This Is My Brain on Boys

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  “I bet she’s never even been kissed.”

  Addie’s cheeks burned. This was so not true.

  But that wasn’t the end of it. What they said next hurt the most.

  “I heard that a bunch of PETA types last year spray-painted nasty stuff about her on the wall of the lab and got kicked out of school for vandalism.”

  “Really?” Another rinse and spit. “What did they write?”

  “I don’t know, but they destroyed all the lab walls. Can you believe it?” This resulted in two peals of laughter that echoed off the tiles.

  Addie’s stomach flip-flopped.

  “That. Is. Harsh,” Bree said.

  “I know, right? But if I’d been her, I’d have left school.”

  “Seriously.”

  Addie hung her head, the water running over her body, dripping off her chin and shoulders along with a fresh set of hot, salty tears. The only reason she hadn’t left the Academy was because she didn’t want to go home. It was worse there, the way the kids stared when she constantly raised her hand in class. It was as if wanting to learn was gross.

  When she got to the Academy, she felt like the ugly duckling meeting her fellow swans. Everyone raised their hands. The weird ones were the people who didn’t participate. Class discussions were fast and furious and often heated, with teachers urging them to push the boundaries in how they thought about the most basic facts.

  What makes prime numbers so special? If the universe is not infinite, then what’s beyond it? Why is there “stuff” and where does stuff come from if energy can be neither created nor destroyed and there wasn’t nearly as much “stuff” around one hundred years ago as there is now?

  If she’d asked these questions back in her old school, she would have been laughed out of the classroom. So, yeah, going home was out of the question.

  Tess often promised that things would get better. With the seniors from last year graduated, that was one less group who knew her. Also, memories faded and, ultimately, people were more preoccupied with themselves than others.

  Lately, she was beginning to see what Tess meant. Since she’d returned to school a few days ago, no one had mentioned the graffiti or the vandalism, aside from Dexter, though that was to be expected with Kris popping up in their experiment. Everything was going just swimmingly, until . . . tonight.

  The door slammed. Addie startled and tried to pull herself together. She could not let the summer students see her crying; she’d never live it down.

  It helped if she could analyze her emotions from a purely biological perspective. Tears, for example, were such strange phenomena, with no evolutionary purpose aside from a temporary emotional release—unlike straight-up lacrimation, wherein the lacrimal gland between the eyeball and eyelid produced moisture. She pondered the three types of tears—basal, reflex, and psychic—until the production of acetylcholine subsided along with her heart rate.

  More composed, she dried off, ran a comb through her wet hair, brushed her teeth, and regarded herself in the mirror. She wrapped herself tightly in a fluffy blue towel and padded down the hall to the safe seclusion of her single room. Except that when she opened the door, she found she wasn’t alone.

  “Hey. I hope this is okay.”

  Oh, god, it was him.

  Kris was sitting on her bed holding two pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Her PEA switch kicked into overdrive.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, pulling the towel snugger.

  “Hazed & Confused?” He held up one pint. “Or Chunky Monkey? Both are ridiculously full of awesome deliciousness.”

  “Um.” She inched toward the safe refuge of her closet.

  “I checked, but they were fresh out of fried agave worm.”

  “Excuse me.” With that, she shut the door of the closet and felt around in the dark for the nightshirt she kept on a hook. Throwing it over her head, she undid her towel, stepped into a pair of underwear, ran her fingers through her hair, and reappeared.

  Kris’s glance flicked to her nightshirt and then up just as fast. “I love Hello Kitty.”

  She examined her shirt. “You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely not. I am a big fan of pink-themed cat logos.”

  “It was a gift last year from my mentee.”

  Placing the two pints on her desk, he said, “What did you mentor her in?”

  Addie slipped a notebook under them so the water wouldn’t ruin the wood, and sat on the bed. “Organic chemistry. I don’t know why she was having trouble. Those carbon molecules are so much fun to build. They’re like toys.”

  “You might be onto something there.” He pulled a scoop from his pocket and cracked open the Chunky Monkey. “K’Nex for the gifted child.”

