by Julie Drew
“I don’t know,” Tesla wailed. She leaned forward, her eyes lowered miserably to the tabletop so that all Malcolm could see was the thick, dark fringe of her eyelashes against her skin, still warmly pink from embarrassment. “Keisha breezed in and right back out, and she was so distracted, and then she walked past Finn like she didn’t see him, but I know she did, and…what about that party the other night?” Tesla stared at him, dared him to contradict her. “There was something off. And there’s something off about Finn. I know it.”
“Well, he’s gone now, so forget about it,” Malcolm assured her.
“He is?” Tesla craned her neck to see through the crowd.
“Yeah, he left before you even got back to your chair. You seem disappointed,” he added, his voice carefully noncommittal.
“No, I’m relieved. I think he’s a jerk,” Tesla stated emphatically.
They sat for a few more minutes, until Tesla sighed. “I better head back home,” she said. “I didn’t tell anyone I was headed out.”
“Do you usually?” asked Malcolm, flicking his silvery bangs out of his eyes.
“I usually text my dad. If he wonders, he can just check his phone. Saves us both from an actual conversation.”
“Text him, then. Tell him you’re with me.”
“No, I’m gonna go. I guess I still feel bad about the fight earlier.”
Malcolm shrugged. “Okay. I’ll see you.” When they got outside he turned to head back to his house, which lay in the opposite direction of Tesla’s.
“See you,” Tesla called after him.
She had only gone seventeen steps, however, had just passed the front of Angelo’s and the red brick of the bookstore next door, when she heard a voice from the shadows under the store’s awning.
“Tesla,” said Finn as he stepped into the light. “Over here.”
“What do you want?” she asked, startled.
“Just wanted to say sorry for my ‘d-bag’ behavior.” It was an apology, technically, but he was clearly laughing at her. “You surprised me, that’s all,” he continued. “I’m usually not that rude.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Tesla increased her speed and walked past him.
Finn was beside her in an instant and his long legs kept her pace effortlessly. He wore fitted, skinny black jeans, a worn pair of Adidas Sambas, and a black T-shirt. His arms swung easily by his side, and Tesla wondered if he ever felt even slightly self-conscious, under any circumstances. His cool confidence was not attractive, she told herself, it was an irritation—almost as much of an irritation as her own hyper-awareness of the mere eight and a half inches that separated them.
“I wasn’t following you, but I was glad to see you at Angelo’s. I’ve been worried about you since the other night,” he said. “Those guys must’ve shaken you up. And—for the record—I asked Keisha to check on you just now.”
Tesla hesitated, though she was relieved to learn her suspicions of Keisha were unfounded. She’d already learned not to be candid with Finn or he’d turn it against her, make her feel like a fool.
“Yeah,” she shrugged. “I’m fine. Nothing happened, really.”
Finn glanced at her as they walked. “Good,” he said. “I thought you might not be, ah, up to that kind of excitement.”
Tesla stopped and turned on him, her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Finn raised his hands, his palms up in surrender as he tried to back-pedal. “Nothing—man! I wasn’t insulting you, or making fun of you—not this time, anyway—it’s just that I noticed that Keisha and that other kid—”
“—Malcolm,” Tesla inserted.
“—and Malcolm,” Finn continued smoothly, “seemed concerned about you, and you looked kind of shaky and pale.”
“I’m always pale,” said Tesla.
“No, you’re always fair-skinned,” he countered. “But your cheeks are kind of pinkish, right there.” He made as if to touch her face, and Tesla snapped her head back two inches, just out of his reach. “The other night you were pale,” he explained, but he dropped his hand back down to his side. “There’s a difference.”
Tesla could feel herself blush and began walking again, looking straight ahead and hoping the dusk in between the now-lit lampposts along the sidewalk hid this fact from Finn, who stayed right beside her.
“Maybe I just seemed that way compared to you and Keisha,” she mumbled.
“Well, obviously,” he said. “The black girl and her biracial cousin make you seem even lighter. But that’s not the point.”
