Love and Other Unknown Variables Read online

  Alone inside the school, I panicked and called Greta. Her mom called the police and met them here. Greta found me, catatonic by that time, in the storage room off one of the labs.

  If Greta hadn’t been there to pull me back from the edge, and tell me to stop being a whiny quitter, I’d have left school and given up on all my ambitions.

  Turning her attention toward James, Greta says, “You promise to stay focused.” She punctuates the sentence by poking him in the arm with a pencil she’s just pulled from her bag.

  “Hey, I’m focused.”

  Greta scoffs. James scowls at the apple he’s about to bite into. “Whatever.”

  Satisfied, Greta starts scribbling computations in her notebook while James rubs a bruise on his apple and mumbles loud enough for me to hear, “I’m focused. Focused on carrying out a proud high school tradition.”

  Brighton is a STEM academy. The mission statement, emblazoned on another plaque by the front office, states our time here is meant to prepare us for futures in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Our motto (yep, another plaque) is Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. Meaning, “I’ll either find a way or make one.”

  So, we’ve found a way to reduce the time we have to spend on things like poetry and literature by making the English teachers hate their jobs here. It’s not hard either. It only takes a little shove to start a ball rolling before inertia takes over. The constant tide of teachers means that little learning goes on in the English classroom.

  It’s a simple equation. No teacher = no English. No English = more time for things that matter. Like math.

  We take seats near the back of the English room. I study the bookshelves lining all four walls and crammed full of books. I don’t recognize any of the titles, which isn’t saying much. Above the bookshelves are paintings. Big ones of trees with people laughing as they hang in the branches. Small ones of books stacked neatly. Tall paintings with stacks of books in the act of tumbling over. Forty-two paintings. They are all different, but the same.

  Forty-two paintings, but zero teachers.

  At Brighton, class starts on time. In fact, the advanced physics teacher, Mrs. Bellinger, will write you up for tardiness for being on time. She says “on time” is late. James is in love with Mrs. Bellinger.

  “This does not bode well,” James says, preparing to launch into an assault on the English teacher’s lack of respect for timeliness. Greta shushes him by pinching his arm.

  And then, walking in, grimacing while wiping one hand on her skirt and carrying a spilling cup of coffee in the other hand, is this year’s target, Ms. Finch. She’s got long black hair and is wearing a knee-length black skirt and a white shirt open at the neck to reveal the creamy complexion of her throat. Let’s just say she doesn’t look like any of the other teachers here.

  “Sorry for being tardy,” the woman says. James chokes a little on his superiority.

  Ms. Finch swears under her breath as the coffee sloshes from the overfilled cup onto the hand clutching it. She switches hands and wipes the other hand on her skirt. Looking up at the twenty-two sets of eyes staring at her, she blushes.

  “I’ve been so…let’s just say I haven’t been sleeping well lately,” she says raising the coffee cup and spilling more. “Guess I was a little overexcited when I refilled.”

  Déjà vu sweeps over me. Where have I seen her before?

  No. Not her exactly.

  The girl with the hope tattoo.

  “Let’s get started. Better late than never,” she says. She pulls a stool over to her podium, picks up a small paperback novel and begins to read.

  I can’t tell you what she reads to us because I’m too busy finding all the similarities and differences between our new teacher and the girl in the donut shop. It becomes a puzzle, like the “Find the Difference” puzzles in Highlights when I was little.

  They have the same eyes and jet-black hair. This one is taller and older, but not by much. I wonder if she has a tattoo, and what it might say.

  When she finishes reading, Ms. Finch closes the book and looks out over us. “I’d like to begin,” she says, “by letting you all in on a little secret.”

  Students shift closer in their seats.

  “I know all about you.” She pauses to let that sink in. “I know you think your precious math and sciences have all the answers and what I have to offer”—she waves the paperback in her hand—“is useless. But you’re wrong.”

  There’s a faint hiss in the room.

  “There are some things in life that cannot be explained with logic. They cannot be understood through dissection. They are what they are—good, bad, or epically crappy. Sometimes they are all those things at once.” She walks up the center aisle as she speaks. Like lambs to the slaughter, our eyes follow her.

