******
The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics
"Grandma, I'm having supper at the Italian hooligan's house so I won't be around for a good bit. There's those meatballs that Myrna Addison made still in the fridge. If you scrape off that green stuff and boil them, I'm sure they'll be Iodine fine." After a lifetime of noshing on rashers of bacon and fried eggs and homemade caramel doughnuts, Grandma was fortified with a stomach, and subsequent arteries, of pure titanium. She could eat the mangled carcass of a Serengeti antelope, hoofs, fur, horns and all, and only suffer through the occasional trumpeting burps. "And don't forget to return Boobs and Butt back to Mr. Sealy. If he finds out we borrowed this month's issue, he'll use weed-killer to write 'Dog Poop Welcome Here' on our lawn again.' Love you."
Rafe, who'd just strolled back into the TV room with more cans of Sprite, caught the latter part of message I was leaving on the machine. "Boobs and Butt?" he demanded incredulously as I hung up the phone. "You read that with your Grandmother?"
"Yeah, it was her idea," I answered, idly continuing to write out integrals on the panty liner I'd found in my pencil case. "Mr. Sealy gets Boobs and Butt every month and we like our borrowed porn to be jizz-free, as they say."
Laughing, Rafe slouched down beside me. "If my Grandmother ever caught me checking out porn, she'd skin me alive."
"I shake my head in sympathy," I said, shaking my head in sympathy.
"So anything good in this month's issue?" Rafe waggled his eyebrows. He looked like a young chap who'd just gotten into his pap's naughty wood block carvings.
"It couldn't have been more boring if it was written with a quill on vellum and called Hamlet." I made barfing motions down my t-shirt. "Where's the originality? The creativity? The absence of brainless Static Equilibrium? I may as well have just said that the vector sum of all external forces that act on a body must be zero."
Rafe tilted his head, frowning. "Are you saying there were no naughty nurses? Or none of those chicks that just wear stockings and sexy shoes?"
"Well yeah, there were all those old Trig. Identities," I replied dismissively. "But what good is that to anyone? I see boobs every time I take a bath. Suril's porn is much more exciting; you should see some of the graduated cylinders those fine fellows have to measure with!" I laughed so hard I bit my cheek and then had to stick a piece of panty liner in my mouth to stop the bleeding.
Rafe looked as though someone had just asked him to analysis the properties of curdled milk with his tongue. "You ever mention Suril's porn again and I'll tell Katrina you tried to find my molar mass."
I wanted to be scared of such a heartless threat but I was chortling too hard; Rafe had made his first Chemistry joke! I jovially whacked his thigh and smudged my running, sloppy face on my pants.
"Holy Mother of God, I spent one day with you and already I'm making retarded jokes." Rafe sighed loudly, apparently depressed.
"You should tell Lucan that, he'd laugh his tattoos off," I wheezed, still giggling. "Like, your mass would be molar if you know what I mean!"
"No, I don't know and I'm the one who made the stupid joke." Rafe popped open the tab of his Sprite and chugged down half the can. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he changed the subject. He obviously hadn't grown into the knowledge of Chemistry I had bestowed upon him. "I told Mom you're a vegetarian and she's fine with it, after she got the 'girls need protein' speech out of her system. She said you're in luck because she made her famous pesto-pinenut pasta tonight. Too bad it's not P day huh?"
I had decided to forgo the S day supper so as not to annoy Mrs. Moretti with stupid cooking demands; it was bad enough that I was a herbivore in an omnivorous home. Rafe suggested that I make up my S day supper by doing another S day lunch tomorrow and he said that he'd join me too. I thought that was as prismatic as an ionic crystal. It was lonely doing S day without Suril. "It won't be P day for a long time yet. I work on a rotational cycle, much like Kepler's first Law."
"You wanna hear something crazy Janie? The only laws I know are ones like you gotta be nineteen to buy liquor and don't murder people."
"All planets move in elliptical orbits with the sun at one focus. That's what Kepler proposed." I patted Rafe's knee consolingly. The boy couldn't help being a little Irish primate. "You can learn these things easily, I'll teach you. We probably should get back to studying anyway, we wasted too much time with all that kissing-smoochy hoopla."
"Whatever, you loved it," Rafe said arrogantly. "You were so kissing me back."
"I didn't know I was," I replied, blinking wide-eyed. This was surprising news as most of our kissing had passed by with me light-headed and dizzy. "You made my stomach feel very funny."
Rafe smirked. "Yeah? How's that?"
"I felt like I had when I'd first read Applications of Numerical Methods in Molecular Spectroscopy."
Rafe burst out laughing. "Fuck, I didn't know I was that good!"
"It was as though I had a stomach full of Unnilennium." I chewed on my wrist in confusion. "It's weird because I only get that feeling when I'm studying. Do you think there's something off with me?"
"All chicks go ape-shit over my hot bod, even nerdyass ones like you," Rafe bragged, leaning back with his hands behind his head. "Trust me babe, it's normal."
There were no good parts left to chew on my right wrist so I switched wrists. "When a body floats in a fluid, the magnitude of the buoyant force on the body is equal to the magnitude of the gravitational force on the body."
Rafe looked at me like Fb didn't equal Fg. "I'll keep that in mind."
