This Is My Brain on Boys

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  What? Incredible. He threw up his hands, exasperated. “Every time I tried to break up with you, you wouldn’t listen or you’d threaten to do something crazy.”

  “I did not. Stop exaggerating.” She rolled her eyes, got up, and staggered to her bedroom. “You can crash here, if you want, and dream about your precious little evil-scientist girlfriend. Don’t wake me up in the morning, though, I need my beauty sleep. You can see yourself out.”

  There was no thank-you. No appreciation for how he’d guided her safely to the red and then the green lines of the T, keeping her steady as the trains lurched so she wouldn’t barf over fellow passengers. Actually, Kara did vomit—right on his shoes—but not until they were a block away from the apartment.

  He couldn’t wait until he could leave Back Bay. If there was one highlight of that horrendous experience, it was the comfort he took in knowing he would never have to answer her hourly texts or listen to her rant and rave about poor, innocent gerbils.

  The administration building was closed, of course, so Kris had to wait on the steps until Mr. Foy arrived, having been alerted by security that Kris had been on the shuttle.

  Foy didn’t even grace him with a glance as he bounded up the stone steps in his white shorts and shirt to unlock the massive front doors. “In my office. This won’t take long.”

  Clearly, Kris’s arrival had dragged the headmaster away from his regular Sunday morning tennis match, which meant he would be extra annoyed. Kris trudged up the stairs, each step leaden, wondering what was even the point. If Foy was going to kick him out, then just kick him out. Have security wait while he packed up his things and they could escort him to the gatehouse.

  “Sit.” Foy pulled out his own chair and sat at his imposing mahogany desk, where a green folder waited. Opening it, he removed a letter on Academy 355 letterhead and slid it to Kris.

  It was one paragraph long.

  It was his expulsion.

  “I spoke to your parents last night. As you know, they’re on the Cape, but they’ll make arrangements for you to return to Connecticut this afternoon. They understand that you are to leave immediately.”

  Kris closed his eyes. This was even worse than he’d expected. Not that he cared about getting expelled or even having to go to the all-boys military school in Colorado. Both of those paled in comparison to the fact that he wouldn’t even have a chance to apologize in person to Addie.

  The letter required his signature of agreement. Kris picked up the pen and hesitated. If he signed this, there was no going back.

  “You know what the real tragedy is here, Mr. Condos?” Foy asked. “It’s that I had planned for you to meet me here tomorrow so that I could offer you another year at the Academy.”

  Kris clicked the pen. Please stop, he wanted to say. Just don’t.

  “You may be surprised to learn that I’ve been monitoring your progress. Every afternoon, I checked in with Buildings and Grounds, where your supervisor, Robert, had nothing but praise for your work ethic. You arrived on time, ready to put in a hard day’s labor. You even woke before dawn to clean out the hornets’ nest. But it was something Robert said to me that really gave me pause,” Foy continued. “It was that he’d spoken to the security guard who caught you in the lab last spring with the can of spray paint. And the guard told him that you’d been trying to cover up the words, not write them. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” Kris whispered.

  “Speak up, boy. I can’t hear you.”

  Kris lifted his chin. “Yes, sir.”

  Foy got up and went to the window, gazing toward the rec fields and tennis courts, where a group of middle-aged men were standing around talking, waiting for his return.

  “Then why did you intentionally sabotage Dexter’s experiment? Was it because of your animal rights stance?”

  “I would like to say it was,” Kris answered. “By now you know my feelings on the use of lab animals. The way he kept shocking those crabs over and over was sick.”

  Foy nodded. “Much has been written on how the pursuit of science is often fraught with sacrifices.”

  Rhesus monkeys. “Yes, sir. But that’s not why I took his crabs.” Okay, that was a full-on admission. Point of no return. “I saw that Dex was doing everything he could to bad-mouth Addie Emerson’s experiment, the one I’m in.”

  “Yes. Dr. Brooks has informed me that you’ve been diligent in this regard, too. Go on.”