  “I know what you all do with English teachers here at Brighton. I know,” she says, turning at the back of the classroom to be sure she has our attention. “And I say: Bring. It. On.”

  1.4

  I toss my keys onto the counter as I walk into the kitchen. Someone is rummaging behind the refrigerator door for the good stuff Mom hides in the back.

  I assume it’s my younger sister, Becca. She’s a sophomore at Sandstone, although how she got that far, I’m not sure. She’s wicked smart, but getting good grades doesn’t motivate her. Mom swears Becca has an eidetic memory. There’s no conclusive evidence eidetic memory exists, according to scientific research, but Becca can recite almost word for word every book she’s read since she was nine. And she has seven overflowing bookcases in her room alone.

  “Dibs on the last Milky Way, Bec.”

  I hear a soft curse from inside the fridge. Becca doesn’t curse.

  “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” The girl with the tattoo closes the refrigerator door, then winces when she recognizes me, the doofus who manhandled her from the donut place.

  “You?” I glance around. Yep. In my kitchen. Did she follow me? No. That’s dumb. It was hours ago that we were at Krispy Kreme, even if it was only moments ago that I was thinking of her in English. I take in her simple purple T-shirt and the way her skinny jeans hug her calves. “What are you doing here?”

  “Getting a snack,” she says. Her inflection sounds like she’s choosing her tone with each word. She grins, deciding to play it cool. “Becca said I should help myself, and we don’t have any good stuff at my house.” She waves the candy bar like a magic wand.

  “Becca Hanson?” Becca doesn’t have friends. In fifteen years, she’s had three. One moved away when she was eight. The other two were imaginary. I am calculating the statistical improbability of Becca choosing this girl—of all the girls in our town, this beautiful, tattooed girl—to be her friend when Becca comes flying down the stairs.

  “Charlie! You’re home.” Her face floods with relief.

  “You have to meet Charlotte. She’s my partner for this project I have to do, even though I told Mr. Bunting I’m not good at group projects, because they include other people, and other people don’t like me.”

  Becca twists her brown hair around her index finger as she carries on. “He didn’t listen, and because she’s new in school and doesn’t know about the whole me and people thing, Charlotte said she’d love to work with me.” Becca’s voice wavers a little.

  It’s not that people dislike Becca. Rather, people make Becca anxious, and the anxiety makes her build these impregnable walls around herself. It also causes babbling spells that make mere mortals cringe. I haven’t seen her this upset since the Harry Potter series came to an end.

  She’s still rambling. “She said I should call her Charley instead of Charlotte, and I said, ‘No, because, my brother’s name is Charlie and it would be weird.’ And she said, ‘Okay.’ So, I’m just calling her Charlotte.” Becca runs out of breath and stops.

  I take a second to drink in this other Charley, from her glossy curls down to her once-white Converse sneakers, covered in Sharpie doodles o
f what appear to be feathers. That stupid déjà vu feeling steals over me again.

  Charlotte interrupts my inspection of her. “I like the idea of a new town and a new me. Charlotte is perfect. Back home I didn’t get a choice, you know? Charley is what my older sister calls me, so everyone followed suit.”

  Sister? It’s the last piece of evidence I needed to prove my theory. Forty-two paintings. The English teacher. Matching sets of blue eyes. This isn’t a doppelgänger coincidence. They must be related.

  “You look like my English teacher.”

  Charlotte’s smile tightens as she studies me. “You must go to Brighton, then. Impressive. And possibly useful.” She tosses the candy bar from hand to hand and says, “I’m Charlotte Finch.”

  Our eyes meet and she fumbles the candy bar. When she bends to retrieve it, I catch a glimpse of the tattoo.

  “Why useful?”

  “Possibly useful.” Her ink-stained fingers flit across the back of her neck. “Like you said, I can’t count on things I can’t measure.” The acidic inflection she loads onto the statement makes me cringe.

  “I just meant hope isn’t part of any infinite set.”

