This Is My Brain on Boys

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  Condor. Kara found it impossible to call anyone by their real names. For the first few weeks after she met Mack, she called him “Slack” before Kris suggested, ever so politely, that she knock it off.

  What he didn’t mention was that he’d actually written to Tess’s mothers when he returned from Nepal asking them for donations to help the orphans there. Their publicist had responded with a nice handwritten note thanking him for his interest and promising to forward his request to the couple. A month later, his organization received a huge check. Really huge.

  He should have set Kara straight about Tess’s mothers from the get-go. He should have told her about the check they wrote and the supportive emails that followed. While he was at it, he might have stopped Kara and Mack’s plans to vandalize the lab.

  Vandalism had never been part of the plan. In fact, neither Mack nor Kara had ever mentioned destroying anything. The idea was to free the animals. That was it. Clean. Simple. Innocent. Release the mice from their cages and the frogs from their tanks so they could scamper to freedom. And after listening to Kara’s horror stories, how could he not be on board?

  “Do you know what they do to the frogs?” she explained as they sat cross-legged on her dorm room floor, strategizing. “It’s almost too awful to describe.”

  Kara was still furious over what she’d witnessed the semester before when she took anatomy and physiology. She claimed she couldn’t sleep or eat until she stood up for those poor, defenseless animals.

  “In anat and phys you need real muscles to test sodium and potassium reactions, okay? That means you have to kill the frog in the lab. First, you stun it.” She mimicked slamming the frog’s head on a table. “And it lets out a little croak.”

  Kris’s heart flipped. As a kid growing up in rural Connecticut, he’d loved to watch tadpoles swim around vernal pools as the miracle of evolution revealed itself stage by stage. Fins turned into legs. Gills closed. The tadpole became a frog and crawled out of the water onto the mud. And he fell asleep at night with the windows open, listening to the cacophony of the bulls singing their mating chorus. “They take them to a guillotine,” Kara continued. “No joke. Like Marie Antoinette. You put the frog underneath it and push down the blade and . . .” She drew a line across her throat. “That’s what they do to frogs. Don’t even get me started on the cats.”

  The cats came preserved. Bags and bags of them to be dissected by the upperclassmen. Fetal pigs—“yanked from their mothers’ wombs at the slaughterhouse”—were also splayed on dissecting boards, pickled in formaldehyde.

  “The Academy is so backward,” Mack said angrily. “Other schools have stopped torturing animals. Kara’s right. If we don’t do something major, nothing will change.”

  It wasn’t until Kris witnessed Mack going berserk, spray-painting random, violent images, smashing beakers in a rain of glass, swinging a baseball bat into terrariums, and almost—until Kris stopped him—tossing a laptop into the moray eel tank, that he realized it had never been about frogs or gerbils for Mack. It was something else.

  But Kris didn’t find out about that until it was too late. And now, here he was being condemned to a summer of hard labor and community service to pay for what had started out as a seemingly worthy cause.

  “Mr. Condos!” Foy called.

  Kris snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”

  “Come here. I want you to meet our visiting students.”

  Tess pivoted slowly. “Kris? What are you doing here?”

  “Mr. Condos has been to China and speaks fluent Mandarin. Isn’t that true?” The headmaster waved him into the gazebo.

  “I don’t know about fluent,” Kris said, nodding to the exchange students.

  They nodded in return.

  Tess introduced the girls. “This is Mindy and Fiona.” The girls smiled.

  “Hi,” Mindy said shyly.

  “You guys learned English really young, right?” Tess said. “I wish I’d learned another language.”

  Fiona butted in. “Yeah, I’m planning on majoring in hospitality so I can travel the world and run international hotels.”

  “Ooh, like the one I stayed at on Moofushi Island in the Maldives. The water is gorgeous,” Tess chimed in.

  “It’s awesome,” Fiona said. “We stayed in a grass hut at the same place, a . . .” She searched for the right word.

  “Villa,” Tess prompted.

  “. . . that was over water with fish and sharks underneath. And the diving and . . .”

  “. . . snorkeling?” Tess suggested.

