Love and Other Unknown Variables

by Shannon Alexander

  My head feels like it’s being stretched between opposing forces, and I’m struggling to pull it back into shape. “Why does she care?” I lie back on my bed and cover my face with my pillow.

  “She likes being the best. At her last school there was weeping in the streets when she left.”

  I lift the pillow so I can see her. “Weeping?”

  Charlotte fakes big sniffles, grabbing my pillow and pretending to use the corner of it as a tissue. Her charcoal pencil-stained fingers leave tiny fingerprints.

  “Why’d she leave then?”

  She tosses my pillow back to me. “Small town. Better opportunities here, ones she feels we can’t pass up.”

  I try to ignore the inviting smell of Charlotte’s perfume all over my pillow. “Like?”

  “Well,” Charlotte draws the word out. “Better pay, cultural diversity, proximity to the university,” she declares in a voice that sounds like a recording of Ms. Finch.

  “That where you want to go?”

  Charlotte wrinkles her nose. “No, I’ll be taking a year off from school when I graduate.”

  True sign of a geek: my heart just stuttered at the idea of taking time away from school. My face must have blanched as well because Charlotte chuckles.

  “You going to be sick again?”

  I shake my head. Charlotte sits back in the chair, propping her feet up on the side of my bed. “Haven’t you ever just wanted to take time off from your life? There’s so much clutter. I’d like time to live my way—with no interruptions. ”

  “What would you do?”

  Charlotte shrugs. “See stuff. There’s plenty I haven’t seen yet, like the Grand Canyon.”

  “The Grand Canyon isn’t going anywhere.”

  “No,” Charlotte says, her voice dark like the shadows in the corners of my room. “It isn’t.”

  So this is what it means to be possibly useful. “You want us to drive your sister nuts so that she quits her job at Brighton and you can go see a giant hole in the ground?”

  She shakes her head and bites on the bottom corner of her lip. “No, not so she quits, but some stuff has come up, and Jo’s turning more and more of her attention back to me. I want all her attention on you.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  Charlotte arches a brow. “Personal stuff. Trust me, a distraction would be good.”

  She’s a mystery to me. Why would I trust her? “Distractions are bad, Charlotte.”

  She sits forward. “Depends on your perspective. The more she’s focused on you geniuses, the less she worries about me. It’d be a kindness to give her a break from me. I mean, she’s my sister, not my mother.”

  I didn’t think it was possible, but I’m more confused than ever. This girl’s universe operates under an entirely different set of rules. I have so many questions for her, and end up surprising myself by asking, “Why didn’t you tell her that you know me?”

  “You’re the only person I’ve met so far that goes to Brighton and has access to her. Plus, I’ve got a certain kind of feeling about you.”

  “Nausea?”

  Charlotte laughs. The sound relaxes my busy mind. “What?” she asks.

  “I’ve been told that before. You know, by girls.”

  “When? In the third grade, back when boys had cooties? I think you may want to take a look at yourself sometime, Longshanks. A girl would be lucky to go out with a smart guy like you.” She stands behind the chair, her long fingers tracing the frayed stitching. When she looks up at me again, the iron mask is back in place. “Get some sleep, Charlie,” she says, business-like. “And thanks.”

  Charlotte fades to shadow as the dim light from the hallway engulfs her.

  Thanks? Thanks for ruining her sister’s favorite pair of boots? And did Charlotte just hint that I was hot? Well, maybe not hot. But she did say I don’t have cooties. And I have long shanks. Whatever that means.

  I can’t take on too much. Asking Charlotte out would open up a whole new world of worries—worries that would distract me from my work, and not in a good way. I can’t risk another breakdown this close to the finish line. When I close my eyes and imagine it, I can almost feel my MIT acceptance letter in my hands. My hands are replaced though by a second pair with charcoal-smudged fingers that press against my chest as I pull Charlotte closer to me.

  I need to get it together.

