Kissing Ezra Holtz (and Other Things I Did for Science)

by Brianna R. Shrum

  “What?” I say. It comes out more forcefully, more annoyed, than I mean it to. Ultimately, he hasn’t done much wrong. He thinks he’s in love with me and there’s no way he is, but how am I going to fault him for that, I guess? He didn’t have any faith in me. Made the totally jackass move of having a full backup because he expected me to screw everything up, and that . . . well. It doesn’t feel great.

  But I can’t be too pissed about that either. Because I did screw things up. I’m frustrated with him—what else is new?—but I guess more than anything, I’m furious at myself.

  For eight billion different reasons. And that is why my What comes out more like a WHAT.

  Ezra doesn’t flinch. I don’t know why that’s attractive.

  He just stares down at me and says, “I’d like to talk with you.”

  “Now?” I blink up at the clock in the hall. “We have two minutes until the bell rings.”

  “After the presentation. After school. I’d like to come over and talk with you. Is that something you would agree to?”

  He’s so formal, but it doesn’t sound stilted; it’s sounds smooth. Practiced. It sounds like one of the hundred versions of Ezra Holtz I have come to intimately know over the years.

  I say, while my mind processes that thought: “Not today. I have a family thing. Tomorrow?”

  He scrapes his teeth over his lip.

  “My parents are going out, but we can light candles at my place if that’s something you’re concerned about.” I’m sure he is. Tomorrow night is Shabbat.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

  He runs his hand through his hair, and that gesture is so breathtakingly familiar to me now that it actually aches. Like I’ve lost something when he disappears into the classroom just as the bell rings.

  Even though I didn’t lose it; I never really had it to begin with.

  I’m thinking all of this over while I walk into the classroom.

  While I sit at my desk and unpack everything we need for the presentation, while I watch Ezra walk in that long, confident stride to the front of the classroom and hand in our paper. We’ve worked our asses off on it, given up countless nights compiling data, wrestling with our differences (and well . . . each other, depending on the mood) and now here we are. Everything is over and life can rewind back to normal.

  But I can’t keep my eyes off him, can’t stop rehashing him looking up at the stars and saying, casually, like it’s nothing, I’m in love with you, Amalia. I can’t stop thinking about the way he’s made me feel and wondering how on Earth it was Ezra Holtz who was responsible for all of this. Wondering what he meant, what he was actually feeling when he made that confession and how it’s all going to topple down.

  Wondering how, if we did decide to make a run of this, we would get through it without murdering each other.

  Not that it matters, not that it’s relevant, because it’s not going to happen.

  I just . . . it can’t.

  Not with someone like him, and someone like me.

  The teacher introduces us and tells me as I walk with Ezra up to the front that he’s glad I’m feeling better.

  I nod and force a smile and clear my throat. Face my classmates.

  I talk slow because I chatter when I’m nervous and I need to do well. For Ezra.

  For me.

  I want to slow all of this down anyway. Want to experience us as partners before he comes over tomorrow and we really, finally end things.

  I say, “We did our project on an updated version of Arthur Aron’s The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness. A study that posited that anyone could fall in love with anyone, if they got to know each other well enough.”

  Ezra clicks to the next slide and cuts in, “We made our own set of questions intended to generate intimacy in the same way Arthur Aron did, and matched up volunteers based on what we determined to be factors of compatibility.”

  We go through the traits we chose that might deem a couple compatible. Our methodology as far as determining those factors, the questions.

  My stomach hurts, not because I’m nervous about public speaking. That’s the number one fear of Americans, above death, even, but it’s never really been one of mine.

  My stomach hurts because as Ezra goes down the list on the screen, question by question, I realize I know every single one of his answers. I know the smell that makes him the happiest (petrichor—when rain falls after a dry spell), I know his very worst memory (his best friend, Moshe, was in a car accident in the eighth grade and died. I remember standing beside him in services while he chose to say kaddish, even though he didn’t have to. I remember the time right after it happened when Ezra showed up at youth group, and I was the only one dragging behind when we all left the room to go do who knows what, and wound up basically alone with Ezra and he just broke down. That was maybe the first time I ever touched him on purpose. I had forgotten that specific touch, but I remember it now). I know if he could change one thing about the way he was raised, what it would be (he would have siblings). I know that his favorite thing about himself is his passion, even though I never would have read that on him before, but now it’s so obvious. It’s so obvious that it always should have been obvious. He cares about things. About people. Deeply.

  We are up here presenting on our findings and my brain is now working out where exactly, and to whom, that passion might extend. It’s working out whether Ezra Holtz could possibly be in love with me.

  Worse than that . . . it’s not working out if I’ve fallen in love with him.

  It’s working out when.

  I blink when it becomes clear that Ezra has been waiting for me to speak for a moment. He’s ready to jump in, I think, to take over when it’s clear I’m lost in thought.

  But he doesn’t.

  He waits for me.

