This Is My Brain on Boys (9 page)

Addie lifted her finger up, pleased he was so smart. “Correct! Though the Mexicans call them
chilocuiles
.
Aegiale hesperiaris
is their scientific name. Your basic moth larvae.”

“Oh god.” Lauren clutched her gut. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

Dexter began writing madly.

“Aren't you at least going to try one?” Addie asked.

“No. Way.”

“That's part of the experiment,” she singsonged.

“Then you do it.” Lauren flicked a worm across her plate. It landed on the table, right by the sauce.

“All righty.” Addie pinched it between her fingers and took a deep breath.

Dex gestured to the worm with the eraser side of his pencil. “It's unorthodox for researchers to participate in experiments with their subjects.”

“It's also unorthodox to force people into eating putrid moth larvae,” Lauren said.

“This helps.” Kris held out the sauce. “It's not bad.
I used to eat stuff like this all the time when I was in China—silkworms. Same thing. They're considered a delicacy.”

Lauren hugged her knees. “I don't eat anything that's considered a delicacy in a foreign country.”

Turning to Addie, Kris said, “Go for it.”

His brown eyes brimmed with amusement. It was as if he was saying,
I know what kind of person you are. You take chances. You're open-minded. You don't mind being different. In fact, you wouldn't have it any other way, would you?

She liked that.

Addie dunked the worm and then popped the whole thing in her mouth, crunching down with one bite, whereupon it exploded in a burst of salty, spicy goo. Swallowing, she snatched up Kris's napkin and patted her mouth.

Lauren insisted on inspecting the napkin. It was empty. “She did it.”

“Of course.” Addie rubbed her stomach (or, the location on the abdomen commonly referred to as such). “Not bad.”

“There you go! Have another.” Kris held out his plate.

“I will if you will.”

“Game on.” He took a worm and, bypassing the sauce, bit it in half.

“Back atcha.” Addie did the same, and then they toasted with their worm halves, dipped them ceremonially, and consumed.

“Um. I have to go, like, immediately before I barf.” Lauren was already half out of her chair.

“Wait!” Dex said, waving the notebook papers. “You need to do your list.”

Hastily, Lauren scribbled down five words, then grabbed her bag and, without so much as a good-bye, dashed out the door.

“I hope she's going to be okay,” Kris said, completing his own list. “She did look kind of green.”

Which was silly, Addie thought, reading over Lauren's latest five impressions, considering the worms were really nothing more than . . .

“Fried cheese?” Tess exploded in laughter.

“Shhh.” Addie scanned the cafeteria to check if anyone overheard. “Quiet. Kris must never know.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“I can't wait to report this to the Athenian Committee.” Addie took a sip of her iced tea. “You are coming to my presentation, aren't you?”

Tess dipped a spoon into her pineapple Greek yogurt. “You know I wouldn't miss an opportunity to listen to you detail the peptides and riptides of love.”

“There are no riptides. Riptides are currents. Peptides are amino-acid chains.” Kind of embarrassing that she didn't know that, Addie thought.

“Whatever,” Tess said, not the least bit embarrassed. “Let's get back to what we were talking about. Weren't you worried Kris would figure out that your worms were fake?”

Addie put her finger to her lips. Seriously. Years of being coached to project to the back of the room had ruined Tess's ability to keep her voice down.

“I was,” she whispered. “Especially since he'd eaten silkworm larvae in China. I hadn't accounted for that. But the chef did a superb job. Cut them perfectly and made them look like the photos on Wikipedia.”

“I bet Dex was apoplectic that Lauren wimped out, right?” Tess shouted.

Addie smacked her forehead. She would have to quit conversing about this in a public place if Tess insisted on being a human bullhorn. These updates were supposed to be confidential, not broadcast to the greater Academy 355 community. Dex would have a hissy fit if he found out she'd been blabbing about the experiment to her best friend, particularly since he and Tess didn't get along to begin with.

