Love and Other Unknown Variables (17 page)

4.9

I
n the last few weeks, our class has hung a disco ball in Ms. Finch’s classroom, rearranged the desks so they spelled Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and glued the pages of her lesson planner together.

Ms. Finch is an admirable opponent, though. She’s still not made a big fuss about the pranks. Perhaps because she kind of asked for it the first day of class with the whole “Bring. It. On,” speech.

The planner thing got under her skin the most, but she played it off. “Guess this is someone’s hint that I need to join the twenty-first century.”

I expected her to retaliate with more backbreaking English stuff, but she continues to find ways to teach this crap so it relates to stuff we like. The more creative we are in torturing her, the more creative she gets teaching us. She seems to enjoy the pranks better than the silence.

As we leave class, Greta and James flank me in the hallway. Ms. Finch has flogged us with poetry.

“That was amazing,” James breathes on my left. He sounds like a lovesick wuss. “I mean did you see the Fibonnacci sequence inside the poem? I had no idea you could do that.”

“Well, to be fair,
you
couldn’t, but it was cool,” says Greta.

“Fibonnacci,” I grunt.

The woman is a genius. She suckered the entire senior class. Three-fourths of class time focused on some poem about life and paths and choices, all poignancy and poem-y. Four minutes before the final bell, she switched gears and showed us a poem with stanza lengths based on dumbass mathematician Fibonnacci and his stupid numbers.

I stop walking. Greta and James are a few steps away before they realize it. Never in my life have I thought the phrase,
stupid numbers
, and Fibonnacci was no dummy.

Holy shit.

“You all right, C-man?” asks James.

Ms. Finch is using operant conditioning on us. We’re getting a major dose of our own medicine, and it’s working. Science is totally kicking me in the balls.

Greta and James are both giving me the underage adoptive parent look.

I change the subject. “That woman is diabolical. Fibonnacci? Seriously?”

Greta laughs. “Admit it. It was cool.”

“No. Never,” I say with fake bravado.

5.0

T
hanksgiving break is here. Finally. I’ve never looked forward to a break from school, but I’m looking forward to this one. I can’t look at Ms. Finch without a gaping cesspool of guilt opening up in my gut. I’m sick of classmates constantly looking toward me to gage their own reactions in English class. I’m tired of all the worries. I just want to lose myself in homework.

And Charlotte.

There’s a small rap on my door before her face appears. “Hi.” She steps inside and studies the piles of junk lying around. I’m not so good with putting things where they go. I do have categorized piles—dirty clothes, books, dishes and food scraps, and the broadest category, stuff.

“Becca and I made pie.”

“Really?”

“Pumpkin.”

My stomach purrs. “Much better than fig.”

“What?”

“Pumpkin pie. It’s better than fig pie.”

Charlotte’s mouth quirks up on one side. “I’ll take your word for it. I’ve never had fig anything. Pumpkin is my favorite.”

“Mine too,” I say. My eyes flick back to the computer screen, only because I can’t stand to keep staring at her, wondering what other pieces of us might fit together as perfectly as pumpkin and pie.

“I didn’t meant to interr—”

“No,” I say. “This isn’t important. I mean, it is, but it can wait.”

“Long enough for a piece of pie?”

“Definitely.”

She steps further in my room. “We’re having a movie marathon, too. Want to join?”

“Uh, no. No more old musicals for me.”

Charlotte grins crookedly at me. “They aren’t musicals, dork. They’re modern remakes of Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
.”

My mouth drops open a bit. “Seriously? And I’m the dork?”

Charlotte crosses my room to stand between the computer and me. She leans on the edge of my desk, her butt nearly on my keyboard. “You know,” she says, her face tilting toward mine. “A little literary culture won’t kill you.”

“Just one,” I say, but my voice is malfunctioning, so it comes out as a whisper.

She whispers, too. “Good.”

---

M
idway through the second movie, Becca pauses it to use the restroom, leaving Charlotte and me sitting in the dim light of the frozen television screen. My sister sure is a sucky chaperone. Doesn’t she realize how dangerous it is to leave me unsupervised around beautiful girls with infinity tattoos?

Charlotte nudges my shoulder with her own. “This is fun. Admit it.”

“This is a total chick-fest,” I say, motioning toward the TV. “I don’t get what you guys see in these movies. That last one had a terrible ending, and I can already see this one’s going down the same path.”

“I admit that Romeo and Juliet are not my favorite couple. Being in love for three days is an easy gig.”

“Exactly. They’d probably realize that they hate each other if they spent more time together.”

“Or worse,” Charlotte says, hugging a pillow, “they’d grow indifferent and their love would waste away. Nothing lasts forever.”

“That’s bleak. Maybe you shouldn’t hang out with me so much. I think I’m rubbing off on you.”

Charlotte smacks me with the pillow she was holding. “Shut up, Hanson.”

“Now you sound like your sister.” I chuckle and toss the pillow back at her. She retaliates by crashing two pillows around my head like cymbals.

“Game on!” I shout, grabbing as many pillows as I can and lobbing them at her one after the other.

