This Is My Brain on Boys (20 page)

“Oh!” Addie smacked her chest, deeply moved. “That is the most touching story ever. It just shows how much you love her. That's one of the hallmarks of shifting to the endorphin stage of a relationship . . . sacrifice of one's pleasure for another's safety and/or comfort.
You hardly ever find that with norepinephrine or even dopamine.”

David said something to Mindy in Mandarin and they both giggled.

“He wonders if you're, um, under the influence of something,” Kris translated with a grin.

“Influence of intense research, tell them,” Addie said, indignant.

“Yeah, I don't think this is the time.” Kris went to the door. “We'll give you guys a few minutes to say good-bye, but you have to come with us tonight. Like David said, it will only make more trouble if you stay.”

She nodded. “At least I know he still loves me.”

“And think of this,” Addie said. “Soon you'll be free and clear adults—because school doesn't last forever. Unfortunately.”

“Isn't there anything you can do for her?” Kris asked as they slowly descended the stairs.

“Not unless she wants to end their relationship, in which case we're back to the same advice I gave her in Tess's room. Don't see him for the prescribed period. I don't think that system applies here, though.”

“I feel really bad for them. They looked so pathetic and trapped.” Kris pushed open the front door. “Why do parents do that to their kids?”

“It's a scary world out there. They're just doing what
they think is best. They want to guarantee that their kids will be okay.”

“Hmm.” Kris stepped outside. “Do you think it works?”

“I think they have no idea what they're up against. If they knew what I know about the potent effects of neuro-hormones on the adolescent brain, they would throw their children behind bars until the age of twenty-five.” Addie followed him down to the yard. “Either that or wave the white flag and surrender.”

Kris shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against a lamppost as they waited for Mindy. “So, that explains Romeo and Juliet.”

“Classic example. Romeo and Juliet meet in a high-risk setting. Their families are sworn enemies, yet he crashes the party, so right there the PEA is firing the epinephrine like mad.”

“The what?”

“I'll explain later.” She didn't want to give away too much before Kris had completed his own experiment. “They continue to engage in high-risk behavior that kicks their amygdalae into overdrive. A street fight. A battle with the parents. A ditched engagement. A one-night stand.”

Kris grinned. “Not that risky.”

“How about a secret marriage under penalty of death?”

“Okay. Got me there.”

Addie wished she could have studied the real Romeo and Juliet in the flesh. Too bad they didn't cryogenically store blood samples in Verona back in the day. Because how awesome would it be to centrifuge their neurohormone levels, eh?

“The bottom line is that Juliet alone could be a public service announcement for what happens to a brain on boys,” Addie said. “Poison? Dagger? Two dead? Any questions?”

Kris let out a loud laugh.

“Hey, you!” A girl stepped out of the shadows, weaving slightly and swinging a red bag. She was rail thin, with long legs and a short black dress. Her eyes were rimmed thickly in kohl. Streaks of crimson glowed on her otherwise straight black hair.

Addie let out a gasp.

Kris went, “Oh, crap.”

“Condor! You came to the party after all!”

“Stay here,” Kris said. “I'm going to talk to her. I'll be right back.”

Kara. The girl who'd made her life hell.

Oh, and, how could she forget? Kris's girl
fiend
.

Kara fell into Kris's arms, resting her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and whispered something in her ear, stroking her back.

Addie was suddenly smacked by waves of anger and
sadness, followed by a big glob of jealousy. Why had she let down her guard when she knew he had a girlfriend? After all the research she'd done, the case studies she'd read, the abstracts she'd collected, not to mention her own testing, somehow Addie Emerson had let herself become vulnerable to the same brain chemicals that had done in Juliet!

And like Juliet, in a matter of days, her own brain had reprogrammed itself to respond eagerly to his touch, his smell, even the mere sight of him. She would have to go through withdrawal and wait out the eleven weeks, two days, and three hours until she was back to normal.

