“How’s your mom?” she asked.
“All right.”
He’d told her the broad strokes plus a few details he’d only admitted once. Sophie alone knew that ever since Jake had seen his dad in Tribeca, he made a special trip every few months. He collected sweatshirts or sweatpants he didn’t wear often and dropped them down the Goodwill donation chute closest to George’s apartment. After all, he and his dad were the same height, close in size. New York City could be paralytically cold. There was a chance his dad would wear them. Sophie alone knew that Jake contributed to his mom’s Harlem rent with a monthly Venmo of a thousand dollars, always on the last day of the month.
“Is she going to pick you up?” Sophie asked.
Winter break was two weeks away.
“Nah.”
The luxury of it sounded absurd—a glittering extravagance—that his mom would neglect a workday just to join him on the Metro-North home. Jake did toy with a dream of her visiting in the spring. Campus would be green, flowering. Every place would prompt a memory he could share. Then, of course, she’d meet Sophie—although he hadn’t told her about Sophie yet. What he said and how were too important. After all, he was the same age she’d been when she married his dad, making the decisions that would define her.
He couldn’t mention Sophie without inviting the comparison.
His mom wasn’t a romantic anymore. Since leaving George, she had abandoned her appearance, leaving her nails unpainted and graying hair undone. She had become more tightfisted than ever, but Jake didn’t resent her attitude. He understood that the one man his mom loved had disappeared, changing choice by choice with new vices until he was no longer the boy she’d given her heart to when she was a girl. Trust had not done her good.
“Is she seeing anyone?” Sophie asked.
“Um.” He dipped a leg over the side of the hammock and revived their back-and-forth rhythm. “She’s seen this guy Mike, but…”
“What?”
“She called them dates, but…” His mom had also mentioned that Mike—a coworker at Glen Oaks—had bought her flowers. It was stated without excitement, and she’d never said what kind of flowers they were. Her heart wasn’t in it. “He’s more of a friend. I don’t think she’s looking for love right now.”
“Maybe love’s different when people are older.”
“I don’t know. I think she had real love once, and then it shattered spectacularly, so she doesn’t trust the soft stuff anymore.” The only thing Mom seemed to care about was setting up his career. Sophie squeezed him. “What about you? Isabel coming?”
Sophie nodded.
“So I get to meet Mama You?” he asked.
“Of course.”
He kissed her forehead and listened to the quiet. Something about the school—maybe the elaborate iron gates secluding them, or the fact that he spent all his time on Sophie—felt utopian. They were in a world of their own where time passed at a different rate, maybe not at all. Sophie was peace, magic, stillness. Even cramped on a hammock, he felt like they fit perfectly together, as if they were two parts of the same person. He kissed her forehead.
“You know I love you?” Jake said.
Sophie nodded.
They kissed, at rest.
“I want you to have everything,” she said.
“I want you to know everything.”
That reminded him. Didn’t her session with Professor Malchik start soon? He checked his watch—three thirty-two, more than half an hour since it should’ve begun.
“Sophie!” he said abruptly.
* * *
At Professor Malchik’s round table, Sophie stared at her knees. He faced her and the wall clock he’d hung himself. Its radio signal came from the cesium atomic clock, the most accurate clock in the world, and it had read four when Sophie finally showed up today.
He cared about time.
Did she?
“Imaginary time,” he prompted.
His anger filled the room like a gas with unknown effects.
“It’s a way to view space-time.” Her voice was low. All the questions for today involved this concept, popularized by Stephen Hawking. “What we consider ‘real time’ is the past, present, and future on one plane. Imaginary time is perpendicular to that plane: it’s the z axis. Theoretically, it allows for multiple things to happen at once…” Professor Malchik kept waiting for her to impress him. He hated how lifeless her tone was, how uninspired. She was just repeating rote information. “Imaginary coordinates are real time coordinates multiplied by the imaginary number i—” He swatted her words aside. Everything she had said was accurate, but he wanted the words to matter to her. It wasn’t perfect until she cared.
“What—?” she started.
“Enough.”
Sophie hadn’t even apologized. She’d just kept her eyes downcast as she entered, a sign that she had no excuse.
“You’re distracted.”
She opened her mouth.
“Don’t lie.”
A white rabbit smiled on the front of her zip-up. The ends of her hoodie’s drawstrings were knotted each with a red heart bead. The strange, whimsical getup reminded him of Alice’s question in Wonderland, “How long is forever?” and the White Rabbit’s response, “Sometimes, just one second.” But Sophie’s eyes weren’t as bright as her outfits. She’d been doing her work, and it was always correct. But, week after week, it was less bold, less speculative.
“Do I need to remind you who you are?”
She shook her head. Her long hair swished.
“Sophie—”
“Please,” she said quietly.
He sat down at his desk.
“Where’s your college essay?” he demanded of his computer. He hit return. The monitor dawned. “You quoted Einstein. ‘I want to know God’s thoughts.’ ”
“Please, stop.”