  “Yes. It was another world. Ever since then, all I want is to run a hotel in the Maldives with its endless white beaches and crystal-blue water. It would be like working in paradise.”

  “I hear that,” Tess said. “You’ve been around the world. You, too, Kris, right?”

  Kris remembered Mack bragging that it cost his parents $30,000 for a week at a Maldives resort before plane fare, which tacked on another $10,000 since his mother refused to fly that distance in anything but first class.

  “I want to be a doctor,” Mindy said.

  Tess jumped in with mock dismissal. “As if that’s anything to shoot for.” She and Fiona laughed, but Mindy looked confused.

  “It’s a compliment,” Kris said.

  When she still didn’t respond, he tried again in Mandarin, adding something about how being a doctor was far more noble.

  “Oh!” She covered her smile. “Thank you. Yes. I’ve always wanted to help people.”

  Tess gestured to the two boys. “And this is Sam and Jack.”

  They bobbed their heads curtly. Sam pulled up the zipper of his blue Windbreaker and said, “It’s noon, we should go.”

  “Riiight.” Tess glanced at Mr. Foy, who was talking to Jack. “We’re supposed to have lunch with the headmaster in his private quarters. Are you coming, Kris?”

  He was about to answer when Mindy said, “What about Harvard?”

  “Harvard’s on Friday, remember?” Tess said.

  “But I have to go to Harvard today.”

  Fiona put a reassuring hand on her arm. “It can wait,” she said in Mandarin. “He’ll still be there.”

  “I hope so.” Mindy pouted. “There’s no point to this trip if we can’t see each other.”

  That was odd, Kris thought. Just when it crossed his mind that, perhaps, he should let someone know what the girls said, Mr. Foy clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m afraid I can’t accompany you to the lab this afternoon. Go see Dr. Brooks. She has your assignments.”

  Tess whipped around, red hair flying. “You’re going to the lab?”

  “I guess so.” He felt a thin film of sweat on his upper lip, a Pavlovian response to her last lashing. “And I better be going.” He checked a wristwatch that wasn’t there.

  “Yeah. You’re almost two freckles past a hair,” she quipped. “Wait. I need to talk to you. Alone.”

  Again? “I got the message already,” he said as Foy led the students across the squishy lawn.

  “This is a new and improved message,” she said. “Look, I’m sorry for being hard on you back at the airport. I was just being protective of Addie after what you and your girlfriend did to her last spring.”

  He ran a hand through his wet hair. The rain had mostly stopped, but it was still drizzling. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. I get too involved in other people’s business. Ed’s always telling me to butt out.”

  Honestly, he was wet and cold and he just wanted to get someplace dry, even if was in Dr. Brooks’s office being read the riot act. “We can talk later.” He thumbed behind him. “I have an appointment with Dr. Brooks. And if I don’t make it . . .”

  “Addie’s not very good at reading people,” Tess interrupted, as if he wasn’t speaking. “She takes things at face value.”

  “Yup. I got that.” He tried stepping backward.

  But Tess grabbed the sleeve of his sweatshirt and pulled him toward her. “I think she rea
lly likes you and wants you two to hang out . . . which is unusual. She’s not normally that way.”

  “Well, we kind of went through hell and back on that flight.” He tried wrenching free, but Tess McGrew had the talons of an eagle. “Imminent mortality has a way of bringing strangers together.”

  She released him abruptly. “Yes, I know. Interesting. So you were scared?”

  “Um, the plane lost an engine, there was smoke in the cabin, we dropped fifty feet in a matter of seconds, the woman next to me was giving herself last rites, and I started hyperventilating.” He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head as an ominous black cloud drifted by. “You might say I was more than uncomfortable.” What was Tess after? He felt like he was on the witness stand and she was the prosecutor.

  “And how did Addie react?”

  He shifted feet, trying to remember. “She read. And we talked about the brain. That’s what got me through the turbulence, actually. There was something about the way she speaks that’s so logical it was kind of . . .”

  “Calming,” Tess finished for him. He got the impression she did that a lot. “Yeah. I’ve had the same experience. She’s the yin to my yang or the yang to my yin. Which is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Yin balances out yang and vice versa.”

