This Is My Brain on Boys (12 page)

“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?”

“That'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.

“Oh, yeah. This is bad.”

“We're just friends. And now that he's apologized for that thing he did last spring, I'm letting it go.” Addie tossed the cup past Tess and, naturally, it missed the bin.

Tess picked it up. “Just the other day you almost killed him in volleyball for ‘that thing he did' last spring.” Tess tossed the cup. “And twenty-four hours later, you're blushing. I've never seen you like this with a guy before.”

There she went with that hyperbole again.

“For the zillionth time, I am not interested in Kris
that way
. Besides.” Addie waved to the exchange students, who didn't wave back, possibly because they were bent over their phones. “He has a girlfriend.”

“So what? Ed supposedly had a girlfriend when we met.”

“He did not!”

Tess tilted her head questioningly. “How would you know? Ed was just some guy in our art class before last fall . . .
right
?”

Addie clenched her teeth. She was this close to blowing the cover she had so carefully orchestrated. “Right. I mean, from what I know. Now. From what I know now.” Her mouth went dry. “In light of . . . experiences with him. Hanging out. Et cetera.”

It seemed as if Tess was debating whether or not to buy this bumbling answer. Fortunately, the exchange students were yelling about nearly missing the shuttle.

“We'll pick this up later,” she said, backstepping toward them. “In the meantime, instead of planning everything, why don't you just relax around Kris and let nature take its course.”

If nature took its course, Addie thought, the Netherlands would be under water and half of Earth's population would have been wiped out by smallpox. But as Tess had noted repeatedly, Addie should not correct others, so she kept this observation to herself.

And then she went to find Ed, before he ruined everything.

“S
o, what's this about you running into a shark?”

Except it sounded more like
shahk
coming from Boston native Buster, the six-foot, bald member of the Academy's Buildings and Grounds department.

Kris grabbed the top rung and tried not to look down, where he hoped Buster was anchoring the twenty-foot ladder securely with his size-thirteen boots. Inches away, under the eaves of the Chisolm Hall, hung a large, papery, gray wasp's nest. He searched for signs of life.

“See anything?” Buster asked.

“Not sure.” Kris removed the crowbar from his belt and listened for buzzing.

The day before, two students had been stung while
chatting on the steps directly below, sending the administration into panic mode. It was too dangerous to spray the hornets when it was warm and they were active, so they had to do it at dawn while the bugs were clustered in their hive and cold.

And by “they,” Buildings and Grounds meant Kris, or, as the regulars had nicknamed him, “The Kid,” because he was at least six years younger than the youngest member of the grounds crew. Climbing to the roof and killing hornets was definitely a job for The Kid, they'd decided without bothering to ask his opinion.

“Consider it a rite of initiation,” Buster had said, though Kris suspected the rest of them were too scared to deal with a swarm of angry, stinging hornets.

Now, several hours later, they were back to assess the death count.

Kris extended the crowbar to the nest and gave it a poke.

“I never heard of no great white in the bay,” Buster said. “Could have been a basking shark. The things look scary but don't bite.”

The hive shook slightly. Kris recoiled. “I don't know. The fin was white.”

“Pure white? Or gray white?”

Why was he peppering him with questions at a time like this? The shark thing could wait. His neck could not.
“You'd better have this ladder steady, Buster, because I'm going to try and knock this thing down.”

“Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.”

The crew was always teasing him about his hair for being relatively long and wavy compared with their shiny, bald pates.

Kris gave the hive another knock. It wobbled. But no hornets.

“I'm just thinking that if it really was a great white, it would have been on the news,” Buster said. “They have organizations that track those monsters, you know. Woods Hole or something.”

Okay. This was it. Kris brought back the crowbar and gave the nest a whack.

“You sure the shark was real?”

Kris squinted. No wasps. Good sign. “I don't know. I guess.” He dealt another smack.

“Could have been a fake.”

“Get out of here. Who would have put a fake shark in the water?”

“Some sicko. To give you preppies a scare.”

One more hit and it would be down, and then he could get off this freaking ladder. “Looked damn real to me.”

“So did the one the drama department used when they put on
Jaws
last summer. Genuine Spielberg. One of the girls here, her parents are famous actors who know him.
Swear to god. They're buddy-buddy.”

Kris raised the crowbar and stopped. “Are you telling me the school put on
Jaws
? How was that even possible?”

“They did it on the beach. Total pain in the butt for us, building that stage off the docks. But it was worth it. I brought my two kids and they loved it and they don't usually go for stuff that's not a video. Afterward, the actors showed them the mechanical shark so they wouldn't be afraid to swim and whatnot and that's why I'm asking—was your shark fake?”

The answer was obvious, and had Kris not been twenty feet above ground, he would have run to the drama department to see for himself.

Whack!

With that, the nest fell and shattered into thin, papery shreds.

The drama department was next to the gym in the basement of Albert Hall underneath the George C. Newbury Theater and box office. Kris took out his clippers and pretended to trim hedges before sneaking to the back entrance, an unmarked steel door that faced a currently vacant parking lot.

Unclogging gutters and toilets between knocking down hornets' nests and mowing lawns was definitely not his dream summer job, but working for Buildings and
Grounds did have its advantages: namely, a master key that he quickly swiped in the scanner.

The door opened onto a hallway of offices, dance studios, a random piano, and a bulletin board posted with programs, requests for rides to Boston, offers to babysit professors' kids, and a practice schedule.

