Love and Other Unknown Variables (4 page)

1.8

J
ames makes an ass of himself in English on each of the remaining days of the week, making me think I’m definitely on my own when it comes to figuring out relationships. He says he’s starting small, laying the foundation for the skyscraper of hell he will erect around Ms. Finch. I say he’s sniffed one too many chemicals in the lab, and his brain is starting to short-circuit.

On Wednesday, he “forgot” his textbook. He may get an Oscar for his performance as Genius Suffering a Nervous Breakdown. I caught Greta’s attention during the climax of his performance to ask, “Did I look like this?” She snorted and shook her head. It took 7.27 minutes of class before Ms. Finch could regain control.

On Thursday, he sneezed every time she said the word, “story.” She was lecturing on the structure of the short story. Fifty-three sneezes. Tobias even got up to get him the box of tissues from the bookcase in the back.

I do my best to keep my head down in class and never make eye contact with my classmates. I don’t want anyone thinking I’ve got anything to do with this crap.

Today, James’s plan A had been to fall out of his chair and fake a head injury, but Ms. Finch declared we all needed a special Friday treat (her words, not mine). We grab our bags and follow her to the grassy courtyard, where we sit cross-legged in a circle.

Thwarted, James reverts to plan B.

“Buzzzzzzzzzz.”

The buzzing noise is coming from my left, where James is sitting, looking overly interested in a wrinkle in his pants. On my right, Greta groans. Across the circle, Ms. Finch is reading to us from the paperback book.

“Buzzzzz. Buzzzzzzzzzzz.”

This time Greta leans behind me and smacks James on the back of his head, denting his kinky black curls. James gives her a devilish grin and, looking right at her, he barely parts his lips and goes, “Buzzzzzzzzzz.”

Two people over¸ Debbie French’s blond ponytail starts swinging around as she whips her head from side to side looking for the phantom insect. Once Debbie starts flinching, the movement moves around the circle like a ripple, until it stops at Ms. Finch. She continues to read.

“Buzzzzzzzzz.”

Debbie looks at me, and I curse inside for letting her catch my attention. She mouths, “Is that you?”

I give my head one solid shake.

With my response, she hops up. “Um, excuse me? Ms. Finch. There is a bee somewhere. I don’t, um, like bees.”

Ms. Finch looks up from her book. “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” she says, a soothing smile lining her face. Debbie’s eyes are wild, but she nods and sits back down.

James stifles a laugh on one side of me, while Greta grinds her teeth. James’s being pretty stupid, but the pandemonium is cool from a sociological perspective. James gives me an elbow nudge, a silent plea to join him. Greta kicks my foot.

“Buzzzzzzzzzz,” James hums more loudly.

A breeze blows through the courtyard. Small vortexes of trash swirl in the corners. One bit of paper escapes and drifts our way, brushing Debbie’s neck as it makes its way around the back of our circle.

Debbie screams, jumping to her feet and swatting her neck with both hands. She takes off running for the doors to the school. Her panic spreads out behind her like the tail of a comet. Justin sprints after her. He’s allergic to bee stings. Half the girls and a good handful of the guys jump to their feet and alternate between scanning the area for the illusory insect and shooting me questioning looks. I remain still, arms crossed over my chest, staring at a spot in the grass straight ahead.

James stands, his hands up like a ninja ready to kick the bee’s ass. Greta jumps up and starts swatting at James, which others misinterpret. They think Greta is rescuing him from the bee, but she’s just pissed. Mob mentality takes over and everyone is standing and ducking and swatting the air.

Ms. Finch and I are the only two people left sitting in the circle. She closes her book, and watches me from across the grass. I want to look away, but her eyes are so similar to Charlotte’s. I’m trapped in them.

A flash of heat burns my ears as I realize Ms. Finch thinks I’ve orchestrated this. I’m the only one not reacting to the attack of the invisible bees.

Greta wallops James in the chest with both her hands and he falls backward over me. I’m swept up in a cascade of limbs. When I right myself again, Ms. Finch is no longer studying me. Instead, she’s motioning for everyone not swept away in the wave of panic to follow her back inside.

James breaks free from Greta and surreptitiously pumps the air with a victorious fist. It’s only a small victory, but he looks elated. Too bad Ms. Finch looks more amused than pissed.

When we get back to the classroom, she apologizes for the disturbance, saying, “Well, that did not go the way I’d planned, but then, you all, as scientists and mathematicians, must know how that feels. At least I’ve learned something from it. How about you?”

