Love and Other Unknown Variables (8 page)

2.8

I
t’s quiet enough in the English classroom to hear the soft rattle of Ming’s asthmatic breathing, and he sits three rows over from me. The controlling Mrs. Bellinger would keel over in ecstasy if her class were this well behaved.

At first, I felt squeamish whenever one of Ms. Finch’s questions went unanswered, but now, just one week into my plan, I’m used to the odd feeling of not performing to my potential. Plus, I’ve noticed Ms. Finch is asking fewer questions. Better not to ask than to leave unanswered questions cluttering the classroom.

I’ll admit the plan isn’t bold, but sometimes simplicity is best. I hope that’s true. I’m not sure I’ve got it in me to be a true agitator.

When I walk into class today, Ms. Finch is standing at her podium, staring into a half-empty coffee cup with unfocused eyes. I hide a smile. She looks deeply distracted.

The bell rings and she doesn’t bother telling us to shut our traps and listen up before reading to us. About mid-way into today’s pages, she loses herself in the story and becomes animated again. But when she finishes and sees us, her good mood slips away. This looks like more than distraction.

There’s a strange little tug in my chest, but I ignore it. My allegiance is with Charlotte (and algebra), but I wish I knew more about why Ms. Finch is smothering Charlotte. What’s the cause to that effect? The action behind that reaction? Charlotte seems convinced that by distracting Ms. Finch, we’re actually doing her some sort of favor, but I don’t see how.

A small anxiety purrs in my stomach like Schrödinger’s damn cat. There’s a piece to this problem I haven’t accounted for, and I need to know what it is.

“None of you care,” Ms. Finch says, closing her novel and sipping her coffee, “but today we are going to talk about circles.”

Ms. Finch projects a poem onto the board—a poem so poem-y it makes me seriously consider puking on her again. The kind of poem that’s full of words like “thy,” “thou,” “whilst,” “wilt,” “hearkens,” and a few “doths.” Oh, and one “erect.”

In the poem, a guy is going on a trip and has to say good-bye to his girlfriend. He’s not cool with PDA and wants her to remember they are like a compass (the stabby-end thing for drawing perfect circles).

“I’m kind of in love with the idea that kindred spirits stay connected no matter the distance between them,” Ms. Finch says. “We’re safe within the boundaries of the shared circle our lives create.” Since she’s facing the board when she speaks, we’re not sure she’s even talking to us. I can tell no one would know what to say even if responding to the teacher were allowed.

I don’t want to think about who I’d like to draw close in my circle. Or maybe I do want to think about her, but whenever I do, everything else fades, which scares me more than finishing my MIT application.

“
S
pecial treat today,” Dimwit says as I get out of the car. She’s leaning on her porch railing with a wicked grin stretched across her weathered face, her wide, white dentures gleaming at me.

This can’t be good.

Dimwit meets me by the garden. I haven’t been back since I finished the wall last week because of all the rain. It’s holding up fine against the heavily saturated ground.

“Today, you’re going to add life to the soil.”

I look at her like she’s speaking Wookie.

“Come on,” says Dimwit, grabbing a cane from beside her rocking chair and walking toward her backyard. The cane is new. I mean, it looks old, but I’ve never seen her use one before. I’m a little worried she’s only carrying it so she can beat me in the head if I do something wrong. “Bring the wheelbarrow and shovel,” she calls back to me.

More shoveling? At least I’ll have something to defend myself with.

I follow her to the back where she shows me to a neat pile of, well, garbage. It’s her compost pile, and from it I can tell she had eggs and a banana for breakfast this morning.

Dimwit smiles. “Black gold,” she says, grabbing a handful of the decomposing nastiness. “Mix this up real well and fill the wheelbarrow full of the good stuff from the bottom. Bring it around front to add to the garden soil.”

“You’re just making up gross stuff to torture me longer, aren’t you? Mom made a flower bed last spring in less than an hour.”

“How are those flowers looking?” Mrs. Dunwitty asks.

Dead
. I grimace and thrust my shovel into the pile of compost.

Dimwit chuckles. “That’s what I thought. It’s the circle of life. From all this decaying matter, my new roses will grow taller and stronger. Respect the circle.” She hobbles back around to her porch, humming.

“Sick of circles,” I grumble and immediately feel guilty. I love circles. They’re amazing. It’s not the circles’ fault I’m stuck here mixing the new ick with the old ick and chopping up bigger pieces of ick with the point on the shovel. When I’m done, I bring the full wheelbarrow around to the garden and freeze.