I muffled a smirk into my hand. "You needed a puncturing in your ego, it was snoodling my nerdyass nosehairs."
"Hey, you're the one who couldn't even remember to push me away." Rafe nudged my knee with his. "Katrina's supposed to think you don't wanna make-out, remember? We need to work on your flailing."
"Lucan said I was an enterprising young lady." I loved Lucan so much, he was as ideal to me as a salt bridge containing a conducting solution. "I'm sure I'll be able to think of some alternative plot before the weekend mass-waves by. Kissing your face still seems a bit too much like Tri-nitrotoluene, highly unstable if you know what I mean."
Rafe's eyes darkened. They reminded me of Super Grover. "Maybe I want to kiss you."
"That's because all guys go ape-shit over my hot bod, even Irishass ones like you," I bragged, polishing my fingernails on my nose.
"Right." Rafe stalked over to the phone. "I'm calling Katrina."
"Sin theta divided by Cos theta Tan theta," I screeched, flinging myself onto Rafe in a high panic. We thumped into the bookshelf and a hardcover copy of The Da Vinci Code fell on my head. It knocked me out of my hysteria. "So will your wedding bowtie match the bouquet of flora Katrina will be carrying up the aisle?"
Rafe scowled and shoved me off him. "I hate you."
"It's understandable." I picked up The Da Vinci Code and stuffed it back into the bookshelf. "I hate The Edible Woman but read it I must. It's necessary for the continued superiority of my average."
Mrs. Moretti screamed that dinner was ready then.
Wincing, I stuck my knuckles into my ears. She sure knew the meaning of the Mach Number, that was for sure.
Rafe pulled my hands free. "Do I have to tell you not to let my Mom in on any of this McGregor Katrina shit?"
"Not really. I've been told that some Mothers can be of an overbearing nature with it comes to the violent, hormonal tendencies of their offspring."
Rafe led me to the kitchen. "You're such a frigging nerdy scientist, you know that?"
I beamed and walloped Rafe on the back in a friendly manner. "Thanks dude, that's truly an inspired compliment."
Mrs. Moretti was pouring vinaigrette over an enormous bowl of salad. She was a tall and stately woman, with angular features and sharp eyes. She looked every bit as tidy as her house. Not a single strand of her dark hair had escaped her complicated, coiling up-do and her clothes were stylish and wrinkle-free. She had
the appearance of a fashionable hostess ready to entertain a slew of important guests, not a mother about to feed her three rowdy boys and a 'frigging nerdy scientist'.
"Mom, this is my tutor Jane," Rafe said. "Jane, my Mom."
"Hallo Ma'am," I said, shuffling over to the island. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Not as long as I have this good-for-nothing idiot loafing around." She shoved the salad bow into Rafe's hands. "You drop this Rafaello and I'll kick you back to Florence."
"Not to be confused with Fluorine, which is known to boil at –188.2 degrees Celsius," I added, nodding importantly.
Rafe rolled his eyes and headed into the dining room, muttering under his breath about how cracked I was.
"Lucan has been singing your praises Jane. He says that you are a genius not worthy of a high school setting." Mrs. Moretti sprinkled fresh parsley over a dish of manicotti. "I hope my beef manicotti won't offend you?"
"Nah, my Grandma eats meat all the time. It doesn't bother me." I did some bouncy deep-knee bends, feeling ecstatic. It was like I was on the moon and gravity was just 1.6 m/s2. Lucan, a TA at a university recognized my innate geniosity. He was 'singing my praises' some might say...and had said! "Lucan's the coolest guy I ever met," I proclaimed fervently. "Cool like the speed of light in a vacuum...3.00 x 10 to the eight m/s...is cool."
"Lucan has always been very popular with girls," Mrs. Moretti told me, sounding slightly exasperated. "I believe it has to do with all his many tattoos. And that ridiculous...goatee he insists on growing."
"I don't care about any of that hoopla," I scoffed, chewing on piece of my hair. "He's awesome because he understands my t-shirt! And he showed me a cool math limerick and he's a Calculus TA!"
"Advanced Calculus," Mrs. Moretti corrected, beaming like she was a sixty watt light bulb. She thrust the beef manicotti dish in my hands and said, "May the Virgin Mary bless you with many robust sons."
I headed into the dining room, beaming also. No one had ever asked the Virgin Mary to bless me with many robust sons before; I didn't even know you could ask the Virgin Mary for stuff. My heart was racing an erratic string wave reminiscent of the well-known Law...Phasors can be used to combine waves even if their amplitudes are different. Advanced Calculus. How entirely 'kick-ass' as they say, was Lucan?
I loved Lucan to the Pi.
The dining room was a sunny room dominated by an extravagant, Mahogany eight-person dining table and a matching China cabinet filled with gleaming dishware and figurines. The wallpaper was gold and cream and dusky rose, the chandelier crystal. A set of glass doors behind the head of the table opened up to a balcony and I could see Guido standing there, smoking. In the midst of all this finery, Lucan had Rafe in a headlock.
I flirted with the idea that brawling with each other was a sign of affection.
"Your shirt cracks me up every time I see it," Lucan said, dragging Rafe backwards so that I had enough room to carefully set down the manicotti.