“Do you remember Shannon?” He didn’t wait. “I told you about him. The day we met. It took him ten years to write his best work, but he had his first breakthrough at twenty-one. He was twenty-one years old when he published the most important master’s thesis of all time. On binary switches. It made digital computers possible. Twenty-one.” His monitor went black. And how old are you? The question burned on the tip of his tongue. She might’ve looked like a child, but she wasn’t. “I’m here to help you. I’m trying to help you.”
Sophie’s lips wobbled.
“Is this boring to you?”
She opened her mouth.
“Don’t you want to be great?”
“No.”
“No?”
“It was never about that.”
“What was it about?”
Silence.
“Well?” he probed.
She stared at her knees again: twin denim hills. The world was silent, but her mind roared, thinking that her motive was always about getting to the core of things, what really mattered, and what really pulled the levers of their existence. “Be great?” The last thing she wanted to be was different. But she said nothing. She didn’t want to tear up in front of him.
“And what about me?” he went on.
She didn’t look up.
“What do you think this class is for me? A checklist item?”
Professor Malchik pinched and released the bridge of his nose. Was he being too harsh? Didn’t she see what she could be? The answers to everything. Were the keys to the universe gold or silver? Did they glitter? Why didn’t she anymore? He reminded her how extraordinary she was. No one in Yale’s history had ever been granted such a personalized tutorial as a freshman. In last year’s Olympiad, only she had solved the problem asking for the longest string of prime numbers spaced evenly apart. The answer was 25, and each of those prime numbers was eighteen digits long. The groundwork for that problem had won another mathematician, Terry Tao, a Fields Medal back in 2006. Sophie was exceptional, and he kept saying that, but his messages didn’t crack her wall. Sophie appeared closer and closer to crying,
as if every compliment insulted her more. He resigned himself to the distance between them.
“I think that’s enough for today.”
She closed her notebook.
“But next time I want Sophie. Not whoever you’re pretending to be.”
* * *
Sophie cried soon after in Jake’s arms on their bed.
“Soph,” he cooed. He pulled her hands off her face to reveal leaky blue eyes speckled pink. Her cheeks were as red as the hearts on her hoodie.
“I’m a person. I’m just a person.”
“What?”
He wiped her tears.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Malchik…”
They’d seen him together once in Commons. He was eating alone in the antisocial half of dining hall. As far as Jake knew, Sophie and her professor had been getting along. They hadn’t had any breakthroughs yet, but Sophie wasn’t worried. Those took time, didn’t they?
Sophie gazed at Jake’s quilt. Last night, right here, they’d watched Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers while Sophie strung peach gummies on her fingers like rings. She ate so many that the sour taste lingered to mix with her toothpaste, creating a flavor she named WarHead Mint. Jake insisted that he try it by kissing her. She dissolved into laughter as his tongue swished over hers, popping bubbles and collapsing foam.
She wiped tears with the heel of her hand.
“We can talk about it later,” he said.
She nodded.
“I love you so much. You’re so special.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not special. I’m a person.” She watched a displaced tear drip down her wrist. “You’re the only one who doesn’t make me feel different, and I don’t want that to change.” She looked him in the eyes. Her expression asked, Okay?
“Okay.”
He kissed her forehead, then her nose, then her salty upper lip. He cupped the back of her neck, careful with her head, but just as careful with the rest of her. She was so clearly a person—a warm-blooded, gorgeous, touchingly tender person—and Jake was drawn to every inch. He wanted to show her that. He crawled on top of her, still kissing, so intently that neither noticed as her latest problem slipped from the bed to the ground.
CHAPTER 6
“And I met a girl,” Jake told his mom freshman spring, the closest he’d come to naming Sophie. He squeezed the phone, bracing himself. He’d never mentioned a woman to his mom before. Outside his room, Berkeley’s courtyard looked hopeful: white dogwoods over green grass and yellow tulips stretching in beds. Sophie was on Science Hill in a senior-level seminar.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
He imagined her sitting with stiff posture on their living room sofa in Harlem. Maybe she’d frozen holding the Yale mug Jake had bought for her birthday.
“Can I tell you about her?”
“What?” Janice asked.
They usually talked about his grades—all A’s barring an A-in logic, where Professor Rollins referred to grade inflation as “the latest outbreak in a pandemic of participation awards.” Then he asked extensively about how she was doing. Were the neighbors still too loud? Was the front door still left open? How was Glen Oaks?
“Her name is Sophie.”
“Okay.”
“And we’ve been dating since school started.”
“I’m sorry, who?”
“Sophie Jones. She’s my year here.”
“Jones,” she repeated faintly.
Jake heard her typing through the phone. He imagined her bent over her laptop on the coffee table, its shortest leg elongated by a stack of dry tea bags. He remembered the first time he googled Sophie, the day he met her. Her shyly smiling portraits had bombarded the results. She didn’t quite look at the camera in most of the headshots.
“A Wikipedia?” Janice asked.
“Yes.” He smiled.
Silence grew.
“Well?” he asked.
“She’s blonde.”
