Super Con-Nerd Read online

  About the Book

  Our favourite character from Con-nerd returns in Super Con-nerd…

  Hi, I’m Connor and I’m a nerd. I thought I knew all there was to being one. But there are better nerds out there. Super nerds. Hyper nerds. Super hyper nerds. I thought all nerds were smart. But that’s not true, because suddenly I don’t feel so bright anymore. The competition to get into this high school was intense but it’s even tougher on the inside. And when I need my old friends, they all seem to have moved on. Can I do well enough to make my family proud, make new friends and still have time to for my real destinty – drawing comic books?

  Full of his laugh-out-loud humour, Oliver Phommavanh delivers this hilarious take on starting high school in his follow-on book from Con-nerd.

  Contents

  About the Book

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For Kung, who loves me for the nerd that I really am.

  My name is Connor and I’m a nerd, so my friends call me Con-nerd. Well, my old friends did, back at Green Hill Primary. I’ve only been here at Kentsworth High School for a week, so nobody has called me Con-nerd. They don’t even call me a nerd.

  That’s because this place is full of nerds. Kentsworth is a selective school where you have to pass an entrance exam, so everybody is smart. Well, they’re supposed to be. I’m sitting in English, struggling with some comprehension questions. Our teacher, Mrs Cheney, is walking around with her hands behind her back. ‘Okay, you have another twenty minutes to . . .’

  A kid with short curly hair shoots his arm up. ‘Finished!’

  ‘Thanks, Andrew,’ Mrs Cheney says. ‘You can read a book and wait for the others.’

  I sigh. That was me last year at Green Hill Primary. I was a fast finisher. This Andrew guy is the fastest finisher I’ve ever seen. He makes my old tutoring friend, Ryan, look like a turtle. And he was really smart.

  I stare at the question on my page. A few more hands go straight in the air, and they’re yelling that they’re finished too. Are we doing English or swimming laps in a race? Either way, I can barely keep my head above water.

  ‘Okay, 7G, let’s go through our answers.’ Mrs Cheney stands in front of the smartboard. ‘Where is the poem set?’

  Everybody around me raises a hand. She snaps her fingers at a kid to her left. ‘Naveed?’

  ‘It’s set in outback Australia,’ Naveed says. ‘Watarrka National Park, to be exact.’

  ‘Whoa, how did you know that?’

  ‘The poem mentions Kings Canyon.’

  Mrs Cheney nods. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s also halfway between Uluru and Alice Springs,’ Andrew adds.

  Mrs Cheney dangles her earrings from side to side. ‘Uh, didn’t know that.’

  Me neither. I feel like I’m in Kings Canyon now because I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. Somebody should search Andrew and Naveed to check if they’ve got smartphones tucked up their sleeves. Or if they’re wearing smartglasses with tiny screens behind the lenses. Nobody can be that smart. Everyone in this class seems to have grown another brain in the holidays. Or maybe mine’s shrunk from reading too many comics and drawing pictures.

  Mrs Cheney rips through each question like she’s in a hurry to catch a plane. She dresses like a flight attendant, with her navy blue blouse and skirt and long blonde hair tied back in a fashionable bun. Everyone who answers reads out a mini essay. All my answers look like a few limp snake beans on the page.

  ‘Okay, last question,’ Mrs Cheney says. She struts down the aisle. ‘Connor, what did you have?’

  ‘Huh?’ That’s strange, I didn’t press the help button on my chair. Even if there was one, I wouldn’t use it anyway. Nobody has asked Mrs Cheney for help yet and I don’t want to be the first.

  ‘Your answer,’ Mrs Cheney says. ‘How do you know that Nancy loved the outback?’

  The whole class turns their chairs towards me. I click my tongue. ‘Um, because she wrote a poem about it?’

  Mrs Cheney’s lips twitch. ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

  I shake my head. ‘Sorry, Miss. I’m not up to that question yet . . .’

  Andrew snorts with laughter. That wasn’t meant to be a joke either. My fingers fumble along the sides of my chair, feeling for an eject button.