  “The way I saw it, Dex couldn’t get his act together by the award deadline. His crabs weren’t trained or whatever. So he stuck with Addie until his crabs were ready and then he started bashing her project so you guys would substitute his instead. I just felt like that was unfair, so I evened the score, so to speak.”

  A silence settled over the room, the only sound coming from the pfft pfft pfft of the lawn sprinklers below the window.

  “No matter the reason, you have committed a dishonest act, which school rules dictate requires immediate and permanent removal.” Foy sighed. “Even if on some level I must admit I do sympathize.”

  Kris went back to the letter and was about to sign when he had a sudden thought. “Sir, is it possible for me to leave tomorrow?”

  Foy pivoted from the window and this time regarded Kris with a look that bordered on regret. “I’m afraid not. If you read the handbook . . .”

  “I have, sir, but the last experiment is today. Lauren Lowes and I are supposed to have an overnight on Owl Island. It’s a major part of Addie’s project, and if I don’t do it, she’ll have no choice but to withdraw from the Athenian Award.”

  Foy considered this. “Let me call a quorum of the trustees and see if that’s acceptable. In the meantime, you need to sign the letter and clean out your dorm room. I’ll let security know what has been decided.”

  I, Kristopher John Condos, hereby admit that I have violated Rule #2 of the Academy 355 Student Code of Conduct by knowingly and intentionally committing an act of dishonesty, the penalty for which is immediate expulsion. By signing this letter, I agree not to appeal this decision. I acknowledge I must leave campus immediately and that I may not return unless specially invited by a member of the Administration and/or Faculty.

  Kristopher J. Condos

  It was done.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Where is he? It’s super-hot!” Lauren fanned herself with the brim of her white visor as she sat on Ed’s boat, which bobbed off the Academy dock in the still, humid air.

  Too still, as if the world was waiting.

  Ed checked his phone for the zillionth time. “No word. We might have to cancel.”

  “We can’t cancel. Addie already screwed things up by not letting me climb the rock wall the other day. The only way my Bio teacher is going to give me extra credit now is if I write up a report on this island doohickey thing whatever.” She sighed petulantly. “What time are you coming for us tomorrow?”

  “Depends on when we leave today. You guys have to make it a whole twenty-four hours without food or water, just surviving on what’s there.”

  Lauren curled her lip. “Ew. There’s nothing on Owl Island.”

  Ed shielded his eyes to see up the cliff. “There are a couple of fresh lakes with native perch to cook. There are no beaver out there, so no giardia that could make you sick. You won’t die of thirst.”

  “Yippee! No beaver pee! Where do I fill up?”

  A figure ran down the wooden stairs leading to the beach and Lauren said, “That’s him.”

  Ed started the boat. Blue smoke puffed out the engine in the rear. “You made it.”

  Kris threw a leg over the side. “Sorry, man. How late am I?”

  “An hour.” Lauren tossed him a life jacket.

  Much to Kris’s disappointment, she was the only one on board. He’d been prepared for a cold shoulder or, more likely, a pair of red-rimmed eyes that seethed with hate. But for Addie not to put in an appearance at the grand finale of her own experiment? That was intense.

  “What time
you get in last night?” Ed asked, pulling away from the dock, one knee on the driver’s seat as he chugged slowly through the harbor’s no-wake area.

  “Try this morning. Took the first shuttle.”

  Ed let out a low whistle. “So you and Kara are . . .”

  “Never speaking again.”

  “Good. I heard she was pretty gross last night, and what she said to Addie . . .”

  “Please.” Kris slapped his hands over his ears. “I’m trying to forget it.”

  “Hey, what are you two talking about?” Lauren called from the back. “Who was gross?”

  “No one!” Ed said, opening the throttle and letting the boat rip on the open water.

  Kris leaned on the prow, relishing the fresh air and spray of seawater on his face as he kept his focus on Owl Island, where he hoped Addie was waiting. This was his final chance to look into those mesmerizing gray eyes and beg for her forgiveness.

  Or say good-bye forever.

