******
The Mean Value Theorem
The next morning was very disaccharide in nature as it was both Friday and T day. Hence I was laying on the carpet of the living room, drinking Tetley Tea and eating tartar sauce toast. Mostly I liked tartar sauce on my spaghetti but there were times in a person's life when the particles of a rigid body moved along paths which were equidistant from a fixed plane.
"That body is said to have undergone planar motion," I intoned, cautiously sticking the tip of my tongue into my tea mug. "Ho equals r x mv that's a scorcher!"
Grandma, who was sitting in her favourite armchair and eating great, greasy strips of bacon and a lemon-filled doughnut, prodded her frog slipper into my side. "Can you keep that fucking math jazz on the down low? I'm trying to relate a story here."
"Sorry, it just slipped out," I admitted and went back to creating the Single-Replacement Reaction...Fe plus CuSO4(aq) ---- FeSO4(aq) plus Cu...out of the four pieces of toast I had on my plate.
It was six-thirty in the morning and Suril had crutched over once again. He was currently sprawled out on the sofa, his bad ankle propped up on bunch of pillows, eating a strawberry sprinkled doughnut. It just didn't seem right for him to participate in any of the Letter Days when he was banged up and on the mend, especially since Mrs. Shah kept making him all his favourite things to eat. So I was solving for T all alone.
I hadn't had the chance to talk to Suril last night since Grandma and I had gone out for Japanese food after she'd picked me up from Grabba Jabba and we'd returned home late. I'd spent the rest of my night getting a head start on studying for exams and forcing myself to take notes on The Edible Woman. Then I'd finally finished off 'Applied Vector Analysis' and the ending was so satisfactory and so cooltastic that, overcome with the more delicate of emotions, I'd ended up sobbing into my pillow for seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds.
The very last equation of the book had read: 21) Using Maxwell's equations in a vacuum, obtain an equation in the form of a conservation law for the rate of change of the energy w equals B squared /2 plus E squared /2c squared of an electromagnetic wave.
Could a more tear-inducing, heart-heating, perfect ending have been written...ever? I could just reread it (over)444 again. I couldn't wait for Suril to plough through it so that we could discuss it in depth and work on the equations together. My favourite chapter had been 'Line, Surface and Volume Integrals' but if I knew Suril like I thought I did, then I'd venture that his favourite chapter would be 'The Del Operator'. I was just jumping out of my epidermis to find out whether I was right or not.
"So that Myron character was real hot to trot and but Fuck-Bots '99 could he ever yodel," Grandma went on, licking bacon grease off her fingers. "Apparently getting a tattoo on your chest is real painful and he could only sit through it for forty minutes. Good thing for him I found his yellings kinda kinky."
"Well I always thought that you were just wasting your time with that Mr. Yakama anyway," Suril remarked, dunking a piece of doughnut into his milk. "A vegetable crisper I ask? Come on now. Who'd haunt a frigging vegetable crisper unless you were one of those granola-fucking New Age vegan hippies? Maybe if Mr. Yakama's wife was haunting his bedside condoms...but I mean please. How fucking dipshit do we look?"
"Well say Mrs. Yakama's worried about the lack of vegetables in Mr. Yakama's diet," I proposed. "Maybe she thinks he should stop eating so much strawberry Pocky and fried Mars bars."
"Oh batshit," Suril scoffed, lick strawberry goo off his upper lip. "Grandma, you can do way better, trust me."
Grandma's scrawny chest puffed out. "Fuck yeah I can. Did you know Myron said I had 'artfully florid' hair? I'm thinking that means he wants to bone me."
Suril whooped and him and Grandma thunked their half-life doughnuts together in an expression of high camaraderie.
"I'm not the only one around here who got a little action of the penis variety last night," Grandma announced slyly.
"Lucan said that he's interested in me and that I'm cute because I have a passion for Math and I'm as brilliant as any Professor he's ever met and he wants to date me," I told Suril, popping the Cu toast into my mouth.
Suril dropped his doughnut onto his lap. "Holy fucking shitcakes!"
"Yeah and here's the real pelvis-punter," Grandma piped up, chortling. "Janie thought he was talking about Carbon-14 dating!"
Suril burst into laughter and Grandma joined in, slapping her thigh with half a strip of bacon.
"Well I didn't think he was going to use Carbon-14 dating on me, I don't need dating." I lapped at my tea. It was bitter and boring because it didn't have any M&Ms in it. "I thought he wanted to do Half-Life or Rates of Decay problems with me."
Suril and Grandma exchanged glances and hooted uproariously.
