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First published in Great Britain in 2020
by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited
2 Minster Court, 10th floor, London EC3R 7BB
Text copyright © 2020 Laura Steven
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First e-book edition 2020
ISBN 978 1 4052 9694 6
Ebook ISBN 978 1 4052 9695 3
www.egmont.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
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For Louis – because I love you more than
any hypothesis can explain
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Acknowledgments
Allow me to explain the plethora of ways in which my love life is screwed. You know, scientifically.
According to the Matching Hypothesis, two people are more likely to form a successful relationship if they’re equally desirable. This desirability can come in the form of wealth or fame, but it’s usually determined by physical attractiveness. Which is to say: most folks fall in love – and stay in love – with other folks on the same level of hotness.
Back in the sixties, social scientists held a Computer Match Dance which, despite its cool name, was nowhere near as fun and futurey as it sounds. Basically, four judges rated a bunch of participants according to their hotness, and these participants were randomly paired up for the dance (except no man was paired with a taller woman, because god forbid their masculinity be challenged in any way!). During an intermission, participants were asked to assess their date, and the results showed that partners with similar levels of hotness expressed the most liking for each other. Shocker, I know.
The sixties may as well be Tudor England, but unfortunately this theory holds true in the internet dating age. One recent study measured the hotness of sixty men and sixty women, and their interactions were monitored. While people at least attempted to contact others who were significantly hotter than they were (probably because the variable of face-to-face rejection had been eliminated, as is the appeal of all online dating), it was ultimately found that the person was way more likely to reply if they were closer to the same level of hotness.
No, you haven’t stumbled upon a social psychology journal by accident, like I did one heady night while researching Walster and Walster over a glass of 2003 Merlot.
All I’m saying is that if the Matching Hypothesis is anything to go by?
Yikes.
1
His name is Haruki, and he doesn’t know I exist. I know, I know. It’s a high-school cliché. But clichés are usually clichés because they’re true. And this particular cliché – nerdy-comma-unpopular-girl-falls-for-hot-guy – is only ever a recipe for disaster.
Haruki bleeds charisma. You know the type. A jock who walks the halls surrounded by disciples like he’s the second coming of Christ, or whatever. His family is basically royalty in my small town, since they own a multi-million dollar hotel chain that dominates most of the midwest. And it helps that Haruki is practically a supermodel, despite having the same basic haircut as every other attractive teenage boy in America. Plus we’re in all the same AP science classes, and while he’s hardly at the top of the pack, he is whip-smart.
So, to sum up: Haruki Ito? Way out of my league. Like, we’re not even playing the same sport.
It should come as no surprise to you that I’m not the only girl at Edgewood High who’s madly in love with Haruki. And, as per the unrequited love trope, I’m utterly convinced I’m the only one who *gets* the real him. Despite, you know, him not knowing I actually exist.
(I cannot emphasize this last part enough. I could perform an elaborate macarena in front of his desk right now, and he’d stare straight ahead as though the light was simply bending around me. Maybe it is. I can never know for sure.)
Today we’re in double AP Physics, which sounds like a cruel and unusual punishment to the normal high-schooler, but seeing as I’m not a normal high-schooler, this is my idea of utopia.
I adore science. Not so much biology, because it’s all kinda messy and unreliable and oftentimes smelly. Or chemistry, because I still have scar tissue on my left hand following a bunsen burner incident a few years back. But physics? Physics is my dirty talk. It’s clean and neat, and simple and complex, and it makes perfect sense to me. It’s one of the few things that does. So, if you ever want to lure me into the boudoir, talk Newton to me.
Mrs Torres is delivering a lesson on the behavior of gas at room temperature, but since I’ve been pretty much fluent in thermodynamics – and most other aspects of classical mechanics – since I was thirteen, she’s been giving me college-level modern physics papers to quietly work through during class, providing I a) complete all the regular homework too, and b) don’t tell any of my classmates. So I’m doing some reading around antimatter and barely paying attention to the lesson when Haruki pipes up.
At the sound of his voice, something skips in my chest. (Upon reading this sentence, my very literal dad will almost definitely have me tested for arrhythmia.)
‘But Mrs Torres,’ Haruki says, interrupting her mid-flow. She nods for him to go on. ‘Near absolute zero, the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution fails to account for the observed behavior of the gas. So surely we should instead be using modern distributions, such as Fermi-Dirac or Bose-Einstein?’
I lay down my pencil with interest. Torres wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. The classroom is sweltering in freak late-September heat. ‘That’s correct, Haruki.’