When she didn’t reply, Finn changed the subject. “So, what’s your story? There is a story, right?”
They had stopped again, beside a wrought iron and wood-slat bench on the edge of the park in the center of town. The bench was nestled cozily between blooming hydrangeas, the deep purple-blue bunches of flowers like party balloons in the summer night. Two lampposts, twenty feet away on either side of the bench, cast a soft light that didn’t quite reach them.
Finn gestured toward the bench, and after a brief hesitation, Tesla sat down and Finn joined her, his arm along the back of the bench, his fingers three inches from Tesla’s right shoulder.
“Yeah, there’s a story, but it’s not that interesting,” she began hesitantly.
“I’ll find it interesting,” he said, his voice serious for the first time.
Tesla thought for a minute. She could feel the pulse in her throat and Finn’s eyes on her face as he waited. “Long story short, I have an arrhythmia—an irregular, too-fast heartbeat. I found out in October. I couldn’t play basketball for a while, which I used to do a lot—with your cousin—but nothing has happened since, so I’m allowed to do the stuff I did before. Or at least work back up to it.” She hated to seem fragile or weak. “It’s no big deal.”
“But you have to be careful, right? Because it could be a big deal.” When she looked at him with suspicion, he hurried on. “Keisha told me a little about it, last fall when it happened.”
Tesla searched his face, but could see no sign of ridicule. All she saw were warm, sympathetic brown eyes focused intently on her own. The slight flick of his gaze moved from one side of her face to the other. Searching.
“Yup, that’s me,” she said lightly. “I need to ask the wizard for a heart.”
Finn was quiet for a moment. “And your mom died, right?”
“How do you know that?” she asked slowly.
“Keisha.”
“Why would Keisha talk to you about me?” she demanded, her body tensed in preparation to leave.
“Whoa, whoa,” said Finn, hand out to stall her. “She doesn’t, at least not any more than she mentions stuff about anybody. It’s not gossip, you’re her best friend. And I’m pretty sure she only told me that about you because it’s something we have in common.”
“Your mom died, too?” Tesla asked as surprise trumped anger.
“No, not exactly. My dad—he’s not dead, at least as far as I know, but he’s never been a part of my life. And my mom works internationally, so I’ve spent a lot of time alone. I know what it’s like to not have your parents around.”
“Oh.” For the life of her, Tesla couldn’t think of a single thing to add.
“Not that I don’t enjoy the freedom,” he said, that faint swagger back in his voice. “No bedtime when I was a kid, and no curfew later when I got older. Totally worth it.”
He seemed to be bragging, but Tesla didn’t buy it.
“Sounds lonely,” she said. “So where are they—your parents?”
“My mom’s in Kenya, I think. She works for the World Health Organization. And Daniel Finnegan—the sperm donor, basically—lives in Ireland. Dublin,” he added with a shrug.
“So that’s where—”
“Yeah,” he said, but his sudden smile held neither warmth nor humor. “That’s where my name comes from. Finnegan’s not exactly a typical name in the black community. He and my mother met twenty years ago somewhere, wer
e together for a couple of weeks, and the rest is history. She saddled me with his name—evidence that she has a sense of humor, if nothing else—and then took off to save the world as soon as I was old enough to go to school. I know, I know, it’s heartwarming—you’re jealous, aren’t you?”
Beneath the sharp quips Tesla sensed a depth of sadness in him that she could not even begin to address, and hastened to bring the story back onto solid ground. “So your mom and Keisha’s mom are—”
“—sisters,” he finished for her, and then they fell silent for a moment. “They both went into medicine. Keisha’s mom’s a surgical nurse, as you know, and my mom’s a doctor. Infectious diseases. She works mostly in Africa. I went to school all over the place, but I did most of secondary school—high school—in London. That’s where I met Joley. He decided to come here for undergrad and law school, and I tagged along. He’s family, for me. And Keisha’s here, so I figured, why not?”
Tesla weighed his words and heard the things he didn’t say—that he didn’t want to drift anymore, maybe even that he wanted to belong to someone.