Since I didn't want to be left out of this comedic tableau, I got into the action by telling a joke. "A Geometer went to the beach and came back a tan-gent," I cried and laughed so hard that I sneezed on my toast. It looked like there was tartar sauce on the outside of the CuSO4 molecule now.
"Didn't I tell you this Lucan guy was interested in you?" Suril gasped, trying to catch his breath. "For fuck sakes, he said he digs girls who can derive over a big rack! How can you not get what he's talking about? I swear Jane, you're thicker than Mom's mulligatawny soup."
"You're just in a constant state of jealously because I finished 'Applied Vector Analysis' last night while you're still stuck reading 'Advanced Engineering Mathematics' like some a drooling chump," I bragged, wiping sneeze off my toast.
"Shit you're done already? How'd it end? No wait, don't me. Okay, yeah tell me. Oh Christ, what a dilemma. Was it totally awesome?"
"I cried for seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds," I admitted nostalgically. "My cardiovascular system was glowing the characteristic pale green light of Barium atoms absorbing energy."
"Satan's shit logs, would you two Nerdy McDorks give it a damn rest?" Grandma rolled her eyes as she selected a chocolate-glazed doughnut from the Tim Horton's box. "We're supposed to be talking about how hot guys wanna bone us, not about snooze-fest, boring-arse textbooks. What does it take to get some normal teenagers around here anyway?"
"I said to Reiko that I thought Myron liked you and she said that she was feeling that vibe too," I told Grandma, licking at the surface of my tea.
"He's going back for another sitting tonight at five and he wants me there with him," Grandma boasted. "Said he'd like something pretty to look at. Well I ain't nothing if not pretty. Plus I can get Lucan to design something up for me. His artwork was pure wicked, wasn't it Janie?"
"Yeah it really was." I blushed the bright red of Mr. Barker's pen marking all of my Chemistry tests and assignments one hundred percent correct. "He said he'd tattoo that Math Limerick on my stomach so that he'd have an excuse to see me with no top on."
"Fucksticks, our baby's growing up," Suril cried excitedly. "Look at her, attracting hot studs and shit! Jane, you're cooler than equations of Viscous Damped Forced Vibration!"
"I know, isn't this fabtastic to the extreme?" Grandma beamed fondly at me. "I'm finally getting a normal granddaughter...kinda. It's just too bad she never kissed that Rafe yesterday but-"
"Katrina was skulking around school," I exclaimed, cringing my blood-enriched head into my mug.
"Ughs ahoy! That'd turn anyone off kissing, believe me," Suril said, faux gagging over the side of the sofa.
"But when I went to that Grabba Jabba place after I said chowder to Myron," Grandma went on as she licked bacon grease and doughnut glop off her plate, "what did I find but my idiot genius of a granddaughter snuggled all cosy in a booth with Lucan, who kept touching her hair – why we'll never know since it's such a damn shrubbery – and then when we were leaving he kissed Janie's cheek and told her to call him after the party."
"Maybe it's just an Italian thing," I said dubiously, my heart accelerating at the memory of Lucan's mouth on my face. "You know, like when you're in Quebec and eve
ryone kisses everyone else on the cheek all the time? Maybe it's like that."
Suril and Grandma rolled their eyes at each other.
"But you know what else Lucan said?" I jammed my Fe toast into my face, spraying crumbs as I talked. "I told him why I hired Rafe because he wanted to know who'd given me a hooky and when I told him, he said that if Rafe couldn't beat the piss out of Conner then he'd do it and he'd tattoo 'cock-sucker' on Conner's forehead. For real he said that!"
"Oh ye Gods above why can't this dude be gay?" Suril lamented, starting on an Apple Spice doughnut. "Why are the hottest non-homophobes so fucking hot? Why are the fat, ugly guys always the bi-curious ones?"
"Because when lots of chicks reject those fuckos, they only got guys to turn to," Grandma said sagely. "After that it's just dogs and dogs'll do it with anything so long as Kibble-Chow's involved. Anyhow, I thought you said that that Paulo's kisses were like a handjob?"
"And that he was hung like a water buffalo," I added.
"Shit yeah and shit yeah. Paulo mmm." Suril took on a dreamy look, his gripings forgotten. "I wish he had a bunch of tattoos, how sexerrific would that be? He called me last night you know. God his accent... now that's a fucking handjob."
"Well it wasn't seeing man strippers together but it seems like all of us got some kinda action, somehow," Grandma said, a touch regretfully.
"So what'd he say?" I began bouncing excitedly and spilled a dribble of tea all down my front. I rubbed my boobs against the dark carpet since Edith Duggin never looked there. "Does he wanna go out with you again?"