  That was a good idea.

  “Anyway,” he continued, digging into the ice cream. “I’m sorry if you felt like I was razzing your shirt. You should see what I wear to bed. Ripped boxers.”

  The image made her slightly faint as she watched him produce two white bowls and thin metal spoons from inside his maroon Andover hoodie. “Did you steal those from the cafeteria?”

  “Steal?” He opened the Hazed & Confused. “More like short-term borrowed without signed authorization.”

  She was doubtful that such a form existed. “That’s a joke, right?”

  He handed her a bowl with a scoop of each. “Right. You’re catching on. We’ll have a belly laugh in no time.”

  “It’s better than your duck and aardvark one,” she said, nudging a frozen walnut.

  “And pig. Don’t forget the pig because he has the balloons!” Kris recapped the pints, sat on the bed, and looked at her expectantly. “Usually at this stage of the game, most people would say thank you.”

  “Thank you for bringing me ice cream after breaking into my room.”

  “Touché!”

  Actually, after her crying jag in the shower, it was nice to have him there. What had Bree called him? Oh, right: heaven.

  He waved the spoon absently. “The thing is, I wouldn’t have had to break into your room if the school hadn’t turned into a prison. Since when did they close the dorms at ten?”

  “Since the summer students required a curfew.”

  “Which I discovered when I buzzed the front door and Tess answered. She told me to go around back where your window was and try to get hold of you that way. It’s not like I have your cell number, and . . . I was worried. That was pretty freaky out there, what happened to us. Wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  Addie was truly touched. “Thank you for your concern. I’m fine. How about you?”

  “Good. Is there any reason why you’re all the way over there?”

  She scooched down from the head of the bed to where he was sitting, by the foot, and went rigid. Him being in her room in violation of curfew and eating Chunky Monkey was so risky! They could get caught at any moment and all hell would break loose.

  The headmaster would summon her into his office and lecture her about being a lousy role model Assistant PC. Tess would be appalled that she was eating ice cream after eight p.m. when there was absolutely no chance of burning off the calories before sleep. And Dr. Brooks . . .

  . . . better not to imagine how mad Dr. Brooks would be.

  “Ice cream makes everything better, don’t you think?” Kris said. “I figured maybe you could use some after capsizing tonight. That water was freezing.”

  “No, freezing is zero degrees centigrade. By my estimation, the bay was roughly 12.778 centigrade, which would have lowered our core body temperatures to—” She couldn’t finish because Kris had shoved a spoonful of banana-chocolate yumminess into her mouth.

  “Sometimes, Addie, it’s nice to just sit together and eat ice cream. In silence.”

  She swallowed it in one lump and paid for it with the stabbing sensation of an instant ice-cream headache. “But I like to talk.”

  “I know you do.” He smiled and took another spoonful. “What do you
want to talk about?”

  She massaged her forehead. “Your ambitions.”

  “My ambitions? I was thinking more along the lines of why the Red Sox suck so bad.”

  “Because they have no reliable hitting and their bullpen has been decimated.”

  “Oookay. Guess we can put that to rest. So you want to know my ambitions, huh?” He stared at the ceiling, tapping the spoon on his knee. “Well, my short-term goal is pretty simple: get back on Foy’s good side, do better than I did on the May SATs, up my GPA next semester, and go to school out west, like California. Major in Asian studies. Then, bam, back to Nepal!”

  “Won’t you miss your family?”

  “Yeah, but . . .” He hesitated, as if about to say something. “Nah. I’ll save it. What about you?”

  “My family is of a non-nuclear structure.” One more bite of ice cream. “Dorrie, also known as my mother, is a wildlife biologist who travels all over the world going from grant to grant. She’s hardly ever home. My father remarried a younger woman and they have twin daughters who require as much time and attention as my stepmother’s closet.”

  “So you’re kind of out of the picture.”

  “No. I’m in the family pictures—in the back. I stand behind my stepsisters because I’m taller.”

