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  How Genius Girl Saved My Ass

  By Garry McNulty

  Copyright 2011 by Garry McNulty

  Cover Copyright 2011 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Garry McNulty and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Eric and Derik: Two Clones Searching for Love

  Mom and Dad Aren’t Getting Along (Now That Mom’s a Zombie)

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  How Genius Girl Saved My Ass

  By Garry McNulty

  It all starts with the chemistry exam that I completely blew. As we’re coming out of the classroom, I’m whining about how tough the questions were, and Toby, my roommate, isn’t saying anything. So I know he did fine. Of course, he stayed in the dorm and studied the night before, while I went out and partied. Isn’t college supposed to be fun? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.

  Anyway, I tell Toby I’ll catch up with him later because I’m on my way to see my super-hot girlfriend, Lana. After failing my exam, I’m looking forward to getting plenty of sympathy from Lana. And by sympathy, I mean plenty of smooch-smooch, boink-boink.

  She’s sitting there waiting for me on a campus bench under a big tree. I told you how hot she looks, right? Well, on this afternoon, she really has it going—perfect blonde hair, pouty glossed lips, glowing complexion, a skirt showing plenty of leg, and a top displaying just the right amount of cleavage.

  I sit down beside her, put my arm around her, and kiss her on the lips. Why waste time, right? Lana, however, presses the palms of her hands against my best blue polo shirt and pushes me back.

  As I’m wondering if her hands are clean, she says, “Ryan, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Talk to me, baby.” Sometimes you have to listen to them for a while.

  “I want to break up,” she says.

  Okay, I wasn’t expecting that. “You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re not seriously thinking of throwing away something as special as what we have.”

  “Let’s face it, Ryan, all we’ve had going is sex.”

  Now that really hurt. I had lavished six weeks of pure devotion on this woman. However, if she wanted to take the narrow view, so be it. “I think I can live with that,” I said.

  Lana’s sitting there grimacing. “To be honest, Ryan, the sex hasn’t been all that great.”

  To a guy, this is the verbal equivalent of a hard kick in the testicles. The pain is just as excruciating. “It hasn’t?” is all I can manage to blurt out.

  She just sits there shaking her head no. Finally, she says, “Besides, I need more time to focus on my modeling career.”

  “What modeling career?”

  At this, she gets all nervous and jumps up. She puts her hand over my mouth so I can’t say any more, and she kisses me on the cheek. “Bye, Ryan. Poor dear.”

  Then she gives me this look of pity and starts walking away. I should have summoned up a little pride and said something like: Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll survive just fine, bitch!

  Instead, I shout, “Lana, I love you! You hear me? I love you!”

  It gets worse. I hear a voice in the bushes shout, “And cut! That’s perfect!”

  I look over and see this guy in a V-neck sweater coming out of the bushes, followed by a cameraman and a sound man. I mean what the hell?

  Meanwhile, Lana comes flouncing back, all smiles, and says to the guy with the V-neck sweater, “Was it really perfect, Flip?”

  He puts his arm around her and says, “Lana, honey, you were fantastic!”

  I’m still sitting on the bench, hoping this is some weird dream. Maybe a big piece of space debris fell from the sky and hit me on the head, and I’m in some kind of coma.

  Lana ushers the bushes-guy over to me. “Ryan, this is Flip Flanders, the emcee of You Got Dumped! You know—the reality show? We’re going to be on national television! Isn’t it wonderful?” She literally jumps for joy when she says this.

  Flip Flanders grabs my hand and starts shaking it. “Nice job, Ryan.”

  Finally, a ray of hope this nightmare is ending. “You mean this was all pretend? We’re not breaking up?”

  “Oh, no, honey,” she says, “we’re finished. We have to protect the integrity of the show.”

  “Absolutely,” Flip says. Then he waves the camera and sound guys in closer. “So tell America, Ryan, how do you feel about the breakup?”

  I sit there speechless, looking confused and depressed. And really stupid.

  *

  The very next night, I’m on national television, and the students in every dorm lounge on campus are laughing their asses off. At me. Why did I have to end it so pathetically, shouting, “Lana, I love you! You hear me? I love you!”? And of course, they all recorded it so they could play it over and over again.

  I might have scored some pity sex from a few of the other women on campus if Lana hadn’t spouted off about the sex not being that good—a total lie, by the way. I’m pretty sure I’m very good at sex. I’m at least average, I know that.

