Celeste clasped her hands together. "I have to start a history paper today, so we need to get home."
"We're going." The engine rolled over noisily. God, did anyone take this car in for regular maintenance?
"I have yet to determine which topic I will be doing, so we need to get home right now."
"Jesus, Celeste, we're going!"
Celeste scowled and retrieved Julie's iPod from her bag. She put the earphones in and turned away.
Julie smiled. Well, that was damned normal.
Chapter 12
Matthew Watkins My visit to the O.K. Corral was... well...
Finn is God I "Facebook like" you, but I'm not IN "Facebook like" with you.
Julie Seagle A typical espresso only has 1/3 the caffeine of a regular-size cup of coffee, so all you snobs can bite me. I can out-caffeine you any day. Of course, I can't pretend to be a giant using a non-giant's cup, but I'll deal.
Julie checked the clock in Matt's room. She still had half an hour to kill before Seth picked her up, and she'd been hanging out in Matt's room, hoping to distract herself before her date. So far he hadn't been very chatty, but at least he didn't seem to mind that she was in here pestering him. Celeste was reading The Great Gatsby aloud to Flat Finn, Erin was having dinner with colleagues, and Roger had already left for his shrimp study trip. The family was used to his frequent traveling by now, and nobody had made a fuss about his departure. Julie, however, had slipped a, "Have a good trip!" card into his briefcase.
Just as he'd promised, Seth had called a few days after they'd met to get directions to the house. He was taking her to a restaurant downtown and then to a late showing at the Omni Theater, located in the Museum of Science.
She flopped back down on Matt's bed and tried to pay attention to her copy of Voltaire's Candide. It was hard to focus, knowing that Seth would be here soon. Julie had never gone out with someone on a formal date before. Not that they were actually going anywhere formal, obviously, but it felt a bit old-fashioned to have a scheduled day and time to be picked up by a boy. High school had been much more about just hanging out together. Everything then had felt so casual and relatively meaningless - based mostly on convenience. This date felt different. Seth had gone out of his way to ask her out, and Julie liked that.
She watched Matt squint seriously at his computer as though at any moment he was about to make a breakthrough discovery that would earn him the Nobel Prize for some incomprehensible scientific digital-magnetic-opti-something or other. Well, if he won, she would valiantly take him clothes-shopping so that he could attend the awards ceremony in something besides the awful shirt that he had on.
"Matt?"
"Yeah?" he said distractedly.
"Let's discuss your choice of attire for the evening."
Matt hit the touchpad a few times. "Really? What aspects would you like to discuss?"
"Let's discuss how lame it is."
"That doesn't sound like the opening of a discussion. It sounds like you've already made up your mind about how you feel, so I'm not sure what's left to discuss."
Julie rolled onto her side. "I'd like to hear the thought process you went through when selecting that shirt. Let's face it, there are thousands of clothing options out there for you to choose from, and yet, despite many stylish shirts that could flatter you, you selected that one. So I'd like to hear what led to the purchase. Ready? Go."
Matt backed his swivel chair from the desk and turned toward her, resting his palms on his knees. "The shirt says Geek. What's to talk about?"
Julie looked at the print on the shirt again and groaned. "The shirt is a nice shade of blue. I'll give you that. Otherwise I don't think it conveys much that's positive about you.""It positively conveys that I'm a geek.""Ha ha. Very funny.""You may find my label unappealing, but it could be worse. At least I'm not a font nerd."
"A what?"
Matt smiled. "You know. People who love fonts. There are people who go to a movie and get agitated because, while the movie is supposed to be set in 1962, the restaurant awning shown in the background of some scene is printed in Arras Bold, which wasn't invented until 1991, so clearly the producers of this movie are insane and should be beheaded."
Julie shook her head. "You're totally lying. Nobody cares about that crap."
"I'm not lying. Look." He picked up his laptop and sat down next to Julie on the bed. "A simple search is all the proof you'll need." Within seconds he'd pulled up thousands of search results verifying the existence of these font nerds. "There's even a shirt for them."
"What does it say? I Brake for Fonts?""No. It just says Helvetica, which is a very well-known and well-loved font, but the T-shirt's font is in Comic Sans, which font nerds absolutely detest."Julie clapped her hand to her forehead. "Wait, there are loved and unloved fonts?""For some people, yes. And check this out. There's a font conference called TypeCon." He opened a new web page. "Unfortunately the schedule for the upcoming conference isn't up yet, but past lectures include, 'Open Stroke Surgery: A Dissection of Letterform Bodyparts into Modular Elements for a Flexible Prototyping Base.' Julie, you don't want to miss this. I think you better register early so that you can get into all of the best lectures."She feigned looking at the web page with grave interest. "Obviously. It's been a lifelong dream of mine to attend a font conference, and I would never forgive myself if I didn't make it this year. Thank God you reminded me in time." Julie put a hand on his arm and looked at him seriously. "Matthew, confess now. Are you a closeted font nerd? Do you go to these conferences? I promise I won't respect you any less if you are. OK, fine, secretly I will, but it's better to get this off your chest and be who you are, than to live in deception. Hiding the truth will only cripple your emotional development."