Love and Other Unknown Variables

by Shannon Alexander

  She smiles. “I meant for trying to help with Jo.” She looks out the window. “And for putting up with me.”

  “Charlotte—”

  “Does it really bother you that I’m at your house so much?” She’s rubbing a hand along the worn vinyl of the car door’s interior, still not looking at me.

  The answer is yes. Yes it bothers me. Everything about her, from her smile to her crazy doodled-on shoes unnerves me. She makes me want to step away from my straight-arrow life, if only so I can peer over her shoulder every once in a while and see how the world looks through her sketches.

  I brush my fingertips over the back of her other hand. There’s a current between us running faster than water over the falls. “Don’t go anywhere, Charlotte.”

  She rewards me with a smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes. God help me, I want to kiss those lines, but I’m held back. Charlotte needs my help. She does not need to deal with my over exuberant, inexperienced hormonal urges. She needs a friend.

  “I do want to let you in,” she says, her smile softening. “But everyone’s always known my business, and they thought knowing gave them the right to make decisions for me. I want to make the choices now, which means I have to keep everyone out until I know what I want.” Her pupils are dilating with panic. “And I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.” She pulls her trembling hand from under my fingertips.

  I double my grip on the steering wheel. My fingers ache. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help, Charlotte. That’s a promise.”

  3.5

  After showering, I head to James’s to study. I’m falling behind in a few classes since I’ve been spending my afternoons gardening. Greta and James have agreed to help me catch up. Plus, Greta says we have to finish our topic presentation outline for Ms. Finch. Topics get approved this Friday.

  James has made a cake. He leads me into the kitchen, steps aside and holds his arms out, like ta-freaking-da, showing off this lopsided monstrosity of a cake. Melody and Ella are posing next to the cake while Greta snaps a picture of it with her phone. She’s laughing so hard she’s wiping tears from her eyes.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” She’s practically cackling.

  James leans against the fridge watching Greta laugh her ass off. “It’s carrot cake.” He winks at me, which is weird, and I hope never happens again. “Melody helped,” he says, tickling his little sister who is standing beside him.

  “Wow, Mel. It looks great,” I say. She smiles her broadest smile.

  “Jamie did the frosting,” she says, pinching off her smile and wrinkling her nose. “I would have made it prettier.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a second,” Greta says lowering her phone and looking at the cake with new interest. “Carrot cake is my favorite.”

  “I know,” James says with a satisfied smile on his face.

  Greta’s about to step into his ginormous gorilla arms for a kiss, but she stops, her eyes darting toward me. Redirecting, she grabs forks from the drawer and fans them out toward us.

  “Do you think it tastes as bad as it looks?”

  James does a valiant job straightening the disappointed slump in his shoulders. He wanted a kiss, but got forked. He stabs a chunk of cake the size of my fist. “Guess there’s only one way to know.”

  My friends are acting like dumbasses around me. I should let them off the hook. Say something like, Oh, go on and kiss the big lug!

  I should also close my door the next time Charlotte and Becca are watching their stupid old movies. Big lug? Who says that? I contemplate lobotomizing myself with my fork.

  James cuts pieces for his sisters. They take them into the family room to finish a game of Pretty, Pretty Princess. I’m actually really good at that game. I always get the tiara.

  Greta takes a bite of the lopsided cake and moans her approval. She and James tear into it like wolves over a fresh kill. I like carrot cake too, and I didn’t get a chance to eat before I came over, but I’ve lost my appetite. Maybe I should go play the princess game with the girls.

  “So listen,” I blurt, determined to press on despite the weirdness. “We have a problem with Finch. My plan is failing. I hate to admit this, but I need help with a new plan.”

  Greta takes another bite. “Let us have cake and figure it out, too.”

  I look at James. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Suit yourself,” Greta says with another mouthful of cake. “I say the key to figuring out what’s going wrong with our plan of attack lies in what’s really bugging Ms. Finch. She’s hiding something. Whiting knows what it is. We need to know, too. It’s probably a weakness we can exploit.”

