the eaves next to a tiny bedside table. On the table sat a combination iPod dock and clock radio. He reached over and switched on the iPod; after a few clicks, music filled the small room.
Brendan had a wide range of musical interests. At school, everyone fell into categories: punk, goth, metalheads, emo kids, euro house music fans. Everyone seemed to feel the need to lock themselves into a certain genre. For comfort, he supposed. Belonging to a group made things easier in high school.
Brendan found it funny that a school like the Robertson Davies Academy, even though it was a melting pot of nerds and misfits gathered from the four corners of the city, was still full of cliques and clans. Some were thought to be nerds by other nerds. 35 You’d think a nerd was safe to be a nerd at nerd school but no such luck. Brendan had so far managed to remain outside any group. He had banded together with Harold, Dmitri, and Kim. Together they formed their own group. He and his friends were like the ubernerds, ultranerds, and nerd untouchables.
Which made it even weirder that Kim had latched onto them. He couldn’t figure it out. Maybe she was a nerd on the inside. Kim always seemed a little exasperated with him and his friends, but she hadn’t dumped them so far. The year is young, he reminded himself.
HE JUMPED when his father knocked on the ladder—he didn’t have a door for his room. Sitting up, he managed not to knock his head again. His father’s head and shoulders popped up through the hole in the floor.
“You ready to go?”
“Go? Go where?”
“The concert tonight. Remember? I got the free tickets.”
Brendan had forgotten. He groaned inwardly at the thought of going to see Deirdre D’Anaan at Convocation Hall. Going to see a show was the last thing he felt like doing. He’d rather just lie down and take it easy tonight after all he’d been through today. He opened his mouth to try to beg off but stopped. The picture on the poster loomed in his mind. He recalled how he had felt when he’d seen it in the bus shelter by the pizza shop: like destiny was calling.
“Let me change out of my school stuff.”
“Cool. Ten minutes in the lobby, Mr. Clair.”
34 Brendan is exaggerating, of course, but there is one documented instance of a man growing a twin out of his forehead in Eastern Turkey. That is to say, the man was in Eastern Turkey, not his forehead. Well, to be accurate, both the man and his forehead were in Eastern Turkey. And the twin as well.
35 Nerd is a term that first appears in the Dr. Seuss opus If I Ran the Zoo. It has come to refer to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests that are age inappropriate rather than engaging in more social or popular activities. To be judged a nerd by other nerds is a sad situation to find oneself in. There have been some pretty wonderful nerds throughout history: Socrates, Copernicus, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci. I don’t care if Galileo could carve on his snowboard: he observed that the Earth revolved around the sun, which is way cooler, if you ask me.
THE CONCERT
They walked through the chill of the autumn evening. Brendan was basking in the afterglow of his streetmeat,
The room was small and cramped. As a result, Brendan had to keep the place meticulously tidy. His sister’s room was liberally carpeted with dirty clothes and half-eaten food. Brendan had always been a neat freak. His cleaning habits gave Delia further fuel for her nerd insults, but Brendan didn’t care.
The slanted roof was plastered with movie posters, mostly sci-fi films. A small bookshelf held comic books and paperbacks. His bed was small and narrow, tucked under the eaves next to a tiny bedside table. On the table sat a combination iPod dock and clock radio. He reached over and switched on the iPod; after a few clicks, music filled the small room.
Brendan had a wide range of musical interests. At school, everyone fell into categories: punk, goth, metalheads, emo kids, euro house music fans. Everyone seemed to feel the need to lock themselves into a certain genre. For comfort, he supposed. Belonging to a group made things easier in high school.
Brendan found it funny that a school like the Robertson Davies Academy, even though it was a melting pot of nerds and misfits gathered from the four corners of the city, was still full of cliques and clans. Some were thought to be nerds by other nerds. 35 You’d think a nerd was safe to be a nerd at nerd school but no such luck. Brendan had so far managed to remain outside any group. He had banded together with Harold, Dmitri, and Kim. Together they formed their own group. He and his friends were like the ubernerds, ultranerds, and nerd untouchables.
Which made it even weirder that Kim had latched onto them. He couldn’t figure it out. Maybe she was a nerd on the inside. Kim always seemed a little exasperated with him and his friends, but she hadn’t dumped them so far. The year is young, he reminded himself.
HE JUMPED when his father knocked on the ladder—he didn’t have a door for his room. Sitting up, he managed not to knock his head again. His father’s head and shoulders popped up through the hole in the floor.
“You ready to go?”
“Go? Go where?”
“The concert tonight. Remember? I got the free tickets.”
Brendan had forgotten. He groaned inwardly at the thought of going to see Deirdre D’Anaan at Convocation Hall. Going to see a show was the last thing he felt like doing. He’d rather just lie down and take it easy tonight after all he’d been through today. He opened his mouth to try to beg off but stopped. The picture on the poster loomed in his mind. He recalled how he had felt when he’d seen it in the bus shelter by the pizza shop: like destiny was calling.
“Let me change out of my school stuff.”
“Cool. Ten minutes in the lobby, Mr. Clair.”
34 Brendan is exaggerating, of course, but there is one documented instance of a man growing a twin out of his forehead in Eastern Turkey. That is to say, the man was in Eastern Turkey, not his forehead. Well, to be accurate, both the man and his forehead were in Eastern Turkey. And the twin as well.
35 Nerd is a term that first appears in the Dr. Seuss opus If I Ran the Zoo. It has come to refer to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests that are age inappropriate rather than engaging in more social or popular activities. To be judged a nerd by other nerds is a sad situation to find oneself in. There have been some pretty wonderful nerds throughout history: Socrates, Copernicus, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci. I don’t care if Galileo could carve on his snowboard: he observed that the Earth revolved around the sun, which is way cooler, if you ask me.
THE CONCERT
They walked through the chill of the autumn evening. Brendan was basking in the afterglow of his streetmeat,
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