"Quit ogling her tits you stupidass pervert," Rafe snapped as he elbowed Lucan repeatedly but to no avail.
"There's not that much to ogle," I told Rafe, taking the pre-folded linen napkins from the sideboard and placing them at each of the set five places. "My boobs fall into the realm of imaginary numbers."
Lucan laughed and shoved Rafe aside. "I've always thought that girls who know how to derive are way hotter than airheads with big racks."
"You never thought that," Rafe retorted, rubbing at his neck.
"Your Mom said that you're an Advanced Calculus TA," I said breathlessly. Lucan was glowing to me like he'd been lit up by a Voltaic cell.
"Yeah, I am." Lucan slung an arm around my shoulder. "I also TA Partial Differential Equations II. I can show you my course syllabus if you'd like."
"I would like!" I looked up at Lucan with wide, Carbon atom eyes. He was taller than Rafe and much taller than I was. "You smell as nice as the pages of Basic Matrix Algebra with Algorithms and Applications."
Lucan ruffled my scraggly hair. He didn't even seem to care that it resembled a bunch of tangled, dusty cords that you'd find behind your computer. "Sweetheart, that's the nicest compliment I've gotten in a long time."
"Oh for fuck sakes." Rafe glared at us, looking disgusted. "Leave her the fuck alone dickwad."
"OI!" Mrs. Moretti came into the room with a bottle of red wine and a basket of focaccia, her heels clicking sharply on the hardwood floor. "You keep up with that filthy mouth under my roof and your Uncle Renzo will hear all about it."
Apparently this was quite the threat because Rafe paled beneath his freckles. Lucan smirked and squeezed my shoulder.
Mrs. Moretti took her position at the head of the table. Guido strode in and angled himself at her right, Lucan at her left. I plopped down next to Lucan and Rafe sat across from me, sulking.
"Would you like to do Grace Jane?" Mrs. Moretti asked, smiling at me.
I squirmed in my high-backed, cushy chair like a forward reaction was occurring in my guts. "I'm not a lesbian Ma'am."
Rafe and Guido burst out laughing. Frowning, Mrs. Moretti smacked Guido upside the head, who in turn smacked Rafe. I was fascinated; it was like the Food Chain, only it was the Smacking Chain.
Lucan patted my knee, snickering. "She means would you like to say a prayer before we eat."
"Oh 4 Pi r squared." I was highly relieved, not wanting to be rude in someone else's home, especially since they were so liberal with the thumpings. "Yes, I've seen people do that on TV before."
"Usually we ask our guests to say Grace," Mrs. Moretti explained, her wine-coloured lips quirking. "But if you don't feel comfortable, then you needn't do so."
"No, I won't mind any more than I mind hyperbolic functions."
Everyone folded their hands and bowed their heads. I could see Lucan's shoulders shaking as he silently chuckled beside me.
Happy, I thought for a few moments. "God, though you live at the edge of the observable universe, which we all know to be estimated at 10 to the twenty-six metres away and therefore it is doubtful that you'll be able hear me, I would still like to take this time to thank you for giving us a stomach which is able to contract in order to mix the food we've just eaten with gastric juices that contain the HCL and the pepsin needed to begin the digestion of proteins. Subsequently, I would also like to give thanks for pancreatic juices, intestinal juices and bile which break down the partly digested proteins, change starch into simple sugars and fats into fatty acids and glycerol. Without these necessary liquids, we would all need to be fed intravenously, much like Duncan from The Edible Woman wanted. So good job God. Amen."
No one said anything.
I looked up, worried and took comfort in licking my hair.
"Amen," Lucan said, giving me a thumbs up.
Everyone else said Amen too.
"Did I do okay?" I asked Mrs. Moretti. She was staring at me with a somewhat stunned expression. She mustn't've read Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman. I couldn't blame her, it was a shit book and I loathed the School Board for forcing it into my Honours English education.
"You were awesome," Guido told me, smirking as he uncorked the bottle of wine. "That was the best Grace I've ever heard. Don't you think Ma?"
"Er yes, it was rather...edifying," Mrs. Moretti agreed, holding out her wine glass to Guido.
"You're a girl after my own heart," Lucan murmured softly, his breath tickling my ear.
I beamed, feeling elated. It wasn't often that a strange group of people took a liking to me. It was as though they were Fe and I was S and we were reacting to form Iron (II) Sulfide.
Rafe tried to kick Lucan under the table but kicked me instead. I jumped and banged my knee against the top of the table. Every single bit of china and glassware rattled. I tried to look like I hadn't done it and hastily began reciting the atomic mass of each element starting with Hydrogen under my breath.
"Sorry," Rafe said before I could get to Lithium.
"Bumbling oaf," Mr
s. Moretti snapped and launched into a binomial lecture of how expensive her crockery was and how stupido Rafe was.
Meanwhile, Guido was pouring everyone wine, including me and Rafe, despite our being underage. Apparently the wine was from some fancy family winery in Italy and Mrs. Moretti said that a glass of well-crafted red never hurt anyone. I took her word for it. I'd never had alcohol in my life before but on a day when I'd gotten my first kiss, it seemed appropriate.
"To digestive juices," Guido said, tipping his glass in my direction and smirking.
"To the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics," I proclaimed, bouncing excitedly in my chair.
