Love and Other Unknown Variables (5 page)

2.1

“
M
r. Hanson?” The sound is muffled, like I’m swimming. “Mr. Hanson, can you rank these acids from strongest to weakest?”

I blink and shake my head vigorously to wake myself. “Uh, twelve?”

“Mr. Hanson, what class do you think you’re in?”

I squint at the teacher. “Um…yours?” The class chuckles, and I smile at them like I know what they’re laughing about.

“I’ll see you for lunch detention, young man,” the teacher says.

“But, sir,” I give my head another shake to clear it, “uh, Mr. Browning, I already have lunch detention for Mrs. Keele.”

“Hanson, what is wrong with you today?”

Sleep deprivation brought on by the hypnotic dancing of the English teacher’s sister.
I shrug instead of answering.

“Tomorrow. Lunch. Here.” He points at my desk before moving back to his.

Two lunch detentions? Who the hell am I today? This is all Charlotte’s fault. My brain is fried, and I blame the girl who’s taken up residence there. Serotonin is such a pain in the ass. Maybe if I help James, Ms. Finch will quit and move herself and her sister far, far away. But as soon as I have that thought, my traitorous brain riots.

I’m exhausted.

Before lunch, Greta catches up to me in the hall on my way to Mrs. Keele’s.

“Hey, derelict.”

“Huh?” I look at her, rubbing my eyes to clear them, balancing my Styrofoam lunch tray in one hand.

“Heard you got detention.”

I nod. “Look, Gret. About this morning, I didn’t sleep well last night and—”

“Wait,” Greta says, reaching in her pocket for her phone. “I want to record this.”

“What?”

“Well, aren’t you about to apologize? They’re such a rare species, your apologies. I’d like to have it on record.”

My ears instantly burn and my jaw locks. I’ve got no way to unlock it and let the words come out.

Greta notices. “Maybe next time,” she says, putting her phone away.

“I have apologized for stuff before. Remember the squid?” In freshman biology, I accidentally pierced the ink sack of the squid we were dissecting and sprayed Greta in the face. I’m trying not to laugh at the memory. “I said I was sorry then, didn’t I?”

Greta raises a brow.

“Didn’t I?” I thought I had. At least, I thought I had after I’d laughed my ass off. Greta’s lips are pressed into a firm line. “Look, I’m just not usually wrong about things,” I say with a grin, hoping she’ll smile back.

With a huff, she rolls her eyes and finally allows for a small smile. “Anyway,” she drawls, “I know it was an accident, and I felt a little bad about being kind of bitchy, so I brought you something.” She reaches into her Mary Poppins bag and pulls out two cans of Mountain Dew. “These are to show you that I’m sorry for overreacting,” she says, carefully depositing them on the tray in my hands.

Mountain Dew: defibrillator in a can. “Thanks, Gret.”

She nods. “See, how easy that was?”

I look blankly at her.

“I apologized and yet the universe didn’t implode.”

“Right. Sorry.”

She pretends to catch her balance. “Whoa, did you feel that? No? Me neither,” she says, looking unimpressed. “Now, you’d better get going. You don’t want to be ‘tardy.’” She makes her usual air quotes around James’s favorite word.

On my way to detention, I pound back both sodas and feel revived…and twitchy. I make it through advanced physics with Greta and molecular biology, but by the time I get to English class, I’m feeling a Dew crash of epic proportions.

I’m nauseated and sweaty, can’t stop bouncing my knee, and Greta has smacked me twice now to stop my fingers from drumming the table.

As soon as Ms. Finch walks in, everything goes into hyper-drive. It’s like I’m seeing into the future. Given a decade, this is what Charlotte may look like.

My brain starts screaming at itself to shut up. I don’t care what Charlotte will look like in ten years. I don’t care what Charlotte looks like now. Charlotte’s appearance will not get me into MIT. Her full lips will not get me a spot as one of Dr. Bell’s research interns. Her long, lean legs will not win me a Nobel Prize.

A wave of nausea crashes over me. I lean forward and put my head on the cool desktop. Closing my eyes, I let the waves roll over me, waves the color of Charlotte’s eyes.

“You okay, Chuck?” Greta whispers.

“Is there something wrong with Mr. Hanson?” Ms. Finch asks from the front of the room.

