The Calculus of Change Page 3

  “We’re going for a drive.”

  “We’ve only been here for fifteen minutes,” I protest.

  “And that’s fifteen too long of me not figuring out this calc problem.”

  “But you are figuring it out.”

  “Good,” he says. “Then when I come back to it, it won’t be so hard.”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “Can we take your car?”

  He’s standing now, his hand pressed lightly into my shoulder blades, nudging me out of my seat. I think I’m about to walk away from an unsolved calculus problem, which is totally sacrilege for me.

  “You’re gonna forget what you were doing with that problem. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I’m smiling and shoving things into my backpack. “And we’ll never make it back for fourth.”

  “We will,” he says. “A short drive. Let’s say seven songs’ worth.”

  “Seven? That could be half an hour, depending on the songs. And we need time to park.”

  “Fine. Six. No more arguing.”

  ***

  We’re driving and the wind is whipping my hair around my face and Tate leans his head back in the passenger seat, one hand out the window like a little kid. It’s not long before we’re out of town. Vast yellow plains meet soaring wispy clouds that jut right up against the Western Slope, which is a mountainous breadth, a god.

  I lean forward and turn the music down. The wind is still loud, and I have to raise my voice to be heard.

  “So why the yarmulke?”

  “What?”

  I reach my hand over and touch the top of his head where the yarmulke starts. “The yarmulke.”

  He turns and looks at me, his mouth pinched. His mouth. It’s the shape of a heart. I bet it would fit against mine.

  I think he’s trying to decide if he can trust me.

  I roll up the windows

  “Sorry if I’m prying. It’s just that I like it.”

  “You do?”

  I nod.

  “Why?”

  “You first,” I say. “Why do you wear it?”

  “I wear it because it’s a symbol of what happened to me in Israel this summer and because it reminds me who I am.”

  “I have more questions.”

  What “happened” to him in Israel? The way he says it—it obviously wasn’t a traumatic experience. My friend Becca went on the same trip last year, and when she came back, she claimed she’d been “transformed.” She told of sleeping in tents and waking at sunrise and visiting holy sites. As she spoke, I pictured orange light cast over sandy brown desert. Campfires and song. Deep conversations under an unpolluted sky full of stars and moon. Was all of that transformative or just really fun?

  “I’m sure you do have questions,” he says. “But now you. What do you like about the yarmulke?”

  “The colors.”

  He laughs.

  “Okay, fine. I like it because I think it means you’re moved.”

  “What do you mean, moved?”

  “I mean you’re somehow more inspired, more impacted, more . . .” I pause, searching for the right word, feeling my cheeks burn hot as I realize how much I’m giving away.

  Tate smiles before I find the word. “I was.” He takes a drink of his giant latte. “Moved.”

  “Shouldn’t moved be a constant state of being?”

  “That sounds intense and exhausting, Ade.”

  I’m lost in the way he uses my favorite nickname.

  “It’s better than the alternative.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Something like death, I guess,” I say.

  Tate reaches for my hand and interlaces our fingers. It feels like being held from the inside out. I wish this feeling, this moment, would last forever.

  Jon

  Jon is standing in the entrance of my bedroom, tapping lightly on the open door. I look up from my math homework and wave him inside. He wanders in, hands in his pockets, and sits on the edge of my bed. He reminds me of a seven-year-old. He has the same thick ruffle of unruly hair as me. His jeans are a comical mix of tight and loose, sagging in the waist but tight through his hamstrings, as is all the rage. He’s wearing an equally tight T-shirt with robots printed on the front. I think he’s making dork look cool. He can do that. He’s a crossover. Everyone likes him because he makes people laugh. He has friends in every subgroup and seems mostly unaware of the social caste system at Bentley. I guess being his sister gives me a few ins I wouldn’t otherwise have.

  “What’s up?” I say.

  “Nothing.”

  So it’s going to be like talking to a seven-year-old.

  “Jon?”

  I wait quietly.

  He sighs. “A girl.”

  “Ah. Who?”

  “You don’t know her. She’s a sophomore.”

  “Try me.”

  “Sabita Patel?”

  “Sabita. Beautiful name. But nope, don’t know her. So what’s the deal?”

  “I like her.”

  Jon and I have always told each other about relationships or love interests. Maybe it’s because we don’t have a mom. Well, he tells me about relationships, I tell him about love interests. He’s had girlfriends since middle school. I’ve never had a boyfriend.

  “That’s great.”

  “She’s really pretty.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  She’s pretty. I’m trying not to let my reaction to the word pretty get in the way of this conversation. What is it about that word? Maybe it’s because I’m always wondering if I’m pretty. Sometimes it feels like pretty is all that matters. And in my reality, pretty is synonymous with thin. She must be thin. I’ve never seen Jon date a girl who isn’t.

  “What does she look like?”

  “She’s Indian. She has this incredible, long black hair. And her eyes, and, well. This is embarrassing, Ade. Jeez. You’ll just have to meet her, okay?”

  “So did you come here to tell me about how pretty your new girlfriend is or is there something I can help you with?” I know I sound bitter, but I can’t think about pretty and what it means and how I stack up without wanting to detonate. It’s too much pressure, too many standards, and it’s all bullshit.