Lucan arched an eyebrow at me. "To the First Law of Thermodynamics."
"Oh hell," Rafe muttered, raising his glass. "To the Second Law of Thermal...uh..."
"Thermodynamics," I corrected, beaming at Rafe.
He smiled back, his eyes softening and he looked very adorable indeed.
"To peace, prosperity and everyone's good health," Mrs. Moretti toasted, sounding confused.
We all drank to that. The red wine was warm and sweet and not as offensive as I thought it would be. I wouldn't be buying a bottle anytime soon but at least I could choke it down without making faces worthy of Calvin and Hobbes.
Everyone started taking up dishes of food and passing them along.
Lucan stuck a couple of pieces of focaccia on my plate and quoted the Zeroth Law in the silkiest, most scandalous manner I'd ever heard. "If two bodies are in thermal equilibrium with a third body, then they're also in thermal equilibrium with each other."
My stomach tingled in a way that usually occurred around exam time. All sorts of electrochemical images of me and Lucan in various states of thermal equilibrium filtered into my brain. I blushed Methyl Red and put too much salad on my plate.
Rafe took the salad bowl from me, not seeming to notice my slightly shaking fingers and winded manner. "What I don't get is how ten to the twenty-six is the edge of the universe. How does that makes any sense?"
Guido rolled his eyes and smacked Rafe on the forehead with his spoon. "That's ten with twenty-six zeros after it dumbass. Even I know that."
"It's fortunate Jane has agreed to tutor you, Rafaello. Why didn't you ask her help last year?" Mrs. Moretti shook the pepper mill at Rafe. "Then I would've been spared the travesty of your grade eleven marks."
"Ten to the six is a million metres," I told Rafe as I smiled at Mrs. Moretti. I liked her because she liked me and didn't think I was a goofus. Most people thought I was a goofus and it was always nice when someone went against the general consensus and thought otherwise.
"And ten to the nine is a billion metres," Lucan added, serving me a large helping of the pinenut pesto pasta.
"So you tell how far ten to the twenty-six metres might be," I concluded, sneaking a peek at Mrs Moretti to see which fork she was using. She was too busy urging Guido to take more manicotti to worry about cutlery. "It's the edge of the known galaxy."
"That's some enlightening shit," Rafe remarked, rolling his eyes.
Mrs. Moretti nodded to Guido and he smacked Rafe for her. "Maybe if you took an interest in the world around you, you wouldn't get into so much trouble, bozo," she snapped, jabbing her fork in his direction.
"She said bozo," I whispered to Lucan and giggled. I knew which fork to use now.
Lucan tweaked my nose. "Ma doesn't lie. She's had to deal with Rafe's bozo ways for the past eighteen years."
I giggled some more. Rafe glared Vanadium II Phosphate at me so I had to hide my face by fake-coughing into my whole hand.
Mrs. Moretti was an amazing, electromagnetical cook worthy of a five star eating establishment. Her focaccia bread was soft and chewy and had pieces of olive and sun-dried tomato in it. Where I came from, sliced whole wheat was considered darn exotic so this focaccia stuff was like a miracle. I wanted to marry it. Then I tried some of the pasta, which was rich and buttery and flavourful and concluded that Lipton was the shit of a thousand grampuses. I wondered if I could somehow adopt Mrs. Moretti; she was like a food Alchemist, making magic on your plate.
"So Jane tell me, what does your Father do?" Mrs. Moretti asked, setting down her wine glass.
"Not a whole lot," I answered, attempting to spear a cherry tomato; it had left the safety of its saladular home and was now involved in the olive oil slickness of pasta from the wrong side of the plate.
Mrs. Moretti pursed her lips. "I see." Her voice was stiffer than a Nickel-Cadmium battery.
Guido and Rafe both took on wary expressions while beside me, Lucan cursed very softly.
Obviously I was missing a common derivative. I hastily added, "Mostly because he's deader than Aristotle's Theory that matter is made up of the four elements."
Everyone made the sign of the cross. I blinked, bemused. I'd never really thought of my Dad as an evil kind of guy.
"I'm sorry Jane," Rafe told me quietly.
"Oh don't be, it's common knowledge now that matter is made up of atoms."
There was a silence. I pondered the evolution of science and the make-up of the atom, like I was certain everyone else was doing.
"How your poor mother must've suffered," Mrs. Moretti finally said, shaking her head.
"She didn't suffer all that much on account of her dying before Dad did."
More crosses were signed.
"Who do you live with now?" Lucan asked, watching me push peppers and onions onto my fork with my finger. They were slidey and need extra boosting.
"Her Grandmother," Rafe answered for me. "Right Jane?"
"Yeah, she's more 'hip' than Laplace's Equation." I was too afraid too use my fancy, spotless napkin so I just wiped my fingers on my cords under the guise of brushing crumbs away. You had to be slick like a frictionless surface when you were in polite company. "And we all know that the Laplacian operator is by far the most important differential operator in Mathematical Physics."
"Though we shouldn't forget how integral Green's Theorem, Stokes' Theorem and Gauss' Theorem are to Vector Analysis applications," Lucan remarked, winking at me.
"Oh indubitably," I agreed, smiling so hard that my left eye watered.