  The bell rings and chairs screech backwards.

  ‘For tonight’s assignment, I want a reflection piece on this poem done by tomorrow,’ Mrs Cheney says. She presses her nails down on my sheet. ‘And don’t forget to finish these first, Connor.’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’ I close my English book in case other people see my baby answers.

  Andrew walks past me. ‘Try to keep up,’ he mutters.

  It’s easy for him to say, he’s already light-years ahead of everyone else. I hope the teachers bump him up to Year Eight, so I won’t see him in every class.

  I thought I knew all about being a nerd. But the only thing I’ve learnt at high school this week is that there are super nerds. Hyper nerds. Super hyper nerds. I have a lot of catching up to do.

  I catch the train and bus back home. I like sketching on the train. I tried it on the bus but the driver stops all the time and my lines just fly off the page. I really should be doing homework but I reckon all those stops and starts will give me motion sickness. Just the thought of the study I have to do at home is making me feel sick enough.

  The teachers call it homework, but it’s more like super-assignments and we’ve got to do them every day. I wonder if Mandy and my other friends have this much homework to do at their high schools.

  Mama said that selective school was going to be hard work but I didn’t realise it would start from day one.

  We had our first assembly with our Year Seven Adviser, Mrs Hend. She didn’t congratulate us on making it in to the school. She just said ‘Welcome to the big league’ and then went on about how we needed to work harder than we ever had before. Maybe that should have been a warning sign at the school gates.

  I lean against the window with my eyes closed, letting the glass vibrate my face, so I can imagine I’m in an alien in my spaceship blasting away from Kentsworth. I thought it was my home planet, but maybe I belong somewhere else.

  I arrive home and Mama’s in the living room, praying in front of Dad’s shrine. Mama and I take turns offering Dad food and incense sticks so he can send us good luck and fortune. I don’t remember much about Dad. He passed away when I was young, so Mama has had to work extra hard to support us both. That’s why she wanted me to get into a top school like Kentsworth.

  I used to only pray at his shrine during special events like Chinese New Year, but now I do it as often as Mama. I like chatting to him about stuff. Sometimes I catch my own reflection in his portrait and imagine he’s nodding back at me. Mama says that I’m going to look as handsome as he was someday. I just want to be as tall as him. He was a badminton champion back in China, when he was younger.

  ‘I prayed to your father for good luck for you today.’ She plants the incense stic
k into a little jar and gets up, brushing her nurse’s uniform. ‘How was school, Connor?’

  ‘It was all right.’

  She moves into the kitchen to wash her hands. ‘Did you get any homework?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She dries her hands on a tea towel. ‘How much?’

  ‘This much.’ I give her my backpack to weigh and it drags her arms down to the floor. Some things never change with Mama. She used to ask me about homework all the time. She was obsessed about my studies. She forced me to go to tutoring and wanted me to be a doctor. Mama used to be a tiger mother. I read about them in a magazine article. Tiger mothers push their kids to come first in everything. My tutoring friend, Ryan, has a tiger mother. I wonder if Andrew’s mum is a sabre-tooth mother or a T-Rex mother.

  ‘I have English work to do,’ I say. ‘And Mr Metwally wants us to do a few pages from our Maths textbook.’

  It feels like he wants to finish off the whole book in a month. Everyone at Kentsworth is in a rush, like they want us to graduate from high school at the end of Year Seven.

  ‘Ah, that’s good.’ Mama leans back in her chair and smiles. ‘You keep working hard, okay?’

  She’s eased up about the whole studying thing. Just a bit. I don’t have to go to tutoring any more. She lets me draw and read comics, as long as I keep getting good grades. Luckily, they don’t have report cards after the first week.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mama.’

  I pour myself a glass of iced tea.

  ‘Ryan’s been doing well this week at St Gregory’s Boys,’ Mama says.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Mama used to always compare me to other kids. She doesn’t do that now.

  Her eyes begin to sparkle. ‘Yes, he did so well to get a scholarship.’