If that was even possible.

She pulled out her phone and texted Ed.

Outside Hollis. Found Mindy. Kara is here and wasted. Come quick!

A half second later
: On my way!

The door to Hollis opened and Mindy appeared. Under the light swarming with summer bugs, she looked so unstable that Addie rushed to help her.

“It's okay,” Addie said, wrapping Mindy in a big hug. “Everything will be okay.”

Mindy coughed back huge gulping sobs. “I love him, Addie. I love him.”

No such thing as love, she thought bitterly.
At least, not for me
. Turning her back to the reunited boyfriend
and girlfriend, she said, “Come on, Mindy. Let's go.”

“But what about . . .”

“Don't worry about him.” Addie cast one last glance at Kris, who was still in Kara's clutches. “He's with someone else.”

“Addie, wait!” Kris shouted, pushing Kara off. “I'm coming with you.”

She kept on walking. Forward, she told herself. Do. Not. Look. Back.

Then she heard Kara's loud, gleeful scream. “Wow. Is that Addie Emerson?” she cackled. “Is that who you've been putting me off for, Condor?
Her?
”

Addie winced and squeezed Mindy's hand.

“What's she talking about?” Mindy said. “I don't understand.”

“Neither do I.”

Footsteps came up from behind, stilettos on sidewalk, followed by heavier pounding.

“Come on, Kara,” Kris pleaded. “Leave her alone.”

Too late. Kara intercepted them and flung out her arms for a full body block. “Stop!” She checked Addie out from head to toe. “Got a makeover, did you? Adorable.”

Addie let go of Mindy and shifted her eyes to Kris, who was mouthing, “I'm sorry.”

“I don't like you,” Addie said, squaring her shoulders.
“You are cruel and you reek of ethanol.”

Kara burst out laughing. “Aren't you precious? Ethanol. Say, Miss Valedictorian, you still decapitating frogs?”

Addie blinked.

“No?” Kara pouted. “Twisting off the heads of gerbils, then?”

Kris gripped Kara's shoulder tightly. “That's enough.”

She swiveled toward him tipsily. “Since when do you stick up for Addie Emerson?”

“Don't,” Kris said, the muscles in his jaw flexing. “Look, let me take you home. You've had too much to drink and you don't know what you're saying.”

She smacked at his hand. “Let go of me. You're not my boss. You don't tell me what to do.”

Addie tensed.

“Please,” Kris whispered. “Just leave it.”

“Oh, don't act like you're so innocent, Condor.” She rotated to Addie. “After all, we never would have gone down to the lab if it hadn't been for you. Brilliant idea, freeing all the animals.”

Addie closed her eyes and wished she were back at school without any of them.

Kara touched her lips, pretending she'd made a faux pas. “Uh-oh. Did I let the cat out of the bag? I mean that metaphorically. Not the ones
you
dissect.'”

“That's it!” Kris yanked her so hard she stumbled.

“Hey,” Kara protested. “You'll ruin my jacket.”

Addie pushed Mindy through a cluster of students who'd come to check out the trouble.

She didn't care if Kris didn't have a ride back. She didn't care if he was rounded up by Harvard security and sent to jail. She didn't care if Foy banned him from campus forever.

Good. Freaking. Riddance.

So much for trusting someone and letting go. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

“Who was she?” Mindy asked as they reached the gates where Ed was parked with the flashers blinking.

“Who?” Addie asked, opening the door.

Mindy slid into the backseat. “That drunk girl.”

“Oh, I have no idea.” Addie got in the front and closed the door. “I've never seen her before in my life. She's no one, I guess.”

T
he first Academy shuttle ran late on Sundays, leaving the Marblehead bus stop at ten a.m., arriving at the security gate at the Academy 355 causeway twenty minutes later. Aside from a few employees on that already-hot Sunday morning, one sheepish boy was slouched in the back, arms folded, head rested against the window, fast asleep.