  One of Charlotte’s thin, dark eyebrows disappears under the fringe of hair on her forehead.

  I sigh. “Most people don’t understand infinity. It bugs me.”

  Charlotte nods. “Busybodies. That’s my pet-peeve.” She smiles. “Oh, and pets named Peeve.”

  Becca guffaws beside me. I’d forgotten about her. “This is my pet, Peeve,” she mumbles to herself. I notice that her finger is so twisted in her hair that she has to yank to get it out. Before she can do any damage, I help her unwind it.

  I can feel Charlotte watching me. It is both satisfying and horrifying.

  Once Becca’s free, Charlotte suggests they get back to work. Becca is just about to start with the hair thing again when Charlotte adds, “I’m in desperate need of something to read, and I couldn’t help but notice you have some great books.”

  “Sure,” Becca says, smiling. She doesn’t smile much, so it’s easy to forget, but when Becca smiles she looks like a whole new person.

  Charlotte flicks the candy bar at me with the warning, “Think fast.”

  I grab for it, but the Milky Way smacks me in the center of the chest and falls to the floor. Charlotte laughs, and it sounds like fingers dancing up piano keys.

  I know I should pick it up, but I’m frozen to my spot. When she laughed, something inside my chest shifted. I don’t know what it means, but it feels like I’ve got more room inside myself.

  It takes a few minutes after she leaves before I realize that she never told me how I might be useful to her.

  1.5

  I’ve spent today deflecting James’s repeated pleas for me to join forces with him to start the war against the English teacher.

  In computer programming, he gave a moving speech about brotherhood and camaraderie. He spoke of the oncoming tide of literature, and how we could stand by and be crushed by it or rise up and defeat it. He even tossed in a “Semper Fi.”

  At lunch, he tries to make me his superhero sidekick.

  “You have to help me pull off at least a few stunts. What would Batman be without his Robin? Superman without Lois Lane?”

  “I’m a Marvel fan, dumbass. And did you just call me a girl?”

  He’s quiet the rest of lunch until I cave and ask, “Why do you care?”

  His eyes kind of light up like coals burning low. “It’s a chance to leave a legacy.”

  “But I’ve already got a legacy. It’s called being the valedictorian.”

  Greta scoffs. “You wish, Chuck. I’ll be the one delivering that speech, thank you very much.”

  James sighs and traces the letters of the “why” on the apple tree plaque. He’s not in the top ten of our class. He’s number eleven, and not because he isn’t brilliant, but because he has other priorities that Greta and I don’t, like spending time with his sisters. I sometimes feel like I only think about my sister when she’s right in front of me, but James is always thinking about his—whether they are safe, did they eat their lunches at school, what they got on spelling tests…

  “Fine, then,” James says. “It’s not about the legacy. It’s about us doing something together this last year before we all go to college.”

  Greta’s smirk falls away.

  James’s father passed away six years ago when James was eleven. Greta has explained to me that James’s frustration over people leaving him (both actual and hypothetical) can leak out in strange and surprising ways—like, if he could trap us all in a biodome to keep us together forever, he would. I guess this need of his for us to band together against the English teacher is another of those ways.

  Greta squeezes his knee. “We’ve still got all year together.”

  “Yeah, man. A year is a long time,” I say, trying to be encouraging. “Twelve months, fifty-two weeks, three hundred sixty-five days, eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours—”

  James holds up a hand to stop me. “But this would be something that when we’re old we could look back on and laugh about. Together.”

  Greta’s eyes soften. “I’d make a pretty kickass Batwoman, don’t you think?”

  James’s face brightens with the smile he gives her.

  I snort, and Greta raises a brow at me, daring me, as always, to challenge her. I stuff my trash in my lunch sack and mutter, “I’m no Boy Wonder.”

  1.6

  I take my seat beside Greta in English and glance at my phone: 2:59:21 p.m. I’ve got bigger worries than James now that I’m about to face Ms. Finch. I’m afraid of what Charlotte may have told her about me.

  Hey, I met one of your students yesterday, sis.

  Oh, which one?