“Uncle! Uncle,” she squeals, lying buried on the couch.

Laughing, I clear away the pillows. Her dark curls are sticking up at odd angles, and I reach out to smooth them back into place. Charlotte catches my hand in hers, and I cup her cheek.

It feels as though someone has turned an electromagnet on inside of me. There is a force out of my control pulling me in. Charlotte’s eyes flick to my lips, and I’m undone. I may have been able to resist before, but now I give in to the pulling and press my lips to hers. They are soft, softer than I imagined—better. Her hands are suddenly at my waist, one finger dipping under the edge of my shirt. One finger and I groan like someone is lifting a one hundred pound weight off my chest.

My tongue laps at her bottom lip, the one she bites on so much, and she parts her lips just enough for me to taste it myself. A string tightens from my chest to my groin—so taut I can barely breathe. She tastes like sugar, so soft and warm in my mouth, I ache.

Her hands slide up my sides to my chest, where she gently pushes me back as she pulls away. “Wait. We can’t do this.”

Without her lips on mine, my body loosens and I catch my breath. “Sorry. Charlotte, I’m so—”

“Don’t. But we can’t. I can’t lose—”

“What are you guys doing?” Becca calls, walking in through the kitchen. “I heard screaming from the bathroom.”

Charlotte’s cheeks darken in the dim light from the TV. A worry flickers across her face. Becca. She can’t lose Becca.

Now you’ve done it, Chuck,
the Greta in my head snarls. I’ve got to fix this.

“Help me, Bec!” I shout, jumping away from Charlotte. “Charlotte attacked me. I was just sitting here saying how much I loved this wonderful, romantic film, and WHAM. Pillow to my head.”

Charlotte runs a hand through her curls and bites that lip of hers, making me want to groan all over. My expression must be a sight, because she takes one look at me and laughs before smacking me with a pillow.

“See? You gotta save me, sis.”

Becca chuckles. “You guys are lame.” She takes her seat on one side of Charlotte, who smacks Becca in the face with another pillow before linking their arms.

Becca turns the movie back on. And I wonder what might have happened if she’d stayed away just a little longer. The thought of kissing Charlotte again makes me feel like I’m being sucked away into the vacuum of space. Which, if you’re wondering, is painful and scary and leaves me almost breathless.

Through the darkness, Charlotte’s hand works its way into the crook of my arm, too. I don’t move for the rest of the movie, afraid that if she lets go, I’ll float away again.

Subject:
Charlotte Finch,

Method:
Beat her with fluffy objects until she acquiesces and kisses me,

Result:
Left adrift in space with discomfort in my lower region.

5.1

B
ecca calls out to me from her room Saturday afternoon. I’ve been avoiding her since the movie ended last night. Part of me wants to come clean and tell her what happened. The other part wants to transfer to an out-of-state boarding school. This friendship she has with Charlotte is nothing shy of remarkable for Becca. She’s never even tried to play nice with other kids before. I can’t screw this up for her, and the probability of me screwing up is pretty damn high.

“What’s up?” I ask, crossing her room to flop on her bed. Becca is sitting on the floor in the nest of blankets she usually reads in, surrounded by shredded book pages. “Aren’t you like biologically incapable of destroying a book?”

“It was from the Goodwill. I read it first—boring finance stuff.”

“I won’t tell anyone your dirty secret if you show me what you’re hiding there.” I point to where she’s cupping her hands around something.

“Charlotte’s eighteenth birthday is coming up and I want to give her something.”

“Eighteen? I thought Charlotte was your age.”

Becca shakes her head. “She missed lots of school because…”

Cancer.

We don’t say it out loud though.

“I’m wondering what you think of my present,” Becca says, opening her hands. Inside is a small pin with a rose on it. The rose is made from the pages of a book, the petals of words delicately curving in on each other in a new story. Charlotte will love it.

“Wow, Bec.” I trace the edge of a paper rose petal. “You made this?”

Becca nods. “You really think she’ll like it?”

“I really do.” I wonder if this will be Charlotte’s last birthday, and how do you celebrate a birthday when you’ve got something like cancer, and how come Charlotte doesn’t seem super sick right now? Or is she? I noticed at the rose garden that her left hand shakes when she’s sketching.

But her personality and memory are still intact. She’s verbal and her balance is fine. Maybe she’s got lots more birthdays coming, and I’m just overreacting.

“Bec? What is Charlotte doing for her, uh, you know? I mean, she’s in school, so she must not be so sick. Right?”

Becca seems to sink a little further in her nest of blankets. Her fingers find their way into her long hair and begin to twist. Becca knows something. Dammit, I want to be the one Charlotte shares these secrets and fears with.

I nudge her. “Right?”

Finally, she looks up at me. “Charlotte’s done with all of that.”

“What’s that mean?”

“That she’s sick of being sick.”

Things reel for a second and come back into focus just as quickly. “She’s just letting it kill her?”

“She’s enjoying being normal for a while.”

“Normal? What’s normal about dying?”