“That’s pretty much my whole story,” he concluded lightly, in control of the moment again so quickly that Tesla wondered if she’d imagined his vulnerability. “How about you—what’s with your name?”
“What do you mean?” Tesla asked, confused.
“I mean, what is ‘Tesla’—does it mean something?”
“Kind of,” she said. “My mom was Russian, and her father was a physicist in St. Petersburg—it was Leningrad, then. She grew up with stories of European scientists like most people grow up with stories about their crazy Aunt Alice. She always liked Nikola Tesla, a Serbian guy, I think, who did a bunch of groundbreaking work with electromagnetism.”
“Really,” said Finn, a puzzled look on his face. “Most people get named after a grandparent or a movie star.”
Tesla smiled, and her dimples dug deep into her smooth cheeks. “I know. Not us, though. I was named Tesla Nikola Petrova Abbott. By the end of his career, Nikola Tesla was pretty much insane, so you can imagine how thrilled I am to be named after him. My mom used to sit with me on her lap and tell me that Tesla successfully took a picture of the bones of his hand before the X-ray was invented. And that he destroyed his own skin from exposure to various kinds of radiation. Gross, huh? My little brother Max’s full name is Maximilian Planck Petrova Abbott.” She shrugged, anticipating Finn’s laughter. “They are—were—a little odd, my parents.”
“Planck, the quantum mechanics guy?” Finn asked, no trace of laughter in his voice.
“Yeah,” she said, still unsure whether she should trust him not to make fun of her. “I think Einstein based some of his work on Planck.”
The conversation seemed to have died a natural death, but it didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable to Tesla, which surprised her. She didn’t really sit still much, even conversationally—she was restless by nature and preferred to keep moving.
The occasional pedestrian, alone or in a small group, strolled by or cut across the park. They added a soft murmur of footsteps and muted voices to the evening, which had cooled considerably. Tesla shivered in her sapphire blue tank top as a breeze played gently with the ends of her hair, making them dance around her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around herself and hugged her elbows in tight.
“Cold?” Finn asked. He moved his hand from the back of the bench to her shoulder. The skin of his fingertips felt hot against the edge of her collarbone.
“No, I’m good.” Tesla dropped her hands into her lap and leaned back until his hand fell away.
“So what was it like when you first found out about the arrhythmia—in October, you said?”
“Why do you want to hear about this?” She asked, relieved to feel suspicious again. She felt better when she was at odds with him. “You were a total jerk when I met you, you know. You snarled at me to get lost, told me not to come back, and then deliberately misunderstood me tonight so you could make me feel like an ass.”
“Okay, I deserve that, I guess,” he conceded. He rubbed his hand over the stubble on his chin. “It’s possible I wasn’t at my most charming when we met the other night—usually, everyone loves me immediately.” He paused, just long enough for her to snort in derision. He smiled and continued. “I had a lot on my mind, and I took it out on you guys. But I am interested. In your story,” he added quickly. “I’m a journalism major.”
“What, you’re writing a term paper on the lives of teenaged girls?” she asked.
Finn threw his head back and laughed with genuine spontaneity. His smile flashed in the dusk, and Tesla realized that until this moment she had not seem him relaxed or lighthearted. Despite his composure, his cool-guy smoothness, he carried a tension in his body, a mental or psychological seriousness of some kind that was as pitiable as it was intriguing.
“No,” he said, still chuckling. “I just meant I like true stories. I like to know what makes people tick, why they do what they do. If you understand people’s motives and histories, there’s very little you can’t figure out.”
“Well there’s nothing to figure out here.” She hoped he would grow bored and change the subject. “I passed out while I was playing basketball after school—not what you want to do in a gym full of people, most of them athletes, when you just play a little for fun. I’m not even on the team. It was totally humiliating, and I wound up in the hospital for a week.”
“Wow. How long were you unconscious?” Finn asked.
