Love and Other Unknown Variables (12 page)

3.6

I
can tell most of my English classmates have heard we’re switching tactics. It’s in the way they stare at me like I’ve walked into class naked. I don’t know how Greta gets information out so efficiently, but I’m glad she’s not my enemy.

Ms. Finch follows me into the classroom, her usual tanker-sized coffee mug in tow, coffee slurping over the sides. I give her a diminutive smile. “Good afternoon, Ms. Finch,” I say with a nod. “I wanted to tell you that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed putting together our project outline.”

Ms. Finch arches her eyebrows.

“The research has been enlightening. I had no idea poetry could be so mathematical. It almost makes it interesting.” I pretend to chuckle at my own joke. Greta is staring at me like I am not only naked, but have also emerged from a pool of icy water.

Ms. Finch recovers by taking a huge swig of coffee before setting her mug down in its usual spot. “Right, well, Mr. Hanson, why doesn’t your group present your outline first?”

I drop my backpack and bow in her direction. “We’d be honored.” James snorts as Greta groans and fishes our outline from her bag. The three of us stride to the front and do our three-minute spiel on “The Infinite Nature of Poetry.” The topic choice was Greta’s. I’d never pick anything that has anything to do with poetry.

During the presentation, I watch Finch’s face in my periphery. Deep worry lines angle upward from the bridge of her nose. Charlotte has the same lines, not so deeply ingrained.

When we finish, I hand her our written outline as Greta and James return to their seats. She takes it slowly, like it might be a trap. Glancing at it quickly and turning it over in her hand she wrinkles her nose and looks up at me quizzically. “Thank you, Mr. Hanson. I agree with you. This is…” She puts the outline away in her grade book without looking at it. “…very interesting.”

She reaches to take a sip of coffee, but when she tries to lift her mug, it doesn’t budge.

The beauty of Ingrid’s adhesive is that it is colorless, odorless, and only adheres when moisture is present. Early this morning, we coated the corner of Ms. Finch’s podium with it. Once the epoxy dried, it was undetectable, until Ms. Finch placed her over-full mug of coffee on it.

Bam! Instant bond.

Best part is, Ingrid hasn’t found anything to dissolve the glue, yet.

I admit it was risky to depend on Ms. Finch to have sloshed some of her coffee over the edge of her mug on the way to class, but the probability was extremely high based on my observations of her routine behaviors.

Ms. Finch looks from the stuck coffee mug to me, where I’m trying my best to look shocked. “Wow. That sucks. How’re you going to drink all that good coffee now?”

Her jaw clenches.

I pull a 10-milliliter pipette from my pocket. “Maybe this will help?”

Before she can say anything, I return to my seat. The class is frozen, waiting for Ms. Finch’s reaction.

She looks from the pipette to the mug of coffee and up at us. Her jaw muscles twitch as she composes them into a smile. “You’re a class act, Mr. Hanson,” she says, sucking up a sip of coffee in her pipette and squeezing it into her mouth. “Ahhh. That’s just what I needed.”

I try to savor my victory, but it feels hollow.

3.7

I
t’s been a month of alternately kissing and kicking ass. Ms. Finch acts like most of the pranks are strange coincidences, like her response when walking into her office, adjacent to the classroom, and finding it overflowing with balloons. “It’s not even my birthday. How thoughtful.”

Ms. Finch isn’t above throwing some punches of her own either. Our big English project presentation is due Monday—the day after Halloween. “The same day your MIT early application is due,” Greta reminded me. “It’s been done for over a month. Just click the little button, Chuck.”

Ms. Finch was gracious enough to okay our topic, even if our presentation was a thin veil for the initial attack. Greta says Ms. Finch wasn’t being nice, but that our topic is actually good. I think Greta’s been sampling the mushrooms Jeremy Peters has been propagating in the bio lab for “research.”

Driving home the Friday before Halloween, James announces, “It’s slumber party night.”

I look at Greta, whose wide-eyed expression mirrors my own. “I’d love to come, J,” I say, “but my teddy bear is at the cleaners.”