  Okay, so maybe she still does a bit. Ryan only found out about it a few days before school started. I wish he had come to Kentsworth with me. I’m the only one there from Green Hill Primary. Elena, the other person who made it, moved to Perth in the holidays.

  ‘Do you know how Mandy’s going?’ I ask.

  Mama shakes her head. ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t come to visit you.’

  Mandy lives next door and I’m surprised I haven’t heard her singing through the walls. We usually hang out after school but I get home later now. Plus I have a ton of superhomework to do. ‘It’s all right, Mama, I’ll see her when I catch up with the others on Saturday.’

  ‘Only if you have finished your homework,’ Mama says.

  I laugh. ‘Teachers never give us any for our first weekend back.’

  I think about Mrs Cheney and choke on my laughter. Maybe she will. I head to my room and finish off my questions about the poem. It’s cool that Mama supports my love for drawing now, but I have this feeling she’ll change her mind if I don’t do well at Kentsworth. Sometimes it’s hard for a tiger mother to change her stripes.

  It’s Saturday morning and Mandy and I are catching the bus to the shopping centre.

  ‘I can’t wait to see the Dragon Wings movie,’ I say.

  ‘Mmmm.’ Mandy’s eyes are darting across the screen, following her finger.

  ‘But I’m more pumped to catch up with you, Stephen and Dazza again.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Mandy’s mum bought her a smartphone for Christmas. It hasn’t made her any smarter. Just quieter. And a lot harder to talk to. It’s like she’s inside a giant bubble.

  I wave my arm between the phone and her face. ‘Hello! This is a phone-free zone.’

  Mandy swipes at her screen. ‘Just one more message to Sasha . . .’

  ‘You already made a friend?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve made heaps,’ Mandy says. ‘My cousins go to Green Hill High, so I’m in with the cool gang.’

  I slump in my seat. It doesn’t sound like the Mandy I know. Mandy was never really that popular back at our old school.

  We get off the bus and head to the food court. Dazza’s outside Burger Shack with his head in his phone.

  ‘Not you too, Dazza!’ I yell.

  Dazza glances up at us. ‘Hey, Con-nerd and Mandy.’

  I’m grinning and my glasses slide down my nose. I haven’t heard that name for ages. I look down to make sure I’m not wearing my old primary school uniform.

  Mandy snatches Dazza’s phone and checks it out. ‘Pfft, this is last year’s model.’

  ‘So what?’ Dazza says. ‘I don’t need any fancy features. Who needs a heart-rate monitor on their phone?’

  ‘I do,’ Mandy says. ‘What phone have you got, Con-nerd?’

  I pull out my phone. It looks like a brick compared to the others.

  ‘Ewww, is that your mum’s old phone?’ Mandy grabs it and holds it next to hers. ‘This phone has no pulse. It died three years ago.’

  I take my phone back. ‘I don’t need any extra features either.’

  ‘Yeah, your life isn’t that exciting anyway.’

  Mandy punches my shoulder. Ow! There she is. It’s good to see she’s back to normal again.

  I spot Stephen’s blond hair slicing through the crowd like a shark’s fin. ‘Yo, original C gang!’ He’s got his RipStik tucked under his arm and high-fives us with his other hand.

  ‘Are you still calling us that?’ Mandy says.

  ‘Yeah, well, in memory of 6C last year,’ Stephen says.

  ‘Whatever.’ Mandy walks inside Burger Shack. ‘I’m starving.’

  We order our burgers and a basket of chips to share, and sit around a booth. ‘Is your old bestie coming to the movie?’ Dazza asks Mandy.

  She shakes her head. ‘Tina didn’t reply to my message.’

  Stephen slurps on his bubblegum shake. ‘Connor, what about your nerdy friend, Ryan?’

  ‘He’s got tutoring,’ I say.

  ‘Wow, he never has a break, hey?’ Mandy says. ‘Saturday mornings are for sleeping in.’ She pokes me. ‘How about your ooh la la?’

  ‘You mean Tori?’

  Mandy rolls her eyes. ‘Come on, how many other girls did you have a crush on last year?’