"Yeah he totally does, he said he couldn't stop thinking about me! I told him I was sick though 'cause I don't want him to see me all busted up and shit." Suril smirked and managed to look sheepish at the same time. "So we had phone sex instead 'cause Mom and Dad were over at Dilip Uncle's house."
"Get the fuck!" Grandma shouted, her eyebrows shooting up to her purple hairline.
"Hey Suril." I began tittering uncontrollably at my own hilarious wittery. "I hope you used a condom!"
"No I just used lotion!"
We all guffawed our breakfasts out our noses.
"Least this way you know you ain't gonna pick up no weirdo STD," Grandma choked out, which set us off again.
Really, I didn't know why people didn't like getting up early in the mornings.
Since I had a free period first thing, I decided to walk to school. I made a T day provisions stop-off at Lawton's drug store and bought a big bag of Twizzlers liquorice, three Twix chocolate bars, a pack of Trident gum and a bottle of juice called Tropical Twist. That was some good T day fodder, I thought. I wanted to buy a box of Turtles too but I didn't have the $9.99 to spare.
I decided to liven up the bleary-eyed cashier with some fascinating Biological trivia. "A Deinopidae has three rows of eyes and is commonly known as an ogre spider," I announced, jiggling my eyebrows as I smushed my nose into my face.
The cashier dropped my change on the counter and didn't pick it up.
When I got to my locker nine minutes and fifteen seconds later, I found a note sitting on top of my Chemistry binder, written on a brand of loose leaf that I wasn't familiar with. I unfolded the suspicious missive and saw, to my great and pleasant surprise, that it was written in Pig Pen Code! With my heart pounding out the Angular Wave Number in excitement, I plopped down on the floor and quickly decoded the rows of dots and unclosed boxes. The note read:
Janie,
Are you surprised?
I'll be at your locker at lunch.
Love Rafe
I could tell that Rafe was very serious about being my friend since he'd written to me in Pig Pen Code.
Ecstatic and happily surprised too, I loaded up my schoolbag and shuffle-ran down to the library and into the nearest cubby desk. I knew that neither Conner nor Katrina would ever find me here, as to them reading revolved around Cosmopolitician and Penthouse respectively. I worked on a stupid Global History question sheet that was due next week and read the graffiti on the desk. Apparently if you called Ashley Walker, you could have a good time. And Joe Connley, if misspelled, green ink was to be believed, liked to take it up the poop chute.
I glanced around in a furtive manner, saw no librarians in the near vicinity and daringly wrote on the desk with my black Uniball pen, 'Conner McGregor is so stupid that he didn't know that a flashpoint is the lowest temperature at which vapours above a volatile combustible substance ignite in air when exposed to flame.'
I sniggered rebelliously into my Global History notes for fifteen minutes straight.
During the five minutes between second period and third period, I spotted Rafe and Katrina coming down the stairs from the English wing, engulfed by a vast, chattering crowd. Katrina was giggling up at Rafe, her cheeks the colour of Phenolphthalein and they were holding hands. Rafe saw me first and he waved to me, jerking his hand from Katrina's but then she saw me too so, in fear, I gave them my no-neck, constipated smile, yelled out, "I equals Ig plus md squared," and sprinted through the crowds at the speed of a travelling wave.
"X decreases with time," I panted, shoving my hair into my mouth so it wouldn't keep tickling inside my nose.
I realized I was in the parking lot when I tripped over a crumpled Mug Root Beer can, baffed my cranium on someone's rusty fender and then had to travel my wave to Physics class. It was a cooltastic and thermonuclear class because Miss Lighthill, the substitute teacher, was so impressed that I'd done every question in the textbook (she'd gone round the classroom checking people's homework and saw my endless pages of neatly drawn diagrams and solved equations) that we got to chatting like old 'college chums'. She told me all about her favourite course when she'd attended Mount A, Machine Dynamics, and I told her that I'd recently read Hibbeler's 'Engineering Mechanics – Dynamics' Tenth Edition and we reminisced and consoled each other on the loss of such a strenuously brilliant read.
By the time I left my Physics classroom, it was quarter after twelve. I meandered about slowly, peering around corners and up stairwells so that I wouldn't be subjected to any unfortunate run-ins with a diseased dick by the name of Conner McGregor. I found another note in my locker from Rafe, but this one wasn't written in Pig Pen Code.
Janie,
Didn't you get my first note? I'll be outside in the playground if you're not busy. Come find me, I've got no one to tell me Chemistry jokes.
Love Rafe
"It may not be Pig Pen Code but it's still chock full of friendly frequencies," I told a nearby couple who were busy eating each other's faces like it was a nutritional meal replacement.
They didn't reply.
