Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love (4 page)

Frosty takes my thumb gently between his teeth and gives it an approving shake. Matthew returns and looks happy to see Frosty so contented in my lap.

Happy enough to decide he’s actually madly, deeply, and X-cellently in love with me?

This Kitten is about to find out!

Here’s the part where I can pretend that Matthew heard me out, threw his arms around me and proposed, or at least asked me to the junior prom two years in advance. The Blissful End and fade out!

Or, here’s the part where I can get all
Alice in
Wonderland
and swear that Frosty actually leapt up between Matthew and me and spoke aloud, in a piping little bunny voice:

“Felicia! Matthew! My dear, sweet humans! How nice that you two, who are obviously and indisputably destined to be 2-gethah-4-evah, are finally discovering what we in the rabbit realm have always known! That the key to making happy burrows, which some call X, is quite simple, obvious really, but can only be attained by—Whoops! I’m late! I’m late!”

But that’s not exactly what happens.

What does happen is this:

I look into Matthew’s eyes, still feeling Frosty’s encouraging teeth on my thumb, and I open my mouth, and out come words. They’re clumsy, mumbled words that communicate, if you can make them out, some vague sense of an amazing phenomenon that demands to be understood, one of those ideas so self-evident that it’s easy to miss, and clichés of that ilk.

“Cool,” he says, unfazed by my idiocy. “What is it?”

“It’s, uh, love,” I hear myself say.

“Love. Whoa,” says Matthew. “That’s big.”

“It is. That’s why I want us to work as a team.” My newborn voice is gaining some balance and starting to spread its folded, wet wings. “On their own, poets have only gotten so far on the subject of love, and they’ve mostly been describing the symptoms. And science, basically, is—”

“Primarily concerned with breeding,” he mutters as Frosty hops from my lap to his and starts chewing a button on his flannel shirt.

“Exactly.” I can see that Matthew’s mental wheels are starting to spin. But before I can continue, he interjects.

“It’s too broad a topic. It needs focus. A place to start.”

“We start with me,” I say simply.

“You?”

“Me. And you.” Matthew sits up a little straighter, now actually confused. Frosty starts climbing up his chest and sits on his shoulder.

I lean forward. “Matthew, here’s the thing.”

Okay, here it comes, here’s the thing. Breathe in, breathe out. “I have a huge, huge crush on you. I have for months.” There, I said the thing. “And this crush I have on you—it’s really fascinating!” I choose my words with care, working hard to keep this phenomenon of ME BEING TOTALLY (OHMIGOD I’M TELLING HIM!) IN LOVE WITH MATTHEW DWYER! in the realm of scientific inquiry. “I mean, you’re a great guy, of course, any girl might reasonably have a crush on you,” I go on, reasonably. “But there are so many guys at school! So why you? Why me? How does this type of thing happen?”

Matthew’s not screaming, or laughing, or running away. My pal Frosty’s nibbling on his hair, which I take as a very good sign.

I build up to my big finish. “Based on the amount of poetry, literature, art, and song that explores the nature of love, I think a lot of people would be dying to get some answers. Now,” I conclude, with a touch of drama, “it’s time for science to pick up the ball.”

Matthew gently removes Frosty from the back of his neck and puts him on his lap, stroking his cloud-colored fur. He doesn’t look at me at all, he just pets Frosty.

Who winks at me. (I swear, he really did.)

After ten eternal seconds of no sound at all but the contrapuntal breathing of Love-Struck Kitten, Bewildered Dawg, and Genius Rabbit, Matthew finally looks at me.

“I think we could win the science fair with this one” is what he says.

4

The Scientific Method Swings into
Action as Matthew and I Exchange
Homework Assignments

When Poet tries to correlate her Data,
She picks a form of verse that won’t frustrate her.
The Sonnets get iambic with her Theorem,
Which hap’ly scans; she has no need to fear ’em.
Blank verse is best for the Hypothesis,
Because nothing rhymes with it.

I
magine, if you can, the Kittenshrieks of shock and alarm, rapidly giving way to amazement and (if I may say so!) grudging admiration, as I tell Jess and Kat what transpired under Frosty’s watchful eye.