  Big gray clouds hung on the horizon. In the back of his mind, an alarm went off, something about the air and the heat, the portentous quiet of the atmosphere. Owl Island came into view, a cluster of dark silver oak and green pine trees and rocks. Ed slowed the boat as they neared the beach. Not a single sign of life.

  “Where’s Addie?” Kris asked.

  Ed didn’t reply.

  Kris turned. “I said . . .”

  “Heard you.” Ed killed the engine and went past Lauren to the back, depressing the automatic winch that lowered the anchor.

  Wow. Kris had no idea that Ed was so pissed at him. Made sense, he guessed. After all, Addie was his close friend, and Ed probably didn’t appreciate that Kris had left her to take Kara home.

  “We’re stopping here? But how are we expected to get there?” Lauren pointed to the beach.

  “Swim,” Ed said. “The water’s waist deep. You won’t drown.”

  “Yeah, but.” She peered over the edge of the boat. “Are those jellyfish?”

  Kris jumped in and held out his arms. “Come on, Lauren. I’ll carry you.”

  She slipped off her sandals and held them with one hand as she gingerly stepped over the edge into Kris’s grasp. “It’s noon,” she called out to Ed, clinging to Kris’s neck. “So be back the same time tomorrow and not a minute later!”

  Ed gave her the thumbs-up and hauled in the anchor.

  Kris turned toward the beach and saw the terns and seagulls not running along the water’s edge as usual, but gathered together in a cluster, hunkering down. At the time, he didn’t give it another thought.

  Big mistake.

  The island was dead silent, especially since there were surprisingly few motorboats on the water today, and even the birds were strangely muted.

  On the bay side, which faced Academy 355, a sandy shore led to a salt marsh teeming with tide pools full of minnows, fiddler crabs, clams, and snails. It was a completely different story on the ocean side, where waves crashed against huge boulders leading to a high meadow of short, dense grass. In winter, the wind was so fierce it whittled the oaks to toothpicks.

  Kris hadn’t been out here before, though Lauren had during orientation, which of course he’d missed as a midyear student. She showed him the rustic cabin, where they found the cooler of water bottles someone had conveniently left.

  Then they headed out to explore the middle of the island in search of the freshwater ponds Ed had described. It had to be over ninety degrees with 90 percent humidity. Even with the ocean breeze, they were hot and sticky and growing slightly bored.

  “When’s Addie going to get here?” Kris tried to ask as casually as possible, though he suspected that Lauren was savvy enough to see right through his act.

  “I don’t think she’s coming.” She led the way on a rocky path covered with pale green lichens. “Ed gave me a notebook from her where we’re each supposed to write our before-and-after lists and journal our thoughts and feelings, et cetera. So that tells me she’s off doing something else.”

  Kris was instantly deflated. The realization that his hopes were mere pipe dreams, that there would be no Addie, that he was stranded here with Lauren, was unbearable. They were only two hours in and already he was ready to flee. Swim back to the Academy if he had to. He was a mess. He was hungry and exhausted from tossing and turning on Kara’s couch, worried about Addie, and at the moment he was under attack by a swarm of mosquitoes.

  He smacked one on his arm. “Can you figure out the point of this experiment?”

  Lauren ducked under a low-hanging branch. “Didn’t Addie and Dex say at the beginning that they were trying to chart how males versus females responded to different situations?” She shrugged. “I don’t get it, but I don’t care, either. All I have to do is write a five-page paper on what it was like to be a guinea pig and my B+ in Bio is moved to an A-.” They went down a slight hill. “Why are you doing this?”

  He told her about the trouble he’d gotten into that spring.

  “You were part of that?” If Lauren was faking disbelief, she was an excellent actress. “But I thought they were kicked out as soon as they were busted.”

  “Not me. I came clean. Confessed to everything.” He could never bring himself to explain about trying to paint over the damage; it sounded like such a lame lie.

  Lauren stood aside to let him go first. They were at a swampy part riddled with even more mosquitoes and probably she wanted to see if he got stuck before she did. “Does Addie know?”