“Do you have your ID?”

Kris cocked open one eye to see a dark-green-suited security guard scrutinizing him with suspicion.

“Oh, yeah, sure.” He yawned and reached in his jeans pocket to produce the ID he'd been given almost a week before, when he'd hopped a ride with Ed and Tess and
that strange girl, Addie Emerson. Eons ago, it seemed.

The guard frowned and handed it back to him. “This is temporary. It expired yesterday.”

Now what was he going to do? He really needed to get back to his dorm. Not that he had any illusions of staying. If Foy hadn't already banned him from campus, he would once he had a chance to read Dexter's email.

“Can't you just let me get my things?” Kris said. “I'm leaving today.”

The unsmiling guard whipped out a radio and called his office with as much urgency as if he'd caught a wanted terrorist trying to sneak into school. After a clipped discussion, he said, “There's a note for you to go to Administration. It's in Chisolm Hall, which is on the other side of the quad—”

“I know where it is.” Kris got up and headed out to the quad.

A pack of students ran by, their sneakered feet pounding the road in rhythmic unison. They took one look at his rumpled shirt and unshaven face and laughed.

“Hard night?” asked one, chortling.

The proverbial Walk of Shame.

Not that he, technically, had anything to be ashamed about, aside from what he had done months before to Addie and the Whit, for which he would never, ever forgive himself.

He kept replaying that disastrous confrontation from the night before, the confusion, then disbelief, then shock on Addie's face, when she realized he was still with Kara. He could almost feel her disappointment like it was his, the heartbreaking, crushing shame that she'd ever let herself have anything to do with a creep like him.

And she was right. It was all his fault. He was the person who'd wronged her the most. How was that even possible?

“Oh, stop moping, Condor,” Kara had said last night as he sulked on the couch of her parents' lavishly appointed Back Bay apartment. “Don't you get it? That's the thing about people like her. They don't care. They don't have
feelings
.”

He could have socked her then. If she'd been Mack—who certainly would have said something as obnoxious—he would have. But he just couldn't hit a girl. And he refused to let her drag him down further into the pit of moral decay by daring him to violate his one remaining shred of decency.

“Addie does have feelings. She's amazing. She's better. Smarter. Her brain . . .”

“Okay, okay. I get it. You have a thing for Addie Emerson,” Kara interrupted. “You just should have told me instead of leading me on.”

What?
Incredible. He threw up his hands, exasperated. “Every time I tried to break up with you, you wouldn't
listen or you'd threaten to do something crazy.”

“I did not. Stop exaggerating.” She rolled her eyes, got up, and staggered to her bedroom. “You can crash here, if you want, and dream about your precious little evil-scientist girlfriend. Don't wake me up in the morning, though, I need my beauty sleep. You can see yourself out.”

There was no thank-you. No appreciation for how he'd guided her safely to the red and then the green lines of the T, keeping her steady as the trains lurched so she wouldn't barf over fellow passengers. Actually, Kara did vomit—right on his shoes—but not until they were a block away from the apartment.

He couldn't wait until he could leave Back Bay. If there was one highlight of that horrendous experience, it was the comfort he took in knowing he would never have to answer her hourly texts or listen to her rant and rave about poor, innocent gerbils.

The administration building was closed, of course, so Kris had to wait on the steps until Mr. Foy arrived, having been alerted by security that Kris had been on the shuttle.

Foy didn't even grace him with a glance as he bounded up the stone steps in his white shorts and shirt to unlock the massive front doors. “In my office. This won't take long.”

Clearly, Kris's arrival had dragged the headmaster away from his regular Sunday morning tennis match,
which meant he would be extra annoyed. Kris trudged up the stairs, each step leaden, wondering what was even the point. If Foy was going to kick him out, then just kick him out. Have security wait while he packed up his things and they could escort him to the gatehouse.