  “Well, could a sister help a brother figure out what to do on our first date?”

  I laugh.

  “Yes,” I say. “I believe I could.”

  I wonder if he’d be talking to my mom about this instead of me if she were alive. Missing her always hits like this. In the middle of something. Like a sudden blow to the gut. Missing her for my brother is excruciating. As though I don’t miss her enough for myself. Jon doesn’t get a mom. Every little boy needs a mom.

  “Well, what does she like to do?”

  “She’s an artist.”

  “Cool. What kind of art?”

  “A sculptor. I guess she takes pottery, but she stays after school every day and works on these clay sculptures.”

  “Easy. Art museum.”

  “I mean, I know she likes art. But I can’t think of something that says trying too hard like the art museum. Plus it’s boring. Try again.”

  “Okay. Arthouse film.”

  “Closer. But also boring.”

  “Paintballing?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “I’m pretty sure you didn’t need me to come up with an idea like paintballing.”

  “I always need my big sis.”

  Jon is only eleven months younger than me, but I’ve always been the big sister. He jokes that his favorite month of the year is February, not because it’s his birthday month but because he’s the same age as me every February. He says I don’t get to boss him around in February. Which is stupid because I have every right to boss him around whenever I please.

  Tate

  “Maggie Tiley,” he says.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I was just saying that at some point this weekend I’ll hang out at Maggie’s.”


  Tate saying the name Maggie Tiley isn’t making sense to me. They don’t strike me as kids who would travel in the same social circle.

  “Oh. I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”

  “Yeah. We’re, um, together.”

  “Oh.”

  I think I’ve already said oh. “Cool.”

  But it’s so far from cool. It’s a knife. “How long?”

  Did I just vomit a bunch of Sour Patch Kids all over the table?

  “What?”

  “How long have you guys been together?”

  “Oh. Six months.”

  “Oh.”

  Of course it would be Maggie Tiley. With her long golden hair and sun-kissed freckles. With her thin. It would have to be Maggie Tiley. Maggie who gets the solos in choir. Maggie who once had a crush on my brother and befriended me to get close to him. Maggie who dropped me when she dropped her crush on my brother. I feel a stab of humiliation as I realize how stupid I’ve been. I had thought maybe Tate could like me.

  “You didn’t know I had a girlfriend.”

  “You didn’t mention it.”

  “Yeah,” he says, “I guess I didn’t. It never really came up.”

  “I know Maggie.”

  “Oh yeah? That doesn’t surprise me.” He pauses. “She knows most of the singer-theater types.”

  “Yep,” I say. “We travel in the same circles. She’s supposed to be a part of this organizing committee we have for open mic night here at Ike’s, but she hasn’t made the meetings yet.”

  “You need a committee for that?”

  I throw a Sour Patch Kid at him.

  “Yes. We have to figure out sound and get an MC, and we need to have an idea of who’s performing. It’s not that involved, but yeah, it takes a little planning. And then we have to spread the word.”

  “So what’s the word? When is the next one?”

  “Last Friday of every month. So, three and half weeks?”

  “Are you singing?”

  “I am. Are you coming?”

  “I am now,” he says.

  It hits me like a promise and I forget that he just told me that Maggie Tiley is his girlfriend. I feel just a little lighter.

  Mr. Danson

  Passing period. Seven minutes every forty-nine minutes, and it’s impossible to gather your books and make it from one end of the biggest high school campus in the history of campuses to the other end, unless you wheel a suitcase around. Some kids do. I’m not there yet—I have some pride. But I might as well buy a suitcase. My pack is stuffed to the brim, and I’m carrying not one, but two fifteen-pound books as I haul ass from the south building to the north building.

  I think about what I can accomplish in exactly seven minutes. Pee and wash my hands, maybe. If there isn’t a line. Solve a quarter of a math problem. Eat a delicious, addictive, half-baked chocolate chip cookie from the school cafeteria. But sift my way through a crowd of chattering teenagers for a mile? In seven minutes? No.

  I round the corner right into Mr. Danson. I think of English last year and how he’d gesture wildly and do voices when reading Shakespeare aloud.

  “Ade!”

  Danson uses my nickname, and in any other circumstance I wouldn’t have noticed, but now I’m picturing him and Marissa and something cheesy like angel eyes, and did I just make eye contact? With his crotch? I curse Marissa for getting into my head like this.

  “Danson. I mean, Mr. Danson.”

  At least I didn’t call him Lance.

  “How is AP literature going this year? You have Cammie Misley, right?”

  Yet another first name of a teacher I did not need to know.

  “I do. It’s good, thanks.”

  “I hear she’s a hard-ass.”

  “She’s okay. Probably one of my better teachers this year.”

  “That’s because you don’t have me.”

  It’s easy to see how his interactions could feel just over the edge of friendly—flirty. But eyes of an angel?

  Being the object of Danson’s attention is momentarily intoxicating, and I find myself thinking like Marissa. He’s wearing a royal blue button-down, sleeves rolled halfway up his ripped forearms. And his hands—

  The bell. I’m late.