Imagine my mom’s efforts not to WIG OUT when I explain that I will be working on a Very Special Science Fair project this year, and with whom. She actually puts her hand on my forehead, like I’m sick or something.

Imagine and then we’ll move on, because Matthew and I have a LOT of work to do. X is not going to reveal its identity without a fight!

(And I hope you enjoyed the poetic snippet above, because that is the LAST poem you will be hearing from me for a while. I am a Scientist now. I even told Mr. Frasconi I was taking a break from writing poems till I found my New Perspective, though I will still drop by for friendly Mister Mastor Mentor chats because we’re pals.)

Over cups of chai tea at the Moonbeam Diner, Matthew explains to me that the scientific method has several steps:

Make observations.

Form a hypothesis based on your observations.

Make predictions based on your hypothesis.

Do experiments that test your predictions. If they work, you have discovered a Law of Nature and can win valuable prizes! Dinner for two at the Marriott, a convertible sophabed, or even the Nobel!

See, this is the sneaky, underhanded way they educate you at the Pound. You think you’re slacking off, drinking tea and mooning over Matthew in the Moonbeam, but actually you’re learning the scientific method. Sneaky, sneaky.

Our first step, make observations, means we must Observe the phenomenon we want to study and Describe what we see. I thought we could start with a basic review of the entire body of literature, poetry, and art pertaining to love since the beginning of time, just to get warmed up. But Matthew, insightfully, pointed out that this would take us probably the whole rest of our lives, and the science fair is in April. He also thinks it’s best to focus on stuff that’s actually happening in front of you, or that can be verified by primary sources (meaning the people who were there). See how smart my DeductiveDawg is?

As our mugs are refilled by one of the Moonies, we narrow down our fact-gathering objectives to the following list:

A: PRIMARY PHENOMENA OF LOVE

Felicia’s crush on Matthew

Matthew’s not-crush on Felicia

B: SECONDARY (AND HISTORIC) PHENOMENA OF LOVE, VERIFIED BY PRIMARY SOURCE INTERVIEWS WITH:

Our friends: Kat, Jess, Randall, Jacob

Our parents

Miscellaneous Wise and Cooperative Adults Who Might Have Something Interesting to Say About Love: Mr. Frasconi, et sweatera.

Jacob, by the way, is Matthew’s other best Dawgbuddy besides Randall. Jacob is just getting back from Los Angeles, where his way-famous actress mom was opening in a play. Who knew they even had plays in Los Angeles?

Jacob is a bit mysterious but extremely well mannered, a deep Dawg with his own personal style. Jacob, get this, plans to be a professional sitar player one day.

Tea in mugs and list in hand, Matthew and I settle on some basic ground rules for our research.

We decide to conduct the interviews as a team, since one of us might unwittingly skip over stuff we already know about our Kitten- or Dawgpals or our own parents, and then the other one would not get to Observe and Describe the skipped-over stuff.

We decide to make Jacob our first interview subject, since he just got back from the Coast, baby, and Matthew wants to see him anyway and find out about his trip to La-La.

We also decide that, in order to maintain some secrecy about our project (ever since MIT, Microsoft, and NASA started sending talent scouts, the science fair at the Pound has been getting a bit competitive) and also because we are really loving this chai tea, we will have as many strategy meetings as possible here at the Moonbeam. We like this table, too, because of the way it catches the light at this late-afternoon hour and because it’s not wobbly. We discuss the fact that we both hate wobbly diner tables.

And then, after a few moments of awkward silence, during which we each stir our sweet, spicy tea in slow circles and stare into the milky fortune-teller’s swirls:

“So, I guess—” begins Matthew.

“—we should start—” I say, too quickly.

“With us. Like you said,” he finishes. “You. And me.”

And right then, our Moonie comes back with the check and we both look at her T-shirt and see the weird-shaped moon pictured there, and at the same time we say, as if we planned it but of course we didn’t,

“Gibbous!”

And crack up so very hard.

Yet another reason why I’m CRAZY IN LOVE with Matthew Dwyer!

OBSERVATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF
FELICIA’S CRUSH ON MATTHEW, OBSERVED
AND DESCRIBED BY ME, FELICIA!

When I think about Matthew I sometimes lose track of time and space. For example, I might become convinced that we are toasting marshmallows over a bonfire on the beach on a starry summer night, laughing at jokes that only we understand, when in reality I’m waiting on line at Duane Reade to pay for some contact lens fluid for my mom and Clearasil for me, and register three is open and I’m just standing there like a dork.

When I think there’s a strong likelihood that I might see Matthew, I become urgently concerned with whether I have hat hair, and how my most recent meal may have affected my breath. Hat hair is not so much an issue in the warmer months, but breath is always with us.

When I’m around Matthew I often wish I were wearing something other than what I am wearing, though I don’t know exactly what that might be. All my clothes are basically the same.

The most bizarre aspect of having a crush on Matthew is how it makes even the most ordinary details about him seem unique and perfect. Generally speaking, all boys have hair, eyes, limbs, and speaking voices. Many have hobbies, at least some basic level of intelligence, and a rudimentary sense of humor. But seen through the adoring lens of my crush, Matthew’s attributes in all these areas AND MORE are transformed into the Platonic Ideal of each, and I can accept No Substitutes!

The Platonic Ideal is a notion taken from Plato, that clever and ancient Greek, that there is basically a perfect version of everything floating somewhere in the big sky of human consciousness. I have just explained this to Matthew, who’s better informed about bunny brains than he is about philosophy.

“Like Frosty is the Platonic Ideal of a rabbit,” I add helpfully. Matthew looks over my essay again (“Felicia’s Crush on Matthew,” see above). His essay about me, still unread, lies on the park bench next to us. A fierce round of rock-paper-scissors determined that he would read mine first.

There were no tables at the diner, so we’re in Madison Square Park, bundled in our coats and gloves, with take-out chais from Starbucks. Jacob will be joining us momentarily for his interview, and in the meantime we are exchanging the homework assignments we gave each other on Friday, before leaving the Moonbeam:

Felicia, Observe and Describe Your Crush on Matthew.

Matthew, Observe and Describe Your Not-Crush on Felicia.

Somewhere in the difference between the two, we feel, we will start to pick up the trail of X.

Matthew peruses my essay with a frowny, serious expression. “Your clothes are fine,” he says abruptly.

“I know! It’s irrational,” I say. “That’s the whole point.” We each sip our tea. Gluttonous, multicolored pigeons are pecking away at the crumbled saltines somebody threw on the ground in front of our bench.

“And I wouldn’t even notice if you had hat hair.”

“Matthew,” I say, sensing his cluelessness. “Haven’t you ever had a crush? It makes your mind do strange things.”

“I can see that,” he agrees, looking at the paper. “Temporal and spatial disorientation, heightened sensitivity and self-consciousness. Distorted judgment.” He winces. “Is it painful? It sounds pretty unpleasant.”

The pigeons suddenly take off with a coordinated flopping of their semi-useless wings as Jacob skids to a stop on his Razor scooter right in front of us.

“Matthew, dude!” he exclaims. Jacob is always blond, but now he’s really tan and his hair is bleached platinum by the sun and ratted into little funky-whiteboy dreads. “And gracious greetings to the Lady Poet.” He bows to me, medieval-courtier style.

“Nice melanin production, Jake,” says Matthew, standing up and giving Jacob one of those back-slapping guy hugs where they bump chests but their faces never get near each other. “How was the trip?”

“Oh, dude, my sweet mama is such a nutcase when she’s opening a new show. I pity her anxiety. Whoops, apologies, Mr. Cracker!” He’s just stepped on the last of the saltines. “It was cool hanging out on the beach, though, playing my sitar. The good people of La-La were totally appreciative.”

“That’s nice,” I say.

“It’s because their spirits are all malnourished from the filthy air and soulless Hollywood vibe,” Jacob says, smacking his arms to keep warm. “You guys wanna go on the swings?”

We gather our ’bucks cups and our backpacks. I take special care to slide Matthew’s essay into a safe spot in my notebook so it doesn’t get crumpled.