You’d think in a neighborhood as huge and sprawling as mine, I could play servant boy to the pissy octogenarian without everyone I know finding out. The theorem would read: If the neighborhood is huge, then the chance of being seen is small.

In my experience, though, a more accurate representation might be: If the neighborhood is huge, then everyone will still be all up in your business because this is the South, man, and being nosey is what we do.

I shouldn’t be surprised to find Charlotte walking some monstrosity of a dog past Dimwit’s house, but I’m shocked enough to freeze in plain sight rather than hide.

“Charlie?” She gives a gentle tug on the leash and the ginormous dog heels.

“Uh, hey.”

The hellhound positions itself between us, eyeing me like I’m a feast. A low growl is rumbling in its throat.

“Nice doggie,” I whisper. It growls louder in response. Charlotte laughs, and the sound, if possible, is more unsettling than Satan’s growl.

“Sit, Luna,” Charlotte commands. The dog sits, but doesn’t take its eyes off of me. “I never figured you for the do-gooder type,” she says, surveying my work.

“I’m not. This is penance.”

“For what?”

“Preoccupation.”

“Oh-kay? I’ll bite. What is that supposed to mean, great genius?”

Dimwit’s voice, harsh like the caw of a crow, swoops down at me from the porch. “Now don’t go getting all distracted by a pretty face. You’ve got work to do.” Both Charlotte and the dog skitter back a few steps at the hollering.

“Just give me a second,” I snap at Dimwit, which surprises us both.

We’re staring each other down across the beat-up garden when Charlotte says, “I can help. Maybe it’ll go faster.”

Dimwit switches her focus, glaring at Charlotte now. To Charlotte’s credit, she doesn’t flinch away again. “Get her a shovel,” Dimwit says before lowering herself back down into her rocking chair. “Let’s see what she can do.”

I retrieve a shovel for Charlotte. As she takes it from me, I say, “You don’t have to do this.”

She smiles. “But I can, and I will.”

Charlotte bends to scratch her hellhound behind the ears. She whispers, “Stay,” and then gives it a kiss on the top of its ferocious head. A pang of jealousy whaps me in the face.

“Let’s do this,” she says, grinning her crooked grin at me.

I eye the dog, but it doesn’t move. Course, if Charlotte told me to stay, I’d probably do the same. Especially if I thought I might get another kiss.

I shake my head and turn back to the wheelbarrow of ick. Together, Charlotte and I work shovelfuls of the compost into the garden.

I break the comfortable silence to ask, “How’s your sister?”

Charlotte breaks up a chunk of mud with the tip of her shovel. “When I left she was scratching away in her lesson planner. I’m not even sure she noticed me leaving.”

“And that’s good?”

“Very good.”

“Sometimes I wonder if we’re being mean. I wonder if we should just drop it.”

“No.” The word is a projectile and it hits me at point blank range. Even the dog, who was lying in the grass watching us, sits up. From the porch, I notice the absence of the wooden squeal of Dimwit’s rocker.

Charlotte wipes a bead of sweat from her pink cheeks. “I mean, why would you stop? I thought Brighton kids did this every year—the whole ‘English sucks’ thing? Isn’t that the motto?” She raises her shovel like a sword, “All hail King Math.”

My smile feels sickly as I nod. “Yeah,” I say, turning away from her to heft another shovelful of ick into the garden, “you’re right.”

Dimwit’s rocker starts squeaking again as we return to work. The soil is wet from all the rain, and it’s hard to move around. We’re both grunting and sweating and slipping in the muck.

I hear Charlotte’s shovel cut through the sloppy mud behind me, followed by a shrieky, “Whoop.” When I turn around, she’s on her butt.

I try to maintain my cool, but before I can stop myself, I’m laughing.

“Thanks for the concern, assbag,” Charlotte mutters trying to stand, but slipping again. I laugh harder, closing my eyes as my face tilts toward the sun. This is why I don’t see Charlotte grabbing a handful of mud and hurling it at me.

Thwump!

I look down, bewildered by the glob of mud running down my chest, my brain scrambling to figure out what just happened.

Charlotte’s got an arm on her because that hurt like hell.

No one’s thrown mud at me since I was four.

Payback’s a bit—

Thwump!