“Well, actually, I just felt dizzy in the gym. I fainted in the principal’s office, not on the court. I had to go to the hospital, and they kept me overnight, at first just for concussion. I got stitches, see?” She moved her hair and turned her face just slightly into the faint light behind Finn so he could see the fine white line that ran into the dark, silky auburn of her eyebrow.
“Yeah, I see,” he said softly. He moved his hand slowly toward her face, then ran his thumb along her brow, over the scar, the tips of his fingers just touching the side of her face for the briefest of moments.
“Then they detected the heart problem,” she rushed on, “kept me longer for tests, discovered the arrhythmia, blah blah blah. Turns out my dad knew about it, but I guess the pediatrician when I was a baby said it was no big deal. End of story.”
“Huh,” Finn said, apparently deep in thought.
“I told you it wasn’t much of a story,” she said quickly, confused by his nearness, the ease with which he touched her, the intense response she felt when he did.
“No, actually it is,” he assured her. “But I suspect there’s more. What was it like in the hospital? I’ve never had reason to go.” He knocked on the wooden seat of the bench for good measure.
Tesla shrugged. “I was bored, mostly. I watched Gilmore Girls reruns and slept a lot. My head hurt. The concussion made me…I don’t know,” she said, hesitant. “It was just weird.”
“How do you mean?” Finn leaned in toward her.
“At some point in the middle of the night after I was admitted, I did something really stupid.”
“I doubt that—you seem like a reasonably intelligent person.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said. “I guess it wasn’t my fault—I did have a concussion—but it makes me feel stupid now. Or maybe I was a little bit crazy that night. The world seemed…I don’t know. Different.”
In fact, Tesla had awoken around three o’clock in the morning, when the whole world is asleep and it feels daring just to be awake. No longer disoriented, she felt strong, clear-headed, even.
“The doctors had at that point found some problem with the electrical activity in my heart,” Tesla continued. “They said I’d have to stay for a few days while they ran more tests and figured out what it all meant. They told me to rest, to let them get to the bottom of it.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Finn encouraged.
“Yeah, well. I’m not always good at following directions,” Tesla admitted. She mi
ssed the smile that pulled one side of Finn’s mouth up for just a moment.
“So what was the stupid thing you did?” he asked.
Tesla not only didn’t like to talk about it, she didn’t like to think about it—but did, far too often. The puzzle of it all nagged at her, hung around at the edges of her consciousness. That night in the hospital she had felt that her perceptions were sharper, more accurate. She sensed, rather than heard, the few people who padded along on rubber-soled shoes as they carried out their silent, night-shift duties. She felt the weight of the entire building around her, the floors above, and below. The mechanics of it all thrummed along, the ductwork and the ventilation, the generators and the electricity that powered the lights and machines, while the sensors hooked up to all the sick people monitored their vital signs, the beep and hum and whir of them like so many sleeping children.
“You have to understand, my head wasn’t right,” she said quickly. “I was hooked up to this machine, a heart monitor, and the wires seemed like tentacles attached at my neck, my chest, my temple, my thigh. It was alive and we were, you know, plugged in to each other. Symbiotic. The monitor was small and portable, the size of one of those old clock radios, and bolted to a wheeled pole like the ones they hang I.V. bags on. It was powered by an ion battery so I could get up and move around. I woke up in the middle of the night, and I felt great. I had this sudden urge to get out of my room, to find the heart of the giant, pulsing hospital, and my monitor was on wheels, so why not, I thought?”
Finn was silent, and Tesla tried to explain what even she found inexplicable. “It all seemed so perfectly natural, like that’s what I was supposed to do. I felt this energy in and around me from everywhere at once. I can’t explain it.”
I can explain it, she thought, though she would never say it out loud. That energy—it called to me. I had to answer.
CHAPTER 6
Tesla paused, distracted when Finn waved a hand to shoo a mosquito that buzzed around his ear. It was so dark now that his face was in shadow, though the lamplight from behind him had turned his wild hair into a shimmering halo around the edges. She wondered if this story made her seem even younger or sillier than he already thought her.