  He found a dead log and dumped it on the sodden ground as a makeshift bridge. “Yeah.”

  Lauren took his hand as she crossed. “You told her.”

  “Actually, she figured it out. Except that part about me being the one to come up with the idea of going down to the lab. She learned that last night.”

  Lauren hopped off the log and spun around, hands on hips. “And that’s why you keep asking about her.”

  “Yup.”

  “So how long have you two been going out?”

  He laughed. “Who says we’re going out?”

  “It’s written all over your face. You look like a puppy licking his wounds.” She stuck out her lower lip, pouty.

  “We’re not together,” he said honestly. “Addie didn’t want to while I was in her experiment and, well, after last night I think I blew any chances of us happening.”

  “Too bad for her!” Lauren said blithely. “Hey, I think I see water.”

  They stumbled down a sandy path to a tranquil pond. Kris ripped off his shirt and dove in, Lauren running after. The water was incredible, almost silky soft and clean. A glacial pond with no vegetation.

  Lauren threw off her shirt and stepped out of her shorts to reveal a bright-yellow bikini. “This is awesome.” She dipped her head back to wet her hair, and when she stood, pinching her nose, she reminded him of one of those Sports Illustrated models—beautiful, athletic, and totally airbrushed. Except she was real.

  He must have been staring, because she lowered her eyes coyly and then swam to him with graceful strokes.

  “This is wild, huh?” Her eyelashes were spikes that made her eyes mesmerizing. “Kind of funny that the school would be okay allowing the two of us on an island. Alone.” She lifted and lowered one bare shoulder. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  It hit him then.

  She had a crush.

  He should have known at the dance, when Lauren kept whispering in his ear stuff he couldn’t even hear because the music was so loud. She’d been sending other signals, too. Stupid, girly things like twirling her hair and running a toe along his leg under the table during those experiments. He was always the last to know when a girl liked him.

  He barely noticed the gust of wind that rippled across the water. Or how the leaves were turning inside out.

  She took one step forward, the dappled sunlight sparkling on her skin.

  “You know,” she purred, “I bet this is the experiment.”

  “What?”

  “I’m g
uessing the reason they paired me up with two guys was because they wanted me to choose. And you know who I chose?”

  At last an out. “Alex? I saw you guys in the gym and you were tight. He seems like an awesome guy.”

  “Alex is nice and everything, but . . . he’s kind of vanilla.”

  Another gust of wind and the sky went dark. Kris looked up to see gray clouds amassing overhead. “Sudden shift in the weather. A storm’s coming.”

  The pond water lapped the shore in gradually increasing waves. The small hairs on the back of his neck rose from atmospheric electricity and he felt a flicker of alarm.

  Not just a storm, his instincts told him. A monster.

  Lauren remained oblivious. She was swimming on her back like a siren, ankles crossed mermaid style. “For example, the rock wall? He’d never have done that. He told me so.”

  It took Kris a second to remember what they were talking about. Oh, yeah. Alex.

  “But you went right up it without a rope. My pulse actually started racing when you did that.”

  She knew he didn’t have a girlfriend. He’d admitted as much by fessing up about Addie. So he could scrap that as an excuse. Lauren knew he was a free agent and she was circling for the kill, just like the mechanical shark.

  “No one will know what we do out here,” she said, flipping around so her head bobbed by his chest. “What happens on Owl Island stays on Owl Island.”

  Something crashed in the woods and Kris jumped.

  “Relax. It’s just a branch. There are no big animals out here.” Lauren stood and rubbed her bare wet arms. “Is it me, or did it just get colder?”

  A lot colder, as a matter of fact. “We need to go.” He ran out of the water, taking Lauren’s hand to get her to move. She squeezed it playfully.

  On shore, they threw on their clothes, which minutes before had been hot and oppressive and now were insufficient against the breeze and faint drizzle. A bolt of lightning cracked across the sky.

  How far to the shelter? They were sitting ducks with all this exposure, and it was suddenly so dark he couldn’t see the path. He would have to negotiate by memory and they would have to run.