The grin on James’s face slips into a grimace. She’s not pissed. Not even a little. And she turned it back around on us and made it like she’s some sort of scientist, too. Something like admiration tickles the back of my mind.

1.9

B
esides James’s antics in English, the rest of the week went by in a blur of physics labs and multivariate equations. It’s good to be back in school, where I know what to expect.

Home is a different story. Becca’s new project partner has been over almost every afternoon. Mostly they stay holed up in Becca’s room, but just knowing Charlotte is here shorts the electrical impulses in my brain.

Back when Greta and James began to date, Greta went through this annoying phase where she was very un-Greta-like. James would join us at lunch and she’d stop eating, twirl her hair like Becca, and blush whenever either she or James said anything. I did a lot of talking back then. It was the only way to keep Greta from looking like she was about to overheat. Even when James wasn’t around, it felt like he was because Greta never shut up about him.

I couldn’t understand what was happening, so I did some research to figure out what was short-circuiting Greta. Turns out, other scientists had the same questions and conducted studies to understand what makes us act like assholes when we fall in love.

The answer is chemistry—brain chemistry. These scientists discovered three phases in relationships: lust (all hormones, all the time), attraction, and attachment. Greta and James are in the attachment phase now, which means Greta can eat again and doesn’t obsessively talk about James. But back during the attraction phase her neurotransmitters were all out of whack.

I’d like to think my brain is more advanced than most humans, but whenever I think about Charlotte, which is more than I’d like to admit, I feel completely adrift in a chemical bath.

I’m at the kitchen table making quadratic equations with the alphabet cereal Mom buys because I said I liked it when I was five. As far as I can tell, Becca and Charlotte’s group project today is an experiment to determine at what decibel a bass line can fracture plaster. The entire kitchen ceiling rumbles like an aftershock.

“What is that?” Mom asks.

I look up from my cereal. “That,” I say, pointing toward the ceiling, “is Charlotte.”

“Becca’s…friend?” Mom says it like she’s test-driving the word.

I shrug and go back to my cereal. Charlotte’s coming over on a Sunday feels like a friendly visit, not a schoolwork thing. She walked in with a sketchpad and a fistful of charcoal pencils, but no textbooks. I’m not sure what’s more disconcerting—Becca having a friend, or the friend being the girl with the infinity tattoo that I can’t stop obsessing about.

Mom drops the armful of files she’s carrying on the kitchen table and papers scatter. She’s an elementary school principal (spelled with a p-a-l because she’s your pal!), so the beginning of a school year means tons of paperwork.

She pushes her glasses up on her head, pinning her blond hair back. “Please go tell them to turn it down,” she says, scrabbling to put the wayward pages back in order and mumbling about noise ordinances and buying Dad a new weed whacker. His is whining just outside Mom’s office window.

“Don’t make me do that, Mom.” I carry my bowl to the sink and face off with her. I get my height from Mom’s side of the family. Last year, I finally overtook her in height. She always jokes that she’s 5 feet, 12 inches tall. I’m 6’4”. Still, she’s far more imposing than Dad’s 5’9”.

“Charlie, please. I’m buried. What’s the big deal?”

“Nothing,” I say heading for the stairs. I don’t tell her “the big deal” is that for every moment I spend with Charlotte, my mind must then spend many, many more moments analyzing each aspect of our brief interaction. I fail to mention that I think her eyes look like a clear day at the ocean when it feels like the horizon is at your fingertips. And I definitely don’t let on how much all of this bothers the hell out of me.

The music is louder upstairs. I bang on the door and holler, “Mom says to turn it down.”

I’m hoping to retreat to my room, but—

“What?” Becca asks as she whips open the door. Her shoulder length brown hair is falling out of its usual ponytail and her cheeks are pink. “Charlotte’s teaching me a funny dance. I couldn’t hear you.”

Behind her, I catch Charlotte shimmying to the thick bass. Her slim hips move in a sweet, slow circle. She’s singing along with the music. I’m shocked by how effortless her song is, like a bird in flight.

Since I’m still not moving, Becca asks, “Did you want to learn?”

“God, no,” I say, but just as I say it the song ends, so my voice is extra loud in the hallway, crowding us all. “Mom just wants you to turn down the music.”

“Oh, sure,” Becca says as she’s closing the door. I tell myself not to, but before the door clicks shut, I crane my neck to catch one more glimpse of Charlotte swaying with the melody of the next song.