“No, idiot,” James says, sitting back in his seat and crossing his arms over his chest. “Greta was saying earlier we need a place to meet to finish our project for Finch. I’m saying, unless we want to dodge a dozen screaming pre-adolescents, my house is out.”

“Not it!” Both Greta and I shout at the same time.

“No, boys. Not my house,” Greta continues. She arches one gingered eyebrow at me. “Mom and Dad are having a dinner party, so my house will be overflowing with shrinks.”

“Scary.” James shudders.

Greta nods. “There is one universal truth. You plus you,” she says, indicating us each in turn, “plus a house of psychologists drinking wine, equals one cataclysmic disaster.”

My palms are starting to get sticky, so I grip the steering wheel tighter.

“Charlie’s house it is then,” says James.

“No.”

Greta graces me with another arched brow glare.

“Um, see, Becca’s got a friend—”

“Really?” Greta interrupts.

“Uh, yeah.”

James leans up between the seats, exchanging a grin with Greta. “Is her friend rabid? Are you worried about her biting us?”

“Is this friend wanted by the law for keeping human eye-cicles in her freezer?” Greta laughs.

“Was this friend sent back from the future in a time machine to warn us of our nation’s impending invasion by wallabies?”

“Does her friend shoot lasers from her eyes like what’s-his-face from the comic book you two are always talking about?”

“Cyclops!” James and I both shout. I cut in before James can launch his next theory. “She’s none of those things, but she plays loud music and sings into wooden spoons, and is a huge—”

“Distraction?” I can feel Greta’s cool green eyes watching me.

“Yes. I mean…it’s hard to concentrate with all the noise. Let’s meet somewhere else.”

Greta and James nod and remain quiet. I assume they are thinking of a place to meet while I’m trying to convince my nervous system there isn’t a need to attack every nerve ending at once.

Greta turns toward me until her seat belt catches her across the chest. “Nah. We’ll meet at your house.” She arches a brow at me one more time, but this time it isn’t a why-are-you-so-stupid look so much as what-the-hell-are-you-hiding-and-don’t-think-for-an-instant-I-won’t-find-out look.

---

C
harlotte’s car is in its usual place outside. I was hoping she’d be somewhere else tonight. Hope is stupid.

When the pizzas arrive, I liberate one from the stack of warm boxes and a handful of sodas. I’m on my way to my room when Mom calls out, “Hey! Who stole my veggie special?”

Ew. I bring the box back to the kitchen. “You can have this back. James is allergic to vegetables.” While there, I stack a bag of chips, three bananas, and a package of Oreos on top of the pepperoni pizza I snag. That’ll keep everyone happy.

“Are James and Greta moving in?” Mom nods at my mountain of food.

“Yes. Greta’s pregnant, and their parents tossed them out.”

Mom’s hazel eyes get huge for a second before she swats at me. “Not funny, Charles Hanson.” But she starts to chuckle as she grabs a plate. “Be sure to leave some food for the girls, or they’ll come busting down your door come dinner time.”

I put the bananas back. I don’t want Charlotte anywhere near my door tonight.

I figure if I can get Greta and James up to my room—fast—and keep them there, I may make it through the evening without the planets colliding. In other words, without Greta and James discovering Charlotte and asking me all sorts of questions that I don’t have answers for.

I’m half way up the steps when I hear someone coming down. I peek around my tower of junk food. My brain hiccups when I see Charlotte. I trip and land hard, sprawling across six steps. Food goes flying. The only thing I manage to save is one soda that comes free of the plastic holder thingy. The others clank down the steps, each jolt shaking them into canned explosives.

“You okay?” Charlotte is at my elbow, helping me up.

“I’m fine,” I say, rubbing my knee, already turning red from carpet burn. Is that blood on the carpet? Nope. It’s pizza sauce. Pizza is all over the steps.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Charlotte is still holding my elbow, her brows pulled together.

“Really, I’m fine.”

“So I can laugh now?” She’s pressing her lips together, fighting to keep a smile in check.

“Laugh?”

She nods, a small snort escapes.

I sigh. “If you must.”