  That weakness is Charlotte. I don’t know why Charlotte is the key, I’m just sure I’m right. Like Euler’s Identity—I can’t solve it, but I know it’s true.

  “Let’s agree to keep our ears and eyes open, but we need a plan in the meantime.”

  Two-thirds of the way through the cake, we’ve rejected half a dozen ideas. James finally suggests something decent between giant mouthfuls of frosting. “Sometimes, when Mom is interviewing someone on the stand, she’ll do this hot and cold act. She fluctuates from friendly and understanding to hostile and intimidating in the bat of an eye. Eventually, the dude gets so confused he accidentally admits stabbing the bouncer in the eye with his granny’s knitting needle.”

  “Brilliant,” says Greta. “Your mom is so my hero.”

  “So you’re saying we need to act like we care?”

  “Yes, particularly about poetry, because I think I’m developing a taste for it.” James rolls his eyes and shoves me. “What I’m saying is that we feed her positive reinforcement for her efforts to literature-ize us, but just when she looks comfortable we toss in a little sabotage.”

  It’s a brilliant idea. By showing an interest in her class, Ms. Finch will spend more time preparing lessons to keep challenging us. It’s what she was trying to do in the beginning. When we first started ignoring her, she’d kept trying for a while, but as time wore on and the wall grew higher, she gave up. If she’s busy with lesson plans, Charlotte said Ms. Finch pays her less attention. By sprinkling in some negative reinforcement, we send a clear message to Ms. Finch that no one truly likes her dumb poetry. We’re all playing a game.

  “Operant conditioning, eh? That could work.” Greta stands and smacks her hands on the counter. “How do we start?”

  James grimaces. “We have to do an excellent job on our outline for this project of hers.”

  “Got it. Academic suck-up mode,” Greta says, opening her laptop and our project notes. “Can do. But what about the sabotage?”

  “I may have an idea.” I hop up from my stool and pull out my phone. “Ingrid’s been working on a new contact adhesive in chemistry.”

  “Ingrid?” Greta sits up straighter, her fingers freeze over the keyboard. “And you’ve got her number on your phone?”

  I pause mid-scroll. Her voice was a little too hopeful, like Becca’s when she needs a ride to the library. “Maybe? What’s it to you?”

  “You and Ingrid…” James says, his fist extended for a bump.

  “Are lab partners? Yes.”

  James sings, “Getting freaky in the lab, oh, oh, oh.” He attempts to dance along with his impromptu song, but he looks like a rooster running in place.

  “Stop, for the sake of our eyes and ears. Stop.” Greta throws her napkin at James, who slows his movements, but keeps doing a miniature version of his rooster dance. Turning to me, she says, “You should ask her out—I mean if you like her—maybe we could double?”

  Great, my underage adoptive parents are trying to set me up.

  3.6

  I can tell most of my English classmates have heard we’re switching tactics. It’s in the way they stare at me like I’ve walked into class naked. I don’t know how Greta gets information out so efficiently, but I’m glad she’s not my enemy.

  Ms. Finch follows me into the classroom, her usual tanker-sized coffee mug in t
ow, coffee slurping over the sides. I give her a diminutive smile. “Good afternoon, Ms. Finch,” I say with a nod. “I wanted to tell you that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed putting together our project outline.”

  Ms. Finch arches her eyebrows.

  “The research has been enlightening. I had no idea poetry could be so mathematical. It almost makes it interesting.” I pretend to chuckle at my own joke. Greta is staring at me like I am not only naked, but have also emerged from a pool of icy water.

  Ms. Finch recovers by taking a huge swig of coffee before setting her mug down in its usual spot. “Right, well, Mr. Hanson, why doesn’t your group present your outline first?”

  I drop my backpack and bow in her direction. “We’d be honored.” James snorts as Greta groans and fishes our outline from her bag. The three of us stride to the front and do our three-minute spiel on “The Infinite Nature of Poetry.” The topic choice was Greta’s. I’d never pick anything that has anything to do with poetry.

  During the presentation, I watch Finch’s face in my periphery. Deep worry lines angle upward from the bridge of her nose. Charlotte has the same lines, not so deeply ingrained.