“Sit.” Foy pulled out his own chair and sat at his imposing mahogany desk, where a green folder waited. Opening it, he removed a letter on Academy 355 letterhead and slid it to Kris.

It was one paragraph long.

It was his expulsion.

“I spoke to your parents last night. As you know, they're on the Cape, but they'll make arrangements for you to return to Connecticut this afternoon. They understand that you are to leave immediately.”

Kris closed his eyes. This was even worse than he'd expected. Not that he cared about getting expelled or even having to go to the all-boys military school in Colorado. Both of those paled in comparison to the fact that he wouldn't even have a chance to apologize in person to Addie.

The letter required his signature of agreement. Kris picked up the pen and hesitated. If he signed this, there was no going back.

“You know what the real tragedy is here, Mr. Condos?” Foy asked. “It's that I had planned for you to meet
me here tomorrow so that I could offer you another year at the Academy.”

Kris clicked the pen.
Please stop,
he wanted to say.
Just don't.

“You may be surprised to learn that I've been monitoring your progress. Every afternoon, I checked in with Buildings and Grounds, where your supervisor, Robert, had nothing but praise for your work ethic. You arrived on time, ready to put in a hard day's labor. You even woke before dawn to clean out the hornets' nest. But it was something Robert said to me that really gave me pause,” Foy continued. “It was that he'd spoken to the security guard who caught you in the lab last spring with the can of spray paint. And the guard told him that you'd been trying to cover up the words, not write them. Is that true?”

“Yes,” Kris whispered.

“Speak up, boy. I can't hear you.”

Kris lifted his chin. “Yes,
sir
.”

Foy got up and went to the window, gazing toward the rec fields and tennis courts, where a group of middle-aged men were standing around talking, waiting for his return.

“Then why did you intentionally sabotage Dexter's experiment? Was it because of your animal rights stance?”

“I would like to say it was,” Kris answered. “By now
you know my feelings on the use of lab animals. The way he kept shocking those crabs over and over was sick.”

Foy nodded. “Much has been written on how the pursuit of science is often fraught with sacrifices.”

Rhesus monkeys.
“Yes, sir. But that's not why I took his crabs.” Okay, that was a full-on admission. Point of no return. “I saw that Dex was doing everything he could to bad-mouth Addie Emerson's experiment, the one I'm in.”

“Yes. Dr. Brooks has informed me that you've been diligent in this regard, too. Go on.”

“The way I saw it, Dex couldn't get his act together by the award deadline. His crabs weren't trained or whatever. So he stuck with Addie until his crabs were ready and then he started bashing her project so you guys would substitute his instead. I just felt like that was unfair, so I evened the score, so to speak.”

A silence settled over the room, the only sound coming from the
pfft pfft pfft
of the lawn sprinklers below the window.

“No matter the reason, you have committed a dishonest act, which school rules dictate requires immediate and permanent removal.” Foy sighed. “Even if on some level I must admit I do sympathize.”

Kris went back to the letter and was about to sign when he had a sudden thought. “Sir, is it possible for me to leave tomorrow?”

Foy pivoted from the window and this time regarded
Kris with a look that bordered on regret. “I'm afraid not. If you read the handbook . . .”

“I have, sir, but the last experiment is today. Lauren Lowes and I are supposed to have an overnight on Owl Island. It's a major part of Addie's project, and if I don't do it, she'll have no choice but to withdraw from the Athenian Award.”

Foy considered this. “Let me call a quorum of the trustees and see if that's acceptable. In the meantime, you need to sign the letter and clean out your dorm room. I'll let security know what has been decided.”

I, Kristopher John Condos, hereby admit that I have violated Rule #2 of the Academy 355 Student Code of Conduct by knowingly and intentionally committing an act of dishonesty, the penalty for which is immediate expulsion. By signing this letter, I agree not to appeal this decision. I acknowledge I must leave campus immediately and that I may not return unless specially invited by a member of the Administration and/or Faculty.

Kristopher J. Condos

It was done.