Bluetooth Blues

Bluetooth Blues
by
Max Griffin 🏳️‍🌈 and Carol St.Ann

approx. 2000 words

The Prompt: "It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be uneducated." ~Alec Bourne

          Roxanne waltzed into second period geometry class, and Christopher's heart sang a silent song of yearning.

          He snatched up his textbook and hid his flaming face in marching triangles and parading parallelograms. The delicate scent of lilac wafted across him as she flounced to her seat and beamed at her friend, Lydia. He scowled in annoyance as Lydia's mouse-like form obscured his view of the lovely Roxanne, and he squirmed in his seat, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of her cat-like beauty. Her eyes glanced his way, and his heart quickened.

          He scrunched down and ran his fingers through his frizzy, blond hair. God, she's looking at me. I bet she thinks I look like Krusty the Klown. Trent Paulson shouldered his way through the students and bent to give Roxanne a kiss on her forehead. She giggled and grasped Trent's hand, crushing Christopher's hopes like a semi driving over an empty soda can.

          "Hey, Professor. What's up?" Benny flopped into the adjacent desk and pulled his computer from his backpack.

          Christopher gritted his teeth, and his eyes threw icy daggers at his classmate. "Don't call me that. You know I hate that nickname."

          "Whatever. You're such a buzz-kill sometimes." Benny wallowed back in his seat, and a low whistle escaped his lips. "Will you look at Roxanne? I swear, if that sweater was any tighter, she'd collapse into a black hole."

          Christopher dared to look, and a terrifying tension arose in his loins. "Stop it. She's not like that."

          "Like what? You can't tell me you wouldn't like to." Benny waggled his eyebrows and sniggered at his buddy twisting in his seat. "Hey, Chris, you got a crush on her?"

          "Just shut up." His features heated, and the blood rushing to his face pulsed against an annoying pimple on his nose. "I don't have a crush on anyone!"

          "Then why do you look like a red dwarf about to go supernova? She's on the cheerleading squad, you nerd. She's more likely to notice a cockroach than guys like us."

          "I tell you, I don't have a crush on anyone. Now shut up! Mr. Burns is looking at us funny."

#

          After dinner, Christopher slouched into his basement laboratory.

          His mother's honeyed tones slithered down the stairs after him. "Chris, sweetie. Have you done your homework?"

          "I did it in ninth period study hall." He rolled his eyes as his fingers rattled at the keyboard of the computer he and Benny had built last summer. He sent his buddy an instant message.

          Carbon_Life_Form: Hey. What's happening 2night?

          He stared at his screen name, "Carbon_Life_Form." God, my nick is so lame. He sat up when the machine beeped with his friend's reply.

          Clever_nick_here: My old man's raggin on me. How about u?

          Carbon_Life_Form: The ancient one bitched about homework, but then she laid off me.

         Clever_nick_here: Is ur heart still throbbin for Roxanne?

         Carbon_Life_Form: Shut up.

         Clever_nick_here: Hey, I signed u up for an online service that helps nerds get girls. Thank me.

         Christopher scowled at his screen and set the messenger program to "busy." Screw him anyway. He opened his email, expecting to find it filled with noxious spam.

         Sure enough, there was a message from someone or something named CyRaNO. He snorted and clicked it open, thinking he might at least see some pictures of hot, buxom women. He read the words that blazed across his screen in crimson and orange.

Does the woman of your dreams ignore you? Is your tongue tied in knots when she's around? Then CyRaNO ® is designed just for you!

Cybernetic Romance and Networking Organization, or CyRaNO ®, will send sweet nothings for you to whisper to your beloved. Just turn on your cell phone, hook up your Bluetooth earpiece, and our Romantic Engineers will replace your geekoid mutterings with eloquent poetry, sure to win the hearts - and more - of the woman you long to please. Just click below to enroll. Have your credit card ready.

You must be eighteen or older to participate.
Results may vary and provider does not guarantee outcomes.

         Christopher picked at the pimple on his nose and pondered what to do. He had his dad's credit card for emergencies. If the state of his love life didn't constitute an emergency, what did?

         He clicked on the link.

#

         Christopher watched the clock all day. As his last class ended, he reached into his pocket, withdrew his phone and dialed with his thumb. He flipped his backpack over his shoulder and clipped his Bluetooth onto his ear as he hastened toward the exit.

         "You there?"

         "I am," said a nondescript male voice. "Just say the start-word when you're ready."

         "Got it. Say 'bluebird' when I'm ready. Roger."

         Lydia was waiting for him at her locker.

         Not now, Lydia.

         "Christopher, hi, um, I was, um, wondering, um..."

         "Make it fast. I'm really in a hurry!"

         She pushed her glasses up on her nose. "Uh, yeah. Um, if you're, um, not busy can we discuss the, uh, geometry project. I, um, I think I have a great idea, and I was wonder--"

         He moved around her. "I can't talk to you now. I'm in a hurry."

         She struggled to keep up through the bumper-car throng of students and teachers. "But, Chris, um, I was hoping we could partner--"

         "I need to go. Later, okay?"

         "Oh, um, yeah, okay." She lowered her head and mumbled, "It's not working."

         He stopped and let out an impatient sigh. "What's not working?"

         "What? Nothing."

         "Well, do you need help or don't you?"

         "Uh, no. I mean, yes. No. Shut-up. I don't need any help."

         "You're weird, Lydia. I gotta go. Go up to the lab, and I'll be right there, okay? I just need to take care of something." He turned and quickened his pace, hollering over his shoulder as he neared the door, "Oh hey, by the way..."

         "Yeah?" She straightened up, and her eyes lit with anticipation.