I approached them and leaned in a bit to catch a close-up of the action. Was that what I looked like when Rafe had stuffed his tongue inside my mouth? I didn't remember being so...moany. And we certainly hadn't wiggled and pressed against each other like that. Or at least I didn't remember if we had...I'd have to ask Rafe for further details.
The guy suddenly wrenched away from the girl, a revolted look plastered upon his face. Too bad for the girl, she must not've been a very good kisser. "What the fuck?"
"Friendly frequencies my friend," I said breezily, feeling pleased with myself. Rafe obviously thought I was a nice kisser as he hadn't looked at me with revulsion yet. "Friendly frequencies."
Across from school was a big public playground, filled with swing sets and slides and jungle gyms and merry-go-rounds. Adjacent to the playground was a skatepark, made up of a huge, concrete bowl and big concrete slabs for skateboarders and rollerbladers to practice on, loaf around in and at night, smoke a lot of weed and grope their girlfriends/boyfriends. It was a popular place for students to eat their lunches and 'hang out' or so I'd heard...from Suril.
I did some fancy moves darting through the traffic and found Rafe sitting on top of the jungle gym pirate ship, his legs dangling off the edge, a rope net ladder beneath him. A blond boy wearing enormous purple skater pants and a yellow t-shirt that had Optimus Prime on it was si
tting at Rafe's side, smoking.
I clambered through a red plastic tunnel, ducked through a low hallway while peeking out the round, glassless windows and jumped up some steep wooden stairs. I emerged on top of the vessel, tittering in high gleeosity, to both Rafe and Optimus Prime looking at me. "Hi Rafe and buddy! I never got to come on a real wooden jungle gym pirate ship before. There's even a genuine pirate flag over there! I'll bet it's made out of one hundred percent polyester fabric designed to withstand the harsh elements of this province."
"Yeah it is, Devon tried to eat it when he was high once." Optimus Prime was studying me. "So you're the infamous tutoring Jane huh?"
I flopped down on Rafe's other side, a variable confused. I didn't know what Optimus Prime meant by 'infamous' exactly so I just said, "Assuming that infamous is present on both sides of the equation, you can cancel to derive a more equidistant scalar, if you'll excuse the senseless verbosity of my final product."
Rafe started to snicker as Optimus Prime's mouth unhinged, his cigarette dangling from his lower lip. "What?"
"Assuming that infamous is present on both sides of the equation, you can cancel to-"
"Fuck, whatever you're smoking I want some," Optimus Prime interrupted, leaning across Rafe and blowing smoke into my cheekbone.
"She doesn't smoke dumbass," Rafe said, shoving Optimus Prime aside. "You're too much of a crackhead to get what she's talking about."
"Well what the fuck's she talking about then, genius?"
"My lungs are what you'd call Virgin a la The Mary," I quickly put in as it seemed that Optimus Prime and Rafe were on the verge of getting huffy with each other. I didn't like when people got into arguments around me, it made my ventricles sad. "Or at least that's what Bianca would call them. She said that may The Virgin Mary bless me with 'many robust sons' as she put it. I thought that was a real surprising way of thinking of things, seeing as how I didn't know you could ask that girl for stuff. I just thought it was, you know, Jesus and Vishnu mostly."
Rafe was grinning at me, seemingly not irritated any longer. I'd forgotten how stupendously blue his eyes were in the noon daylight. "Hi Janie."
"Hallo-ed be thy name," I intoned piously, keeping to the religious theme.
"I always go the Loki route before exams myself." Optimus Prime held out his hand. "Austin O'Leary. Rafe's been blabbing about you all morning long."
I did the hand-shaking drama. "Jane Hazelton. Of the 1540 Skylark Drive Hazeltons, if you'd recollect your late 80's settlement history."
"I'm a Global Geography man." Austin stood up and stepped out his cigarette before kicking the butt off the edge of the ship. "Dude, I'm taking off now dude, I see Hilary and Jess down there. Call my cell later, 'kay?"
"Yeah cool," Rafe said.
"Nice meeting you Jane." Austin looked down at me. "Say, maybe sometimes I can sit in with Rafe when you do Pre. Calc.? I'm doing shit this term and it's dragging down my average."
"When a pipe is open at both ends, only odd harmonics are present," I agreed, taking my lunch out of my schoolbag.
Rafe scooted closer to me as Austin left with a confused expression on his face. I reflected to myself that that was what smoking did, made your face perplexed with wrinkles. "I told Austin that you're helping me break up with Katrina. He's been my best bud since primary so he'll make sure she finds us kissing tomorrow. But I didn't say anything about Suril or Conner; it's probably best if only you and me know about that."
