This Is My Brain on Boys (19 page)

I
t took twenty minutes to convince Buster to let Kris leave work early.

“We are potentially facing a diplomatic crisis,” Addie said, repeating Tess's admonition.

Buster was not impressed. China could declare war on the United States for all he cared. In the Buildings and Grounds community, a work schedule was a work schedule. “Your shift ends at midnight, kid. You have to help me break down the tent.”

“That can wait,” Kris said. “It's not like there's anything happening on the quad tomorrow. It's a Sunday.”

He was standing really close to her and she felt a surge of excitement as a little tingle ran up her arm when the
backs of their hands brushed—which he might have been doing intentionally.

Finally, after Kris promised to do most of the work on Sunday, Buster relented. He probably didn't want to stay late, either. “Okay. Just this once I'll give you a pass. If Mr. Foy asks, I'll tell him that you had to leave campus on an emergency to find one of the exchange students.”

“Um,” Addie said, “could you not? Diplomatic crises require utmost tact.”

“Tact, huh?” Buster winked at Kris. “Sure. Mum's the word.”

Actually, the word was
late
. They were now five minutes over their schedule, with no room for bickering about semantics.

She slipped off the idiotic sandals and ran to her dorm to get her practical ones while Kris went to get a shirt that didn't identify him as a member of the Academy 355 workforce. That added another five minutes until they rendezvoused at the prearranged meeting spot under the oak by the causeway.

“Hey,” Kris said when she arrived breathless, her ugly sandals slapping the pavement as she approached. She could barely make out his white shirt in the dark.

“I didn't get a chance to tell you how beautiful you look tonight.”

He took a step closer, triggering a rush of epinephrine
that made her swoon. He was so cute and tall and just super-nice.

“Thanks. Tess chose the dress and applied intense heat and friction to my hair.”

“I like it out of the ponytail.” He slipped his hand along her jaw. “Can I?”

She was touched that he asked before he kissed her. It indicated that he understood her quirks and didn't mind.

“Yes. But we have to be careful. No one must be able to catch us.”

“No one will find us.” He bent down and softly brushed his lips against hers. This time, Addie didn't take charge as she had the night before, but let him be in control.

She gave in to his embrace, and allowed him to kiss her deeper, stroking her hair and pressing his chest against hers. It occurred to her that letting go was a matter of trust. And that she should never fall for someone like Dexter because he was 100 percent untrustworthy.

Beeeep!

They sprang apart. Addie adjusted her dress. Kris grinned.

Ed was leaning out his driver's side window. “Enough with the PDA. Get in.”

A musty old tarp covered the backseat, the kind Addie had seen on the school's boat when Ed rescued them after
the shark attack. Ed told them to get under it so he could pass security without an interrogation.

“I'll tell them I'm picking up a couple of summer students from the bus stop since the shuttle stopped running an hour ago.”

It was a plausible excuse. As a college-level PC, Ed was free to come and go as he pleased and often ran similar errands. Too bad the tarp smelled like rotting fish. It was suffocating.

Ed put on a huge show for the guard, complaining about how his Saturday night had been ruined because some idiot kids had stayed in Boston too long and missed the last bus. The guard commiserated and sent him off with a pat on the hood and a grammatically incorrect “Drive careful.”

Kris and Addie threw off the tarp and gasped for air. “That thing was nasty, man,” Kris said, kicking it to the floor.

“It was all I could think of. You two are going to have to hide under it again when we come back with Mindy. What's the story there, anyway?”

Addie briefed them with the little information Fiona had provided. David was in the Harvard summer program staying in Room 308 in Hollis Hall and Mindy went to plead with him not to end their relationship. That is, if she hadn't left yet. Fiona was afraid that he would close
the door in her face and Mindy would have to make her way back to the Academy alone, all the way from Harvard . . . which would be a real problem.