I sit up. “No. I’m fine,” I manage to say, but the room is spinning, which doubles the vomit-y feeling. I make fists and worm my knuckles into the muscles of my thighs, hoping to distract myself.

“In that case, shut your traps—”

Oh, how I wish I could. Just then, I feel the horrible burning sensation of Mountain Dew going the wrong way in my esophagus. There’s not much I can do. It’s coming up. It knows it, and I know it.

I spring from my seat and sprint up the aisle with one hand clamped over my mouth.
Please don’t let me barf in front of everyone.
I’m almost to the hallway. Jenna, sitting in the front row, pales as she watches me. Something about the terror in her eyes, like a mirror of my own, distracts me, and I trip over her bag in the aisle. Flailing through the air, I take my hands away from my mouth to brace for a fall, and all hell breaks loose. Mountain Dew and cafeteria corn dog go flying in every direction as I tumble to the ground.

The class erupts into a chorus of disgust. I roll myself up and notice I’ve landed right next to a pair of black pointy-toed heels. Well, they were black. My eyes run up the long legs attached and stop at Ms. Finch’s face, contorted with revulsion.

“Well,” she says, “that’s one way to get out of a pop quiz.” She bends over and offers me a hand. My braced arm slips in some puke and I crumple at her feet.

“Mr. Thomas. Please come help Mr. Hanson to the bathroom.” Ms. Finch steps away from me as James tries to figure out the best way to help me up without getting covered in nastiness.

“We’re finally doing this,” James whispers as he drags me out the door, “together.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I say, but my voice is too loud in my head, so I shut up.

“There’s no recovering from that. It’ll take the custodian the rest of class to clean up your mess. Everyone is all shaken up. And Ms. Finch is covered in your gastrointestinal fluids. I knew you’d come through for me.” James finishes with a fist pump. The motion shakes me. I feel my stomach twist again and for a second, consider letting loose right on James. The thought exhausts me, though. I hang my head and allow myself to be led away.

2.2

T
hat afternoon, Dimwit takes one look at me and swears, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Charles. How are you supposed to work if you can’t even stand up straight?”

I shrug, regaining my balance by clinging to the porch railing.

“Go the hell home.”

So I do.

I climb into bed fully clothed. Everything about me feels thick like wool. I want to slip away and sleep, but the strange sense that I’m not alone is holding me back.

I prop myself up on one elbow, blinking in the dim light, and see someone silhouetted in the doorway. It’s Charlotte.

“What are you doing here?”

“Congratulating you,” Charlotte says, maneuvering around piles of clothes, papers, and miscellaneous crap. She moves a stack of science journals and pulls my desk chair closer.

“Oh.” I’m confused by her presence, the smell of her skin, and whatever it is she just said. “For what?”

She laughs, and I relax into the sound of it. “You annihilated my sister.” She shows me a text with a picture of Ms. Finch’s boots. “Those were her favorite shoes. Can you make yourself puke on command, or did you just decide to take advantage of a great situation?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“But it did happen.” Charlotte digs the toe of her shoe into the carpet between us.

“Is there a universe in which anything you say makes sense?” I ask, rubbing the back of my hand across my mouth to get rid of any drool.

“She knew what she was getting into when she took the job. Everyone warned her, said Brighton kids are a pain in the ass. Said y’all wouldn’t listen to her.” Charlotte is leaning forward on her knees, a gleeful look in her eyes. “I had the best summer in, like, six years because she was so intent on creating lesson plans that would intrigue you guys and make her some freaking local hero. The English teacher that tamed the dorks or something.”

My head feels like it’s being stretched between opposing forces, and I’m struggling to pull it back into shape. “Why does she care?” I lie back on my bed and cover my face with my pillow.

“She likes being the best. At her last school there was weeping in the streets when she left.”

I lift the pillow so I can see her. “Weeping?”

Charlotte fakes big sniffles, grabbing my pillow and pretending to use the corner of it as a tissue. Her charcoal pencil-stained fingers leave tiny fingerprints.

“Why’d she leave then?”

She tosses my pillow back to me. “Small town. Better opportunities here, ones she feels we can’t pass up.”

I try to ignore the inviting smell of Charlotte’s perfume all over my pillow. “Like?”

“Well,” Charlotte draws the word out. “Better pay, cultural diversity, proximity to the university,” she declares in a voice that sounds like a recording of Ms. Finch.