As quickly as it had spread, Jake’s smile vanished without leaving any trace of its warmth behind. Blonde. That was Janice’s recently adopted word for the women she served at Glen Oaks. Their hair color didn’t matter. Every rich woman was “blonde,” her dismissive slur for women with easy lives.
“International Math Olympiad.” Janice enunciated the phrase from Sophie’s Wikipedia as if it were an exercise in speech therapy. “Okay. I’m glad you have a friend.”
“I told you. We’re dating.”
“Is this why you don’t have a summer job lined up?”
No. She knew why. He’d spent the past six months applying for internships on Wall Street, but most of those were only open to college juniors and above. He was qualified—if only someone met him, they’d see. With Sophie’s help, Jake had been plumbing Yale’s alumni network and had sent hundreds of emails with his résumé attached. If he didn’t get hired, he figured he’d tutor the same kinds of teenagers he used to—in $200 sneakers, wearing privilege in their boredom—and feed his bank account in the process.
“If she’s in the way of your dream, she’s not the one.”
“I brought her up because I’d like you to meet her.”
“Meet her? You just met her.”
“I’ve been putting this off for a while.”
“But—”
“I know. Feelings change, people change, life changes. I know, but—”
“The decisions you make now—”
“She’s like me.” He touched his heart. “She has the same energy. Okay? She cares about her work. She works hard. And she’s the nicest, most humble, most thoughtful person I’ve ever met. You don’t even know what she’s doing with her life. She’s not in the way of my dreams, she has her own, and it’s important to me to talk about her with you because she’s going to be around. So, I’m asking, please, could I bring her home to introduce you?”
Janice was silent.
“After you get a job.”
* * *
Peter climbed Science Hill the day of his last session with Sophie, the final nail in the coffin of their disastrous year. He’d failed before, but never so slowly, so face-to-face. Every week since their December spat, she’d come in more like a ghost than before. He knew he shouldn’t have raised his voice. “Don’t you want to be great?” He’d repelled her, and the connection he’d hoped to share with her never came. Every week, she rejected him with her blankness, her guarded politeness, and her desire to do no more than asked.
He stepped into the dim physics building, to his office. “Please, stop.” Meanwhile, his minor celebrity as her mentor in the department had faded. Other professors had noticed: Sophie had retreated to the back rows in lectures. Her work was increasingly like other top students’. She had not outshone her peers like the all-star everyone had expected her to be. Only the chair still brought her up to Peter. Today, Peter was supposed to ask Sophie if she wanted to continue her individual study next year. “She can study with anyone in the department,” the chair had said. “Make sure she knows that.” Peter had nodded.
His frustration had assaulted him at random: during lunch in Commons, at the podium in Time Theory, his lecture class, or on the sidewalk where Science Hill began to slope. He’d tried everything, even topics outside of time, to spark some interest. Today’s problem set dealt with the Fourier transform, a technique used to map equations as sound waves—a last-minute revision. Nothing else so far had clicked. His intensity must have been repulsive. Maybe that explained why his sons had never fallen in love with school either.
Was today his last chance? At his desk, he rehearsed his proposal: It’s hard to believe this year is over… If you’d like to pursue an individual study as a sophomore, I speak on behalf of the department when I say we’d be more than happy to extend the tutorial. You can work with anyone, any advisor—
A new email from Sophie:
Re: PHYS991
Dear Professor Malchik,<
br />
I attached my problem set for this week.
I am unable to make our session today, but I wanted to thank you sincerely for your valuable mentorship this year. I am extremely grateful for the privilege of studying with you. I learned more than I could have imagined.
Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Sophie
Peter stared at the email.
In his mind, the apeirogon went dark.
He felt as if he’d lost her for good.
* * *
The hour before, Jake and Sophie had been reading in bed when he got an email from Lionel Padington, granting Jake a summer job interview the following day at 1 p.m.
Lionel—the most famous CEO they’d emailed in Bass. He’d been one of the few Sophie recognized. Just his name conjured his Southern accent, salt-and-pepper crew cut, and charm softening his sharp suit. Always quicker-witted than the news anchor, he lit up every TV interview. They’d found Lionel’s email address in the alumni directory and inquired about a job at Padington open to college graduates. It had been bold, but so was Lionel. He’d grown his firm from nothing to manage over $50 billion. He played basketball with Jeff Bezos at the Equinox on the Upper West Side. He lived in a world of “definitely.”
Now, Jake’s dark eyes glowed. Sophie squeezed his ribs. They shook each other, thrilled and celebrating before the implications hit.
“Tomorrow,” Sophie repeated.
Jake nodded.
She didn’t even consider seeing Professor Malchik. Jake’s dream felt like theirs. For the next few hours, they threw themselves heart-first into frenzied, kamikaze preparation. They rehearsed Jake’s answer to every standard ask until Sophie suggested they eat dinner. Later, she asked harder questions. “How did you choose the companies in your own portfolio?” “Where is the world heading?” Sophie’s stamina endured even after Jake brushed his teeth limply at 2:30 a.m. She wanted nothing more than for him to get this job. She knew how much Jake had idolized Lionel in high school. His future deserved to gleam.
The Love Proof Page 7