The bus from the T stop in Wonderland to Marblehead had already stopped running and wouldn't resume until the next morning at six a.m., an hour after Mindy was supposed to be at Logan. A cab ride cost over fifty dollars and she didn't have cash or a credit card. She would be a scared girl trapped in a strange city in a foreign country and she would miss her flight to Chicago. Oh, and her father was some bigwig in the Chinese government.

See above: diplomatic crisis.

“Don't worry. We'll find her.” Kris took Addie's hand and gave it a squeeze, releasing a burst of norepinephrine that made her want to break out in song.

Boston was lit up like a fairyland, and the lights along Memorial Drive reflected off the slowly moving Charles River. Ed crossed the salt-and-pepper bridge onto the section of Massachusetts Avenue that was home to MIT, with its modern brick buildings and ghost campus. Not a soul in sight.

From there they crept bumper-to-bumper through honking traffic. Addie tried to temper her anxiety. This trip was taking too long. Already they were off schedule by ten minutes, and if . . .

She closed her eyes. No. She was not going to slip into old habits. They would get there when they got there.

But they
were
late.
Really
late.

Although it was after eleven, Harvard Square was still packed with college students. They emerged in clusters from the red-tiled T station and gathered around amateur guitarists strumming behind the newsstand. Addie leaned out the window to inhale the smells of garlic and fresh coffee emanating from nearby restaurants mixed with the grit and grime of the city.

“Down that alley is a place with really good pizza,” Kris said, pointing to a neon sign. “When I was at Andover, my friends and I would come here on Friday nights and hang.”

It had slipped her mind that he used to attend a different school. There was so much about him she didn't know and yet she felt so close to him. Then again, one of the by-products of dopamine was a false sense of intimacy.

She made a mental note to mention that in her paper for the Athenian Committee.

Ed parked in front of the iron gates to Harvard Yard and activated his flashers, immediately setting off a chorus of angry beeping from fellow frustrated motorists. Addie opened the door and Kris followed.

“Addie will call you when we're ready to be picked up,” Kris said, leaning in the window. “Thanks, man.”

“I'll meet you on Summer Street.” Ed thumbed over his shoulder, the blare of horns so cacophonous it was embarrassing. “Chill!” he yelled into the rearview, pulling back into traffic.

Kris and Addie took in the historic entrance to one of the most famous college quads in America. “Harvard,” Addie whispered. “I am really here.”

“You can get that on a T-shirt, you know. Buy it online for twenty bucks and save four years and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in tuition.”

“Yes, but it's the degree that matters, not the T-shirt.”

“I dunno. The T-shirt might just do it for me.”

They entered the quiet yard dotted with small white tables where students sat, chatting earnestly. Kris navigated the paths zigzagging through the worn grass with ease. “I had a friend who went here,” he explained. “We used to visit a lot.”

“After the pizza?”

He laughed. “Sometimes before the pizza. We were that reckless.”

Though that wasn't really very reckless, so he had to be joking.

Addie said, “Hah! Good one.”

That only made Kris chuckle again. They passed a large bronze illuminated statue that was decorated haphazardly with ribbons and flowers.

“What a fraud,” Kris said. “I'm surprised they don't take it down.”

Addie read the inscription on the base:

JOHN HARVARD

FOUNDER

1638

Kris ran his sneaker against the base. “The Statue of Three Lies, they call this monstrosity.”

“Why?” Addie asked, staring up at the noble visage. “He's the founder of Harvard. It makes sense to have a memorial to him.”

“First of all, it's the likeness of a nineteenth-century Harvard student, not of the seventeenth-century clergyman named John Harvard,” Kris explained. “Also, John Harvard was neither the first president nor founder of this esteemed institution but merely some guy who chipped in seven hundred and eighty pounds, barely enough to buy a couple of PS4s. Finally, the date? Fail! The school was founded two years earlier.”

“Why are you doing that?”

Kris lifted his foot, which he'd been running along the base of the statue. “For good luck. That's the tradition.”

“I don't believe in luck.”

“You should. John Harvard was a nobody and he ended up with a famous statue and the most prestigious
school in the world named after him. How lucky is that?”