  Anyway, that night I’m sitting on the very same bench where Lana blindsided me the day before. It’s dark, except for a thin slice of moonlight. I’m slugging down a bottle of cheap wine poorly concealed in a brown paper bag, and I’m contemplating suicide by alcohol poisoning. Along comes Tracy Chyvers, better known on campus as Genius Girl.

  She sits down beside me. “Ryan, I can help you.”

  “That’s very kind, Tracy,” I say, “but I don’t fool around with unattractive women. A guy has to have standards.”

  It’s not like I was insulting her. She’s a genius, for crying out loud. She has to know she’s one hideous 22-year-old. Yet, for some reason, she acts all offended.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, asshole! Listen to me. How would you like to travel two days back in time?”

  “And get humiliated on national TV all over again? No thank you.”

  “Could you be any more freaking stupid?” she shouts in my ear.

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. I didn’t want to say, Yes, I could be more stupid. But saying, No, I couldn’t be more stupid, didn’t sound right either. I set down my wine bottle and gave her a blank stare.

  “You’d have a chance for a do-over, dickwad! You could just not show up to meet her, or show up and dump her ass on national television.”

  Okay, I may have been a little slow catching on. In my defense, that was some real rot-gut wine I was drinking, and I may have incurred some temporary brain cell damage.

  *

  So Tracy drives me out to this pitch-dark, unpaved road. I hear brush and tree branches rubbing up against the sides of her minivan. It’s all pretty creepy. I know she’s some kind of astrophysics genius, but all that knowledge in your head at one time can’t be good. And it’s a known fact ugly women resent guys like me who date hot-looking women.

  I’m thinking, Is she going to murder me with a
hatchet and cut me up in small pieces and marinate me? Then I’m thinking: Maybe she’s going to chain me to a wall and make me her love slave. And later, I could break free and escape and write a book called, I Was an Ugly Girl’s Sex Slave and make a million dollars. And I’m thinking that wouldn’t be so bad.

  At that point in my thoughts, we’re a mile or so in from the main road and her headlights are shining on the door to an abandoned mine. A big sign reads: Keep Out! No Trespassing! Tracy says she bought the mine by selling some of her invention patents. Genius Girl.

  She unlocks the door and turns on all this multicolored, futuristic, laser-type lighting. There’s a sleek, one-seat, race car with no tires sitting on a pair of rails that runs through a tunnel circling around the place. Genius Girl had obviously done some serious renovating. She tells me to sit in the vehicle.

  I climb into the sleek, little race car, Tracy has me buckle the seat belt, and she places a motorcycle helmet on my head. I should point out that none of this is making me feel particularly safe.

  Before I can reach a conclusion on that, I’m flying around the track at a jillion miles an hour.

  Tracy had babbled on about the colored lights having something to do with a gravitational force that could bend space or some damn thing. All I know is, I threw up twice in my helmet and almost choked to death on my own vomit.

  The race car, time capsule, or whatever the hell it is, comes to a halt at last, and I stumble toward the door, dizzy as all get-out. Once outside, I barf one last time. Time Travel Tip: Avoid consuming large quantities of cheap wine before traveling.

  Genius Girl had given me a cell phone on the ride to the mine. I pull it from my pocket and press her pre-set number so she can give me a ride home. Except, now, it’s two days earlier, and she’s shouting at me on the phone, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I explain and Tracy comes to get me. We compare notes on when I left and when I got back, and it was exactly two days earlier. She’s all pleased with herself. The fact that I threw up twice in my helmet and almost choked to death on my own vomit didn’t seem to concern her at all.

  *

  After Genius Girl drops me off at my dorm, I make my way down the hall to my room. It’s so late even the party animals are asleep. When I tiptoe into my room in the dark, Toby wakes and sits up in his bed.

  “Who’s there?” he says.

  “It’s me, Ryan.”

  “What are you doin’ all dressed, man? I thought you were asleep.” He looks over at my bed and gets this weird look on his face.

  So I look over and see there’s someone in my bed. I flip on the light, and I see it’s me. That is, it’s present-time me. Genius Girl never mentioned this possibility.

  Toby’s clearly not taking it well. “Is this some kind of out-of-body experience? ’Cause if it is, it’s freakin’ me out. Get your spirit ass over there and back in your body.”

  At this point, my present-time self is stirring. He rolls over, and resting on one elbow, rubs his eyes. And sees me. And keeps staring at me. Hey, it’s still kind of a shock for me. I can only imagine what it’s like to come out of a sound sleep and see yourself standing there looking back at you.