2.0

1
2
:38:17 a.m. I want to sleep, but my normally obedient brain will not shut up. I keep imagining myself striding into Becca’s room and sweeping Charlotte in my arms in some elaborate, yet terribly manly, dance move.

2:09:52 a.m. When Charlotte smiles you can see a small chip on the bottom corner of her central incisor. I wonder how it got chipped. It makes her smile even more appealing. She has a smile with a story.

I’m getting stupid with sleep deprivation.

3:14:15 a.m. Pi. It’s pi time. Is there pie leftover? What kind of pie does Charlotte like, I wonder? It’d be some unique flavor, like fig. Fig pie would taste like butt.

4:57:04 a.m. OhmyGodIamsotired.

6:00:00 a.m. I rouse myself from half-sleep to a zombie-like state that passes for awake.

6:20:15 a.m. I must have fallen asleep in the shower. Moving too slowly. I stare at my shaggy, sand-colored hair and decide it would take too much energy to comb it.

6:29:53 a.m. I’m leaning on the counter with Mom waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. She’s eyeing me, but not questioning me. When Mr. Coffee stops, she pours herself a cup and one for me. She drinks hers black. I give it a try and gag.

“That’s terrible.”

Mom laughs. “You’ll get used to it,” she says, adding lots of cream to mine.

I try another sip and grimace. “Seriously, how do you drink this?”

Mom shrugs and finishes her mug. “Sometimes, we do what we have to do to get by.” She fills her mug again and holds the carafe out to me for a refill. I shake my head and take one last sip. Blarg.

6:32:22 a.m. I’ll just have to kick James in the sac if he whines about being tardy today.

6:41:01 a.m. “You look like crap,” Greta says as I pull out of her driveway.

James snorts from the backseat.

I’m too tired to care.

Greta fiddles with the radio and tunes into a familiar song. My vision is flooded with a replay of Charlotte’s hips moving, pulling me into a chaotic world I have no chance of controlling—the world of hormones. I exhale like a gorilla just punched me in the stomach and reach for the dial to turn the station.

“Hands off, Chuck. I like that one.” Greta swats at me, defending her tune. I try darting around her, but she’s lead to my gamma rays.

I’m obviously not paying attention to the road. Which is how I end up driving into a garden.

In my defense, the road curves right in front of old Mrs. Dunwitty’s house. The road curved, and I did not.

“Chuck,” Greta screams, half in my lap trying to grab the wheel. My car has bumped up the small curb and laid tracks through the green grass, through a small decorative fence, and over some orange flowers.

I crush the brakes and fishtail in the mulch, spraying it all over the yard and ripping up a few more bushes of flowers. Once I manage to stop the car, it’s in the middle of Mrs. Dunwitty’s garden. There’s part of a rose bush on the hood.

“Everyone okay?” I ask turning to Greta and then James.

James’s eyes are wide, but his lips are set in a grim way. Greta’s hands are a little shaky, but she manages a sympathetic smile, until she notices the carnage. “Oh, Chuck,” she says on an exhale. “Look what you’ve done.”

I look at the yard. My stomach sinks to the threadbare floorboards. I’ve totally screwed up Mrs. Dunwitty’s garden—the same garden that has won her the coveted Yard of the Year award seven years in a row. It’s the only thing on this earth Dimwit loves. She loves her garden more than I love MIT.

Greta shoves at my shoulder, saying, “Go! Go tell Mrs. Dunwitty you’re sorry.”

“But we’ll be late,” I say, jabbing my finger at the digital clock on the dash. 6:42 a.m. The lines in the middle of the six and four don’t show up anymore so it looks like hieroglyphics. “I’ll stop by after school.”

“She’ll have called the cops. You’ll be in way more trouble. Do it now.”

I look at James for backup.

His muscles are clenched so that his square jaw looks like it’s made of rock, not flesh. Instead of agreeing with me, he nods at Greta who doubles her effort to shove me out of my own car.

“Fine. But when this old lady turns me into compost, I’m coming back to haunt both of your asses.” I can hear the final strains of Charlotte’s song still playing on the radio as I slam the car door.

Mrs. Dunwitty’s front door is painted a sickly shade of pink. The only reason she gets away with exterior pink paint (total neighborhood no-no) is she’s been here longer than anyone else. And she’s way meaner.

Dad grew up with her son. He’s witnessed her wrath. Once, her son neglected raking the leaves to go to a movie with Dad and some girls. She made her son pick up every leaf. One by one. By hand. Dad says she sat on the porch overseeing her sentence, calling out whenever he missed a leaf.