There’s a small playground at the uptown end of Madison Square Park. Unlike us Free Teenage Children of the Pound, who can wander wherever we like as long as it’s relevant to our project du jour, the little kids are locked up in classrooms during the day, daring each other to eat paste and learning how to fold cootie catchers. So we’ll have the swings all to ourselves.

Jacob is a virtuoso of the Razor scooter, doing hairpin turns and popping ollies and weaving in between horrified senior citizens at incredible speed. He circles and swerves around me and Matthew as the three of us head toward the swings. This makes his voice cut in and out, so I can’t hear all of what he’s saying.

“You should swear off the ’bucks, man—
something
—the mallification of America—
something something
—corporate java mind control —something something something —a caffeine-laden tool for global domination— Oh, this is cool, people. Watch this.”

Jacob accelerates on his scooter and jumps off it directly onto a swing, landing on his belly and arcing through the air as the confused Razor crash-lands against the fence.

He flips over onto his butt and starts whooping and pumping his legs and having a grand old time. It seems the only way we’re going to get any interview material from Jacob is to take to the air. Swings make me queasy, but science is not for wusses, as I’m beginning to learn.

It takes a while to calibrate our swinging so we’re all moving forward and backward in unison.

“So, Jacob!” I yell. “What’s your experience of love?”

“I love New York, baby!” he crows.

“That’s great, buddy,” shouts Matthew. “But we mean love, love. Romantic love, FM-radio-love-song love.”

“You mean love with chicks?” Jacob says as we all pump our legs.

“Sure! If that’s the way you swing!” Matthew says, making us snort with laughter.

“There was this one girl,” yells Jacob. “She was it for me, I mean IT. I will never, ever”—we’re all getting breathless now—“ever, find someone as perfect as her.”

“Who, man? You never mentioned a girl,” says Matthew.

Jacob stops pumping, so we do, too. “She was riding the L train,” he says, sounding wistful. “I watched her put on her lip gloss all the way from Lorimer Street to Eighth Avenue, even though I was supposed to change at Union Square.” We’re slowing down, down, down. “Then she got off the train. She was wearing orange sneakers. I will never see her like again.”

“When was this?” I ask, trying not to sound suspicious. Frankly, I am not sure this qualifies as a Love Phenomenon. And that seems like quite a lot of lip gloss.

“Seventh grade. Ah, the folly of youth.” Jacob seems genuinely sad.

“Could be time to move on, bro,” says Matthew, not unkindly.

“No doubt, no doubt.” Jacob has stopped swinging and scuffs the ground with his big Great Dane–puppy feet. “Loving the wrong woman can lead to calamity, for sure. You should see the play my mom’s in. She gets peeved at her ex and like, burns his new wife to a crisp with acid, and then, like that’s not enough mayhem, she grabs a knife and utterly Tarantinos these two little kids they had together. It’s a gorefest, man. It’s mad violent.”

“That’s tragic,” says Matthew.

“That’s
Medea,
” I say.

“Exactly,” Jacob says. “Only with TV screens and stuff. It’s a modern version. Mother Thespian got some excellent reviews. The dude from
Variety
thought she had ‘ferocious clarity.’ ”

We all agree that having ferocious clarity sounds extremely cool, as Jacob retrieves his scooter.

“Sorry I couldn’t be more, whatever,” says Jacob. “But I applaud the wild and unrealistic ambition of your project.”

“And, hey, sorry about the L train girl,” says Matthew. “It’s a loss. But you’ll survive.”

“No, Mattski,” says Jacob, suddenly quite serious. “Think Eastern for a minute. It’s not the loss that leads to suffering. It’s ego, man. It’s the fact that Miss Orange Sneakers did not even notice me falling in love with her. To me, during those like, twelve precious minutes we were in each other’s lives, she was the, what is that expression? The crème de la plooz, you know, the people’s choice, the best of the best.”

“Ne plus ultra,” I fill in.

“Right. But to her, I was just another nameless face on the L train. If she even saw me. I gotta live with that, you know,
ordinariness
. That’s painful.”

Matthew looks at me. “Oh,” he says. “Is
that
the painful part?”