This Is My Brain on Boys
Page 23
“I mean, alone.” He exhaled deeply. “I’ve been kicked out, Addie. I’m done. I signed the letter of expulsion this morning.”
A lump rose in her throat. Even in her emotional muddle of heartbreak and self-pity and anger about last night, she didn’t want him to leave. “What did you do wrong this time?”
He smiled lopsidedly. “Dexter’s crabs. I kind of set them free.”
“Again?”
“And then I rigged the wiring to give him a shock when he put his hand in the water.”
She gasped. That was truly horrible.
“Don’t worry,” he added quickly. “I installed a ground fault interrupter so he wouldn’t be electrocuted and used enough resistors to keep the shock mild.”
“You should have been expelled for that.”
“Yeah. I know. But Dexter was trying to screw you over. Also, those crabs. How would you like to be them? The way he kept shocking them was sick.”
The image of Dexter stamping his foot as it dawned on him that his tortured crabs had been stolen caused her to experience the strangest of reactions. It was like a hiccup, except the spasm didn’t affect just her diaphragm. Her whole body convulsed.
“You freed his crabs!” she blurted. “Where did you take them?”
“To the beach right by the docks. They zoomed straight down, shock free. Couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
“I bet.” By now, she was in full hysterics. Wrenching, uncontrollable waves of laughter were overtaking her whole body.
“You’re laughing!” Kris exclaimed.
“I know,” she said, gulping for air. “I’m not a gelotologist . . .”
“Jell-O-tologist?”
“Gelotology is the science of laughter.” She took a breath. “But that fall must have destabilized my left superior frontal gyrus, because now I can’t stop. And also, before Mr. Foy rescues me, I have something to confess.”
“Wait. Is this some concussion thing?”
“Nope.” Her chest heaved as she tried to regain composure. “I got you back for trashing the lab. And I got you back good, so we’re even. Shake?”
He took her hand but didn’t shake. “Hmm. Definitely a brain injury. You don’t believe in revenge, remember? You told me that once.”
“You’ll see at my Athenian Award presentation. I’m going to reserve you a front-row seat.” Then she pulled him to her, with a deep long kiss, because this time it was her turn to call the shots.
As she’d been doing all along.
EPILOGUE
The Brain Adrenaline, Dopamine, and Amine Synthesis System (B.A.D.A.S.S.)
by Adelaide Emerson
as delivered to the Athenian Award Committee
on October 14 at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Athenian Committee, it is an honor and privilege to be standing before you today as a nominee for the very prestigious Athenian Award. As each of you has been provided with a copy of my research as well as video footage of the interacting couples from my three experiments, it is inefficient to restate what has already been stated.
“Instead, I would like to use this opportunity to update you on the couples’ progress since the submission deadline, starting with the first couple, who, for the sake of anonymity, I have labeled Ted and Bess. Although Ted was informed of the experiment shortly after implementation, Bess was not. Or so we both assumed.
“Apparently, Bess did deduce that her attraction to Ted was spurred by artificially stimulated neurohormones, but chose to not reveal her discovery for fear that this would harm their relationship. This perfectly comports with my thesis that artificially stimulated PEA release can still lead to the production of long-term ‘love’ hormones such as endorphins and oxytocin. They are still involved and committed, though not completely certain until Thanksgiving, when they will meet each other in person for the first time since Ted left for college. That he attends a school whose unofficial motto is Where Fun Goes to Die is definitely in Bess’s favor.
“Unlike Bess and Ted, Kris, Lauren, and Alex understood they were joining an experiment when they volunteered as participants in exchange for extra credit and other nonmonetary compensation. Although it seemed initially that Lauren was more attracted to Alex—despite their low-adrenaline sessions—as my thesis accurately predicted, she developed what in layman’s terms is called a ‘crush’ on Kris after she witnessed him engaging in high-risk activities. Photos and video of them interacting at a school dance and, subsequently, in an isolated pond are attached. Lauren was unable to pursue this relationship with Kris, as he was otherwise engaged.