My hand hesitates by the doorbell. I peek over my shoulder and see James glaring at me. One false move and he’ll be out of the car and ringing the bell himself. I take a deep breath and press the button.

I hear the lock
click
. Before I can blink, Mrs. Dunwitty whips open the door, and stares out at me with hawkish eyes and a too-wide mouth that seems to stretch from ear to ear. She’s rail thin and about a foot shorter than me, so I try to stand in front of her so she can’t see the wreckage behind me. No use. She sees past me to her war zone-esque garden and starts shrieking.

“What happened? Did you see what happened?” She’s breathing fast and clutching her chest, her brown weathered skin turning ashen.

Oh, crap. She’s not going to kill me. I’ve killed her. I hadn’t seen that one coming.

“Charlie?” Her voice shakes.

“Um…” I stumble. My brain is telling me to lie. Lie real good.
Tell the woman you were on your way to school and you noticed some vandals had torn up her garden. Charles Mortimer Hanson = Good Samaritan.
“See, what happened was—”

“
You
,” she says, jabbing a bony finger at me. “You did this, didn’t you, you little shit?”

Too late. I blink away my surprise. My parents work with young kids so their vocabularies are pretty PG. I’ve never had an adult speak to me like Dimwit.

Mrs. Dunwitty pushes past me. “My beautiful garden. My roses.” The sagging skin on her arm flaps as she gesticulates and hollers. “My statuary. Dammit, Charlie, what kind of a jackass drives over an angel?”

I look over the garden and notice a small stone angel tipped over by my front bumper. One of her wings is lying in the dirt beside her. Bet God doesn’t like you to rip the wings off his angels. Now I’m dead
and
damned. “Yeah, see, I’m real sorry. I was driving and got, um, distracted and lost control.” My voice fizzles out.

Mrs. Dunwitty’s whole face is pinched in deep thought, like she’s seeing something I can’t. She mutters to herself. What I catch sounds like, “… won’t like this at all. Just the excuse he’s looking for.” I think she’s talking about her son. I know he checks in on her every so often, although why he’d care about her garden, I can’t figure. I’m sure she’ll fix it. The woman lives to garden.

When she looks back, I fight the urge to dodge the daggers in her glare. “I can’t do this alone.” I flinch away from the sharp edge of her tone. “You’ll fix this. Starting this afternoon. You’ll make this right.” She nods once before shutting the door in my face.

---

J
ames is still grumbling at me as we pull into Brighton’s student parking lot. The bulk of his bitching is out of his system though. For the last half mile, he’s been having an angry conversation all by himself.

“Don’t know why we put up with his shit,” he says.

“Cuz he’s got a car,” alter ego James replies.

“We don’t know anyone else with a car?” James v1.0 asks in a desperate whisper.

Back and forth he goes. Greta laughs, which snaps James out of his psychotic rambling. He flushes and runs a hand across the stubble on his cheek. “What? You know it’s a valid question.”

“True,” she says, her eyebrows pulling down low as she studies me.

“I said I was sorry,” I say, pulling into the first open spot in the lot.

Greta laughs again, but it doesn’t sound so nice anymore, like she’s laughing to cover her urge to punch me in the face. “No, you didn’t,” she says.

“He reckons he doesn’t need to,” James says. “God of numbers shouldn’t have to apologize to anyone.” He does a little mock bow with his head.

The god of numbers wouldn’t have crashed in the first place because the god of numbers wouldn’t have been trying to block out visions of a certain long-legged girl’s hips and how the skin there might feel under his fingertips. I scrub at my burning eyes, wiping away my exhaustion.

Screw James and his whiny bullshit. It was an accident. No one intends to drive over a foul-mouthed octogenarian’s prize-winning rose garden. No one
wants
to spend time sweating his balls off under the glaring eye of a demented grandmother, no matter what those Hallmark Channel movies say. Frustrated, I snarl, “Shut up, James. You think you’re Mr. Perfect? You can’t even piss off an English teacher.”

“My stuff
is
working.” James leans forward between the seats. “You couldn’t do any better.”

“Can too.”

“Can not.”

“Can—”

The car shakes with the force of the door slamming. “I’m the god of numbers, and
I
demand an apology!” Red hair dull against the morning light, Greta storms through the parking lot saluting us with both middle fingers.

James swears under his breath, grabbing his bag and following.

“James,” I call out after him, but he doesn’t turn around.