"B equals T x N," Lucan drawled out, idly stroking the stem of his wine glass. He lowered his voice. "I think you and I should study the T and N planes in depth."
I flushed the brilliant hue of Iron III Chloride mixing with Potassium Thiocynate. T and N were referred to as the osculating plane, which literally meant the 'kissing' plane.
"Christ above," Guido groaned, downing his wine and reaching for more. "Can we please save the goddamn scientific foreplay for later? I'm getting nauseated."
"Yeah I'll say," Rafe snapped. "Let her eat in peace muttonhead!"
Lucan muttered something in Italian and Rafe answered back, looking furious, and it went on.
Mrs. Moretti rapped Guido's knuckles sharply with the end of her knife. "Heathen, don't you take the Lord's name in vain!"
"Christ Ma!" Guido rubbed at his knuckles, which I saw were all bruised. "That friggin' hurt!"
Mrs. Moretti whacked him again for saying the f-word (version mild). She turned to me and scoffed, "Men, they're all the same! Act so macho all the time and when it comes time for a little pain, the cry like babies."
"I frown deeply in agreement," I said, frowning deeply in agreement. I nodded a bit to add extra seriousness to the situation.
Mrs. Moretti then told Lucan and Rafe off for fighting like wild savages.
Over the remainder of dinner, I learned a lot of things about the Moretti family. Guido was twenty-seven and he was a Corrections Officer, not an elephant trainer as I'd previously guessed. The grey uniform and the black eye, which bore distinct signs of trunk brutality, had thrown me off. Guido worked at Foster Hill, a juvenile detention centre and he'd gotten injured breaking up two rowdy fifteen year olds. Mrs. Moretti was a high-powered executive of something or other (I didn't quite catch all the details as I was distracted by Lucan writing the Poyn
ting vector in my pesto sauce with his fork) and hated her secretary because she always smelled like the Body Shop and Mrs. Moretti only liked the timeless elegance of Chanel No. 5. She also rivalled Mrs. Shah with her 'Eat eat eat' mentality. Lucan said it was an ethnic thing.
I also learned why Mrs. Moretti hated Katrina (she said Mrs. Moretti used too much butter and oil in her pasta and that her desserts were too fattening) and that Rafe's Aunts used to paint his nails until he was five. He had liked it a lot and cried when they said he was too old to wear girl's nail polish. Mrs. Moretti told this story with a great deal of fondness and reached over Guido to pinch Rafe's cheek. I sniggered for a good six point five minutes and couldn't talk. Rafe said he hated me and Guido smacked him with the focaccia basket.
For dessert we had cannoli, which I'd never had before but was now my favourite dessert ever. I told Mrs. Moretti that Katrina was so stupid that she didn't even know how to use Wallis' Formula (I hastily crossed myself after that) and that she was the best cook I'd ever had the fortune of meeting. Mrs. Moretti said I was sweeter than chocolate-raspberry tartufo and Rafe nudged me under the table with his foot and smirked at me.
After we'd eaten to the point of near-combustion Mrs. Moretti ordered Guido and Lucan to help her clean up and shooed me and Rafe off to study.
"I love your Mom like I love Variable-Mass Systems," I enthused as we headed back to the TV room. "She's so nice to me and you know, hardly anyone ever is. I love her!"
"Yeah, she's awesome." Rafe began gathering up all his binders and textbooks. "Let's go study in my room. I'm sick of Lucan trying to...science you up. You're not one of his stupidass skanks for fuck sakes."
"He hasn't done anything like that." I stuck the panty-liner with the integrals on it into my pocket and collected all of our pencils and erasers and calculators. "We were covalently bonding over our mutual love of the sciences. He knows what I'm talking about Rafe. Hardly anyone ever does. And he said I was cute too. Who thinks that?"
"I think that," Rafe exclaimed as we headed up the stairs. "Why do you think I'm dragging you up to my room?"
I rolled my eyes. Rafe could be so slow. "Obviously to study. We haven't even touched Physics yet."
"Sometimes you're not too smart at all Janie," he gloated, smirking. "Obviously, we need to make-out some more." He poked me in the side and made me squirm.
I was surprised because Rafe's room was neat. The bed was made, his desk and dresser were organized, his bookshelf spotless. I supposed Mrs. Moretti had beaten cleanliness into him. Rafe shut the door and then locked it behind us. We sat down on his bed with our backs to the wall.
"How come your Dad wasn't at dinner?" I asked curiously, opening Rafe's Chemistry textbook to the familiar page on Hybrid Orbitals. "Did he have to work late?"
"Mom and Dad are divorced actually."
I was astonished. "What kinda guy would divorce your Mom? She's a real 'babe' and a half, as they say!"
Rafe laughed softly and slid his arm around my shoulder. "Dad was this big-time drunk and used to smack Mom around and shit. He split after I was born. I think that's the best thing he ever did for her. That's why Mom got a little...edgy when you said that your Dad didn't do much. My old man was unemployed most of the time and he was lazy and so Mom's got this big thing against husbands who do jack shit."
"Do you ever see him?"
"No. Last I heard he was living in California or Miami or some shit like that." Rafe snorted disgustedly. "Apparently he's boning this chick who's like twenty years younger than him."