"Well we all know that Newton's Third Law states that when two bodies interact, the forces on the bodies from each other are always equal in magnitude and opposite in direction." I stuck my face close to Rafe's adorable Irish chimney sweep's face and bestowed upon him my special 'I-got-another-one-hundred' beam. "You made my mouth form a happy parabola when you wrote me a note in Pig Pen Code. Only Suril's ever done that."
"What can I say, there's more to the internet than free porn." Rafe grinned back at me. "I didn't think you even got that note."
"It's because I got into a good chatting with Miss Lighthill, my substitute Physics teacher," I said, bouncing excitedly. "Time was a function of our chatting you see. Miss Lighthill's only twenty-seven and she did her undergrad at Mount A and her favourite course ever is Machine Dynamics and she recommended a great list of some outside readings to me, wanna hear them?"
Rafe leaned back on his elbows. His cheeks were all freckly and sweet and I, a little bit, wanted to touch them with my tongue to see if they tasted like cinnamon but it wasn't C day and I didn't think freckles could taste like thyme. "Sure."
"Okay check-out counter this electromagnetic line-up," I cried as I began peeling a tangerine. "First there's 'Mechanisms and the Dynamics of Machinery'. Then there's 'Fluid Dynamics and Dynamos in Astrophysics and Geophysics' followed by 'Kinematics, Dynamics and Design of Machinery', which I was planning on ordering anyway and then finally, 'Molecular Thermodynamics of Fluid-Phase Equilibria'. That should get me to Halloween at least and boy gravy I just can't wait!"
"Christ you're so much cooler than Katrina." Rafe watched me eat long strands of tangerine fibres as he opened his bottle of blue Power-Aid. It was the same colour as his eyes. "Lemme guess, today's O day."
I pulled out a hoity British accent while making a moustache out of tangerine peels for effect. "Oh Thomson's plum pudding atom. 'Tis a tangerine old chap, a tangerine by the Queen Mum's naff knickers. Toodle pip and cheerio, I say."
"Right. Um...okay." Rafe closed his mouth and then opened it up again. He drank some Power-Aid.
"The day is Friday, so yes, consequently, it is also T day." I gunched my incisors into a tangerine slice and juice came slurping down my face. "Wanna piece, they're Mother Nature's nipples...or at least that's what the heating man Kenneth Slaunwhite says. I dunno what the actual tit area would be...a mountain?"
"It's hard to say." Rafe wiped juice off my chin with his finger and then skimmed upwards to trace at my wet bottom lip. His eyes narrowed as they dropped to my mouth. "I like watching you eat instead."
"How do you do always that?" I asked him breathlessly, feeling exactly like I did whenever I read about the Ideal Vapour-Compression Refrigeration Cycle.
Rafe's long lashes fluttered as he met my dung-hued gaze. "Do what?"
"Make my stomach feel like its full of sinusoidal waves." I blinked at him, my face frowning. "When you touch me, even for just a picosecond, you make my heart beat erratically. A cardiograph would be able to record my heart movements accurately and then you'd have a concise visual aid."
Rafe smirked at me. "Janie, that's what we call an attraction."
"The only attraction I know about is what happens on a molecular level." I finished off my tangerine and dumped the peelings into my lunch bag. "How would I know if my Ja molecules are attracted to your Ra...not to be confused with Radium...molecules? How would I know if I want to bond with you?"
Grinning, Rafe asked me, "Do you like me?"
"Yes, you're my second friend."
"Do you like hanging out with me?"
"Yes, especially when I can tutor you in all my favourite subjects."
"Do you want me to kiss you?"
I stopped shaking my Tropical Twist juice bottle and gasped. "Benedict's Test no!"
"No?" Rafe looked insulted...as though someone had told him that foraging ants didn't leave behind a trail of formic acid. "Why the hell not?"
"Because Katrina would hibernate her cuticles into my retinas all winter long." I took a good gulp of juice and spilled it down my front. "Shitcakes, the juice urinated on my boobular region." I sucked juice out of my zip-up sweater. It was mostly hairy with a splash of citrus.
Snickering, Rafe softly tugged my hair so that I'd look at him. "Say we were back at my house and Katrina wasn't around. Would you want me to kiss you then?"
"If we were done all our homework," I shyly admitted. "We still have to practice for the party tomorrow, remember?"
"Forget about Katrina," Rafe bit out impatient
ly. "Say this is after we break up. What about then?"
"Well that seems kinda like solving an equation that has no real solution," I said, confused but not because I was a smoker of the cigarettes. "Sure we could do it but what's the point if Katrina's already dumped you?"
Rafe stared at me for a long time. I supposed he was trying to think of a situation where an equation had no real solution so I decided to help him out.