“Which brings me to the third and more controversial of my experiments, which is already the topic of heated debate in the neurological academic community. Colleagues have asked me when I decided to include Kris in my own personal experiment, and the truth is that I immediately saw an opportunity on our flight to Boston. He possessed many desirable qualities that made him an outstanding candidate: he reacted viscerally to adrenaline stimulation, as evidenced by his hyperventilation during turbulence, and he was kind to a strange child, thereby displaying empathy.
“Finally, Kris was—is—attractive, and I was not averse to the prospect of engaging him in close physical contact.
“Was it wrong of me, a scientist, to mislead this unsuspecting guinea pig for my own personal gain? As my former lab partner once said so eloquently, the pursuit of science is not pretty. I need not remind you of the animals who have been bled, poisoned, drugged, infected, and, ultimately, killed on the road to better medicine. They were never informed, nor did they give consent, to such experiments.
“Are we humans that much different?
“But the real reason I chose to apply my theory to practice on Kris was far more primal: I liked him. I really liked him, and I wanted to see how far we could go. After all, what would be the purpose of my research if only to understand how one might fall in love when I could actually be motivating the cutest boy in the school to fall in love with me?
“If that violates the scientific method, then so be it. I am happier now than I have ever been, and not merely because I nabbed a perfect score on my SATs last month and have been invited by the dean of admissions to apply to my dream school, Harvard. (Pause for applause.)
“I am happy because my brain is bathed in endorphins as part of a long-term relationship, a luxury I did not imagine possible when I was informed that Kris had been expelled.
“Fortunately, our headmaster wisely reasoned that Kris’s personal sacrifice to stay on the island in a dangerous electrical storm to rescue me far outweighed whatever actions he may or may not have committed months before during an especially transitive period in his own brain chemistry. Also, in the spirit of transparency, a couple of very prominent actors with a daughter who attends Academy 355 threatened to terminate their generous annual contributions to the capital fund if he was not readmitted to the Academy.
“In summary, I present to you a multidimensional project that I hope furthers our knowledge of how the brain creates the illusion of love by implementing the most powerful and dangerous natural drugs available to humanity, drugs that aren’t manufactured in a lab, but by our own brains.
“Thank you for your consideration.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It doesn’t take a brain scientist to figure out that I’m not a brain scientist, so I would like to thank the following source of information: My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD. It was my launching pad for imagining the powers of the brain, especially in adolescents, when so much wiring is still being connected. Taylor’s memoir is a fascinating, inspiring, and easy read.
I am also grateful to articles published by or quoting: Semir Zeki, PhD, a neurobiologist at the University College of London; Martha Bridge Denckla, MD, a research scientist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute; David C. Geary, PhD, a professor of psychological sciences at the University of Misso
uri; Anne Marie Helmenstine, PhD, a science writer; and Brain Architecture by Larry W. Swanson, which gave me the basics.
That said, I do not recommend using this book as the basis for any science paper in which the sought grade exceeds a C+. Instead of measuring neuron reception, for the most part my brain is pretty much distracted by boys.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
SARAH STROHMEYER is a bestselling and award-winning novelist whose books include The Secrets of Lily Graves, How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True, Smart Girls Get What They Want, The Cinderella Pact (which became the Lifetime Original Movie Lying to Be Perfect), The Sleeping Beauty Proposal, The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives, Sweet Love, and the Bubbles mystery series. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Boston Globe. She lives with her family outside Montpelier, Vermont.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
BOOKS BY SARAH STROHMEYER
Smart Girls Get What They Want
How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True
The Secrets of Lily Graves
This Is My Brain on Boys
CREDITS
Cover art © 2016 by Jolly Awesome
COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THIS IS MY BRAIN ON BOYS. Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Strohmeyer. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015961010
ISBN 978-0-06-225962-2 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © April 2016 ISBN 9780062259639
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FIRST EDITION
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