  “Uh-huh.” Tess seemed lost in thought. Kris wondered if he could go without her sinking her claws into him.

  Nope.

  “One last thing,” she said, grabbing his sweatshirt again. “What were Mindy and Fiona talking about in Chinese?”

  “Mandarin,” he corrected. “I don’t know exactly. Going to Harvard, I think. There’s some guy . . .”

  “Oh, no. I knew it. David?”

  “David? Um.” Kris scratched his head, feeling slightly uncomfortable, as if he was snitching. “They didn’t mention a name.”

  “The tour group leader said that under no circumstances are we to allow Mindy to meet up with David at the Harvard summer session. Their parents have both forbidden it.”

  “And this is relevant to me because . . . ?”

  Tess wagged a finger. “Because you better make sure that if you hear anything of a meeting with David that you tell Mr. Foy immediately. If Mindy runs off with David or whatever, it could cause an international incident. For real. Her dad’s a diplomat. Like, the president would have to get involved.”

  Kris almost burst out laughing, it was such an absurd concept. “Isn’t she fifteen? That’s a little young.”

  “Sixteen next week. Haven’t you read Romeo and Juliet?” Tess frowned when he started laughing at that. “It’s not funny, Condos. You’re in hot enough water as it is. If you add aiding and abetting an international kidnapping, forget ever coming back to school. Foy will throw you in prison.”

  She hoisted her bag over her shoulder, flashed him one more stern look, and trudged to the administration building, leaving Kris to wonder if the entire world had gone crazy—or just him.

  SIX

  The Agnes B. Whitchurch Marine Biology Laboratory—aka the Whit—was tucked into the cliff overlooking the roiling Atlantic Ocean and happened to be exactly a 10.5-minute walk from Addie’s dorm room in Wren, provided her forward progress was not impeded by unexpected, if well-intentioned, interlopers.

  Tess said it was more polite to refer to them as “friends.”

  An hour alone in her room, sorting, organizing, and cleaning, had done wonders to settle Addie’s brain. First, she had unzipped each item of clothing from its individual Ziploc bag and placed them in drawers or hung them in the closet.

  Then she arranged her toiletries by necessity and size in her plastic caddy and took them down the hall for a quick shower to rinse off the grime of the airport. After blow-drying her hair, she combed it smooth into a ponytail and applied special sunblock to her face.

  Once again, she contemplated makeup. Tess said she should at least try a little mascara and subtle eyeliner. Even just a swipe of lip gloss. Addie understood the technical advantages of these enhancements, the way they tricked the viewer’s caudate nucleus into imagining that the eyes were a perfect 63.5 millimeters apart, that glossy lips created a perception of health and, therefore, reproductive potential.

  Would Kris find her more attractive if she enhanced her features as a parasite-free partner? That, after all, was the purpose of blush, though perhaps not a selling point Clinique would choose in marketing its Cheek Pop line. Still, she would have to research extensively in order to select the best products, a prospect that left her feeling slightly overwhelmed.

  Addie caught herself. What did she care whether Kris found her attractive? She hardly knew him and she definitely didn’t want him as that kind of friend. Maybe in fifteen years after finishing her PhD at Oxford, but not now. Boyfriends demanded too much time and energy, every last bit of which needed to be devoted to earning a full scholarship to Harvard—or a school of similar quality. (MIT would do in a pinch.)

  Hmm. If she was developing feelings for Kris, then perhaps her amygdala had been temporarily damaged during the adrenaline rush of turbulence. She would have to review the literature. Somewhere there was an answer to her sudden interest in mascara, and if there wasn’t . . . she would devise an experiment to find one.

  She brushed her teeth and changed into a royal-blue tank top and white skirt. Blue was her calming color and she rarely deviated into the more alarming reds and oranges so adored by Tess, who also preferred greens, despite their tendency to trigger feelings of jealousy and envy in the subconscious of others. Addie had warned her of this, to which Tess’s response had been an illogical “Excellent!”