He frowns and asks, in a way that entirely suggests he already knows the answer and just wants to make a point, ‘So why aren’t we using such distributions?’
She sighs, swatting away a buzzing fly. ‘Because quantum physics is not taught as part of this state’s high-school curriculum.’
‘Why not?’ Haruki persists, like a dog with a bone. A really, really sexy dog. Not that I’m weirdly into dogs, or anything. Anyway.
The other kids shift restlessly in their hard, plastic chairs, silently willing their classmate to drop it. Their impatience is almost palpable, but drop it he does not. Instead he adds, ‘If we can handle it, why not teach it?’
Torres presses her lips together and sighs again. It’s two in the afternoon, and only getting hotter. Ah, climate change. I don’t blame her for getting irritable, although Haruki has a point – a point my dads have argued time after time with the school board.
But patiently as ever, she says, ‘Because truly getting to grips with some of these concepts requires an incredibly advanced level of math. Research shows that your average seventeen-year-old is unlikely to achieve such a level.’
Haruki scoffs. ‘So what, we dumb down the syllabus to suit the lowest common denominator?’
I agree with what he’s saying, but he’s being kind of an ass about it. It’s not Torres’ personal fault.
Torres leans back against her desk and pinches the bridge of her nose. She’s wearing heeled pumps, a tight blouse and even tighter pencil skirt. I feel sweaty and uncomfortable just imagining wearing something like that. Right now I’m extremely grateful that our school’s lax uniform policy allows for shorts and flip-flops. My toenails are basically a hate crime, but the open air setup is a life-saver.
Patiently, Torres answers, ‘I’m sorry, Haruki, but that’s just the way it is. So if we could bring our attention back to –’
‘Well, it’s clearly not the way it is,’ Haruki snaps, laying down his pencil. ‘Because Caro Murphy seems to be above learning classical mechanics. Unlike the rest of us.’
At the sound of my name, I freeze in my chair.
Well, kind of my name. It’s Caro Kerber-Murphy. But whatever.
Everyone else in the class bar Haruki snaps around to stare at me, gauging my humiliation levels following the public call-out.
I mentally flail for an explanation as to how Haruki knows two-thirds of my name. The assumption I’d made regarding my light-bending skills has been blown out of the water.
A loaded silence follows. What am I meant to do in this situation? Pretend I didn’t hear him? Defend myself ? Defend Torres? Why is there no textbook on how to navigate mortifying confrontations such as these? Maybe there is. Maybe I could Amazon Prime it right here to this very classroom. Do they do next-second delivery yet? Surely they’re working on it?
Since the R&D bods over at Amazon clearly give no shits about my predicament, I do what all introverted science nerds would do in this scenario: pretend there’s no outside world and stare defiantly at the CERN experiment outlined on the page in front of me.
Through the roaring pulse in my ears, I vaguely hear Torres say, ‘See me after class, Mr Ito. We’ll discuss it then.’
My heartbeat takes a good half hour to return to normal cardiovascular function. In that time, I obsessively analyze the events of the past few minutes.
Firstly, it transpires that Haruki Ito is in fact aware of my existence, which is a significant development in itself.
Secondly, it appears that said awareness is founded on disdain for the special treatment I receive. Which, you know, fair enough. I’d be similarly pissed.
But the lovesick puppy in me is now worried. What if aforementioned disdain overrides any and all romantic feelings in the past, present and future, and in all dimensions up to and including those we have not yet discovered?
When final bell rings, I quickly chuck pencils and erasers back into my leather pencil-case and sling my backpack over one shoulder, into the neat dent carved from years of textbook-hauling. Seriously, being a devoted lifelong nerd has permanently messed up my posture and overall anatomy. I am essentially Quasimodo, if Quasimodo were an expert in kinematics. Maybe he was. We just don’t know.
Painfully aware of the fact that I have to pass Haruki’s desk to reach the door, I tuck my head to my chest and practically tiptoe past him. Just as I’m crossing the front of his desk, he clears his throat. That annoying, crush-induced arrhythmia strikes up again, and I stop walking to look up at him. For a sweet millisecond, hope bubbles in my belly. Our eyes meet, and it’s . . .
Exactly as devoid of interest as I’d expected. It’s soon embarrassingly apparent that he wasn’t clearing his throat to get my attention. He was just clearing his throat. Because mucus. And, like an idiot, I stopped walking and gazed hopefully up at him.