  2.3

  Ms. Finch is already in the classroom when I arrive the next day. I fuss with the strap on my bag to avoid looking at her as I walk down the aisle to my desk. Next to my seat sits one of the jumbo cafeteria trashcans, the kind on wheels. I drop my bag at my feet, my ears instantly flushing. Greta and James are looking like they may explode with laughter.

  I punch James’s shoulder. “Idiot,” I say under my breath.

  James doubles over snickering. “Man, it wasn’t me.”

  “Don’t even go there,” Greta says when I look at her.

  Ms. Finch, standing with one hand on the trashcan, says, “I can only afford so many pairs of boots on my teacher’s salary.” I peek at her feet to see if she’s wearing slippers or something because how the heck did she sneak up on me? She nudges the can in-between us, its wheels squeaking.

  Striding back up the aisle, she tells us to shut our traps and begins the day’s reading. Seated, I can’t see over the giant trashcan.

  When she’s finished reading, Ms. Finch grabs a marker and writes on the white board behind her.

  Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

  “Anyone know who said this?” she asks, capping the pen and tapping it on her right palm. No one has an answer. “Really? After all I’ve heard about the intellectual superiority of Brighton students, I thought someone would be able to answer.”

  I’m sure she’s looking right at me.

  “I’m guessing, then, most of you are unaware of the ways in which mathematics and literature intersect.”

  More silence.

  “Here’s your first big assignment from me,” Ms. Finch says amidst the sound of shuffling papers. I lean sideways and see the class passing back packets of papers. Waiting for them to reach me feels like standing rooted to one place while a tsunami approaches.

  “This quarter, you’ll work in groups and research one mathematical or scientific idea represented in literature.”

  I glance around and almost laugh at the expressions on the faces around me. Shock, horror, and physical pain are predominant.

  “For example, you could look into the ways in which the meter of some poetry can be found in Pascal’s Triangle, or similarities between mathematical and literary paradoxes, or even the ways in which Lewis Carroll wove algebraic formulas into his greatest works. Oh! And, did you know one of the inventors of computer programming was the daughter of a famous poet?”

  Ms. Finch’s smile is so big it crinkles her eyes at the corners. She thinks we’re going to be excited about this. Obviously, she isn’t as smart as she thinks. Or, we aren’t. I’m not sure which, but I know what I’m going to choose to believe.

  “Why even Einstein,” she says, pointing to the quote on the board, “had an appreciation for literature.”

  Einstein has forsaken us.

  Ms. Finch ignores the hushed disbelief building around her and draws two intersecting circles on the board, labeling one “Math/Science” and the other “Literature.” With the rest of the class time, we’re expected to fill in the Venn diagram. It becomes plain when the literature side stays blank that we’ve got a lot to learn. Judging by the satisfied look on Ms. Finch’s face, she’s ticking this off as a victory for her, proving we need her more than she needs us.

  ---

  When I arrive at Dimwit’s house, she’s rocking on her porch while a tall glass of iced tea perspires on the table beside her, and staring out at the garbage heap of her garden. The garden used to be a kidney-shaped island of color in the midst of her immaculately trimmed lawn. The rose bushes varied from miniature v
ersions to tall, climbing vines, and everything in-between. Now the tall vines hang limply from a smashed trellis and the miniature red rose bushes look like roadkill.

  I stop at the bottom step and shift my weight from foot to foot. Sweat runs down my spine, pooling at my waistband. I clear my throat.

  “I know you’re there. I see you.”

  “Oh. Well…what should I do?”

  Mrs. Dunwitty fixes me with what can only be described as an evil-ass stare. “Fix the mess you’ve made.” She takes a swig of tea, making the ice cubes clink against the glass.

  When she stands, her rocker smacks into the siding of the house. Not proud of this, but the sound makes me jump. “It’s too damn hot out here for me,” she says, holding her cool tea glass up to her cheek. She’s stood too fast and steadies herself by holding onto the doorframe. Once she’s regained her composure, she steps inside and slams her pink door in my face.

  I wait for more detailed instructions, but the door stays shut. How the hell am I supposed to fix this mess? I scan the yard and notice tools upright in a garbage bin next to the garage door.