The play this summer was
Little Shop of Horrors
, to be shown on August third, fourth, and fifth, the second-to-last day of the session. Next to it was a screamer of a note:

PEOPLE!!!!!!

ONLY 2 MORE WEEKS TO DRESS REHEARSAL AND 1 WEEK AFTER THAT FOR THE PLAY. THIS MEANS YOU CANNOT MISS A SINGLE PRACTICE!!!

BE HERE ON TIME WITH YOUR LINES,

UNLESS YOU HAVE A WRITTEN EXCUSE FROM THE INFIRMARY.

1 NO-SHOW = NO SHOWS FOR YOU!

SIGNED, YOUR MAESTRA

TESS

Maestra? Kris thought about this. Wasn't sure that was a word. Maestro, yes. Nevertheless, even though Tess was not at the top of his favorites list, he had to smile.
That posting was very her.

Fortunately, practice was in the afternoon before dinner and then after evening games. Guess it never occurred to the drama kids to get up early like the athletes.

His phone vibrated. Kara. Again.

She'd been after him to go to a party in Cambridge the next night, which just happened to conflict with the school dance—an easy excuse, especially since he had to work.

You better answer me. I know you're on break. I called Buildings and Grounds.

Holy . . . she didn't. Now that was really going too far. The guys would never let him live it down.

She answered his frantic call with a menacing giggle. “I knew that'd get your attention. You are such a sucker, Condor.”

He exhaled in relief. “So you didn't call the office?”

“Of course not. I'm not that much of a stalker.”

Though she was, in fact, stalkerish. “I'm working. What do you want?”

“Oh, have I interrupted your lunch? That's very working-class hero of you, to be so protective of your baloney and cheese time. Wait, you don't wear a tool belt, do you? Because I am there in a New York minute if you have a tool belt.”

It was eleven forty-five. In fifteen minutes, he had to
be at the gym for the third part of the experiment. “Not to change this fascinating subject,” he said, “but weren't you involved in drama for a while?”

“Don't remind me.
Annie.
I was orphan number three. The reviews were rave.” She yawned. “Why? What are you up to?”

Above him, a door slammed, followed by footsteps. He had to hurry because he could not get caught, not with his ass already on the line with Foy. “Do you know where the prop room is?”

“Under the stage. Is that where you and I are meeting up?” Another shrill giggle that sent shivers up his spine.

“I'll tell you later. Thanks.” He hung up and found the right door and unlocked it. His heart sank as he faced a maze of black walls, floors and ceilings zigzagging this way and that.

His phone buzzed. Kara. Seriously? Since ignoring her would only make matter worse, he answered with an irritated, “What now?”

“You didn't tell me what time you're picking me up for the party. We can meet in Harvard Square or”—she paused—“you could just come to the Back Bay. No parental supervision, remember?”

The prop room was marked, helpfully, PROPS. He flicked on the light and surveyed the racks of costumes and mess of odd scenery. These drama people were pigs!

Juliet's balcony was shoved in a corner, along with brightly painted plywood flowers that were either from the
Wizard of Oz
or Dr. Seuss. He had to climb over what appeared to be the remnants of a makeshift barn until he found it: a gigantic mechanical great white shark with no underside except for wires encased in Plexiglas.

He found the switch hidden in the “belly” and flicked it on. The motor had been insulated for total silence. Even when Kris depressed the forward button on the remote control, he could barely make out the gears churning.

“Score.” Kris pumped his fist and used his phone to take a picture for proof. He couldn't wait to show this to Addie.

“You're not answering me!” Kara's voice came out small and far away as he took seven shots from various angles.

“Sorry,” he said, getting back on. “What was that again?”

She sighed. “I'm talking about the party. What time are we meeting up?”

He shifted gears, turning off the light and shutting the door. “No can do. Seriously, I have to go to this school dance.”

“
Have
to or
want
to?”

“Have to. Gotta work. Foy's orders.” It was a half-truth. No point in further angering Kara in adding that he wanted to go because Addie would be there.

“You continue to be a disappointment to me, Condor, with all this obeying and industriousness. Good thing you're cute, otherwise I'd dump your sorry butt.”

Wish you would, he thought, turning off the prop-room light and backing slowly out the door.

“That's it. You've left me no choice. I am coming over there to get you. What do you think about that?”

Kris did not take the bait. “I think I've got to get back to the job. Thanks for the help. Bye!” And clicked off.

Someday Kara would get the hint, right? She had to, because otherwise he would have to tell her, again, that they were over. History. Finito.

In the past, whenever he so much as mentioned maybe seeing other people, she'd burst into tears about how she was going through a lot and he wasn't helping, thank you very much.

“Go. Just go!” she'd order. “Leave me alone so I can do what I have to do.”

And of course, he couldn't leave after
that
.

It'd been easier to stay put and tolerate her roller-coaster moods. Until now.

Until Addie.

Whenever he was in Addie's orbit, he instantly felt sharper and brighter, as if her genius was contagious. She made him want to match her point for point, fact for fact, with his intelligence.

The other night, motivated by a sudden burst of
academic curiosity, he actually went to the library to read.
For fun.
Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius
.
Dude was alive 1,800 years ago and was still completely readable.

Ah, but he wasn't pure as all that. The other side of him also wanted to pull out that ponytail and kiss those sweet lips. He had an evil urge to coax out the passionate, fiery girl trapped in the perfect model of a straight-A student.

But none of that was possible with Kara in the picture. As long as she was texting him every hour and threatening him with surprise visits, he was trapped.

That had to change. Now.