He shoots me a look as if to say, ‘What on earth are you staring at, you insignificant gnat?’ and carts himself off to talk to Torres.
I shuffle meekly away, downbeat and dejected. By the time I’ve made it to my best friend’s locker, I’m pretty sure Eeyore has replaced the bald eagle as my official patronus.
‘Hey, girl. What’s up?’ Keiko asks. Her sunflower-print skater dress and blue ombre hair are an assault on the eyes but, like, in a good way. She’s plugged into purple headphones, some new indie band playing in her ears, so she barely hears my mumbled reply.
Haruki knows who I am. He just doesn’t care.
2
Keiko walks me to chess club. School’s basically deserted, but she knows I still don’t like to talk about anything personal while wandering the hallways – seriously, do you know how high the chances are of being heard? – so she just takes my mind off the situation by talking about a gig she’s playing at the weekend.
Her mom’s finally given her the green light to perform in drinking establishments with her rock band, which has opened up a whole new world of venues for her. She’s only seventeen, but she has the voice of an old soul. And she writes all of the band’s songs. What I’m trying to say is that my best friend is way too cool to be hanging out with me.
‘So I’m thinking we’ll open the set with Mess You Up, because that never fails to get the crowd going,’ she says, all wide eyes and animated hand gestures. Her new bangs keep dropping into her face, and she brushes them back impatiently. ‘And then a couple more uptempo bangers – The Power of Pretty, Upside Downside – before mellowing out into Reason To Be. What do you think? Or should we skip the slow tracks altogether? I know some crowds prefer . . .’
And just like that she’s off on another tangent. It’s how our friendship has operated for over a decade. She talks, I listen. Mostly. And I’m okay with it. Mostly.
We walk past Emily and Ethan, the Griffin twins, as they check the school play audition times on the noticeboard. They both look up adoringly at Keiko as she passes – then exchange daggers when they realize what the other is doing.
Keiko has this magnetic energy. It’s not the fact she’s a rock star, or the fact she’s done some plus-size modeling, or her quirky fashion sense and killer hair. It’s all of those things, and something else entirely. A spark you can’t put your finger on.
Basically everyone in school is in love with my best friend, but she never affords them the luxury of falling in love back. She’s a big fan of hookups and fuck buddies, but not so much actual dating. Between her and Gabriela, our beautiful Puerto Rican cheerleader pal with a long-term boyfriend who loves her, is it any wonder ya girl’s got self-esteem issues? (I know. I can’t really pull off saying ‘ya girl’. It’s a problem.)
Keiko leaves me at the door with a hug, all warmth and stale cigarettes and sweet perfume. ‘Go kill some kings, or whatever.’ She says this every single time I play chess.
She’s one of those people who proudly does not engage with nerd culture. I’ve tried telling her that superhero comics and board games are totally mainstream now, and that rejecting them ultimately means she’s the one who’s out of touch with the zeitgeist, but that put her off even more. She’s so edgy I can barely keep up with what does or does not constitute a Cool Thing.
I’m one of the last to arrive, and almost everyone is already set up in a pair by the time I abandon my backpack and scan the room for a partner. Lucy Cox and Everett Clark hold hands over their board, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes, talking about new set pieces they’ve been learning. Madison Spencer and Guadalupe Martinez kiss over their warring queens, completely oblivious to the room around them.
God. When did chess club get so horny?
In fairness to the Matching Hypothesis, both couples are approximately the same level of objective hotness and social status. And I can’t fight the twinge of jealousy. In a completely pointless exercise in self-flagellation, I catch myself wondering what kind of couple Haruki and I would be. Over-the-top PDA? Fake-arguing while sparks fly? Nerding out over mutual interests?
Doesn’t matter. The Matching Hypothesis actively forbids us from ever dating.
I’m not sure why the Matching Hypothesis plays on my mind so much, to be honest. I stumbled upon that first article at a time in my life where I felt totally and utterly unlovable – when Gabriela and Ryan first started dating, and Keiko was at the height of her experimentation stage. Maybe that’s why I latched on to the theory like a barnacle to a speedboat. I liked having a reason – a concrete, scientific reason – to explain why I wasn’t in the same place they were, no matter how much I wanted to be. It gave me something to blame beyond myself.
Sighing deeply, I force myself back into the present. When I see the only person left unmatched with a chess partner, I nearly turn and walk straight back out.
Mateo grins as he watches me scan the room, waiting for the moment I realize my fate. When I try and fail to disguise my horror, he saunters over with a cocky grin.
