The Avery Shaw Experiment (22 page)

“I can do that,” I said.

“And you’re never allowed to have a birthday party without me ever again.”

I laughed. “Promise.”

Aiden let out a huge sigh of relief and leaned over to grab me up in a big hug. We held on tight, neither of us wanting to be the first to let go.

“Can you really forgive me?” Aiden asked, his voice thick with emotion.

I sniffled, but laughed at the same time. “I really can. I do.”

“I love you, Aves.”

“I love you too, Aiden.”

As we walked back to the car, I thought about how much my life had changed in the last few months. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was excited by the prospect of my future. With Aiden back, it was like I now had the best of both worlds.

“Are you going to be mad if I keep sitting with Grayson at lunch? It’s the only time I ever see him at school.”

Aiden sighed again, but it was playful. “It’s okay. I get it.”

“I’ll rejoin you guys next year after he graduates,” I promised.

Aiden watched me a minute with a frown on his face.

“What now?”

“I will never get used to the idea of you dating my brother. It’s seriously disgusting. If you guys start making out in front of me all the time, I am going to need therapy.”

I think I turned redder than I ever had before, and I felt a weight settle on my chest. “I think it might be too late for that,” I said, unable to hide my disappointment. “I think Grayson’s given up on me—not that I blame him.”

Aiden rolled his eyes and shook his head. “If that were the case, I’d be able to smell right now. Trust me, Aves, he’s still crazy about you. All you have to do is let him know you like him too.”

Grayson

I’m not going to lie,
punching Aiden in the face felt really good. I hadn’t meant to break his nose, but I didn’t feel sorry for it either. Not even when I got grounded.

I don’t think my mom actually wanted to ground me—I think she knew Aiden deserved what he got—but it’s not like she could condone violence, so I received a month of house arrest. No friends over and no leaving the house for anything except family- or school-related activities, which, now that basketball was over, pretty much meant science club meetings. Oh freaking joy.

At least when I told Owen about it—I’d come clean to him about having to join science club—he offered to tough it out with me. I was a little shocked, but I wasn’t going to complain.

“What kind of geek stuff do you guys do?” he asked as we wandered into Mr. Walden’s classroom after school.

“Well, usually we work on our experiments for the science fair.”

“Dude. Do you seriously have to go to that?”

“Unfortunately. But it really hasn’t been that bad. Mine and Avery’s experiment mostly consisted of me taking her on dates. For that, I got extra credit
and
didn’t get kicked off the basketball team. One time I even had to kiss her as part of the experiment.”

“You got extra credit for kissing?”

“Pretty much.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I believe those were Grayson’s exact words when he learned about the experiment,” Mr. Walden said as he came in the classroom with his standard cup of coffee. “Ones that almost earned him detention.”

I laughed as Owen’s face went pale. “Sorry, Mr. Walden!”

“Don’t let me hear anymore of that language, Mr. Jackson.”

“I won’t.”

Mr. Walden sighed but then smiled at me as he sat down. Actually, Mr. Walden is a pretty cool teacher.

“How is your experiment coming along, Grayson?”

The question made me want to be sick. Avery and I had worked so hard these last few months, and it was all for nothing.

I fell into a chair near Mr. Walden’s desk and frowned at him. “We tried everything we could think of, and Avery’s just not better. We were wrong. She’s, like, broken forever or something, so I guess we failed the experiment.”

Mr. Walden’s face fell. “That’s not your fault,” he said.

He must have seen the guilt in my expression, because he got up from his desk and put a hand on my shoulder.

“It’s nothing that you did, Grayson, and you couldn’t have prevented it. You have been wonderful with Avery. Don’t blame yourself, and don’t blame your experiment.”

“But I gave up on her. I was so frustrated. I didn’t know she was really sick. Her mom made her see a doctor.”

“She’ll be fine. She’s getting the help she needs now.” He gave my shoulder one last squeeze before going back to his desk. “I bet she could really use a friend right now, though. It’s not too late for you to help her get through her depression.”

Mr. Walden was wrong. It
was
too late for me. I’d called her house Saturday night after her mom came to see me, but she was out with Aiden. Her mother told me he’d dragged her to the museum. I wanted to break his nose all over again. I told the jerk I was in love with her, and he turned around and took her on a freaking date.

It was my own fault. I knew he wanted her, and I was the one that told him how much she was still in love with him. Of course he went to her. I would have done the same thing if I thought I had a chance with her.

“Maybe she will get better,” I said. “But if she does, it’ll be because of therapy and medication, not the seven stages of grief. We were both wrong.”

“Don’t get discouraged, Grayson. Trial and error is a big part of science.”

“Whatever.” I didn’t really want a bunch of teacher mumbo jumbo right then.

Mr. Walden sat there looking at me like I’d just told him I was dropping out of school to make a living selling drugs or something. He seemed sad, and for the first time in my life, I hated that I’d disappointed one of my teachers.

“I’m sorry I let you down, Mr. Walden,” I mumbled. I felt the back of my neck get warm and reached up to rub it before Owen noticed my embarrassment. “I really did try, though. I swear! I told you I wasn’t good at all this science stuff.”