  Charlie Hanson molested my neck in the Krispy Kreme and then told me hope doesn’t exist.

  I don’t want to give Ms. Finch the chance to engage in some parameter-setting discussion involving Charlotte. A discussion like, “Don’t ever touch my little sister again.”

  That’s why I timed my arrival for thirty-nine seconds before the bell.

  I shouldn’t have worried about a lecture though, because Ms. Finch isn’t even here yet.

  2:59:45 p.m. and James hasn’t showed up, either. James is fifteen seconds from being tardy.

  At 3:00:52 p.m., Greta looks at me like I’ve done something wrong. “Where is he?”

  Just then, the English teacher walks in, cup of coffee in one hand and a paperback in the other. Technically, she’s late, but not as late as James.

  Ms. Finch takes in the room with one long, sweeping glance and instructs us to, “Shut your traps and listen up.”

  Greta looks stunned for a second before Ms. Finch smiles.

  “It’s what my dad used to say each night before he’d read a bedtime story to my sister and me.” She opens the paperback as I try to ignore the unbidden vision of Charlotte in lingerie looming in my mind’s eye. I calculate square roots to squelch the boner threatening to embarrass me in the middle of English class.

  3:01:14 p.m. and still no James. This is remarkable. For a millisecond, I think maybe he’s hurt. Maybe he went to the restroom between classes, slipped on someone’s misdirected piss, and knocked himself unconscious on the lip of the urinal. It could happen.

  3:03:32 p.m. He’s three minutes and thirty-two seconds late. James is dead in a boys’ restroom.

  Greta grasps my arm and squeezes, hard. I look up from the phone and see James strolling into the classroom at 3:03:36 p.m.

  He’s smiling at us, but as he enters his face shifts, jutting out his chin and cocking one eyebrow into an impressively high arch. Greta groans. “Oh. Dear. Lord.”

  James’s normal gait disappears, too. He is now walking like his left hip is dislocated and swinging his right arm at an awkward angle. He swaggers past Ms. Finch’s podium and comes down the center aisle, nodding greetings at the gaping students all around him, even holding his hand up fo
r Tobias Quartell to slap him five. I’ve never seen anything like it. Neither has Tobias, whose mouth is as wide as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

  I can’t help noticing, too, that everyone’s eyes travel back and forth like a tennis match from James’s strange display to me. Like I’m somehow in control of him. Like if I think it’s cool that he’s acting like a wannabe thug from the suburbs, then we should all support him in his stupidity.

  Throughout this bizarre scene, Ms. Finch doesn’t stop reading. James makes a huge production of scraping the legs of his chair across the floor and dropping his textbook-laden bag on the desk with a thud. Still no response from Ms. Finch.

  Defeated, James flops into his chair. Moments later, Ms. Finch finishes the passage she’s reading. I glance at my phone. 3:05:06 p.m.

  “Mr. Hanson?”

  I freeze. Twenty-two sets of eyes burn into me.

  “Please be sure your phone is on silent and put away. I believe that is the policy at Brighton?”

  I look up in shock. This is the issue she’s choosing to address? I catch Tobias’s curious expression and think I’ve found an ally until he gives me a sly grin and a nod. What the hell?

  I shove my phone in my bag and mumble a “yes, ma’am.” Heat pulses through my ears like a heartbeat.

  James drops his head into his hands like he’s disappointed his stunt didn’t get a reaction, but the rumbling chuckles that follow tell another story.

  After class, I walk silently beside Greta as she shreds James for his “asinine, embarrassing, culturally deplorable display of stupidity.”

  “Maybe if someone had helped.” James gives me a light shove, toppling me into a locker.

  “Easy, man.” I rub my elbow and jog to catch up, but Greta stops mid-step and I have to sidestep to avoid crashing into her, essentially throwing myself into another locker. James grins.

  “I’m still not convinced this is the best way for us to spend our senior year, J,” Greta says, ignoring me as I rub my elbow and shoulder. She places one of her small hands on James’s enormous bicep and looks him in the eye. “There are plenty of other ways to spend quality time together.”