I shook my head. "That's more crap than getting a 90 on a test."
"Yeah," Rafe said quietly, resting his cheek against the top of my head. I guessed he didn't mind my scrappy hair either. "But I wouldn't mind getting crap like that."
"You can do way better than that Rafe." I patted his knee. "You're smart when you apply yourself. I'll help you, don't worry."
"Thanks Janie."
We sat there in silence for a while. His arm was warm around me and it felt nice. I relaxed against him and slid my arm around his waist. He didn't smell as good as Lucan but he didn't smell half bad either. I liked Rafe a lot, he never made me feel like I didn't belong.
"How'd your parents die?" he asked me after a while. I could feel his lips moving against my hair. "Or would you rather not talk about it?"
"I don't mind. My Mom died of Multiple Sclerosis when I was four and then when I was nine, my Dad got into a car crash." I gnawed at my wrist a bit. "I think it was probably better that way; Grandma says Dad was dying without Mom. He used to get upset when I'd ask him questions about her. He missed her so much that he couldn't even talk about her."
"That sucks more than getting a 90 on a test."
"Yeah, it sucks like getting an 85 on a test."
"Oh those dumb fucks who get 85," Rafe scoffed, sniggering. "How stupid can you get?"
I think he was being sarcastic, if his Math test marks were any indication. "I'm really glad that I listened to pseudo-punk boy and Lord of the Rings girl from my English class," I remarked around my wrist. "They recommended you to me. And with all the 'knuckle-sandwiches' that go on around here, I can see that you've got molecules of experience."
Rafe chuckled. "None of that's serious Janie, we're just messing around."
"I know but I'm still glad I picked you."
"I'm glad you picked me too," Rafe murmured. "Even if I don't understand half of the stuff that comes out of your mouth or your science jokes."
"I know." I fiddled with the bottom of my 'Don't drink and Derive' t-shirt. "Rafe, I really, really, ten to the twenty-six really don't want to have to kiss you in front of Katrina. She's going to beat me so hard that bile from my liver will blow out of my ears at a force of 2.36 m/s."
"She'll only get pissed if you look like you're kissing me back," Rafe explained, stifling his laughter. "You know, like how you were before. You kept forgetting to push me away."
"I don't know why kept forgetting," I muttered, puzzled. "Normally I never forget much of anything."
"It's because I make your stomach feel all fluttery," Rafe boasted arrogantly. "I make you hot."
I twisted so I was looking at him. Our faces were very close to each other. "Didn't your stomach oscillate when we kissed too?"
Rafe tilted his head, his eyes on my mouth. "Uh...yeah?"
It didn't take a Quantum Physicist to figure out what he wanted to do. "When your eyes were closed, did you see Cramer's Rule?"
"Doesn't everyone?" he whispered, angling my chin. "Don't forget to struggle Janie."
Rafe kissed me. This time it was very hot and insistent, not gentle and exploratory like before. His tongue immediately found mine and I forgot to struggle. Again. And then, somehow, I ended up recumbent on the bed with Rafe on top of me, my arms around his neck. He was kissing me so deeply that my every atom felt on the verge of combustion.
Rafe was giving off heat, heaps of heat that could be measure in joules/mole and my temperature was changing, rising, absorbing his heat and this was a Specific Heat Capacity problem in practice and there was an equation for it, I knew it...I'd used it tons of times...Q equals C...something...it was basic Kinetics...but Rafe's hands were stroking down my sides, making it difficult to think, to breath and then they were slipping under my T-shirt and his hands were skimming my stomach and...
I heard soft moaning. I realized that I must have been doing it because Rafe wasn't kissing me anymore. He was millimetres away from me, his nose brushing mine. We stared at each other, sharing laboured breaths, our hearts racing against each other. His eyes were impossibly dark and the way he was looking at me made me feel effervescent.
"Hi Janie," he murmured against the corner of my mouth.
I gasped, clinging to the comforter beneath me. "You're making me forget things. Things I always know."
"Mmmm." His mouth was shifting, whispering over my jaw and down my neck. And it felt so odd, the way he was kissing at me and sucking at me, that I
had to take to muttering specific heats of elemental solids so that I wouldn't scream or pass out or die.
"26.5j is the molar specific heat of Lead," I wheezed dizzily, squeezing my eyes shut. How was I supposed to think like this? "Quantum theories above, what are you doing to me?"
"Tutoring you." I felt his lips curve into a smile. His fingers tangled with mine and then he'd pinned them above my head. "Insert witty joke here about me finding your y-intercept."
"24.4j is...Alu...minum..." How could a person's neck be made to feel like this? Every stroke and lick seemed to be sending flames straight to my intestinal juices. I squirmed against him. He was filtering his heat into me and I was slowly heating, boiling, molecule by molecule, drip by drip, like we were performing a titration...
"Oh shitsicles!" I yanked my hands out of Rafe's grip and wiggled out from under him. "My titration lab!"
Rafe looked dazed. His cheeks were Methyl red. "Um...what?"
I sat up too quickly and a travelling wave of light-headedness swept over me. I sucked in air, pressing my hand to my pounding heart. "I haven't even started my titration lab yet!"
Rafe propped himself up on his elbow. "The lab that you only did today?"
"Yes!"