‘Caro Kerber. Looks like it’s you and me.’ Seriously, what is it with people only knowing two-thirds of my name? He drags a chair back along the ground, its legs screeching against the linoleum. ‘Pull up a pew. I don’t bite.’
Mateo Gutierrez is one of the most opinionated homo sapiens on this earth. He’s president of the debate team, and he’s renowned for having no concrete stance on, well, anything. His actual genuine views are lucid, whether political, social or ethical, but what does not change is how passionately he’s prepared to argue on any given subject, from any given side of the debate. It’s quite impressive. You know, if you find contentious, belligerent jerks impressive. Which I do not. At all.
‘Alright,’ I grumble, resigned to spending at least the next fifteen minutes in his presence. He’s one of Gabriela’s childhood friends, so I attempt civility at all times. ‘Do your worst. And it’s Kerber-Murphy.’
We’ve clashed during chess club on many the occasion. He usually beats me, with his calculated precision and meticulously executed set moves, but there have been a few times he’s knocked over his own king in frustration. I’m a hideously defensive player, and fortify my pieces in such a way that they’re impossible to penetrate. It drives him up the wall. And to be honest, it drives me up the wall too. I wish I was confident enough to push for bold attacks and risky sacrifices, but I’m not. I play it safe, always.
This time, it only takes a few moves for Mateo to launch his verbal assault. ‘Coward. Do you know how boring you are to play against? I would say it’s like watching paint dry, but that’s offensive to paint.’ He launches an assault with a knight and a bishop, but I’ve arranged my frontline so there are no hanging pieces. He groans in frustration.
I find myself in a position I so often land in: everything is so neat and impenetrable that I don’t want to move anything when my turn comes around. I reluctantly shuffle a pawn forward. Mateo’s eyes light up, and he swoops into the gap I’ve been forced to create. His eyes smirk, even though that’s technically not a thing. It’s the only way to describe it. He’s obviously delighted with himself.
Said grin soon vanishes when he realizes I’ve forked his bishop and his knight, which is unfortunately nowhere near as dirty as it sounds. Just means he’s about to lose one of them.
‘Damn,’ he grumbles. ‘Lucked your way into that one, didn’t you?’
I maintain a neutral expression. ‘Totally. Pure luck.’
It’s a little cooler in this classroom, since it’s north-facing and all, but I’m still feeling clammy and uncomfortable. There’s almost definitely going to be a sweaty assprint on this seat when I stand up.
Apart from a whirring ceiling fan, the room is graveyard quiet, and ripe with the sound of concentration. Until Mateo pipes up again, since he basically has to be making some kind of noise at all times, and starts humming an annoying tune from a commercial I can’t quite place. If he’s trying to put me off, it’s working. I can barely focus on the board, I’m so hot and bothered.
But then I see it: the intention behind his last couple of moves. He’s visibly angry when I castle just in time to stop him from skewering my queen to my king.
What I want to say in response: ‘I’ll skewer your ass to your face, you pugnacious prick!’
What I actually say: ‘Please be quiet, Mateo. Some of us are trying to concentrate.’
Look, I don’t mean to sound like Hermione Granger every minute of the livelong day. It just happens.
We play for a while longer. I try to regroup and fortify my defenses, but his unrelenting attacks punish my piece count. It’s not going great, but at least I don’t have any brainspace left to think about Haruki and our awkward encounter.
After ten more minutes, I’m not surprised when he promotes a pawn and effortlessly checkmates me.
At this point Mateo could choose to be gracious in victory, but as it happens, that is not the path he takes. ‘Suck it, Kerber! What’s that now? Eleven games to three? Twelve? I lose track.’ He whistles unnecessarily. ‘You need to grow some lady balls. Launch an attack. Maybe take your queen out for a joyride every once in a while. Or, you know, keep making a dick of yourself. Your call.’
I swear to god, I’m going to shove a rook so far up his ass he’ll be able to taste wood varnish on the back of his throat.
By the time I leave school at five-thirty, the temperature is vaguely less hellish, so my walk home is bearable at least. Despite the absurd amount of thunderflies in the air.
I live a couple miles from school, which I diligently cover on foot every single day on account of Dad #1’s obsession with car accidents. If you ever need to know hard statistics on how many people are killed in crashes each year, he’s your guy. As far as fetishes go it’s pretty niche, but I’d rather his search history showed repeated hits on government data sites than on hardcore pornography. You take the wins where you can.