“That where you want to go?”

Charlotte wrinkles her nose. “No, I’ll be taking a year off from school when I graduate.”

True sign of a geek: my heart just stuttered at the idea of taking time away from school. My face must have blanched as well because Charlotte chuckles.

“You going to be sick again?”

I shake my head. Charlotte sits back in the chair, propping her feet up on the side of my bed. “Haven’t you ever just wanted to take time off from your life? There’s so much clutter. I’d like time to live
my
way—with no interruptions. ”

“What would you do?”

Charlotte shrugs. “See stuff. There’s plenty I haven’t seen yet, like the Grand Canyon.”

“The Grand Canyon isn’t going anywhere.”

“No,” Charlotte says, her voice dark like the shadows in the corners of my room. “It isn’t.”

So this is what it means to be
possibly useful
. “You
want
us to drive your sister nuts so that she quits her job at Brighton and you can go see a giant hole in the ground?”

She shakes her head and bites on the bottom corner of her lip. “No, not so she quits, but some stuff has come up, and Jo’s turning more and more of her attention back to me. I want all her attention on you.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Charlotte arches a brow. “Personal stuff. Trust me, a distraction would be good.”

She’s a mystery to me. Why would I trust her? “Distractions are bad, Charlotte.”

She sits forward. “Depends on your perspective. The more she’s focused on you geniuses, the less she worries about me. It’d be a kindness to give her a break from me. I mean, she’s my sister, not my mother.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but I’m more confused than ever. This girl’s universe operates under an entirely different set of rules. I have so many questions for her, and end up surprising myself by asking, “Why didn’t you tell her that you know me?”

“You’re the only person I’ve met so far that goes to Brighton and has access to her. Plus, I’ve got a certain kind of feeling about you.”

“Nausea?”

Charlotte laughs. The sound relaxes my busy mind. “What?” she asks.

“I’ve been told that before. You know, by girls.”

“When? In the third grade, back when boys had cooties? I think you may want to take a look at yourself sometime, Longshanks. A girl would be lucky to go out with a smart guy like you.” She stands behind the chair, her long fingers tracing the frayed stitching. When she looks up at me again, the iron mask is back in place. “Get some sleep, Charlie,” she says, business-like. “And thanks.”

Charlotte fades to shadow as the dim light from the hallway engulfs her.

Thanks? Thanks for ruining her sister’s favorite pair of boots? And did Charlotte just hint that I was hot? Well, maybe not hot. But she did say I don’t have cooties. And I have long shanks. Whatever that means.

I can’t take on too much. Asking Charlotte out would open up a whole new world of worries—worries that would distract me from my work, and not in a good way. I can’t risk another breakdown this close to the finish line. When I close my eyes and imagine it, I can almost feel my MIT acceptance letter in my hands. My hands are replaced though by a second pair with charcoal-smudged fingers that press against my chest as I pull Charlotte closer to me.

I need to get it together.

2.3

M
s. Finch is already in the classroom when I arrive the next day. I fuss with the strap on my bag to avoid looking at her as I walk down the aisle to my desk. Next to my seat sits one of the jumbo cafeteria trashcans, the kind on wheels. I drop my bag at my feet, my ears instantly flushing. Greta and James are looking like they may explode with laughter.

I punch James’s shoulder. “Idiot,” I say under my breath.

James doubles over snickering. “Man, it wasn’t me.”

“Don’t even go there,” Greta says when I look at her.

Ms. Finch, standing with one hand on the trashcan, says, “I can only afford so many pairs of boots on my teacher’s salary.” I peek at her feet to see if she’s wearing slippers or something because how the heck did she sneak up on me? She nudges the can in-between us, its wheels squeaking.

Striding back up the aisle, she tells us to shut our traps and begins the day’s reading. Seated, I can’t see over the giant trashcan.

When she’s finished reading, Ms. Finch grabs a marker and writes on the white board behind her.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

“Anyone know who said this?” she asks, capping the pen and tapping it on her right palm. No one has an answer. “Really? After all I’ve heard about the intellectual superiority of Brighton students, I thought someone would be able to answer.”

I’m sure she’s looking right at me.

“I’m guessing, then, most of you are unaware of the ways in which mathematics and literature intersect.”

More silence.

