This Is My Brain on Boys (4 page)

Addie hadn't witnessed this phenomenon herself; she was relying on descriptions provided by Tess, who, like Ed, was working as a PC—Peer Counselor. This was a bit of a sore spot in their friendship, as Addie had also applied to be a PC and was rejected, despite her significantly higher grades and numerous teacher recommendations.

It was confusing. Never before had she been rejected for anything, except varsity field hockey. (Though that was to be expected, she supposed, after she accidentally dislodged three of the coach's front teeth with an illegal scoop.)

“What did I do wrong?” she'd asked Dex while they were cramming for their chemistry final after she got her letter of rejection last spring. “I've got the scores and the
recommendations. Why did they take Tess and not me?”

“You're socially awkward,” he said without hesitation as he scribbled a formula for oxidation reduction.

“I am?”

He laid down his pencil. “This revelation shouldn't come as a surprise. People like us—well, people like you—have poor communication skills. We—I mean, you—often unknowingly say things that are interpreted as rude.”

She sat back, gob-smacked. “No, I don't.”

He peered over his frameless glasses. “Isn't Tess often correcting you on proper behavior?”

“Yeeesss,” she said slowly. “And I help her with Calculus.”

“Exactly. That's the upside.” He went back to finishing the formula. “People like us have Mensa-level IQs. At least, according to my test results, I certainly do. I can't speak to your intelligence level. This is why we find it impossible to associate with the normal. Compared with us, they are intellectually inadequate.”

This only made her feel worse. Okay. So she was slightly smarter, maybe, and particularly fixated on the brain, sure. But that didn't make her a freak. . . .

Did it?

“No, no. You're fine, Adelaide,” the headmaster, Mr. Foy, had informed her when she showed up in his office the next day, having lain awake the night before mulling
over Dexter's analysis. “Think nothing of the committee's decision.”

“They didn't reject me because I'm socially awkward, did they?” She studied his glass paperweight to avoid his penetrating gaze. “I've read plenty of books on the social behavioral patterns of adolescents. I know to keep at least forty-six centimeters between myself and others to ensure enough personal space.” She pushed back her chair. “And Tess taught me that observations such as ‘You're short,' or in your case, Mr. Foy, ‘You're bald,' are not appreciated even though they are stated facts.”

He cleared his throat. “That's excellent, Adelaide, but being a Peer Counselor requires a unique skill set. For example, a good PC is able to detect when her students are homesick or being bullied, suffering from anorexia, or even understanding their sexuality. How would you deal with those issues?”

“I would ask them about their issues directly. That's what I told the committee in my interview, and still I was denied! Now can you see why I'm upset?”

Mr. Foy sighed and switched topics. “What about the Athenian Award? Dr. Brooks tells me that you and Dexter are finishing up your research and are almost prepared to submit. That will give you plenty to do this summer.”

“That's true. But I really want to help people.”

This must have resonated, because he nodded thoughtfully. “I understand. Hey, how about a compromise?
Since you and Tess are such good friends, perhaps you can help her on an as-needed basis. A kind of Assistant PC. After all, you'll be staying in the same dorm, and Tess might need a helping hand now and then.”

“I do know a lot about the adolescent brain!” she exclaimed, feeling better. “Thank you, Mr. Foy. I knew you'd find a solution.”

So far, however, Tess had not come to her for assistance, only to complain.

“I've had to deal with two sets of bickering roommates, three cases of homesickness, one case of love sickness, an accusation of yogurt theft, and a queen bee who thinks I'm supposed to arrange her mani-pedis,” Tess groaned over the phone. “I am so sick and tired of the drama!”

Addie found this statement illogical, since Tess had volunteered to direct the summer play,
Little Shop of Horrors
. She was born for the stage.

Ed's car rounded the quad with its lush green lawn pockmarked with brown patches that no amount of seeding could cure. At the center was a white wooden gazebo, a favorite meeting spot, especially on rainy days like this. A cluster of students huddled under its roof while the sky unleashed a sudden downpour.

“Let us out,” Tess announced abruptly.

“Here? But it's raining. Can't he drop us off at the dorm?” Addie asked.

“Yeah, it's no problem for me to take you to Wren,”
Ed said. “I have to go past the admin building for Kris anyway.”

“No!” Tess said shrilly. “Now! I have to meet the exchange students in Thwing and I'm already late.”

“Okay, okay.” Ed slammed on the brakes. Tess was half out the door before they came to a complete stop.