  Kris closed his eyes. “What I mean is, you’re pretty self-sufficient, so your parents can ignore you and not feel guilty.”

  Guilt. He was obsessed with it. “They never feel guilty.” She crunched on a fairly large piece of dark chocolate. “They act like I don’t exist.” As soon as she said that out loud, she felt a little sorry for herself.

  “Oh, Addie. That blows.” He slid his bowl onto the desk and put his arm around her. She stiffened. Kris was warm and smelled of dried kelp from the bay.

  “You know what I secretly loved the most about Nepal?” he said, still holding her. “Not the mountains or the people, though, don’t get me wrong, they were awesome. It was the aloneness. No cell. No internet. It was like I’d slipped off the face of the Earth.”

  “Earth doesn’t have a face,” she began.

  “It’s an expression.”

  He laughed, turned to her, and they clicked. For what seemed like eons, she was lost in his deep-brown eyes. They were like tractor beams drawing her to him.

  She wiggled free and concentrated on her nearly empty bowl, willing herself to get back in control. “You are going to the dance Saturday, right?”

  He bent his head toward hers. “If I go, will you dance with me?”

  “God, no!”

  He flinched. “No?” The tone of his voice made it sound like she had hurt his feelings. Or maybe he was teasing. “Why not?”

  “I can’t, because . . .” Wait. She couldn’t tell Kris that she needed to see him interact outside the lab with Lauren. And yet, it was vital to her coursing emotions that they didn’t. It was so confusing!

  “Um, because PCs aren’t allowed.”

  “What? That’s stupid.”

  “I know. School rules. We have to be chaperones.” She shrugged like it couldn’t be helped. “Anyway, you have to go to the dance. The headmaster has made it mandatory.”

  He stood and stretched so high his fingertips grazed the ceiling. “I have to go to the dance because I’m on cleanup, so I’ll probably only show up at the end.”

  This would never work with Lauren. He had to be there at the beginning. She watched him shove his two pints, bowls, and spoons under his hoodie. “You could come earlier,” she said.

  “Nope. No point if I can’t dance with you.”

  “What if I found a way to sneak in one quick dance?”

  He zipped up his bulging jacket. “Then maybe. Hey, I gotta go before I turn into a pumpkin.” Then, without a thought, as if it was second nature, he leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek before opening the window and disappearing into the night.

  Addie fell back on her bed and listened to his footsteps crunch across the gravel, reminding herself that a personal relationship was a nonnegotiable, don’t-even-go-there possibility.

  She touched the spot where he’d kissed her, and sighed.

  The next morning, much to her relief, Addie was back on schedule: A run on the beach at five a.m. Shower at 5:45. Blow-dry at 5:55, followed immediately by hair in ponytail, a slathering of SPF 50, and her hiking outfit, a white T-shirt and trail shorts. Technically they were gray, but also with enough of a denim-blue hue to quell her anxiety.

  She was in the lab by 6:10 and had finished reading the paper on spindle neurons by 6:45 and writing up her own Athenian presentation five minutes later. There was one more experiment to run on Brad and Angelina—whether their behavior changed depending on their choline levels—and then it was off to breakfast.

  At 8:15 a.m., she went to the café to meet Tess for iced coffee, oatmeal with almond milk, and one half of a sliced banana. It was the only breakfast she ate. Ever. Tess arrived right on Tess Time at 8:30. Fifteen minutes late, like clockwork. And, as usual, too flustered to consume anything but caffeine.

  “Crisis alert!” Tess gave her latte a squirt of liquid death. “Tay and Bree’s new weapon in their campaign to make their roommates’ lives hell is to call each other at three a.m. and talk really, really loudly. It’s totally unfair to Emma and Shreya.”

  “So watching TV at Thwing as one big happy family didn’t work, huh?”

  “Made it worse when they walked out.” Tess tossed her stirrer in the trash. “I was up all night dealing with their complaints.”

  Addie took a sip of black coffee. “Unpalatable!” She reached for the half-and-half and dumped in a good-sized serving.