  When we finish, I hand her our written outline as Greta and James return to their seats. She takes it slowly, like it might be a trap. Glancing at it quickly and turning it over in her hand she wrinkles her nose and looks up at me quizzically. “Thank you, Mr. Hanson. I agree with you. This is…” She puts the outline away in her grade book without looking at it. “…very interesting.”

  She reaches to take a sip of coffee, but when she tries to lift her mug, it doesn’t budge.

  The beauty of Ingrid’s adhesive is that it is colorless, odorless, and only adheres when moisture is present. Early this morning, we coated the corner of Ms. Finch’s podium with it. Once the epoxy dried, it was undetectable, until Ms. Finch placed her over-full mug of coffee on it.

  Bam! Instant bond.

  Best part is, Ingrid hasn’t found anything to dissolve the glue, yet.

  I admit it was risky to depend on Ms. Finch to have sloshed some of her coffee over the edge of her mug on the way to class, but the probability was extremely high based on my observations of her routine behaviors.

  Ms. Finch looks from the stuck coffee mug to me, where I’m trying my best to look shocked. “Wow. That sucks. How’re you going to drink all that good coffee now?”

  Her jaw clenches.

  I pull a 10-milliliter pipette from my pocket. “Maybe this will help?”

  Before she can say anything, I return to my seat. The class is frozen, waiting for Ms. Finch’s reaction.

  She looks from the pipette to the mug of coffee and up at us. Her jaw muscles twitch as she composes them into a smile. “You’re a class act, Mr. Hanson,” she says, sucking up a sip of coffee in her pipette and squeezing it into her mouth. “Ahhh. That’s just what I needed.”

  I try to savor my victory, but it feels hollow.

  3.7

  It’s been a month of alternately kissing and kicking ass. Ms. Finch acts like most of the pranks are strange coincidences, like her response when walking into her office, adjacent to the classroom, and finding it overflowing with balloons. “It’s not even my birthday. How thoughtful.”

  Ms. Finch isn’t above throwing some punches of her own either. Our big English project presentation is due Monday—the day after Halloween. “The same day your MIT early application is due,” Greta reminded me. “It’s been done for over a month. Just click the little button, Chuck.”

  Ms. Finch was gracious enough to okay our topic, even if our presentation was a thin veil for the initial attack. Greta says Ms. Finch wasn’t being nice, but that our topic is actually good. I think Greta’s been sampling the mushrooms Jeremy Peters has been propagating in the bio lab for “research.”

  Driving home the Friday before Halloween, James announces, “It’s slumber party night.”

  I look at Greta, whose wide-eyed expression mirrors my own. “I’d love to come, J,” I say, “but my teddy bear is at the cleaners.”

  “No, idiot,” James says, sitting back in his seat and crossing his arms over his chest. “Greta was saying earlier we need a place to meet to finish our project for Finch. I’m saying, unless we want to dodge a dozen screaming pre-adolescents, my house is out.”

  “Not it!” Both Greta and I shout at the same time.

  “No, boys. Not my house,” Greta continues. She arches one gingered eyebrow at me. “Mom and Dad are having a dinner party, so my house will be overflowing with shrinks.”

  “Scary.” James shudders.

  Greta nods. “There is one universal truth. You plus you,” she says, indicating us each in turn, “plus a house of psychologists drinking wine, equals one cataclysmic disaster.”

  My palms are starting to get sticky, so I grip the steering wheel tighter.

  “Charlie’s house it is then,” says James.

  “No.”

  Greta graces me with another arched brow glare.

  “Um, see, Becca’s got a friend—”

  “Really?” Greta interrupts.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  James leans up between the seats, exchanging a grin with Greta. “Is her friend rabid? Are you worried about her biting us?”

  “Is this friend wanted by the law for keeping human eye-cicles in her freezer?” Greta laughs.

  “Was this friend sent back from the future in a time machine to warn us of our nation’s impending invasion by wallabies?”

  “Does her friend shoot lasers from her eyes like what’s-his-face from the comic book you two are always talking about?”