Addie got out and gathered her things from the trunk, eager to get to the lab and start working, but also slightly disappointed to be leaving Kris so soon, before they'd cemented their friendship. She could already hear Tess nagging her about blowing a chance to broaden her social circle.

She had to devise a way to make sure they saw each other again. This presented a challenge, as Kris wasn't in her classes, showed no interest in science and/or the lab, and also was a boy, so he wouldn't be living at Wren, the girls' dorm. However, when Tess dated guys B.E. (Before Ed), she would always leave something behind in their rooms that would give them an excuse to contact her. Perhaps that might work.

Addie zipped open her computer case, found a USB cord, and tossed it through the back window so it landed on the seat next to him.

“What's this for?” Kris asked, holding the cord.

Darn. He found it too soon. “Thank you,” she said. “I must have dropped it.”

“You just threw it in.”

Then she had another idea. An invitation. “You should visit us in the lab. You might enjoy Dexter's crabs.”

Kris's lips twitched. “The lab is probably the last place I should visit.”

“Nonsense. We have a moray eel. And a centrifuge! It's state of the art, you know.”

“He knows,” Ed said, and for some reason Tess poked him in the shoulder. There was an awkward silence, and then Kris got out of the car and took his own pack from the trunk.

“I'm gonna split, too. Thanks for the ride, man.” He gave Ed a wave, but Ed just lifted his chin in bare acknowledgment. With that, he slung his pack over his shoulder, shoved a hand in his pocket, and trudged across the soggy quad toward Chisolm Hall.

His exit was highly unsatisfactory. No “See you around,” or “Hey, we should hang out,” or “You know, I might just visit Dexter's crabs.” It was as if those last fifteen minutes on the tossing and turning plane where he bared his soul had meant nothing. She couldn't help feeling as if she'd failed, yet again, in the social department.

“We have to talk.” Tess was standing alone with a scarf over her head to keep off the rain. Addie hadn't even noticed that Ed had driven off.

“Why do people say they have to talk when they are
already talking?” Addie snapped, suddenly aware that she was extremely grumpy. No wonder. Her normal sleep cycle had been disturbed to catch an early flight and she'd consumed way too much caffeine.

Her skin itched and her heart thudded, warning signs that one of “her moods” was about to descend. If she didn't eat something, soon, she was going to be super-
hangry
. Just then, she remembered the shiny vending machine in the lobby of Wren bursting with indestructible cookies, candy bars, and chips. Normally, she avoided that machine like a sewer hole, but at that moment, it was the mecca of junk food, the source of all salvation.

“I've gotta get a Snickers ASAP. See ya.” She began marching to their dorm, a girl on a mission.

“Wait!” Tess slipped off her sandals and went after her, barefoot. “I have to tell you about Kris Condos. Do you remember last spring when . . . ?”

“Please, Tess. Not now.”

“He did something bad!”

“I don't care. We all make mistakes.”

“But this is different. He did this to you!”

Addie spun around, her rising agitation growing with such intensity that if she wasn't precisely aware of the chemical processes in her brain, she would fear that her head was about to explode.

“If you're referring to last semester, he told me he
screwed up. We analyzed what led to his errant behavior. I explained about his new neural pathways. He agreed that made sense. So I don't care what he did last spring. What I care about is being his friend.”

Tess's jaw dropped. “Hold on. You
like
him?”

“What's the big deal? You're always on my case to make new friends and here I am doing my best, but for some crazy reason you're all negative.”

“I can't believe it.” Tess's feet were apart, fists on hips. She was either stunned or ready to fight. “I thought you weren't going to have anything to do with boys until you got your doctorate from Oxford. What about when you said that they'd be too much of a distraction?”

Addie shrugged and resumed walking to the dorm. “The brain is constantly evolving and my current state is not in the same configuration as this morning when I got on the plane. Between the adrenaline of the turbulence and an invigorating discussion with Kris, my cerebellum created new pathways, too.”

“Or, to put it in normal speak, a girl has a right to change her mind.” Tess was laughing now.

Addie kept marching forward. “I don't know why you're making such a big deal about this,” she said hotly. “Kris is going to be my friend like you and Ed and Dex. That's all. It's not as though I'm planning to drop out of school and run away with him. I just want to go for coffee,
maybe hang out and watch Netflix on a Sunday night.”

Tess snapped her mouth shut. “Sorry, Addie. It's just unlike you to care about this kind of stuff.”

Addie bent her head against the rain and the cold and a sudden wave of self-pity. “It's not. With you and Ed wrapped up in each other 24-7 and Dex wrapped up in himself, sometimes I'm kind of . . . lonely. Can you blame me for wanting another person when you're not there for me?”