"When the discriminate is a negative then there's no real solution or an x-intercept," I advised, unwrapping my Twix chocolate bar. "You know the discriminate right? It's what's under the square root in the Quadratic Formula. Twix?"
Rafe took the chocolate from me. "I don't know how you can be so fucking brilliant and so fucking dense at the same time."
"Suril said I'm thicker than his Mom's mulligatawny soup." I stared down at my chocolate, feeling a little bit hurt. "I can't help it if I don't understand all this attraction, bonding, kissing hoopla. No one except Lucan has ever wanted to date me before so what can I do?"
"Wha-" Rafe choked on his chocolate as his face turned raw meat red.
I grabbed his Power-Aid, pulled the stopper and shoved it into his coughing face. "Be a strong bamboo in the face of the winds of adversity," I cried, putting my arm around his shoulder. It didn't make it all the way so I had to scoot really close. I hugged him tight, worried. "r: V equals (4/3)(Pi r cubed)!"
"What the fuck?" Rafe roughly jerked away from me. He wasn't coughing anymore but his cheeks were still sirloin scarlet.
"It's the Volume of a Sphere of a Radius," I answered with enlarged, homogeneous solid sphere eyes.
"When the hell did Lucan say he wanted to date you?"
"Last night, when we were going to Grabba Jabba after his work was done." I blushed into my juice bottle. "Apparently he wasn't talking about Carbon-14 dating or Half-Life and Rates of Decay problems either."
"Well isn't that fucking equidistant," Rafe sneered, his eyes dark and furious. "What'd he do, make you all fucking hot with Calculus equations?"
"I wasn't hot, it was a bit chilly by the waterfront actually." I gnawed on my upper lip apprehensively. It seemed to me that Rafe was angry about something and I was scared that he was going to start shouting at me. "Lucan did show me some equations similar to what students in his tutorials were doing but mostly we just had discussions."
"That asshole," Rafe snapped, making me flinch. "I can't believe...after I goddamn told him...did he kiss you?"
"On the cheek," I whispered, shrinking against the side of the jungle gym pirate ship.
Rafe looked away from me, his face tight. "Are you attracted to him?"
I couldn't tell why Rafe was so upset with me but it was making me feel sick inside my blood stream, like I was about to take an exam after lunch only this time I didn't feel any excitement mixed in with my sickness. I stared down at a Daddy pushing his little daughter on the swings and I couldn't remember my Dad ever doing anything like that with me. I felt very by myself then, even though Rafe was sitting beside me.
"Before I met you, no boy ever thought I was cute or wanted to kiss me or date me or do anything except copy my homework. I don't know how to answer all the questions you keep asking me because the only boy I know is Suril and he's gay and I don't know why you're so mad at me but I'm sorry for whatever I did." My lower lip began to tremble uncontrollably. "It makes my heart feel sad when people get mad at me."
There was a silence as I drew ellipses on my Twix chocolate bar, not feeling too hungry at all.
"Fucking Christ." Rafe muttered something in Italian under his breath and raked a hand through his hair. "Shit Janie, I'm being such an asshole. I'm so sorry...God your eyes...you shouldn't be the one apologizing to me." He carefully took my hand, like I was H. G. Grassmann's original copy of 'The Calculus of Extensions' and wove his warm fingers through my cold ones. "Look at me?"
Hesitantly, I looked up into his Power-Aid blue eyes. They were also the same colour as Mr. Yakama's Honda Civic.
"I'm the one who needs to apologize to you," he said so gently that it didn't seem like he'd been sneering at me seconds before. "I know we haven't known each other for very long and I don't normally act this way but it's like you're doing something to me and I can't help getting all-"
"Sweetie bunches of oats!"
I jerked my hand at such a high linear speed that my particles must've been metres away from the axis, hence the enormous circumference.
From behind us we could hear the click of heels scaling up the wooden steps.
Rafe muttered crossly in Italian again as I scooted as far away from him as possible.
Katrina appeared at the other end of the jungle gym pirate ship, her long, auburn hair shining in the sunlight. She was wearing very tight, black Capri pants, a too-small black tank top underneath a little red and black zip-up hoodie that revealed a lot of her flat, pierced stomach and metallic round-toe heels.
"Baby, you need to get a new cell," she cried, stalking over with a lot of wiggly hip action. "I've been looking all over for you huggy wuggy bear!"
"Yeah sorry," Rafe mumbled, watching me shove my lunch into my bag. "Jane are you leaving? We still have tons more Chemistry to work on. I've got that test on Monday, remember?"
Katrina manoeuvred her way onto Rafe's lap. "Boy, I'll teach you Chemistry," she cooed into his ear.