I’d stooped to make my own mud ball when Charlotte hurled a second one.

“This means war!” I throw a huge wad of mud at Charlotte, who dodges it by rolling to one side, but her supporting arm slips and she goes down on her face.

“Aaarrrgh,” Charlotte screams and stumbles to her feet, blindly throwing another handful of mud. This one catches me in the nuts.

I gasp and crumple in the mud. Charlotte presses both her muddy hands over her mouth. “Oh, man. I’m sorry. Total accident.” She drops to her knees so she’s eye to eye with me.

“S’all right,” I groan, biting back the tears. Thankfully, she only nicked my junk so I can still make words. “Not broken.”

She dissolves into the mud in a fit of giggles.

“Un-cool, Charlotte. Very un-cool laughing in the face of my pain. Now you must pay.” I dive in the mud and start lobbing it at her as fast I can.

She retaliates by rubbing mud into my hair like it’s shampoo. She’s laughing so hard that tears are rolling down her cheeks, making muddy rivers flow down her neck and empty into the neck of her shirt.

“The hell’re you doing?”

We freeze and look up at the shadow falling over us. Dimwit. She’s leaning on her cane, her brown knuckles white against it, and a look in her eye darker than any black hole. On the other side of us, the wolf dog is whining, shaking with the desire to either comfort Charlotte or tear me apart.

Charlotte goes silent and focuses on the mud covering her clothes like it’s the Mona Lisa.

I stand and help Charlotte to her feet. Her left foot slips out from under her, but I manage to grab her under the arms and pull her toward me for balance. We’re face to muddy face, and I know I’m surrounded by the twin threats of a pissed off Dimwit and an overprotective pooch, but I can’t seem to disentangle my arms from hers.

Mrs. Dunwitty clears her throat. “Asked you a question, son. What do you think you’re doing?”

Charlotte pulls away, cooing at her dog to calm it down. I shrug at Dimwit and grab our shovels. “Shoveling?”

“Do I look like a dumbass?”

“Uh, no?”

Dimwit turns to Charlotte. “Sweetheart, I know you’re trying to help, but this just won’t work. Can’t say we didn’t try.”

Charlotte’s face flushes so pink I can see it even through the dirt.

Dimwit gently takes Charlotte’s shovel. “I’d like to see my garden fixed before I expire. No one lives forever.” Dimwit smiles at her, her lips stretching tight. “You can go.”

Charlotte looks at me, but I’m as stunned as her. Then, she gets the giggles.

“Later, Charlie,” she says punching me in the arm. The sound of her punch landing makes a squishy noise—mud on mud. She gives a whistle to her beast and leaves me with one more smile.

I watch her walk away. The familiar tang of anxiety coats my throat. What am I doing with this girl? I’m standing in a busted garden, covered in mud, with my heart racing so fast, it’s leaving all logical thoughts in the dust.

“Back to work,” Mrs. Dunwitty says, but before she can teeter away on her cane, she leans in to get a better look at my muddy face. “You all right, son?”

My eyes feel swollen. I can’t go back to the paralyzing black hole of fear I slipped into two years ago. That was over a chemistry problem I couldn’t figure out. This—this is way bigger. This is Charlotte Finch.

“Girl’s got you confused.”

“I’m not confused.” But that’s a lie, and we both know it. I look at the wheelbarrow of rotten compost and blink my giant eyes, hoping they don’t start crying giant tears in front of Dimwit. Oh, she’d never let that go.

Having a girlfriend has never been something I had the bandwidth to take on. Not that I don’t think about girls. I do. A lot. But, one thing I’ve learned is theoretical mathematics is a vastly different creature from applied math.

I’m a theoretical mathematician, thus I will never get laid.

Shit.

“You afraid?” Dunwitty asks, her tone teasing, but her face serious.

“Of what?”

The smile on her face shrinks, and I realize with a sick pang she’s about to impart some sort of old-lady knowledge. “Know why I love a garden?”

I shake my head.

“It’s always changing.”

Dimwit’s garden has definitely changed. It went from beautiful to smashed and now it’s, well, in progress. How this relates to me, I have no idea.

“Don’t you nod your head at me like you understand.”

“But it’s only a garden.”

“You’ve never heard of a metaphor?”

She pulls her sun hat off her head and shoos me off with it saying, “Get back to work.”

I open my mouth to say something, but end up closing it again, like some deranged fish.