“Oh, honey. I'm always here for you.”

“That's not true. Not always.”

“I am.” Tess stopped. “Besides, Ed's going off to college next month and who knows what will happen? He could meet someone freshman year and break up with me at Thanksgiving. So you're not the only one who feels alone these days.”

Addie turned and regarded her friend, the soaked scarf plastered on her head, raindrops dripping off the tip of her thin nose, looking strangely vulnerable and small despite her regal height. A lot of kids at school sucked up to Tess with the hope that she'd invite them home to LA to meet her mothers and the celebrities who apparently hung around her backyard pool.

None of that had ever mattered to Addie. She didn't even know about Tess's mothers until halfway through their first semester as roomies in ninth grade, when Jake
Gyllenhaal stopped by to take her out to lunch and invited Addie along, too. He was very polite and super-smart, so he and Addie got along swimmingly.

Maybe that's why Tess liked her, because she loved Tess for herself, not her access to the red carpet. Or maybe it was because Addie had saved her butt in Calculus. For whatever reason, Addie couldn't imagine life without her flamboyant, crazy, impulsive best friend, her complete and total polar opposite.

Tess stretched her arms. “Hug?”

“Hug,” Addie agreed, letting herself be folded into Tess's wet embrace.

Even if Kris never spoke to her again, Tess was right. They'd always be there for each other. No boy could tear them apart. Their bond was like the lithium iodide of friendship—powerfully electrifying and permanently unbreakable.

“D
o you play tennis, Mr. Condos?” Mr. Foy creamed an invisible ball with a perfect backhand.

“A little. Running's more my thing.” Kris stood awkwardly, crossing and uncrossing his arms in the well-appointed office, more nervous than he wanted to be.

Since the headmaster was standing, he felt like he should stand, too. But he didn't quite know how to deal with the imaginary tennis match this man appeared to be playing, or the fact that he was taking his own sweet time delivering the death sentence to Kris's summer.

Tess's warnings about ruining his life still rang in his ears.

“Running, eh? Good for the heart. Great for long-term
health.” Mr. Foy tossed the phantom ball high for a serve. “Distance or sprinting?”

“Distance. Cross-country in the fall. I'm closing in at fifteen in a 5K.” It struck him, then, the stupidity of this statement. “But I guess you wouldn't know that, seeing as how I . . .”

“Transferred in January.” Foy slammed the invisible ball with his pretend racket. “On my recommendation.”

Kris followed the fantasy serve and applauded lightly, wishing with all his might that Foy would just get the lecture over and done with.

The headmaster tossed the imaginary racket onto a leather couch and wiped his brow. “Did you know that?” he asked, placing his hands on his hips and regarding Kris coldly.

“That it was your recommendation that got me in? No, sir.”

“You had a 4.0 at the end of your sophomore year at Andover. Went to Nepal on a humanitarian mission on your own volition. Published an insightful and moving piece about Sherpa children dealing with grief after losing their fathers on Everest and single-handedly raised over twenty thousand dollars for them when you returned.”

The achievements were true, though hearing them out loud was like getting shot with darts.

Foy returned to his antique mahogany desk and sat,
linking his fingers on the large green blotter. “I bought your line about not fitting in back at Andover—”

“It wasn't a line, sir.”

“Excuse me. Let me finish.”

Kris stiffened, unsure whether he should say “Yes, sir” or if that would be considered an interruption, too.

The headmaster smiled weakly. “I convinced our admissions department that a bright, thoughtful, driven boy like you would be an asset to the Academy 355 community. You would bring a fresh perspective. Third-world experience. You would be open-minded, dynamic, inspiring!”

Kris knew what was coming and it was almost too much to bear. The physical temptation to cut and run was overwhelming.

“Instead, you chose to pursue a radical path that resulted in destruction of school property, not to mention harassment of fellow students, in clear violation of the Academy Handbook.”

God, this was awful. Worse than when he was found with the spray can on that chilly morning.

“What happened, Mr. Condos?”

He was caught in a quandary. He wanted to tell the truth about what he'd really been doing in the lab at three a.m., which was not what the administration assumed. But he was afraid that any explanation might come across as a
cover-up, and nothing would get him booted off campus faster than a lie. So he said, “I don't know, sir. I'm sorry.”

“Sorry is meaningless. Who cares about whether you're sorry? Anyone can say he's sorry.”

At the tip of his tongue was the word “Sorry.”