  After making up her bed, tucking the corners in tightly, she ran a tube of ChapStick over her lips, hooked her computer case over her shoulder, slipped her feet into a pair of ballet flats, and was about to head out when she spied the tiny bottle of perfume Tess had bought for her in Paris. Why not? she thought, spritzing a little on her wrist and taking a sniff.

  Instantly she was transported to a flower garden of lilies of the valley. Smell was the most interesting and primal of the senses—instantly recalling the most vivid experiences: freshly cut grass on a summer day, wood smoke in winter.

  She debated formulating an experiment measuring brain waves as they reacted to various scents, especially unusual smells to which those brains had never been exposed. Then again, the Whit didn’t have the necessary equipment. That would be another benefit of winning the Athenian, the chance to get to use a CT scanner.

  Pushing open Wren’s heavy wooden front door, she crossed the quad to the stone wall that edged the cliffs and bordered the path down to the Whit. The morning’s storm had swept away all the humidity and made everything green, sparkly, and invigorating.

  Fierce waves crashed against the rocks below as seagulls swooped and dove into the blue-gray water. Addie inhaled the fresh sea air deeply into her lungs, since it might be hours before she was outside again. She tended to lose all sense of time when she was working in the lab and was often surprised to find when she left that day had somehow become night.

  Footsteps pounded down the path. Lauren Lowes, one of the school’s best field hockey players, ran past in blazing neon-green sneakers, her face bathed in sweat.

  “Hey,” she said, doing a double take and backing up. “I wanna talk to you.”

  “We are talking,” Addie said. “Are you okay?”

  Lauren was squeezing her side and grimacing. “I’ve got a stitch, dammit. Sucks.”

  She reminded Addie of a Russian ballerina. Slim with blond, almost white, hair pulled into a bun, she ran with the grace of a gazelle—but displayed the manners of a long-haul trucker.

  “You should exhale when your left foot lands,” Addie said. “For some reason, it prevents ERTAP.”

  “What’s that?” Lauren leaned against the wall.

  “Exercise-related transient abdominal pain. Is that why you wanted to talk?”

  “No. I wanted to ask what you were doing giving
Kris Condos a ride?”

  Addie stiffened. “You saw?”

  “I was in the gazebo when you guys got out of the car this morning. I was like, what the . . .”

  “Honestly, it’s no big deal.” Addie flipped her ponytail in an effort to come across as unfazed. “We sat next to each other on the plane and Ed and Tess were picking me up, so . . . Yeah.” She adjusted the computer bag on her shoulder. “Are you ready for our experiments?”

  At the end of last semester, Lauren had answered an advertisement Addie posted on the Academy’s virtual bulletin board looking for volunteers to participate in “behavioral science studies” for extra credit. Having bombed AP Bio, Lauren was doing everything possible to bring up her GPA, including retaking the class over the summer and participating in Addie and Dex’s experiment.

  “I guess.” She began walking, still clutching her side. “Not quite sure what I’m supposed to do other than show up. We start tomorrow, right?”

  “It depends,” Addie said, keeping pace. “We still need one more guy. That’s what we’re meeting with Dr. Brooks about in a few minutes. She apparently found another”—Addie reconsidered the euphemism lab rat—“participant. Once he agrees, we’re good to go.”

  “Who else is there?”

  “Alex.”

  “Do I know him?”

  I hope not, Addie thought. “Doubtful. He’s just here for the summer. I haven’t met him, but Dexter has.”

  Dexter had solicited (roped in) Alex Tavarez, a rising junior back at his prep school in California who was working at the Academy as a summer PC and assistant boys’ lacrosse coach. He, too, was looking for extra credit. Between their athletics and difficulties with science, Alex and Lauren would make an ideal pair, a factor the Athenian Committee should appreciate when they analyzed the experiment’s equanimity.

  If all went according to plan, Lauren would be as equally attracted to Alex as she would be to the other volunteer at the start. Then the fascinating part would begin. Which guy she ultimately chose would depend entirely on the B.A.D.A.S.S. system. While it had worked flawlessly on Tess and Ed, the Athenian guidelines mandated that the same result had to be replicated. If it wasn’t, they were screwed.