Mr. Walden’s face went from sad to shocked. “Is that what you think? That you’ve failed and you’ve let me down?”

I shrugged uneasily. “Well, we did. The experiment was a bust. What happens now anyway? Do we get kicked out of the science fair? I suppose I don’t get my extra credit, either, right?”

Mr. Walden jerked back in surprise, nearly spilling his coffee all over his desk. “Good hell, Grayson!”

I was surprised to hear the curse after all his lectures on the subject of foul language. Owen seemed pretty stunned too.

“Of course you’ll get the credit!” Mr. Walden said. “You did the work, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but we can’t go to the science fair now.”

“Why not?”

“Because we don’t have a finished experiment. We failed!”

Mr. Walden sighed. “Do you know how many times Thomas Edison failed before he had a working lightbulb?”

“Uh . . . no?” Why would I know something like that?

“They say it was over a thousand, Mr. Kennedy.”

“No way!” Owen said.

Mr. Walden smiled. “Indeed. Allegedly when he was asked about it, he said, ‘I have not failed one thousand times. I have successfully discovered one thousand ways to
not
make a lightbulb.’ Failure is a part of the process, Grayson. Of course you can still take your experiment to the fair this weekend. Yours will not be the only unsuccessful project there, and you may even still place.”

“What? How?”

“The project itself is intriguing. I believe people will be fascinated with your efforts despite the negative outcome. All you have left to do is write up your conclusions, and you will be ready for Saturday.”

Showing off a lame failed experiment didn’t sound like much fun to me. “Maybe we still shouldn’t go, though. The nerds are already embarrassed having to take a dumb jock like me to the fair with them. This experiment just proves them right. I don’t want to ruin their day when they’ve all worked so hard.”

Suddenly Mr. Walden had the look on his face that he always had when he was about to start doling out the detention slips. “You are not a dumb jock, Grayson.”

“Right.” I scoffed.

Mr. Walden leaned back in his chair and rubbed his head like it hurt. I knew I exhausted the guy on occasion, but I thought we were past me giving him migraines.

He sighed and pulled his grade book out of his desk. He walked over and plopped it in front of me. After finding my name on his class list, he ran his finger down the line and stopped it on a B.

I was a little shocked. “Is that the grade from my test last week? Did I seriously pull a B?”

“No,” Mr. Walden said gruffly. He scooted his finger back to a different column. This time he pointed at an A minus. “This was the grade you got on the test last week. The B is the grade you will see on your report card for third quarter when they’re handed out this Friday.”

Scratch being a little shocked. If I hadn’t been sitting, I’d have fallen over in a dead faint. “You’re totally shitting me, Mr. Walden!”

Mr. Walden frowned at me, but before I could apologize, he cracked a smile and said, “I assure you I am not
shitting
you, Grayson.”

There was a round of laughter in the room. I hadn’t realized that the science club geeks were all standing behind us, listening to the conversation.

Mr. Walden smiled at everyone and then met my eyes again. This time his were shining. I couldn’t believe it, but the man was proud of me.

“I haven’t added in the extra points from the science experiment yet, Grayson. This lift in your grade is purely from you actually turning in your homework assignments and studying for your tests. If you attend the science fair this weekend as we agreed on, and if you continue to apply yourself as you have been, I have no doubt you will graduate with an A in my class.”

At that everyone broke out into a round of clapping and cheers. I took an exaggerated bow, pretending like it was no big deal, but it actually felt kind of awesome knowing I’d done so much all by myself. Well, it wasn’t completely on my own. I totally owed the science squad.

“I think this calls for a celebration. What do you guys say to some applied physics for science club today? My treat.”

“Applied physics?” Owen asked.

Now I understood why everyone laughed at me the first time I’d heard that term. The horror in Owen’s voice was hilarious.

I slung my arm over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. It’s not as scary as it sounds.”

“Sounds like a party in here.”

Avery’s quiet voice broke the scene like a sledgehammer through a window. She stood in the doorway to the classroom, blushing from the way she’d brought everything to a stop. She’d been so nonresponsive lately that she’d faded into the background both at lunch and here in science club. We weren’t used to her speaking up anymore, and I wasn’t the only one surprised when she’d interrupted the conversation.

Of course, we were also shocked because of who she’d dragged with her to science club.

Libby was the first to snap out of it and answer her. “It is,” she said. “Today a miracle has occurred, and we are celebrating.”

“Miracle?” I laughed. “Gee thanks, Lib.”

“Grayson’s going to get an A in physics!” Tara blurted, then promptly turned bright red.

“An
A
?” Aiden gasped. I rather enjoyed his shock. Jerk.

Avery wasn’t shocked. Actually, she shocked me when she said “I’m not surprised,” and her face lit up with a bright smile. I hadn’t seen her smile like that since her birthday. It made my stomach get all fluttery. I had to look away from her before I blushed like some stupid tween experiencing his first crush.

“It’s not a sure thing,” I mumbled, looking anywhere but her eyes. “We still have to finish our project before the science fair this weekend.”

“Well, then it’s definitely a sure thing.”

Surprised by the excitement in Avery’s voice, I looked up and found her beaming at me. “We’re done!” she squealed. “I’ve reached the final stage!”