"The lab that's probably due in a week?"
I tore open my school bag and shoved my calculator and pencil case into it. "I hand in my homework as soon as possible, I always, always do that!"
Rafe's lips quirked.
"I have to go home now." I tried to be calm. It didn't work. "And I have French homework to do and those stupid Edible Woman questions! I hate English so much!"
"Janie breathe." Rafe stood up and pulled me to him. He rubbed my back like I was a little baby that needed a burp. "How about I pick you up tomorrow morning?"
I frowned suspiciously. "I don't have to wear anything fancy do I? I've never been picked up before."
"You can wear whatever you want to." He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. "Feel free to take inspiration from Boobs and Butt."
"The direction of the instantaneous velocity of a particle is always tangent to the particle's path at the particle's position." I sighed in relief; I still knew everything I knew.
"...That's a no right?"
"Average Velocity Rafe, does in fact Displacement/Time Interval."
He rested his forehead against mine. "You done freaking out?"
"Mostly."
I wrote down my address in Rafe's Physics binder and he wrote down his phone number in my French scribbler. Then he kissed me again and said that he liked kissing me better than Katrina because I liked his Mom and I didn't taste like MAC lipstick. I thought that was a nice thing to say and floated downstairs like I was displacing my own weight of fluid.
Mrs. Moretti stuck her head out of the kitchen. "Coffee Jane? I've got almond biscotti too."
"Actually I need to get home Ma'am." I rubbed my nose to hide my mouth in case it looked too 'just-kissed'. "I've got a lot of homework to do."
Lucan came out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a tea towel. "I'm about to head off, I can drive you home."
Rafe came to stand beside me. "I'm driving her."
"Don't be dense Rafaello, gas is pricey," Mrs. Moretti snapped. "Lucan will take her."
"Where do you live?" Lucan asked me.
"Skylark Drive. It's near the grocery store on Market. But I don't mind walking though, it's only-"
"Walking?!" Mrs. Moretti screeched, outraged. "At night? You want to walk? A pretty girl like you? Have you gone stupid?"
"No, we can't let you leave unescorted,. Lucan gave me a warm look. "Just lemme get my shit in together and we'll be off." He ducked back into the kitchen. Rafe stalked after him, looking disgruntled.
I loved Mrs. Moretti. "Your ex-husband was a stupid jerkfece to divorce you. I mean I'd marry you like a pineapple and I'm not even a lesbian."
Mrs. Moretti burst into surprised laughter and pulled me into a rough hug. "You must come over for dinner again, Jane? And next time bring along your Grandmother. I will make my special vegetable pie, you will love it." She kissed both of my cheeks and told me to call her Bianca.
I thought Bianca was a name as beautiful as Serret-Frenet equations.
Lucan came out of the kitchen wearing a black hoodie with the sleeves rolled up so that his colourful, tattooed arms were visible, Rafe at his side. Rafe got my zip-up hoodie from the closet while Mrs. Moretti dragged Lucan back to the kitchen to take home leftovers.
"Where's Guido?" I asked, stuffing myself into my hoodie. "I'd like to say chowder to him."
"He already left. Him and Lucan don't live here anymore, they only come around for supper."
I put on my schoolbag. "Your mother cooks like Erwin Schrodinger studied atomic models."
"I'll be sure to tell her." Rafe shook his head, smiling. "So how about I pick you up tomorrow at eight?"
I goggled at him. "But class starts at eight-thirty!"
Rafe rolled his eyes. "Ten to eight then, that's my best offer. I refuse to be at school any earlier."
Mrs. Moretti and Lucan came back, the latter carrying a grocery bag stuffed with plastic containers of food. We all did the good-bye hoopla and there was a lot of waving as I followed Lucan to his pickup truck.
"Thank you for this drive," I intoned as Lucan beeped his doors open. "I appreciate it as much as I appreciate my intestinal juices."
"It's my pleasure," Lucan replied, laughing. "You need to come over for supper every night. I haven't had this much fun in a while. Plus Mom thinks you're awesome."
I got into the car and buckled up. "I think your Mom is awesome too. She said I could call her Bianca. I never got to call an adult by their real name ever."
Lucan revved up the engine and tore away from the curb to the screechings of a Finnish metal band called Children of Bodom.
The ride home was the fastest ride ever. I told Lucan about how Grandma wanted a tattoo and he said he's hook her up no problem. Then he told me all about his tattoos. He had tons of them; a portrait of his deceased Grandfather's face, a protection prayer in Italian, this big, intricate thing made of galaxies and chains and shooting stars that surrounded Bianca's full maiden name, a phoenix that curved all around his left bicep, flames and rays down the side of his neck because Lucan meant light and a complex, interlocking tribute to Biomechanics.
My favourite tattoo was the one Lucan showed me when we stopped at a five-way. He pulled off his hoodie and his wifebeater and all down the right side of his chest, he had rows of integrals and derivatives tattooed. He told me that last summer he'd been in New York and had gotten stuck in an elevator between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth floor of some fancy apartment building. He'd been alone and was afraid of heights and had done Calculus to keep from hyperventilating.
I got to touch those tattoos on his chest with shaky fingers and he watched my awestruck expression with eyes so dark that they seemed black.