“Fortunate, perhaps. Not lucky. But we're wasting valuable time. Where's Hollis?”

Hollis turned out to be right around the corner. Now the question was how to get inside, since they didn't have a key card.

“It's after eleven,” Kris said. “There might be a curfew for summer students like at the Academy. If we wait, someone is bound to come out and we can go in.”

Sure enough, a girl opened the door, took one look at Addie in her expensive, brand-new Newbury Street dress, and opened it wider.

“Thanks,” Addie said. “We're here for a party and didn't know how to get in. We buzzed but I guess they didn't hear us.”

“I figured,” the girl said, smiling. “There are parties all over campus tonight.”

“So much for security,” Kris said, taking the stairs two at a time.

Addie froze at the bottom step, covering her mouth. Kris turned. “What's wrong?”

“I did it,” she said, simultaneously shocked and delighted. “I lied! And it was the easiest thing in the world!”

Kris gave her a thumbs-up. “Next you'll be laughing at my jokes. Come on.”

They reached the third floor, their footsteps creaking
down the ancient hall's wooden floors until they found 308. Kris placed his ear against the door. “Voices. Male and female.”

“Talking, or . . . ?” Addie asked.

He shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” He rapped quietly three times.

“Who is it?” someone asked in a distinct accent.

Kris answered him in Mandarin, and after a moment's hesitation, the door opened a crack to reveal a boy in a multi-striped shirt and glasses.

“Yes?”

“We're friends of Mindy's,” Kris said first in English and then in Mandarin.

The boy pushed up his glasses. “Who?”

“Mindy's not her real name, remember?” Addie tried to peer inside the room, which was pitch black aside from a glowing computer.

“I don't know a Mindy,” the boy reiterated.

Kris tried a different approach. “She's in a student exchange program, staying at Academy 355. They're worried about her because she left without telling anyone where she was going.”

The boy seemed like he was about to again deny any knowledge of such a person when a small voice peeped from the back of the room. “I'm here. It's okay. I know them.”

David said something to her in Mandarin.

Kris put his mouth to Addie's ear. “He told her to stay back. That he would take care of it. Looks like she's not going without a fight.”

“Then he wants her to stay?” Hmm. This was a new and perhaps troublesome twist in their relationship.

“Can we just talk to her?” Kris asked David in Mandarin. They spoke further, until David relented and let them in.

He switched on the light and closed the door. There was Mindy sitting with her hands folded at the end of his bed, her facial expression unreadable.

“I'm okay,” Mindy said. “David and I talked and I'm fine.”

“So, you're not breaking up?” Addie asked.

David said, “You told them about us?”

“Fiona did.”

This wasn't exactly true, but Addie wasn't going to call her on it.

David plopped down next to Mindy, taking her hands in his and speaking in soothing tones. As a neuroscientist, Addie was confused. He seemed to regret causing her distress. He showed remorse and affection by holding her hands. These were not the standard behavioral patterns displayed by a person who wasn't in love.

Kris said gently, “You have to go back with us, Mindy.
Your plane leaves tomorrow morning. Everyone is wicked worried.”

She nodded, tears welling in her eyes, and leaned against David, who patted her silky dark hair and in English said, “This is what I didn't want to happen. I broke it off with Mindy . . . because I knew that when we got back home, things would only be worse for her.”

“Why?” Kris and Addie asked in unison.

“It's not just Mindy's parents who don't want us to be in a relationship. Mine, too. My father had girlfriends in school and didn't thrive academically. My mother thinks I'll be the same.”

Mindy smiled ruefully. “He studies harder than anyone. From six in the morning until eleven at night.”

“They found out from my little brother that Mindy and I were planning to see each other here and they called me—they were . . . angry,” David continued. “They had spoken to her parents and . . .” He brought his lips to Mindy's hair. “I broke it off so she wouldn't get in trouble. If I hadn't, things would have been bad when she got home.”