“Nothing, Charlie.” Becca stands up to face me, her calm features distorted into a mask of chaos and fury. “There’s not one thing normal about any of this, but it’s Charlotte’s life. It’s her decision. So what’s it to you if she wants to spend a little time outside of a hospital for once?”

I blink. It’s the only safe response. Becca’s rare anger is about to explode.

“Exactly!” Becca is shouting now. Becca does not shout. “If Charlotte wants to spend the rest of her life as a fucking aerial-acrobat, than so fucking be it!”

Whoa. Becca definitely doesn’t say
fuck
.

Her hands are shaking fists. “Bec,” I murmur, reaching for her. She shrugs me off and opens her fist, holding out the beautiful rose she made for Charlotte, now crushed from her rage. She glances at it, and I think maybe she’ll erupt again, but instead all the fury wilts away.

“Crap,” she whispers.

I don’t know what to say. This is all new for me, this friendship with my sister. I don’t want to let her down. “Can you fix it?”

She looks into my eyes and shakes her head.

“I’m sorry.” And I do mean the flower, but so much more, too. I reach for her hand, still clutching the flower, but she shirks away again.

Becca’s voice is small in the space between us. “I’ll have to start over.” She tosses the flower in her trashcan and flops back into her reading nest. “There’s still time.”

When she’s not looking, I rescue the rose from the trash.

5.2

G
reta shows up Sunday afternoon without James. “Lover’s spat?” I joke as I close the front door behind her.

She scoffs. “They went to visit his dad.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

James doesn’t talk about his dad much. I know his dad’s buried in his hometown in Eastern North Carolina, a few hours from here. I know James misses him, even if he doesn’t say so.

Greta follows me up to my room, taking over my desk chair and flipping through all the open windows on my computer until she finds an online game she wants to play. She’s going to screw up all my character points. I just know it. I’d get upset, except it’s Greta.

I lie on my floor and read through my advanced physics notes. A silence settles between us, and it isn’t exactly uncomfortable, but it’s not like a pair of sweatpants either. Greta’s got something to say. I can tell by the number of times she’s tucked that one strand of hair behind her left ear.

Just as I’m about to bolt from the room under any pretense I can come up with, Greta turns from the screen. “When are you going to ask Charlotte out?”

I sit up so quickly all the blood whooshes in my ears. When she asked, I could taste Charlotte on my lips, like the memory was just lying in wait to attack. “Never,” I manage to grunt.

Greta cocks a brow at me. “You’re a terrible liar, Chuck. Your ears give you away every time.”

Damn. They do feel warm.

“Besides, never is a long time.”

“Depends on your perspective,” I say. These feelings that I have for Charlotte will pass, but she may pass before they do. Never may be a short time to wait in this case.

Greta’s face pales as she catches on. She takes a deep breath and blows it out, her freckles stretching with her rounded cheeks. “You’re right. Guess I just wanted you to ask her out to assuage my guilt about going to the winter formal when you don’t have a date. She’s probably all wrong for you anyway.”

“Wrong for me?” My nerves frazzle like sparklers in summer. “You don’t even know her, so how can you say that? Her art is so beautiful, Gret. Looking at her sketches is like looking through a microscope and seeing the core of everything around us. And she’s passionate, maybe not about math, but the feeling is the same, the desire to wrap your life up in something you love so you never have to be far from it. Charlotte gets that. I don’t know how, but she gets me.” My voice breaks at the top of a very long crescendo, and I have to catch my breath.

Greta’s eyes are wide green pools. “Okay, Chuck. I didn’t know.”

“No—shit—I’m sorry, Greta.” I slump, my spine too brittle to support me. “I’m scared,” I say to the carpet. Being left behind will break me. Of this, I’m sure. “How am I supposed to fall in love with a girl when I know she’s going to break my heart?”

Greta blinks, her eyes glistening in the light from my computer screen. “Maybe it’s not love.”

“Did you not listen to anything I just said?” The heat from my ears travels down my neck. I watch as Greta digests everything before I drop my forehead to the floor. “Plus, I kissed her,” I say into the carpet.

Greta falls forward from the chair onto her knees in front of me. “You what?”

“Friday. On the couch. Watching movies.”

Greta pauses long enough that I peek at her. I see the moment she swallows whatever other reservations she has and decides to be on my team, even if we’re going to lose. “Well done, Professor Peacock,” Greta chuckles. “How’d it go?”

I rest one cheek on the floor and look up at her. “She said we couldn’t.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Greta wrinkles her nose. “Because you suck at kissing?” Her ginger brows wag up and down, trying to lighten the mood.

I snort into the carpet. “Probably.”

She nods. “I knew it. You should have practiced more.”

“We can’t hurt Becca.”

“Have you talked to Becca?”

My horrified expression answers for me. “Right, well. You need to talk to Becca.”

I move my head so I’m resting on the opposite cheek. I can’t face the pity in her eyes.

“Hey,” Greta says, her voice sharp enough to pull my eyes back up to hers. Maybe that wasn’t pity. “You’re stronger than you think. If you want to fall in love, then fall.”