  Heaving a big sigh, I grab a shovel and start pulling out the broken stalks of roses to stuff into the garbage, trying—and failing—to avoid the thorns. I don’t think it’s a coincidence Dimwit didn’t leave gardening gloves for me.

  As the sun is setting, Mrs. Dunwitty comes outside to inspect my work. “Tell me, son,” she says, plucking a damaged rose from the garbage, rubbing one of the petals with her desert dry fingers. “How did this happen?”

  My hands are blistered and the skin on my forearms looks like I got into a brawl with Greta’s cat. I’m in no mood to explain the suckdom of my life to the ornery old bag. “Well, see, the car was moving at a velocity of—”

  “You think you’re some kind of smarty britches.”

  “No,” I sigh, wiping my dirt-stained hands on my T-shirt. “It’s Greta’s fault.”

  “She was driving?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then how do you figure it’s her fault?” Mrs. Dunwitty looks at me like I’m a garden pest.

  I shrug. It wasn’t Greta’s fault. It was Charlotte’s—Charlotte and those stupid sexy hips of hers.

  “Know what you need to do?”

  I shake my head.

  “Man up.” Dunwitty slaps me on the back like my little league coach after he told me to stop crying and hit the stupid ball. I only had to play one season before my parents decided “socialization” was not the answer. For the record, I wasn’t crying.

  “Same time tomorrow,” Mrs. Dunwitty calls as she walks back to her porch, the remains of a fat orange rose in her withered fingers. “Oh, and take that broken angel away. I can’t stand to see her all busted like that.”

  I heft the small angel into the trunk of my car and slam the lid.

  2.4

  The footsteps bounding down the stairs can only belong to Charlotte. Becca does not bound. Becca drifts.

  I run my fingers through my fine hair, still wet from my shower, willing it to look all casual messy-like. There was a bed-headed guy in one of the movies Becca and Charlotte watched over the weekend, and Charlotte kept saying she’d love to run her fingers through his mane. I’m not sure I can achieve his look, though, since my hair feels more like yellow duckling feathers.

  Giving up, I grab my pencil and hunch over my notebook. I’d probably pass out and split my skull on the hardwood floor if her fingers were tangled in my hair anyway. I hate Hollywood.

  “There you are,” Charlotte says, leaping from the bottom step into the kitchen.

  “Me?”

  Charlotte’s smile is teasing, and even though I know I’m alone in the kitchen, I glance over my shoulder to be sure she wasn’t talking to someone else.

  “Yes, you.” She comes closer and plops down in the chair beside me. “Becca says you have a compass.”

  I narrow my eyes at her.

  “You know. The stabby-end thing I can make perfect circles with. It’s called a compass, right?”

  I nod, eyes still narrow.

  Charlotte squints back at me, her face a mirrored mockery of mine. “Don’t look so skeptical. I need to borrow it.”

  “For math?”

  She wrinkles her nose and her bow-shaped lips pucker with the movement. “Not for math. Obviously, I’m planning on murdering someone with it.” I snort, and the sound seems to delight Charlotte, even though my ears are now volcanic. She chuckles and smacks at my shoulder. “I’m drawing something and my circles are seriously shitty.”

  I erase a stray mark on the page, trying to keep my mind on the numbers before me, not the image that just flashed through my mind of me running my fingers through Charlotte’s wild curls and pulling those bow lips toward mine, teasing them open with my tongue.

  Holy crap. Numbers.

  Numbers = good. Hard-on in front of Charlotte = bad.

  Charlotte leans closer, her shoulder pressing against mine, her perfume of sweet vanilla making the math in front of me blur. “What’re you working on so intently that you’re just going to ignore me?” My breathing has gone shallow and I may pass out when she breathes the word, “Dude,” along my neck. “What the hell is this?”

  “Calculus.”

  “Nuh-uh. I’ve seen calculus. I’m in calculus. This is—I don’t know what this is.”

  “Really advanced calculus.”