“Oh, thank you.” Charlotte exhales a gale of laughter. Her eyes water and her knees buckle and she’s babbling, “pizza flying,” and “your face,” and “ohdearlordthatssofreakingfunny.”

The sound of her laughing echoes in the stairwell, multiplying her joy. It’s a sound I could get used to.

“Har, har,” I say, chuckling at myself as she chokes back more giggles. “We’re going to need more pizza.”

Sobering, she looks around. “This is totally salvageable. Five second rule, man.”

“Yeah, but you’ve been laughing for like an hour.”

“Sixty minute rule, man.”

We both laugh, as she helps me pick up pizza slices and arrange them in the box so it looks as though they were never projectiles.

“For your friends?” Charlotte asks, balancing the chips back on the top of the pizza box. I nod and look down the stairs to the sodas I dropped. I want to invite Charlotte to join us, act like she’s just any other girl and not the English teacher’s sister, not the secret I’ve been hiding from my friends.

But then, Charlotte isn’t just any other girl, so instead I say, “Well, thanks.”

“Remember, it’s one step at a time,” she says, giving my arm a squeeze before stepping aside to let me pass.

3.8

A
s soon as they get out of Greta’s mom’s Volvo, I usher James and Greta straight to my room.

“Geez, Chuck,” Greta grumps. “I didn’t get to say hi to your mom.”

“Pizza’s getting cold,” I say, motioning to the box in the center of my floor, praying no one notices the elliptical shape of the slices Charlotte and I shoved back together.

James flops down in front of the food. He’s about to shove a piece of pizza in his mouth when he stops. “What’s this?”

Is it carpet fuzz? It thought I got it all out.

James examines the pizza and grins. “Hell yeah, man,” he says, pulling apart the crust, “stuffed crust.”

I laugh, a stiff, strangled sound. I cover by stuffing a huge bite of pizza in my mouth.

We finish our project crap quickly. Ms. Finch wants us to demonstrate how our mathematical concept can be used in literature. We’re showing how words can be combined in infinite combinations to make poems. Like the poetry magnets my dad gave Mom for Valentine’s Day a few years ago. With the 50-word magnets in the box you could make 2,118,760 possible 5-word poems. Which isn’t an infinite number of poems, but it is, in layman’s terms, a butt load.

Since words are constantly being created, it can be assumed language is infinite. If you raise the power in the exponential equation to infinity, it equals a possible number of poems stretching from here to eternity. Not quantum physics, but not the worst topic ever either.

As soon as Greta puts her computer in her bag, I stand and step over the landmine of junk on my floor. “Well, guess that’s it. I’ll see you guys bright and early Monday.” I’m reaching for the doorknob, but no one has moved.

James stuffs a handful of chips in his mouth. Greta grabs another soda, cracking it open and asking, “What’s with the rushing?”

“Uh, no rush. I thought we were done.”

James gets up on his knees and wraps both hands around the bag of chips in a prayer position. “Please don’t make me go home. It’s like an estrogen explosion over there.” He scoots toward me on his knees, shaking his hands in supplication. “Don’t send me to the front lines, general.”

Greta laughs and tosses a cookie at him. It bounces off the tight curls on the back of his head. “God, you’re an idiot,” she giggles. “Seriously, Chuck. I’m not leaving either. By now the shrinks will be on bottle number who-knows-what. They’d analyze me into a catatonic state.”

“Yeah, of course. Mi casa es su casa.” Inside my head, I hear yelling.
Don’t anyone leave this room.

I fiddle around on the computer while Greta and James keep playing my-family’s-crazier-than-yours. Before long, I can hear the familiar bass of Charlotte’s music playing across the hall in Becca’s room. James and Greta notice it too.

“Is Becca listening to music?” James asks, stopping mid-my-mom-is-so-crazy. Before Charlotte, Becca never made noise.

“No, idiot.” Greta smacks him in the shoulder. “It’s Becca’s new friend’s music.”

He touches one finger to his forehead. “Oh, yeah. Cyclops.” Laughing, he asks me, “So what’s she like?”