Rafe was looking up at me in a way that told me there were multiple roots to the problem but I couldn't read any of them. For some unfathomable The Edible Woman-like reason, I was feeling like I had when I'd goofed up that Hess's Law question. "At a given temperature the solubility of a gas in a liquid is directly proportional to the pressure of the gas above the liquid," I mumbled and hurried away to Katrina loudly telling Rafe was a dorkshow I was.
Even spouting off old Henry's Law didn't make me feel any better, which was something of a shock because Henry's Law had never failed to make me feel happy. Was something wrong me? Was it the lack of sustenance in my diet today? The painters certainly weren't in, as the British would say.
I had to giggle as I walked past a group of chattering girls sitting on top of the monkey bars. "It's just such a funny slang of saying that menstruation is occurring," I told them and giggled on.
It took me the rest of the lunch hour to figure out why Rafe had been angry with me. The conclusion I eventually arrived at was of such an obvious nature that I felt as dumb as though I'd forgotten the Critical Point Properties of Dichlorodifluoromethane.
Rafe just wanted someone better to date his brother. Lucan was a brilliant TA who was older and attractive and artistic afterall. I was just a high school student who was too young for him, too stupid-looking and could only draw a straight line with the aid of my graphing calculator. It was only natural that Rafe would want a cooltastic girl for someone he cared about; I would too if I'd had an older brother.
Feeling pleased that I was no longer fooligating around in the dark, I decided to write Rafe a note. I ate some Twizzlers as I took out a clean piece of paper and a black Uniball pen. Chewing in a bovinesque fashion, I wrote:
Ra (not to be confused with Radium)
I'm writing to you very proper on a clean piece of paper because you didn't like it when I wrote to you on paper I found in the garbage can with eyeliner I found on the ground. I'm not using Pig Pen Code either, because you're only new to the art of it and it might take too long to decode. I'm sorry that I made you so mad that your freckles swam in your cheeks of blood. I'm sorry that you didn't want to look at me, it happens, Edith Duggin says that no one wants to see a person chew their hair and eat their wrist.
You don't have to worry anymore because I won't "go out" Lucan, I promise. It's easy to see that he's too clever and too cool for me and that you've only got his best interests inside your cardiovascular system. You don't have to apologize to me, I understand like I understand Analytic Geometry. It's nice having family to care about I think. I only went to Kismet last night because my Grandma wants a
tattoo and Lucan said he'd design something for her.
Love Ja
P.S. Here's a funny Chemistry joke to make you laugh...Q: What do you get if you chop up Avodagro into 6.023 x 10 to the 23 pieces?
A: Guaca-MOLE!
(Hee hee)33333333333
Tittering, I jammed the note into Rafe's locker and headed off to class, my heart buoyant enough to warrant the equation Fb equals Mfg where Mf is the mass of the fluid that is displaced by the body.
My last class of the day was Honours Biology. We had a test the cellular level of things and since I was the first one done, I got to leave early, which was no surprise to anyone. What was asurprise though, was Rafe, sitting next to my locker and studying Chemistry.
I trundled up to him. "How come you're not in class?"
Rafe looked up at me and smiled. His eyes were very soft. "I skipped Art. How come you're not?"
"We had a test in Biology and I was the first one done." I worked the combination to my locker and opened it. "I didn't know you take Art."
"There's lots you don't know about me." Rafe put away his Chemistry binder and stood up. "I have a present for you."
I beamed up at him. "Are you gonna let me do one of your assignments? It's true, you won't learn much that way but maybe we can both do it and then that'll be double the fun!"
"It's better than an assignment." His lips quirked as he tucked a scraggly, well-chewed bit of my hair behind my ear. "It's my I'm-sorry gift to you."
"But didn't you get my note?" I frowned as I dragged my teeth along my wrist. "I said that you don't need to-"
"I got it and you were wrong," Rafe interrupted, smoothing the scrunch out of my forehead with his fingertips. My stomach lurched at the feel of him on me. "Close your eyes."
"This is quite the variable," I murmured, reluctantly obeying. "I feel kinda funny 'cause you can't exactly interchange Joule's First Law with his Second Law."
"I'll keep that in mind next time I...uh study that." He took my hands and slid something weighty and crinkly into them. "I'm sorry for being such a bastard to you. Hopefully this will make up for it. You can look now."
I looked now. I was holding a hardcover book hidden in a Chapters bag. "You weren't a bastard Rafe," I told him, opening the bag. My eyes widened as I pulled out a brand new, gleaming, thermonuclear copy of 'Fluid Dynamics and Dynamos in Astrophysics and Geophysics'.
"I asked your Physics sub. about the list she gave you and since I had a free after lunch I went downtown to Chapters and this was the only one they had in stock..."