  Charlotte studies the formula I’m working with. I allow my eyes to flick toward her face for just a fraction of a second, taking in the way her brow pinches together making brackets along her forehead.

  “It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  She smiles at me, a sunrise.

  “You understand it?”

  “Hell no.” She does the nose wrinkle thing again and I have to turn back to the page in front of me. “But I don’t have to get it to get it. You know?”

  I shift away from her, running a sweaty palm down the thigh of my pants. “No.”

  Charlotte holds one finger up, a gesture for me to wait, before she scurries up the stairs. I copy a new problem into my notebook. I could work solely on the computer, but I like the way the paper feels under my palm as I work through the numbers, finding the solutions I need. I’m a quarter of the way through when she reappears, clutching her sketchpad.

  She opens it and holds it out for me. “Do you understand this?”

  The page is covered with oranges, reds, greens, and yellows. It’s like smudges of each color, bleeding together in a multitude of shapes. It doesn’t look like anything at all.

  “What’s to understand?”

  Charlotte doesn’t respond. She simply holds the picture steady for me to study. The more I look at it, the more I can see, though. Suddenly, it isn’t just colors, but fall leaves in the mountains.

  “Is it leaves?”

  One of her brows lifts and she tilts the page to examine it. “Perhaps.”

  But when she shows it to me again, it’s no longer leaves, but fish in a pond, like the Koi in the lobby of that hotel I stayed in once. When I blink, I see Mrs. Dunwitty’s rose garden at its peak.

  And suddenly, I get it.

  It’s a million problems all in one, and every way I work it I get a new solution. It’s beautiful.

  “May I?” I ask, reaching for the sketchpad.

  She captures the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth as she considers. After handing it to me, she sits and begins fidgeting, her fingers tapping softly against the underside of the table as I turn through the pages. Without thinking, I grab her restless fingers, tangling them with mine like the colors in her sketch. Her hands relax, but her whole body goes rigid beside me.

  “Sorry,” I say letting go of her hand, ignoring the stuttering of my pulse. What was I doing? I’ve spoken to this girl a handful of times and here I am trying to hold her damn hand in my kitchen.

  Now that I’ve let go, she starts to wriggle again.<
br />
  “Am I making you nervous?” I meant looking at her sketchbook, but the way she blinks like I’ve snapped at her makes me wonder what she thinks I could have meant.

  Charlotte takes a deep breath that hitches as it travels up her spine like it’s catching on snags along the way. “I’m not used to sharing. It’s always been easiest to keep things close.”

  I want to know what things she’s keeping so close. I want her to unpack them from inside herself, perhaps making room for…what? For me? This is ludicrous. I should hand her back her sketches and walk away.

  I push my own notebook toward her instead. “It’s only fair.”

  She chuckles and glances down at the open page. “What’s this?” Her voice is soft beside me. She’s pointing at the problem I was working on moments ago. In it, I’ve had to use the symbol for infinity, but I drew her tattoo instead. I didn’t even realize I’d done it.

  “Trying to figure me out, Mr. Hanson? Think you’ll get extra credit?”

  “I—” I’ve got nothing to say. I stare at the symbol I’ve drawn with the word hope bound up in its endlessness. There are many ideas in mathematics that we know are true, even if we’ll never be able to solve them. Too many. They’re the paradoxes that make math so beautiful.

  Charlotte feels like that. Like a problem I’ll never really figure out, but that I know is just right for me.

  She leans her shoulder into mine. “You and me, Charlie, we’re on the same team—both artists. We just work with different mediums.”

  Now it’s my fingers that can’t be still. Charlotte eyes them as I drag one hand up and down the metal spiral binding of her sketchbook and simultaneously tap a rhythm against my thigh with the other hand. She reaches for the one tapping between us, clasping it lightly in her own. Without another word, she begins flipping through my notebook, her eyes skimming the formulas. I wonder what kinds of things she’s seeing in them.

  I wonder what she sees in me.

  2.5

  Ms. Finch is on time the next day. She leans against the blackboard and waits for the tardy bell, flinching when it finally pierces our ears.