  Tate

  “So you’re saying Y is a function of X?”

  I laugh. He wasn’t lying about math: it’s not his thing.

  “No, I’m saying Y1 equals Y plus P.”

  We’re sitting across from each other, and I’m trying so hard not to solve the problem for Tate.

  I go back to writing lyrics in my notebook.

  What is beauty

  but something that’s here

  and then gone, like everything?

  Tate stops me every few minutes to ask another question. It stuns me that he doesn’t want to learn this. He doesn’t want to get sucked into a problem and let it mess with him for hours. How can he miss the magic of it? I want to show him.

  Tate puts his head in his hands and sighs. He looks up at me with this spectacular mess of hair waving in every direction.

  “This is the best part.” I move my chair around to his side of the table and try to stay composed as I inhale the scent of him. Like coffee and a fresh shower and something sweet—is it the Sour Patch Kids?

  My arm almost touches his shoulder.

  Think, Aden. Math, math, math.

  He’s not as far from the solution as I thought.

  “So, see this angle?” I draw him a diagram, and as I move the pencil, my elbow brushes his forearm. He makes no attempt to move, and our arms are touching as I finish the diagram. My arm tingles and I shiver. I want to lean into him. And then my body just leans itself into him without my choosing. Again, he doesn’t shift away, as though leaning and arms touching and electricity are all a normal part of solving math problems.

  “Sometimes it helps to think in pictures first, and then work with the equation. At least with this problem.” I cover the lean with something mathy. Again I amaze myself with the ability to say anything coherent to Tate, especially when our arms are touching and there’s leaning, and the floor just opened up and sucked the rest of the world away, leaving us here, like this.

  There’s a fleck of gold in Tate’s otherwise gray-blue left eye.

  “I know,” he says.

  “What?”

  “There’s that brownish color in one of my eyes.”

  “I said that out loud.”

  “You did.”

  I wonder if my face just feels warm or if he can see that I’m blushing. Heat. My whole body feels hot. I didn’t know one could blush with one’s whole body. I didn’t know a lot before I met Tate.

  Tate nudges me with his elbow and I smile.

  “My dad knows,” he says. “I was careless with last week’s quiz. I just threw it in my pack, and he saw the freaking huge red C-minus scrawled on the top.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He thinks it’s some fluke. Like it’s the teacher’s fault or something. Heaven forbid any son of his isn’t thriving in academia. He wants to conference with her. Not happening. I’m a senior, for Christ’s sake. I’m not conferencing with my dad and my calc teacher.”

  I’m not sure what to say.

  “That sucks.” It’s a start. “There’s time to pull it up,” I add.

  “But you’re so distracting,” he says.

  No air. Tate just sucked all the air out of my body with one small sentence.

  “What? I mean, why? Am I distracting?” Stop talking.

  That was about ten octaves higher than my usual voice. I’m completely inside out—I bet he can see that everything inside me is all sparkly and dancy and laugh-out-loud because of him. I bet he can see, and yet he’s still here with me telling me about his life.

  He sighs. “I don’t know what it is. You’re easy to talk to. And I like what you say.”

  I have no idea what, exactly, I say, but God, I want to keep saying it.

 
Jon

  It’s a shock to walk in on Jon and Marissa making out. On Jon’s bed. Two days before his date with Sabita.

  “Oh God,” I say. And though I’m embarrassed and almost revolted, I stand there, staring at the two of them.

  Marissa pops her head up.

  “Aden!”

  She sounds as worried as I am dumbstruck.

  I’m reliving the trauma of sophomore year. The back of my brain is reminding me that this isn’t my business. That I’m acting like a jealous girlfriend.

  Marissa rolls from underneath Jon and pushes him off her.

  I suddenly realize that I don’t want to be standing here right now. I don’t want to think about my brother’s hard-on for my best friend. Crap. I just thought of it.

  “Math homework time,” Marissa yells as I walk into my room. I almost slam the door but think twice because I hate fighting with Marissa. I’m her anchor, and she’s mine. I leave it open a crack and breathe. Jeez. What is it with me and needing to think about sucking in air lately? I wonder if I’m dying. That’s what people who die do, right? They stop breathing.

  Marissa will come in here after having made out with my brother, and I’ll try not to think about what the heck just happened to my perfect little world of separates. Separate brother. Separate best friend. When separates collide, things get messy. And I’ve had enough messy. Maybe I’m closing my eyes. Maybe I’m not seeing what’s real. But I’ll hang on to this illusion for as long as I can because the thought of letting go, of letting separates collide and explode—it’s terrifying.

  I was never less a fan of Jon than when he dated Marissa sophomore year. And I’ve always been a fan of Jon, even when he’s a tool. But it was bound to happen. We were all so close in age. Jon and I grew up around each other’s friends. Marissa went from little-girl pretty to teenage knockout in a matter of seconds. Her breasts arrived in the summer between eighth grade and freshman year. Her mom, Cassandra, bought her a push-up bra because that’s what a mom should do when her daughter sprouts breasts, and the rest is history. Every guy wanted her, including my brother.