We chatted about Advanced Calculus and Partial Differential Equations and Lucan talked about how awesome being a TA was and how tattooing and math were his favourite things and he was lucky because he got paid to do both. I told him that he was the coolest guy I'd ever met and he gave me a one-armed hug while driving. We told each other more science jokes and discussed Taylor's Theorem and the Physical Interpretation of Divergence and Poisson's Equation. Lucan knew everything about everything. It was more brilliant talking to him than it was actually using Taylor's Theorem.
I wished I could talk to Lucan for forever.
When we got to my house, Lucan parked in the driveway and stuck his truck into part. He took a skinny black marker out of the glove compartment and wrote his phone number on my arm. "I want you to call me if things don't work out with Rafe, okay? I'm into you, fuck the age difference."
"I will," I happily agreed. Rafe must've filled Lucan in on the Conner McGregor situation and I thought it was brilliant that Lucan was willing to fight for justice as well as for the knowledge of math and
fantastic body art. "No one hardly ever knows what I'm talking about but you do and we can have conversations together!" I beamed and didn't even need to chew my wrist. "Hey, maybe some day when I have an inservice at school, I can come to one of your tutorials? I won't even talk, I promise, I'll just differentiate."
Lucan burst out laughing. "Sweetheart, you're like no one I've ever met. I mean Christ, even the students who have to take my tutorials don't wanna be there."
"Well their heat loss is my rise in temperature," I said smugly, without thinking. Immediately the way Rafe had kissed me on his bed filtered into my cranial lobe and I flushed like a toilet.
"I couldn't have put it better myself."
I unbuckled my seatbelt and gathered up my schoolbag. "Thank you for propelling me to my place of residence Lucan. I appreciate it like I appreciate the Law of Refraction."
Grinning, he asked, "Do I get a hug?"
I put my arms around him and he squeezed me tight. I wished I had an Erlenmeyer flask to bottle how marvellous he smelled. "You're really nice," I whispered into his shoulder. "I like you."
"Make sure you come back for supper sometimes, okay?" He brushed some hair out of my eyes. "We all love you."
I almost felt as warm as when Rafe had kissed my neck. "F equals -kx," I agreed, my heart thumping out a Mach cone. "I'm hooked like Hooke's Law."
Lucan waited until I got inside before driving off.
I kicked off my shoes and reflected that today was the most wildebeest day ever. I mean I hadn't done any of my homework and it was night time! I followed the sounds of the TV into the living room, ditching my hoodie and schoolbag as I went along.
Grandma and Suril were both in their pajamas, stuffing their faces with ice cream. Suril was laying on the sofa, his sprained ankle propped up on a bunch of pillows while Grandma had taken up residence in her favourite armchair. They were watching the Blue Jays play baseball.
"Ugh, check the massive gut on tubby over there," Suril was saying with great disgust. "Have you ever seen a greasier moustache? I swear, soccer's the only sport that's filled with hot guys. And WWE wrestling but that's not exactly what I'd call a sport."
"Well the fellow up at bat seems to have an interesting bulge in his pants," Grandma observed, leaning in for a closer look. "But that's probably just his cup talking."
"The amount of strange and baffling things I did today was ten to the nine kg/m3," I announced, shuffling in. "It was like a Phosphoric Acid spill in the Lab of life."
"Yeah?" Grandma thumped down her container of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and looked interested. "You do any drugs today?"
I carefully perched on the edge of the sofa near Suril's knees. "No."
"Skip any classes?" Suril demanded around a mouthful of Bear Claw ice cream.
"No."
Grandma was rolling her eyes. "Kiss any boys?"
"Yes."
There was a split second of silence.
"Get the fuck!" Suril yelled in my ear, bolting upright and then groaning in pain when his ankle was jostled.
"Get the fuck!" Grandma echoed, her long, chandelier earrings banging around her scrawny neck. "Mother Nature, it's about damn time! I thought you were gonna turn up all asexual like those amoebas you see on David Suzuki."
"Don't tell me it was Rafe," Suril slowly enunciated, grabbing my hand. "Don't tell me you kissed Rafe Moretti."
"Well mostly he kissed me." I had to grin. "He said I was a better kisser than Katrina."
"Holy motherfucking Hassium!"
"What we need some is some champagne and a few of those man strippers," Grandma proclaimed, beaming at me fondly. "You know, the policeman kinds. We'd all enjoy that."
"I know I would," Suril said, not taking his eyes off me. "Fuck Jane, I'm absent from school three days..."
"I showed a girl my bra too. Twice." I chewed on a strip of my hair. "Only I'm positive as Hydrogen that I'm not a lesbian. She didn't make me feel like Rafe did. Or Lucan, when he quote the Zeroth Law to me in that sexy way."
"Lucan?" Suril's dark eyes were bugging out of his head. "Who the hell's Lucan?"
"Rafe's brother," I answered, feeling dreamy. "I think he's my brain soul mate...after you obviously."
Grandma squinted at me. "Shits ahoy, is that a hickey on your neck?"
I tried to look at my neck but couldn't see much.
Suril narrowed his eyes. "Details. Now."
"My eyes are seeing it but my brain don't believe it," Grandma said, shaking her head. "I mean fuck."
So I gave them the details.