“Here’s your first big assignment from me,” Ms. Finch says amidst the sound of shuffling papers. I lean sideways and see the class passing back packets of papers. Waiting for them to reach me feels like standing rooted to one place while a tsunami approaches.

“This quarter, you’ll work in groups and research one mathematical or scientific idea represented in literature.”

I glance around and almost laugh at the expressions on the faces around me. Shock, horror, and physical pain are predominant.

“For example, you could look into the ways in which the meter of some poetry can be found in Pascal’s Triangle, or similarities between mathematical and literary paradoxes, or even the ways in which Lewis Carroll wove algebraic formulas into his greatest works. Oh! And, did you know one of the inventors of computer programming was the daughter of a famous poet?”

Ms. Finch’s smile is so big it crinkles her eyes at the corners. She thinks we’re going to be excited about this. Obviously, she isn’t as smart as she thinks. Or, we aren’t. I’m not sure which, but I know what I’m going to choose to believe.

“Why even Einstein,” she says, pointing to the quote on the board, “had an appreciation for literature.”

Einstein has forsaken us.

Ms. Finch ignores the hushed disbelief building around her and draws two intersecting circles on the board, labeling one “Math/Science” and the other “Literature.” With the rest of the class time, we’re expected to fill in the Venn diagram. It becomes plain when the literature side stays blank that we’ve got a lot to learn. Judging by the satisfied look on Ms. Finch’s face, she’s ticking this off as a victory for her, proving we need her more than she needs us.

---

W
hen I arrive at Dimwit’s house, she’s rocking on her porch while a tall glass of iced tea perspires on the table beside her, and staring out at the garbage heap of her garden. The garden used to be a kidney-shaped island of color in the midst of her immaculately trimmed lawn. The rose bushes varied from miniature versions to tall, climbing vines, and everything in-between. Now the tall vines hang limply from a smashed trellis and the miniature red rose bushes look like roadkill.

I stop at the bottom step and shift my weight from foot to foot. Sweat runs down my spine, pooling at my waistband. I clear my throat.

“I know you’re there. I see you.”

“Oh. Well…what should I do?”

Mrs. Dunwitty fixes me with what can only be described as an evil-ass stare. “Fix the mess you’ve made.” She takes a swig of tea, making the ice cubes clink against the glass.

When she stands, her rocker smacks into the siding of the house. Not proud of this, but the sound makes me jump. “It’s too damn hot out here for me,” she says, holding her cool tea glass up to her cheek. She’s stood too fast and steadies herself by holding onto the doorframe. Once she’s regained her composure, she steps inside and slams her pink door in my face.

I wait for more detailed instructions, but the door stays shut. How the hell am I supposed to fix this mess? I scan the yard and notice tools upright in a garbage bin next to the garage door.

Heaving a big sigh, I grab a shovel and start pulling out the broken stalks of roses to stuff into the garbage, trying—and failing—to avoid the thorns. I don’t think it’s a coincidence Dimwit didn’t leave gardening gloves for me.

As the sun is setting, Mrs. Dunwitty comes outside to inspect my work. “Tell me, son,” she says, plucking a damaged rose from the garbage, rubbing one of the petals with her desert dry fingers. “How did this happen?”

My hands are blistered and the skin on my forearms looks like I got into a brawl with Greta’s cat. I’m in no mood to explain the suckdom of my life to the ornery old bag. “Well, see, the car was moving at a velocity of—”

“You think you’re some kind of smarty britches.”

“No,” I sigh, wiping my dirt-stained hands on my T-shirt. “It’s Greta’s fault.”

“She was driving?”

“No, but—”

“Then how do you figure it’s her fault?” Mrs. Dunwitty looks at me like I’m a garden pest.

I shrug. It wasn’t Greta’s fault. It was Charlotte’s—Charlotte and those stupid sexy hips of hers.

“Know what you need to do?”

I shake my head.

“Man up.” Dunwitty slaps me on the back like my little league coach after he told me to stop crying and hit the stupid ball. I only had to play one season before my parents decided “socialization” was not the answer. For the record, I wasn’t crying.

“Same time tomorrow,” Mrs. Dunwitty calls as she walks back to her porch, the remains of a fat orange rose in her withered fingers. “Oh, and take that broken angel away. I can’t stand to see her all busted like that.”

I heft the small angel into the trunk of my car and slam the lid.