  “Are you sure you want that much?” Tess inquired.

  “Fat is excellent fuel for the brain. Why not put them together?”

  “Brain and fat?”

  “No. Bree with Tay and Shreya with Emma. That way everyone would get the necessary eight hours of sleep.”

  They left the café, Tess pushing open the door with her shoulder. “Giving in to their manipulation would defeat the purpose of a summer session. Tay and Bree are from the same town. They’re supposed to branch out and meet new people.”

  She waved cheerfully at a group of her PCs lounging on the grass.

  Addie followed behind, sipping her coffee. “Meeting new people is overrated.”

  “No, it’s not. How can you say that?”

  “The Broca’s area in my cerebral cortex signals my lips to move.”

  Tess laughed and did the waving thing again as another group of summer students passed by.

  This time, Addie attempted to join in with her own halfhearted hand flapping. In response, the students put their heads together and whispered conspiratorially. Maybe they’d heard about her, too.

  Tess said, “Smile. No one likes a grump.”

  “They’re talking about me, that I torture animals.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “It’s true.” She walked deliberately, eyes averted. “I try not to let it get to me, but one cannot always control one’s own synapses.”

  They stopped in front of the library, where Tess was scheduled to meet up with the exchange students. Today, finally, they were going to Harvard, complete with a tour of the campus, a special lunch with a representative from admissions, and shopping in Harvard Square. Mindy was going to be thrilled.

  Tess pulled herself onto the brick wall to wait. “What’s up with you this morning? Did something happen last night—I mean, besides the shark attack?”

  “I got only five hours and twenty-three minutes of sleep.”

  “Ah. And . . . ?”

  Addie opened the lid of her cup and downed a cube of ice that she then crunched. “Do you think I should give makeup another try?”

  Again, Tess laughed. It was her “adorable” laugh, the one she used with small children who were being cute and when Addie was being . . . Addie. “You swore off makeup when you got pinkeye, remember?”

  “T
hat’s because you used violet eyeliner with carmine in it, and carmine is made from cochineal extract, which is made from the ground shells of the female Dactylopius coccus beetle, to which I am allergic.”

  “Ooookay. So we’ll avoid the bug kinds. For Saturday night, I’m picturing you in a pale blue dress, so those colors would clash anyway.”

  Addie was flabbergasted. “How did you know I wanted to wear makeup for the dance?”

  “Um, because you wouldn’t wear it to a lab?”

  This seemed to be more of a question than a statement, which Addie could parse for only a second, since the exchange students were approaching. “Do you think if I wore makeup, people would stop calling me weird?”

  Tess cocked her head sympathetically. “Oh, honey. Something did happen last night, didn’t it?”

  “Not really.” Addie didn’t want to mention the incident in the bathroom—no telling how Tess might react. “Aside from Kris showing up in my room with ice cream.”

  Tess arched an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Don’t act like you didn’t know. You told him to go around back to my window where, in fact, he attempted anti-defenestration.”

  “Anti- defene . . . wha?”

  “Defenestration.” Addie finished the last of her ice. “To exit through a window, the Latin word for window being fenestra. Ergo, to enter through a window would be the opposite of that. Hence the anti.”

  “Whatever. Who cares? Kris brought you ice cream! How sweet is that?”

  “Too sweet. Have you ever read the sugar content in Chunky Monkey?”

  But she couldn’t hide her smile. She’d been replaying last night over and over, how he teased her about the Hello Kitty nightshirt and complimented her on being brave. How he kissed her cheek.

  And though it might come across as catty, she took secret delight in knowing that Tay and Bree would have killed for Kris Condos to climb through their windows. (Even if they were on the second floor.)

  A shot of pain radiated through her shoulder as Tess hit her with a hard punch. “Look at you!”

  Addie rubbed the spot on her arm. “What?”

  “You are totally into him.”

  “I am not.” She went toward a recycling bin to toss her coffee cup, but Tess slid off the wall and rounded on her, peering at Addie like she was trying to read her mind through her eyeballs.