Dex dismissed Tess as a vapid drama queen, and Tess thought he was a psychopathic robot with an Oedipus complex. And now he was a psychopathic robot who
maybe had a crush on Lauren. After the agave worm experiment, he kept sulking about her being “ganged up on,” as if somehow her unwillingness to try a strange food had been Addie's fault.

“That was too much for her,” Dex had railed, slamming his clipboard so hard against the soapstone lab tables that it produced a hairline fissure.

“If she had been more adventurous, Kris would have had a more flattering impression of her than”—she read off his last list—“nice, pretty, timid, uptight, boring.”

“Her impressions of him aren't much better. He was downgraded from cocky to egotistical and from mysterious to whacked.” Dex thumbed the crack he'd made, pulled a Sharpie out of his pocket, and drew over the line, to hide it. “I see she still kept strange and trouble.”

“Also cute.”

So there they were. Two days into the experiment and already Addie's thesis was being blown to smithereens and she and her lab partner were squabbling yet again.

“Sounds like the project isn't going as you'd planned,” Tess said, finishing her yogurt.

“We'll see at the dance.” Addie bit into her turkey sandwich, chewing thoughtfully.

“What's happening at the dance?”

Addie couldn't answer. She was only at eighteen.

“Oh, you're not doing that counting thing, are you?”
Tess rolled her eyes. “It is so weird.”

She swallowed. “It's not weird. Thorough chewing aids digestion and ensures full nutritional value out of every meal.”

“Before you take another bite, tell me what's so important about this stupid dance.”

Addie put down her sandwich. “That's when we'll see if Lauren puts the moves on Alex or Kris. It will be our one chance to observe our subjects out of the lab and in their natural habitat.”

“We need to buy you a new dress.”

“I don't care what I wear.” She lifted her sandwich to take another bite and was blocked by Tess.

“Also, we should do something with your hair. Get it out of that ponytail. Have you considered eyeliner? You need something to bring out your eyes.”

“The dance is not about me. Besides, Kris and Lauren might not even be able to attend.” She wiggled her brow. “That's okay because their next experiment is even more dangerous than consuming fake insects.”

“Uh-oh. I hope you're not going too far, Addie, like when you got your hands on some cyanide to turn those iron nails blue and . . .”

“Please, that was eighth grade. And it was sodium ferrocyanide, which is barely toxic.”

“You accidentally released enough poisonous gas to
send the entire class to the hospital!”

Addie dismissed this with a wave. “Middle schoolers craving attention. Everyone was perfectly healthy.”

“Sure. After twenty-four hours in the ICU with round-the-clock supervision.”

“Like I said. Everyone was fine.” Addie took another bite of her sandwich and counted back from twenty.

“Exactly what kind of so-called trauma are you going to inflict on these poor people?” Tess groaned and waited for her to finish, counting out loud until she was done. “Five, four, three, two, one.”

Addie patted her lips. “Nothing too strenuous. Just enough danger to really get the amygdala pumping out those survival chemicals. It's the only way my thesis can be proven.”

“You're hella sick.”

“We'll see. If they fall madly in love, you might think I'm hella genius.”

“Hey, I wonder if that's what happened to Ed and me,” Tess said, her green eyes wide open in fresh revelation. “We were stuck on a mountain in super-high winds with lightning all around. Could have easily died. Maybe that's why I fell for him . . . because, otherwise, he's so not my type. Did you ever think about that,
genius
?”

Addie thought, If you only knew
.
“How are you two
doing, by the way? Did you have a talk?”

“Yeah. Thanks for giving him a push. He said he's going to try to visit in October.” She twirled her spoon. “I just love him
sooooo
much.”

“I know.” Addie gave her arm a pat.

“You do?”

“Actually, I . . .”

A shadow darkened their table and there was Kris, showered and clean, hands in his jeans pockets. Addie's pulse quickened.

“Got a minute?” he asked.

“I better go set up for evening games,” Tess said, sliding out of her chair. “See you in about five minutes, Addie?”

Addie put down her half-eaten sandwich and shook her head. “Can't. I've got some more work to do at the lab. There's a paper that's just been published on . . .”

