Love and Other Unknown Variables
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
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