  I clear my throat. “As for the ultimate findings,” I say, “our first couple is still a couple. They claim to love each other. They seem compatible and happy and the intimacy established through the experiment seems to prove Aron’s—and our—hypothesis. Our second couple is no longer together romantically. While there is some attraction still reported, it was determined by the subjects that friendship was where their relationship made the most sense. Both respondents, however, claimed, when asked, that it was absolutely fair to say they loved each other. Not romantically, but in a very real platonic sense. As for our third couple, they did nothing to prove our hypothesis, as they hated each other from the beginning, and they hate each other now.”

  “Sometimes,” Ezra says, “getting to intimately know a person really doesn’t help if you hate everything you find out. Even with the failsafe of mirror neurons and empathy that the staring for four minutes into one another’s eyes was supposed to generate.”

  There’s a low wave of laughter from the class.

  “I’ll point out for the record,” I say, “that it was me who insisted on matching that couple. Ezra maintained that it was doomed to fail.”

  Ezra smiles smoothly for the class and says, “She’s right.”

  “Mark that down on the calendar,” I call back before I think about it, “I’m right.”

  Ezra glances at me and he looks surprised. Caught entirely off-guard. He fixes his face in an instant and turns back to the class, and I am left with my pulse crashing under my skin.

  Ezra says, “While the results of the study weren’t uniform, it did begin to prove that emotional intimacy, while it may not always generate love—”

  “Even compulsory intimacy,” I cut in.

  “Yes,” says Ezra. “Even when it was circumstantial, it does generate strong emotional connection, positive or negative.”

  “Which really,” I say, “is the basis of love.”

  Ezra meets my eyes when I say it, and I stutter. As the class claps politely and I stand there frozen, and so does he, all I want is to leave. Right here, right now.

  But then . . . maybe all I want to do is stay.
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  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Observation: In nature, family bonds are observed as oft-beneficial tools for physical safety and thus the perpetuation of the species. All precise functions of the family unit, particularly when said family unit may be risky (as in the case of lions eating their young, or in the case of my trying to quietly exist while Ben ruins all our hearing with outdated Irish punk) are unclear.

  In cases unlike the lion, in cases of family units that weave together in emotional and physical support, the lengths of such bonds are unquantifiable.

  But relationships function like they do for a reason.

  I cannot quantify everything I get from mine. But god, am I glad they exist.

  Irish punk and all.

  I pull in the driveway after school and I don’t know if I’m glad to have had the excuse not to see Ezra tonight or frustrated.

  I have a solid couple hours of homework (AP classes are the devil) ahead of me, so it’s probably a good thing. If I knew he was going to be here tonight, I wouldn’t be able to focus.

  I can barely focus now.

  Who am I kidding—I can barely focus enough to get all this Smart People shit done when I’m totally neutral.

  Ben would slap me upside the head for calling it Smart People shit and say, “Smart People shit was made for you, dude.”

  Maybe not Smart People shit.

  Motivated People shit.

  People who know how the frick to manage their heads and time because they haven’t skated by on the least possible effort for eleven years shit.

  I sigh, and I kill the engine.

  I head inside.

  I don’t even say hi to my family, because I can’t afford to get caught in any conversation that might hold my interest for more than fifteen minutes. If I start talking, I’ll use it as an excuse to stay talking and then I won’t finish my chem homework, or I’ll employ my second most typical strategy which is: do everything at four a.m., turn it in in a state of total disarray, and walk away with a C. B, maybe.

  It takes all my self-control to shut myself in my room, and more than that to actually open my AP chem book, but I do it because I know once I start, I’ll actually be interested. It’s so bizarre to actually care about this kind of stuff now that I’ve forced my eyes to open to it, but I do.

  I open the book.

  I flip to the section on bonding, and my brain clicks on after five minutes. This—this is how I know this is the right call for me, major-wise. My mind doesn’t do this in literature, it doesn’t do this in bio, in algebra. I skate through those things like everything else, and by skate through I mean barely. I mean, even now that I’m trying, I sleep through all of them.

  This, though, I guess I really do enjoy it.

  Who knew a person could like more than one thing?

  I work on chem, on bio, on lit, everything but psych because I finally have a break. And when it’s through, I head upstairs where the whole floor smells like maple chile chicken. Spices and sweet. Kaylee is roasting some green beans in the oven, and I just stand there for a while and inhale.

  I miss being a part of this.

  I barely have the time to be right now; it’s like I haven’t even left for college and I’m already practically gone. But it’s okay. At least Thanksgiving break is coming kind of soon and then I can participate with everyone again.

  This is temporary.

  It’s for something I need.

  It’s okay.

  “Hey, stranger,” says Dad.

  I set the table for something to do with my hands, to make myself feel like I’m participating in family dinner beyond eventually consuming it, and sit at the table.

  Mom dishes out the food and everyone eats, and I relax.

  Man. I had no idea until just now how freaking keyed up I’ve been.

  “You feelin’ okay, Molls?” says Ben.

  I shrug and say, “I’ll live.”

  Kaylee says, “Too much studying will rot your brain, you know.”

  I roll my eyes but I’m smiling. “You’re one to talk.”