“Um, you are my Assistant PC,” Tess chided. “The girls are going to be all over campus tonight and I can't be three places at once.”

Shoot. That paper was vital to her Athenian thesis, a really fascinating breakthrough in the role of cells in regulating emotions.

“What are you guys doing that you're going to be in three places at once?” Kris asked, taking a seat across from Addie.

Tess picked up her tray. “It's Choose Your Own Adventure. The rock-climbing wall, ropes course, or kayaking.”

“Which adventure are you doing?”

The question was directed at Addie. She met his gaze under that brooding brow and swallowed the bite she'd just taken. “I don't know. Kayaking, maybe. I could read in the boat.”

“Five minutes.” Tess tapped her watch. “We're starting off with circle, where we talk about the latest crises, and I don't want you to miss it. Your adolescent brain research could come in handy.”

Addie gave her a tiny salute. “Yes, boss.”

When she was gone, Kris leaned across the table and smirked.

“What are you up to?” she asked.

“Fried cheese.”

Her heart skipped a beat, though it was hard to tell if that was because he'd figured out the scam or because he was so close the tip of his nose almost touched hers. “Affirmative,” she said, sitting back a bit and twisting off the top of her water bottle. “When did you deduce the secret ingredient?”

“When you put it in front of me and I smelled mozzarella. Do you know how many pizzas I've eaten in my life? I'm something of an expert.”

She took a swig and recapped it. “Why didn't you tell Lauren?”

“And ruin your fun? Nah.”

“That's humorous,” she stated.

“Humorous?” He made a face. “I've never actually heard someone say that. Usually people just laugh.”

“Ha.”

“You're messing with me, right?”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“Getting there. Let's try a joke. A duck, a pig, and an aardvark walk into a bar . . .”

“This sounds bad.”

“It only gets worse.” He frowned. “Shoot. I forgot the middle. Anyway, the punch line is, And the pig said, ‘I don't have any balloons!'” Kris slapped the table, howling with laughter.

Addie remained straight-faced.

“Don't you think that's hi-lar-i-ous?” Kris asked.

“How could I? You totally messed up the middle.”

“Okay, but the punch line. You have to admit, that's pretty good.”

“I admit nothing.” Addie held up her hand and ticked off her fingers. “For starters, your story didn't make sense. A pig, a duck, and an aardvark wouldn't walk into a bar. That would violate local health ordinances. For another, animals do not speak. Their brains have not evolved to the point where . . .”

Kris smacked his head. “Forget it. Do you have to pick everything apart?”

“An unexamined life is not worth living.”

“Now she's quoting Socrates.”

Addie crumpled her paper napkin and tossed it onto the tray. “I'm right here. You don't have to refer to me in the third person.”

“Now she's giving me a grammar lesson.” He looked up. “By the way, word is that right before the volleyball game Ed teased you about being an animal killer”—Kris covered his nose protectively—“and you didn't give him a concussion for it.”

Poor Kris. The space under his eyes was still ringed with purple from the burst capillaries. She'd really done a number on him. “Ed was joking.”

“So was I. It was an attempt to break the ice. You know, to clear the elephant from the room, so to speak.”

“What elephant? And we weren't in a room. We were outside.”

Kris ruffled his hair so it stood on end. “Man. Tough crowd.”

Now that made her laugh. She giggled so hard, she coughed. “It's the hair. It's so wild. Do you ever get it cut?”

“Really? That's where we're going?” But he was smiling, and she couldn't help but smile back.

This phenomenon was fascinating, but also disturbing.
Her growing feelings for Kris were becoming a problem, not only because he had a girlfriend who just happened to be her arch enemy, but also because falling for a volunteer in your experiment definitely did not comport with scientific protocol. She would have to force herself to keep a professional distance, otherwise the entire B.A.D.A.S.S. project could be in jeopardy.

Her phone dinged and a text from Tess screamed,
WE'VE STARTED. WHERE ARE YOU??????

“Gotta go,” she said, getting up. “See you tomorrow. Don't forget, we're meeting at the gym, not the lab.”