  “Cyclops!” James and I both shout. I cut in before James can launch his next theory. “She’s none of those things, but she plays loud music and sings into wooden spoons, and is a huge—”

  “Distraction?” I can feel Greta’s cool green eyes watching me.

  “Yes. I mean…it’s hard to concentrate with all the noise. Let’s meet somewhere else.”

  Greta and James nod and remain quiet. I assume they are thinking of a place to meet while I’m trying to convince my nervous system there isn’t a need to attack every nerve ending at once.

  Greta turns toward me until her seat belt catches her across the chest. “Nah. We’ll meet at your house.” She arches a brow at me one more time, but this time it isn’t a why-are-you-so-stupid look so much as what-the-hell-are-you-hiding-and-don’t-think-for-an-instant-I-won’t-find-out look.

  ---

  Charlotte’s car is in its usual place outside. I was hoping she’d be somewhere else tonight. Hope is stupid.

  When the pizzas arrive, I liberate one from the stack of warm boxes and a handful of sodas. I’m on my way to my room when Mom calls out, “Hey! Who stole my veggie special?”

  Ew. I bring the box back to the kitchen. “You can have this back. James is allergic to vegetables.” While there, I stack a bag of chips, three bananas, and a package of Oreos on top of the pepperoni pizza I snag. That’ll keep everyone happy.

  “Are James and Greta moving in?” Mom nods at my mountain of food.

  “Yes. Greta’s pregnant, and their parents tossed them out.”

  Mom’s hazel eyes get huge for a second before she swats at me. “Not funny, Charles Hanson.” But she starts to chuckle as she grabs a plate. “Be sure to leave some food for the girls, or they’ll come busting down your door come dinner time.”

  I put the bananas back. I don’t want Charlotte anywhere near my door tonight.

  I figure if I can get Greta and James up to my room—fast—and keep them there, I may make it through the evening without the planets colliding. In other words, without Greta and James discovering Charlotte and asking me all sorts of questions that I don’t have answers for.

  I’m half way up the steps when I hear someone coming down. I peek around my tower of junk food. My brain hiccups when I see Charlotte. I trip and land hard, sprawling across six steps. Food goes flying. The only thing I manage to save is one
soda that comes free of the plastic holder thingy. The others clank down the steps, each jolt shaking them into canned explosives.

  “You okay?” Charlotte is at my elbow, helping me up.

  “I’m fine,” I say, rubbing my knee, already turning red from carpet burn. Is that blood on the carpet? Nope. It’s pizza sauce. Pizza is all over the steps.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” Charlotte is still holding my elbow, her brows pulled together.

  “Really, I’m fine.”

  “So I can laugh now?” She’s pressing her lips together, fighting to keep a smile in check.

  “Laugh?”

  She nods, a small snort escapes.

  I sigh. “If you must.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Charlotte exhales a gale of laughter. Her eyes water and her knees buckle and she’s babbling, “pizza flying,” and “your face,” and “ohdearlordthatssofreakingfunny.”

  The sound of her laughing echoes in the stairwell, multiplying her joy. It’s a sound I could get used to.

  “Har, har,” I say, chuckling at myself as she chokes back more giggles. “We’re going to need more pizza.”

  Sobering, she looks around. “This is totally salvageable. Five second rule, man.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve been laughing for like an hour.”

  “Sixty minute rule, man.”

  We both laugh, as she helps me pick up pizza slices and arrange them in the box so it looks as though they were never projectiles.

  “For your friends?” Charlotte asks, balancing the chips back on the top of the pizza box. I nod and look down the stairs to the sodas I dropped. I want to invite Charlotte to join us, act like she’s just any other girl and not the English teacher’s sister, not the secret I’ve been hiding from my friends.

  But then, Charlotte isn’t just any other girl, so instead I say, “Well, thanks.”

  “Remember, it’s one step at a time,” she says, giving my arm a squeeze before stepping aside to let me pass.

  3.8

  As soon as they get out of Greta’s mom’s Volvo, I usher James and Greta straight to my room.