         "You've got peanut butter on your cheek. It's been there since lunchtime."

         "Nerd!"

         "Geek!"

#

         Christopher ran down the steps, his book-laden backpack flopping against him with each footfall. "Hi, Roxanne."

         "Hi, Christian."

         "It's Christopher." He tried to keep from staring at her sweater.

         "Oh, yeah, okay. Whatever." She shoved two sticks of gum into her mouth and maneuvered it like a cow chewing its cud.

         "Bluebird."

         "Where?"

         "Uh, you just missed it."

         The deep voice intoned. "Bluebird ready."

         "Roger."

         "Who?"

         "Who what?"

         "Who's Roger?"

         "Roger who?"

         "What?"

         "Uh, never mind."

         "Tell her you need to talk to her. Say it's important. Ask if you may walk her to her car."

         "Okay."

         "What?"

         "Nothing. I need to speak to you. It's important. May I walk you to your car?"

         "I'm not going to my car. I'm waiting here for Trent. But you can talk if you want to." She popped her gum and rummaged through her handbag.

         "Can you wing it for a minute? I gotta pee."

         "You gotta pee?"

         Roxanne's eyes darted up from her purse. "What kind of question is that? Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"

         "Not you. I mean, of course you don't. Uh, no."

         "Chris - whatever your name is, what do you want? And it better not have anything to do with the bathroom, or I swear--"

         "It doesn't. I'm sorry about that. Listen, Roxanne, what I wanted to say was..."

         "I'm listening."

         "Bluebird."

         "Where is it?"

         "Bluebird!  May Day!  I'm crashing here."

         "I'm back. Okay, say: Your eyes inspire me to wax poetic. And then say..."

         "Your eyes inspire me to whack poetic.
         Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd "

         "What? What's stelled mean?" She popped her gum.

         "Let me finish:
         Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;
         My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
         And perspective it is the painter's art."

         "Oh, I get it. You're reciting some kind of poetry to me. That's so cute." She ran her lipstick across her pouty mouth. "Did I get any on my teeth?"

          "It's a Shakespearean Sonnet. What a bimbo!"

         "It's a Shakespearean Sonnet. What a bim--" He cleared his throat. "Your teeth look fine."

         She checked her manicure. "Sonnets are boring. --But yours was nice."

          "Does she want to hear the rest?"

         "Do you want to hear the rest?"

         "No. I don't understand it. But I think it means you think I'm beautiful. Trent does too. He tells me all the time. What's keeping him?" She studied her watch, and then removed the chewed-up wad of Bubblicious and threw it into the grass. "Here he comes! I'd better freshen my breath." She loaded another two sticks into her mouth.

         "Hey, Sweet-lips. Hi, Professor."

         "Trent! You're late. You shouldn't keep me waiting, you know. Charlie here has been reciting Shakespeare to me. He thinks I'm beautiful."

         "Well, he's right. For sooth, let's go-eth to my house-eth while my parents are still at work-eth, and I'll show-eth you how beautiful I think you are, er, my fair lady."

         "Oh, Trent. You're so romantic."

         "You may call me Sir Trent-a-lot."

         "If the a-lot fits." She giggled and cooed as she poked him in the belly. They walked off, without so much as a sideways glance for Chris.

         "This session is now over."

         "It's over all right!" Christopher yanked the Bluetooth off his ear, resisting the urge to throw it to the ground and stomp on it until it was smashed into microscopic particles. "Complete waste of time."

#

         Annoyed and dejected, Christopher walked into the math-lab where Lydia had laid out her ideas for him to examine.

         "Hi, Chris. Why the long face? Your conversation with Miss Bubblegum didn't go well?"

         "What do you know about it?"

         "I saw you from the window."

         "You were watching me?"

         "What if I was? I was curious. No big deal."

         "Yeah, well, it doesn't matter anyway. She's with Trent. They deserve each other. I'm swearing off girls anyhow. They're nothing but trouble."

         "Oh. I guess you don't want to be my partner then."

         "Sure I do. You're almost as smart as me. We'll get a merit citation for this. Besides, you're not a girl; you're a nerd. Like me." He winked and covered his head with his arms as she picked up an eraser. "You know, I recited Shakespeare to Roxanne, and she didn't even have a clue."

         "Well, I probably wouldn't recognize Shakespeare either, except if it was from Romeo and Juliet. And that's only because we studied it this year."

         "You're probably right. To tell you the truth, I didn't even know what I was saying to her. Give me an Isosceles Triangle any day. At least I know where I stand with a polygon." He lifted a protractor from the countertop and clutched it to his chest. "I should stick with something simple like," he sang off key, "these are a few of my fav-o-rite things..."

         Lydia held her arms up and danced about the lab as she launched into song, her melodious soprano clear as a bell.

         "Vectors in three space and point-wise convergence,
         Countable spectra and complex resolvents,
         Sequences Cauchy, commutative rings,
         These are a few of my favorite things!

         "When the curve dips, when the net pings,
         When I'm feeling sad,
         I simply remember my favorite things
         And then I don't feel so bad."

         "That was awesome, Lydia!  But hey, look at the time.  We'd better get to work.  Uh, by the way, I saw the Bluetooth. CyRaNO, right?"

         Her reddened complexion revealed the answer. "Sister site."

         "So, who do you need help talking to?"

         "Christopher, you can be just as dumb as you are smart."

         "Huh?"

         "Never mind.  Let's get to work."



---
Two 2009 Quill Nominations:
         Best Short Story
         Best Comedy/Satire
Featured in Drama NL; Dec. 12,2019, Back Story by Joy