I shrug and lean closer to the computer screen.

“Come on, man, is she hot? Or, is she weird, like Becca? No offense.”

I shrug again. “I don’t know. She’s Becca’s friend.”

“So she’s weird,” he says to Greta, who tries to swallow her giggles. My stomach coils at their laughter. I make fists with my hands and dig my knuckles into my thighs to distract myself from the suffocating need to round on them and defend Charlotte.

“You like her, Chuck?”

I wiggle the mouse, making the little arrow on the screen move in the shape of infinity.

“You do. Our little Chuck has a crush.” Greta hops up and spins my chair around so I’m facing them. “That’s awesome. You should totally ask this new girl out. We could double.”

“Uh, no.” I spin back around to the computer. I’m sure my asking out the sister of the least popular teacher at Brighton would go over well. I’m sure Greta’d love to double with us—in a parallel universe where unicorns prance and everyone speaks in Dr. Seuss-ical rhymes.

James puts down his pizza and stands, too. “C-man, you gotta man up. She has to be better than Ingrid. Ingrid’s got the personality of an amoeba. Even if this one’s weird, she’s a girl, right? Ask her out.” He kicks my chair so its spins around to face them again. “Shit, ask her out if she’s a dude. We’ll love you no matter what.” They’re standing together, arms around each other looking down on me like underage adoptive parents again.

This shit is getting old.

“Yeah, right.” I try to spin myself back to the computer, but James’s meaty paw stops my momentum. My ears are on code red, ready to burst into flames. “Look,” I say. “Stop trying to set me up.” I push his hand away. “I can’t ask Charlotte out.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Because she’s Becca’s friend?” Greta asks.

Yes, that’s one of the many reasons, and the easiest to explain, so I hang on to it like a lifeline. “Yes. Exactly. Becca’s never had a real friend before. I can’t screw that up for her.”

Greta nods as James scowls. “He’s right,” she says, looking up at him.

“Damn.” James flops back down to the floor and grabs another slice of pizza.

Greta pats me on the shoulder before crossing to my door. I jump from my chair, sending it spinning in circles, and meet her there. “Where are you going?” My voice sounds like a guitar string pulled too tight, sharp and whining.

“To the bathroom?” Greta purses her lips in a funny snarl.

“Why?”

Her eyes widen in her round face. “Uh, three sodas is why.” I’m leaning my back against the door, blocking her. She squirms from one foot to the other. “May I be excused, your lordship?”

I swallow a shallow breath and open the door for her. I follow and watch her walk the hallway of doom. As if on cue, Becca’s door opens as the bathroom door closes.

“We’ve got to stop running into each other here.” Charlotte laughs like a songbird as she bursts out into the hallway. I feel the heat ignite in my chest.

James is on his feet, tripping over the pizza box and spilling his soda down the leg of his pants to get a look at Becca’s friend. “Hey,” he says, jutting out his chin at Charlotte in a nod.

Charlotte parries with her nod. “Hey.” She smiles, a bright and genuine smile, and sticks out her hand. “I’m Charlotte, Becca’s friend,” she adds, thumbing toward Becca’s open door.

James shakes her hand, eyeing her in a way that makes me want to kick him in his balls. Instead, I clear my throat. “Yes, this is all nice,” I say as I step between James and Charlotte. Looking at Charlotte, I ask, “Whatcha doing out here?”

Charlotte leans in conspiratorially and whispers, “I have to pee.” She speaks slowly, dipping her chin with each word, so when she’s finished, she peering at me from under her thin, black brows.

My hand shakes with the familiar need to tilt her chin back up so her full lips would be inches from mine.

Someone clears her throat.

For the love of Pythagorus. I’ve got no luck.

“Greta, this is Charlotte,” James says from behind me.

Greta studies Charlotte like a scientist through her microscope. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

“Not formally. I look like my sister,” says Charlotte.

Greta’s eyes go wide.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but—” Charlotte nods toward the bathroom.

“Sorry,” Greta says, moving out of the way.

I look at Greta, whose face is scarlet, and cringe.