  I feel myself turning bright red. ‘Well, remember how Tori had to quickly leave for Korea?’

  ‘Yeah, you never got to dance with her at the Year 6 farewell,’ Stephen says.

  ‘She went there to visit her sick grandmother. I haven’t heard anything from her since then.’

  She hasn’t replied to any of my emails. I thought Tori and I were friends. I would have loved to see the new Dragon Wings movie with her.

  ‘Hopefully she’ll come back soon,’ Dazza says.

  Our waiter brings our food and I’m the first to pinch a chip. ‘So, did you all survive the first week of high school?’

  Everybody nods.

  ‘Yeah, I know a few guys from my footy team there,’ Dazza says. ‘I’ve joined the cricket team too.’

  Stephen takes a chunk off his burger. ‘Yah, I’ve made some skateboarding friends.’ He licks his lips. ‘We go to the skate park after school.’

  ‘Have you heard of Dave Ha?’ Mandy asks. ‘My cousin knows him.’

  ‘Dude with tidal-wave hair who rides a giant wooden skateboard?’ Stephen says. ‘Yeah, he’s cool.’

  I can’t stop blinking at them. They didn’t just survive their first week. They’ve thrived.

  ‘What does everybody think about having different teachers for each subject?’ I ask. ‘Or being in different rooms, having heaps of homework?’

  Stephen shrugs. ‘We just have to get used to it.’

  ‘Yeah, they told us all this stuff at those high school transition classes last year,’ Dazza says.

  I must have zoned out at those classes. I mean, I knew that high school was going to be different to primary school. But I didn’t realise the work would be so much harder. It would help if I had friends like everybody else.

  ‘How about you, Con-nerd?’ Stephen says. ‘Your selective high school must be a geeky heaven.’

  I chomp down on my burger. More like a geeky he
ll. I feel like I’m a jelly bean in a bowl full of smarties. Should I tell them the truth? ‘Um, yeah, things are all right.’

  ‘Have you made any nerdy buddies yet?’ Mandy says. ‘It must be cool to be with your own kind.’

  That’s what I thought too. I chew on the same piece of burger until it turns into mush. I just slowly nod. ‘Uh, I’ve spoken to a few kids.’

  ‘Just be yourself, Con-nerd.’ Mandy slaps my back.

  I play around with my leftover chips. I don’t know if I can be myself there. Andrew would probably laugh at me if he saw my comics. Everything there is just so serious.

  ‘Elena is gutted that she can’t join you at Kentsworth,’ Stephen says. ‘She says hi to everyone from Perth.’

  ‘Wow, you’re still going out with her?’ Mandy says.

  ‘Yeah, we video chat almost every day,’ Stephen says.

  Dazza scrunches up his wrapper into a ball and throws it at me. I hold my hands out and it lands in my palms.

  Dazza smiles. ‘I taught you well.’

  ‘What do you mean, man?’ Stephen says. ‘I was Con-nerd’s real basketball coach.’

  ‘Do you still play?’ Dazza says.

  I squash the paper ball flat. ‘Not since we left school.’

  ‘Maybe we can play a game sometime,’ Dazza says.

  I smile at them. ‘That would be cool.’

  Stephen grabs a serviette and wipes his mouth. ‘Bring it on, guys.’

  We finish our burgers and head to the cinemas. Stephen stares at the Dragon Wings poster. ‘This better be good, Con-nerd.’

  ‘Trust me, if it’s half as good as the manga, you’ll be blown away,’ I say.

  We walk in together as a group. I wish it was like this all the time. Will I ever find a group of friends in high school like the original C gang?

  After the movie, we walk out of the cinema, rubbing our eyes. Dazza and Stephen are trying to outdo each other with their scariest dragon faces. Dazza wins by rolling his eyeballs up and lashing his tongue out.

  Stephen laughs. ‘Those battle scenes were epic.’

  Mandy clutches my arm. ‘So, Dragon Wings expert, what did you think?’

  ‘The comics are way better,’ I say.