  I tell them Tracy Chyvers helped me travel two days back in time to undo something terrible. They totally believe me because everybody on campus knows Genius Girl can do damn near anything when it comes to science and astrophysics.

  Then I tell my present-time self how Lana dumped us on national TV, and he’s like, “Oh, my God!” And how everybody on campus was laughing at us, especially her remark about the sex not being very good, and he’s like, “That bitch!” I didn’t tell him how I made a complete ass out of both of us by shouting “I love you!” twice.

  Instead, I tell my present-time self, “Don’t worry, I’m going to undo all this, but right now I need some sleep. Move over.”

  “Whoa!” he goes. “You’re not sleeping with me!”

  Toby’s smiling now. He’s got a story he can tell his grandchildren, and it’s getting better by the second.

  I’m growing a little annoyed with myself—my present-time self—and I say, “You know the chemistry exam you’re going to be taking this afternoon? Well, you flunk it, ass-wipe, because you partied instead of studying. I can pass that exam for you and screw up Lana’s plan to humiliate you.”

  So he lets me sleep with him, but he makes me brush my teeth first because I smell like puke. Then he complains I’m using his toothbrush. I mean, Jesus Christ!

  *

  In the morning, Toby and the other Ryan go off to their classes and I study for the chemistry exam. That afternoon, I go in and take the exam and ace it. Okay, maybe not ace it exactly, but I pass the damn thing, all right?

  Toby, who passes the exam again, shakes my hand after class and wishes me luck on the whole Lana thing, and I go off to see her.

  There she is, sitting on the bench waiting. This time I’m not so much thinking how hot she looks as I am calling her a cheap, conniving bitch and worse under my breath.

  I sit beside her and just give her a little peck on the cheek.

  She starts right in. “Ryan, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Before you say anything,” I tell her loudly, “I have to get this off my chest.”

  Now she’s all confused. “Wait! What?”

  “I’m breaking up with you,” I say even louder.

  “What do you mean? I…”

  But I don’t give her a chance to finish. “You’re shallow and selfish, Lana. And not very good in bed.”

  Some of the students passing by have stopped to listen. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Toby peeking out from behind a tree. Hunched next to him, I realize, is my present-time self, wearing this ridiculous mustache and sombrero as a disguise. What a dick.

  Lana, meanwhile, is reeling from my insults. “Hold it, mister! I’m plenty good in bed!”

  “I’m afraid not, Lana. You just lie there like a sack of dog food. I have to do all the work.”

  “You bastard!”

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, so I won’t say anything about your breath and bad hygiene.”

  I can see she’s steaming up pretty good, so I get up off the bench, ready to make a strategic retreat.

  She jumps up as well—and shouting, “You son of a bitch!”—takes a swing at me.

  I duck deftly, and when she does a 360 with her haymaker, I catch her in my arms. “Let’s just say goodbye,” I utter dramatically and let her drop to the ground.

  “And cut!” shouts Flip Flanders, coming out from the bushes. “That’s perfect!”

  As the cameraman and sound man appear behind him, I flash this surprised look that I practiced all morning in the mirror. “Whoa! Who are these people?” I ask, convincingly.

  Lana, back on her feet, brushes herself off and shoots a pair of dagger eyes at me. “You jerk! I was going to be on national television.”

  “You still are, Lana!” says Flip Flanders.

  “But I was supposed to break up with him,” she whines.

  I’m killing myself to keep a straight face.

  “This will be even better,” says old Flip. “You taking a swing at him was a classic.”

  I’m hoping the cameraman is zooming in on her angry, scrunched-up face.

  “And, Ryan,” says Flip, “the whole ‘lying in bed like a sack of dog food,’ unbelievable. I can’t wait till we get it on the air.”

  “Well, I certainly wasn’t looking to embarrass anyone. You should have told me you brought a video crew with you, Lana.”

  “I hate you!” she screams.

  And I allow myself a small grin.

  *

  Lana left school the next day to launch her modeling career. Maybe she learned a valuable lesson about treating people with respect. Then again, maybe not. Who gives a shit, really?

  When the two days were up, present-time Ryan and myself merged effortlessly into one. And I threw away that r
idiculous mustache and sombrero.

  Tracy Chyvers used me as her big success story when she began marketing her time-travel invention to some giant corporations. So I’ve become semi-famous and have already parlayed that into at least a dozen good dates. Hey, I’m practically an astronaut, for crying out loud.

  When I asked Genius Girl why she chose me to be the first person to travel through time, she replied, “Because you had nothing going for you. If you got lost in time or just crashed and died, the world would have gotten along without you just fine.”