Foy swiveled back in his large chair. “Now, some of the faculty believe that your honesty immediately after the crime should be weighed as a mitigating factor. They also like you because you're an engaging student with promise.”

There was a “but” coming. Kris could feel it.

“
Buuuuut,
I believe that unless you can explain why you did what you did, giving you a second chance would be a waste of my time and the Academy's resources. So, Mr. Condos, can you answer this simple question?”

“Why?”

Kris felt a twitch. The muscle at the base of his thumb was flexing. Did that mean he was hyperventilating?

Hyperventilation. The plane. The sound of the engines. The smell of jet fuel being dumped in case of a crash. The crying kid. The scorpion key chain. (Did he really give that away?) Addie. Heads between their knees. Talking.

Addie.

“Neural pathways,” he heard himself say in sudden clarity. “I laid down new ones in Nepal and wasn't prepared to deal with the implications.”

Foy looked up. “Did you say
neural pathways
?”

Did he just say neural pathways?
“Yes, I did,” he answered with shaky confidence. “Immersing yourself in another culture often creates hundreds, if not thousands”—this part he might have been making up—“of neural pathways, especially in teenagers. Addie Emerson taught me that.”

“Addie Emerson? When did you talk to Addie Emerson?”

“On the plane here. We actually had a pretty good conversation.”

Foy reeled, as if Kris had smacked him with a shovel. “I must say, that is wonderful news. I'm quite fond of Adelaide. She's a cut above the norm.”

“I can see that. She's very smart.”

“More than smart.” Foy tapped his temple. “A genius, especially when it comes to the brain. A passion of hers.”

A girl with a passion for brains. Okay.

Foy leaned closer. “Does she, er, know what you did?”

He shook his head. “I hope not.”

“Do you
hope
? Or do you
know
?”

Kris corrected himself. “What I mean is I don't think so, sir. She didn't seem to know who I was, except that she'd seen me around campus.”

“Aha.” Foy was silent for a minute as he contemplated his clasped hands. “Well, then, the restitution program
I've devised for your summer might just work after all. Are you ready?” He got up and went to the door. “Did you bring your work boots?”

“Excuse me?”

“Physical labor, boy, a tried-and-true method for rehabilitation. That and community service.”

The food pantry.

“Come now.” Foy snatched an umbrella. “We need to hurry. I assured Dr. Brooks we'd be at the lab by noon.” With that, he threw open the door and marched out, past his secretary, Mrs. Plunkett, who raised a finger as he passed.

“Headmaster. Your eleven thirty appointment with the . . .” Too late. He was already down the marble stairway, Kris on his heels.

“Why are we going to the lab, sir?”

“You'll see.” Foy took the steps two at a time. “This is the community service component. Great character building.”

Never good when adults mentioned “character building.” Another not-good thing? The lab. It was THE one place he'd planned on avoiding this summer. Probably, Foy had him lined up to scrape paint, scrub floors, clean out gutters and animal tanks. Yes, definitely the animal tanks.

The headmaster pushed open the large front doors of Chisolm Hall and stood stock-still. “Oh, crikey. I
completely forgot about the exchange students.”

A group of students stood in a cluster away from the drizzle under the gazebo.

“I bet that's what Mrs. Plunkett was trying to tell you,” Kris said.

“Every summer we have the privilege of hosting several students from Beijing for a week.” Foy squinted toward the quad. “They're part of a tour that starts in New York, goes to Chicago, California, and back to China. Along the way, they stop in Boston to tour colleges. We always try to take at least two boys and two girls. You speak Mandarin, don't you?”

“A little,” Kris said. “Enough to get by. Languages come easy to me.” He didn't mean to brag, but it was true.

“Good. I must introduce myself. And you.” Foy deployed his umbrella and plowed toward the gazebo, free hand outstretched. “Welcome, welcome!”

It wasn't until the students parted that Kris saw the wet red hair. Tess smiled broadly at the headmaster, who exchanged greetings while Kris hung back in the rain, out of his new enemy's peripheral vision.

Tess had made it clear she didn't like him. She practically had it stamped on her forehead: I HATE KRIS. Now that he knew she was best friends with Addie, he understood why she'd led the protest on campus demanding zero tolerance for bullying. She was sticking up for her friend, not, as Kara claimed, riding a power trip.

“Tess McGrew can't resist exploiting a cause,” Kara had said, twirling her black hair while the two of them watched the protest from her second-floor dorm room in Wren. “That's her mothers' jam, too, yanking orphans from their homes in Africa and bringing them back to London and LA. They only do it for the publicity.”