  “Please.” She tosses her long, shiny hair out of her eyes. “As if I need to study.”

  “Okay, nerd,” says Ben, and Mom laughs, and it’s nice. That even when my life is in flux, when Ezra is a complete massive question mark and I love my best friend but can’t always tell if we’re good for each other, when school is a jumble of questions and uncertainty, when I’m so stretched thin by eight thousand responsibilities that I can barely participate in our life, I still have this.

  This. My people are always the same.

  I relax.

  I breathe.

  I eat.

  After dinner, we pile on the couches and watch The Last Jedi for the ninetieth time, and after the third time that Dad insists he wasn’t sleeping, he was just resting his eyes, and Kaylee is passed out so deeply that she doesn’t even wake up when she flops off the couch and onto the floor, I head back into my room.

  Books are all over the floor, college apps stuffing my computer with window after window, most of which read: Submitted. I’ve sent in apps to a few state schools, a few community colleges—backups and slight reaches. I can’t go far enough to finish out any kind of advanced chem degree at a community college, but I could at least snag a number of gen eds, prove I can work, then move forward if I need to.

  I have options.

  I can make a career out of science. I can take a few classes in art, minor in it. I don’t know, that art restoration route is looking better and better all the time. Maybe . . . maybe later I double-major; who knows.

  But right now, this is the plan.

  And it’s . . . honestly? It’s okay.

  I play with the hem of my oversized night shirt and consider going to bed. Even step toward it. Then I feel a tug in my chest. One I haven’t felt in a long time. Not over the pain of it.

  But it’s there, pulling. Hard. Hard enough I can’t go to sleep.

  I turn toward my easel and pull out a blank canvas.

  It’s after eleven, it’s a school night. But I don’t care.

  I get out my supplies and sit in front of the easel.

  For the first time in months, I paint.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Pre-Experiment Hypothesis: Love is predictable. If a specific set of factors of compatibility, and stimuli that generate levels of intimacy, are employed, then love can be created. Predicted. We know there is a formula; it is not complicated, when it comes down to it.

  Post-Experiment Conclusion: We don’t know shit.

  Friday night, my parents are out. Ben is hanging out inside somewhere, probably playing video games or something, and Kaylee is with him, probably making fun of his video game addiction while simultaneously getting totally sucked into the story. If she hasn’t already, by the end of the night, she will have snaked the controller from him and commandeered the whole thing.

  I am thinking about this, about familiar patterns and things that calm me, because Ezra will be here any minute.

  We haven’t texted since Thursday, except for me saying: whenever you get here, just meet me at the treehouse

  And Ezra responding: Okay.

  That period freaks me out. Who knew a piece of punctuation so tiny could bring forth so many tonal possibilities?

  I’m so anxious, way more than is characteristic for me. I just . . . I wish I knew what was going to happen tonight. Wish I had any clue at all which way this was going to shake out. Wish I had . . . control.

  I hear the dull hum of an engine, the putter as it dies. My heart jumps up into my esophagus.

  I dig my nails into my palms then loosen, dig then loosen. My stomach is swooping and hollowing and tightening.

  I hear Ezra’s feet crunching over the leaves.

  Oh god.

  Here we go.

  He raps his knuckles on the tree and I say, “Come up.”

  He climbs.

  Pops his head into the treehouse then hoists himself u
p and in, and for seconds, neither of us says anything.

  We just . . . stare.

  I don’t know what to say or how to say it. It’s not like we’re fighting, really. Not like we broke up because we were never together to begin with.

  Not like either of us is furious or something; we’re just . . . frozen.

  Hovering in limbo.

  Who is supposed to talk?

  I look at his jaw, the sharp cut of his cheekbones, those black-framed glasses I have grown so used to, his slightly too-long hair. My pulse is racing.

  Ezra cracks first.

  “Amalia, I just . . . I need you to know that I didn’t have a whole project backed up.”

  That is not what I expected him to say.

  “What?” I say.

  “Just—I didn’t. I started my own stuff way back when we began this whole thing, before we’d started to really work together. When you showed up hung over to study with me, and that guy was inviting you to more parties and you seemed down for all of it. I didn’t—yeah. I didn’t trust you, and why should I have?”

  I wrinkle my nose but don’t interrupt.

  “I realized the more we worked that you actually did care and I had you all wrong, and I stopped. I swear. What I had was bare bones, nothing close to what you churned out. It was shitty of me, maybe, to make a backup in the first place, but I swear it wasn’t because I didn’t have any faith in you or something. It was because I didn’t at first. And I was wrong.”

  “Well,” I say. My throat is dry. I make a valiant attempt at swallowing. “Not that wrong. I messed up.”

  He runs a hand through his hair, brushes his fingers over his glasses on the way, like he does when he’s nervous. “It’s forgivable.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You did something we all do. I was pissed at the time, but you pulled through, and our grade is going to be fine. I just—I couldn’t stand you thinking I’d basically been lying to you this whole time.”

  “Okay,” I say. I blink outside, where the sun is just beginning to set. “Is that it?”