"It's so beautiful," I breathed, staring down at the glossy grey and orange cover. I pulled my sleeves over my hands and wiped my fingerprints off of the shining cover. "It's even more beautiful than my copy of 'Discrete Signals and Systems with MATLAB'. Why would you do something like this? You didn't have to-"
"I know I didn't," he muttered gruffly. "I just...wanted to."
I glanced up from 'Fluid Dynamics and Dynamos in Astrophysics and Geophysics'. Rafe was shuffling his feet and looking both embarrassed and pleased. I carefully put my new book back into the bag, meticulously set it on top of my schoolbag and flung myself onto Rafe. He smelled like the theory behind a thousand Physics problems. "I like you more than I like reading about Uniform Circular Motion and Gravitation," I announced, and, with a stealthy glance around to make sure no Katrinas were skulking about, I smacked a loud kiss onto his soft, freckly cheek. It was better than pinching it, I thought.
Rafe blushed as he hugged me back. "So you wanna help me study for my Chem. test Monday?"
I nodded eagerly, bouncing in anticipation. "It's only T day and not my birthday today but you're giving me all the best presents anyway!"
We decided to go to my house to study because Rafe liked to steer clear of his house Friday nights. Apparently Rafe's Aunts and Great-Aunts and his Grandmother and girl-cousins all congregated at his house every week for a Ladies' Night. There was a lot of wine and a lot of food and a lot of drunken bitching and gossiping and fighting, according to Rafe. He told me that a bunch of loud, drunk Italian ladies wasn't a pretty sight and shuddered a lot. I figured that he didn't like these get-togethers because he probably got his cheek pinched a lot. He brought out a lot of maternal urges in woman, afterall.
I was a little bit sad when I realized that I had nothing to give to Rafe in return for his stupendously electromagnetic gift to me but he said that if I helped him get Katrina 'off his ass' as he put it, then he'd be in my debt forever. He also said that if he had to put up with another night of Katrina's clingy, Cosmo/Celebrity/fashion gossip-obsessed ways then he'd strangle her with the strap of her new Prada bag. I crossed myself and recited Malus's Law to ward off lingering tinkles of Katrinaphobia
While we were stuck behind a bus picking up a load of seniors, I tried to tell Rafe that I wouldn't date Lucan but he wouldn't let me finish. Instead, he told me that it was stupid of me to think that he would think I wasn't good enough for Lucan; mostly Rafe thought I was just too young for Lucan. While Rafe was saying all that, I had another epiphany; namely that Rafe's ego might've taken a fracturing because, afterall, once he was done with Katrina he wouldn't have a girlfriend any longer while Lucan seemed to be quite popular, womanly speaking. And hadn't Rafe said that Lucan had 'enough skanky chicks hounding after him?' Well as a teenaged boy with many rampant hormonal urges, I thought that it was a given that Rafe would feel a bit inferior. Hence his anger at me was justifiable as it was ego and hormonally driven.
I congratulated myself on this polarized venture into the field of Psychology and wriggled my upper lip into my scrunching nose.
To take his mind of Lucan and all the pretty skanks that wanted him, I said to Rafe, "Don't tell anyone this but I did a very bad thing today."
Looking interested, Rafe glanced over at me as he stopped at a red light. "Yeah?"
"It happened in the library this morning." I lowered my voice and glanced about, which was a sillier thing to do than calling the disturbances on the Moon 'earthquakes' because they weren't exactly occurring on the Earth now were they? "I feel that moonquakes is a much more suitable classification for the event in question, don't you?"
"Uh...what?"
"Well earthquakes have been known to occur on the moon but really they ought to be called moonquakes, I think." I pulled a strand of my hair straight and licked down it. "Did you know that the moon has such extreme temperatures so as to range from 100 degrees Celsius at noon to –173 degrees Celsius at night?"
"That's...yeah. Wow. Very extreme." The light turned green and Angelina merrily farted forward. "So is that the bad thing to you did today? White-out earthquake in some textbook and write in moonquake instead?"
"Eta Theta Iota no!" I sheepishly shoved wet hair off my cheek. "I guess my circular path proved to be more elliptical in nature."
A smile tugged on Rafe's lips. "It does look that way."
I leaned in close to Rafe. "I made some graffiti on the desk I was working at for the first time in my life," I whispered, feeling more ashamed than defiant at the moment. "I wrote 'Conner McGregor is so stupid that he didn't know that a flashpoint is the lowest temperature at which vapours above a volatile combustible substance ignite in air when exposed to flame'. I'm just hoping no one will ever find out; I wouldn't like to get expelled from school and lose all my scholarships and the chance to study at a Post-Secondary Institution of my choice."
Rafe laughed uproariously the entire drive home.