“I read somewhere that a lot of those kids needed medical treatment,” he'd offered. “Tess's moms paid for surgery that straightened their legs and even saved their lives.”

Kara rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, Condor. You are so gullible. That's why I love you.” Then she kissed him. Hard.

Condor. Kara found it impossible to call anyone by their real names. For the first few weeks after she met Mack, she called him “Slack” before Kris suggested, ever so politely, that she knock it off.

What he didn't mention was that he'd actually written to Tess's mothers when he returned from Nepal asking them for donations to help the orphans there. Their publicist had responded with a nice handwritten note thanking him for his interest and promising to forward his request to the couple. A month later, his organization received a huge check. Really huge.

He should have set Kara straight about Tess's mothers from the get-go. He should have told her about the check they wrote and the supportive emails that followed. While he was at it, he might have stopped Kara and Mack's plans to vandalize the lab.

Vandalism had never been part of the plan. In fact, neither Mack nor Kara had ever mentioned destroying anything. The idea was to free the animals. That was it. Clean. Simple. Innocent. Release the mice from their cages and the frogs from their tanks so they could scamper to freedom. And after listening to Kara's horror stories, how could he not be on board?

“Do you know what they do to the frogs?” she explained as they sat cross-legged on her dorm room floor, strategizing. “It's almost too awful to describe.”

Kara was still furious over what she'd witnessed the semester before when she took anatomy and physiology. She claimed she couldn't sleep or eat until she stood up for those poor, defenseless animals.

“In anat and phys you need real muscles to test sodium and potassium reactions, okay? That means you have to kill the frog in the lab. First, you stun it.” She mimicked slamming the frog's head on a table. “And it lets out a little croak.”

Kris's heart flipped. As a kid growing up in rural Connecticut, he'd loved to watch tadpoles swim around vernal pools as the miracle of evolution revealed itself stage by stage. Fins turned into legs. Gills closed. The tadpole became a frog and crawled out of the water onto the mud. And he fell asleep at night with the windows open, listening to the cacophony of the bulls singing their mating chorus. “They take them to a guillotine,” Kara
continued. “No joke. Like Marie Antoinette. You put the frog underneath it and push down the blade and . . .” She drew a line across her throat. “That's what they do to frogs. Don't even get me started on the cats.”

The cats came preserved. Bags and bags of them to be dissected by the upperclassmen. Fetal pigs—“yanked from their mothers' wombs at the slaughterhouse”—were also splayed on dissecting boards, pickled in formaldehyde.

“The Academy is so backward,” Mack said angrily. “Other schools have stopped torturing animals. Kara's right. If we don't do something major, nothing will change.”

It wasn't until Kris witnessed Mack going berserk, spray-painting random, violent images, smashing beakers in a rain of glass, swinging a baseball bat into terrariums, and almost—until Kris stopped him—tossing a laptop into the moray eel tank, that he realized it had never been about frogs or gerbils for Mack. It was something else.

But Kris didn't find out about that until it was too late. And now, here he was being condemned to a summer of hard labor and community service to pay for what had started out as a seemingly worthy cause.

“Mr. Condos!” Foy called.

Kris snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”

“Come here. I want you to meet our visiting students.”

Tess pivoted slowly. “
Kris?
What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Condos has been to China and speaks fluent Mandarin. Isn't that true?” The headmaster waved him into the gazebo.

“I don't know about fluent,” Kris said, nodding to the exchange students.

They nodded in return.

Tess introduced the girls. “This is Mindy and Fiona.” The girls smiled.

“Hi,” Mindy said shyly.

“You guys learned English really young, right?” Tess said. “I wish I'd learned another language.”

Fiona butted in. “Yeah, I'm planning on majoring in hospitality so I can travel the world and run international hotels.”

“Ooh, like the one I stayed at on Moofushi Island in the Maldives. The water is gorgeous,” Tess chimed in.

“It's awesome,” Fiona said. “We stayed in a grass hut at the same place, a . . .” She searched for the right word.

“Villa,” Tess prompted.

“. . . that was over water with fish and sharks underneath. And the diving and . . .”

“. . . snorkeling?” Tess suggested.

“Yes. It was another world. Ever since then, all I want is to run a hotel in the Maldives with its endless white beaches and crystal-blue water. It would be like working in paradise.”

“I hear that,” Tess said. “You've been around the world. You, too, Kris, right?”

Kris remembered Mack bragging that it cost his parents $30,000 for a week at a Maldives resort before plane fare, which tacked on another $10,000 since his mother refused to fly that distance in anything but first class.