Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(9)

Like most of the other Apey boys, I find Brit Means a little weird and a little intense, and can’t help but be fascinated by her. She walks the halls like a time traveler noticing small differences created by minute shifts in quantum chaos. She can sometimes seem like a beautiful foreign exchange student from a country no one’s ever seen.

Once, I found myself sharing the shade of a tree with her on a hot day just after school. I was waiting for Q; she was waiting for her ride home.

“Most human structures are made out of wood,” she said to the tree. “Wood is trees is plants. Human clothes are cotton: plants again. We live in nature every day without realizing it. We live inside plants.”

“Huh,” I said, secretly marveling at a sudden acute impulse to kiss her.

Back in Calculus, Q passes the box of donuts around. Brit leans over to choose one, drawing close enough for me to smell the shampoo in her wet hair.

Next to her sit Amelie Shim, Naima Gupta, and Paul Olmo, always in that order.

“So I’m supposed to give you turkeys a test for the suits,” says Mr. Soft. “What questions do you want on it?”

We all think. It’s so early.

“Just email me, okay?” says Mr. Soft. He’s so soothing. “You’re all getting As anyway. I hate this grading bullshit.” Even his swears are soothing.

“Thanks, Mr. Soft,” says Q.

“We all know we’re doing the work here, right?”

We have an assignment to calculate the volume of solids formed by rotating area formulas around axes. Nothing too crazy. But Mr. Soft wants to make things interesting by having us sketch the resulting volumes on paper, in charcoal, by hand.

“To really get a sense of how the volumes feel,” he says.

It’s a pair assignment. Paul Olmo leans over to Q and whispers something. Q nods.

“Me and Paul are gonna do our volumes in clay,” Q announces.

“Nerds,” I say.

Q just looks at me like So?

It’s Paul’s turn with Q, since I got to partner with him for the last assignment. We rotate among us three to ensure equal friend time. Before I can wonder who I should pair up with, Brit Means speaks.

“Frank, will you be my partner?”

“Thanks you,” I find myself saying.

Thanks you?

The bell rings. I see Q looking perhaps as astonished as me—Brit always partners with Amelie—and he offers me a covert fist bump. I naturally mistake the fist bump for a high five, and the whole thing becomes this strange gearshift pantomime: the awkward greeting ritual of male nerds everywhere.



* * *



? ? ?

Playa Mesa is a giant pyramid-shaped peninsula set at the edge of the Pacific; Brit Means’s house is on the side opposite from mine on that pyramid.

We sit at her hulking dining table and start our assignment. Brit’s mom designed the table; Brit’s dad built it. Atop the table sit garlic pita chips in a wooden bowl, which Brit’s dad carved himself. The table sits in the bulb of a large, curvaceous kitchen, which Brit’s mom designed and Brit’s dad built. Brit’s parents are architects. They habitually design and build stuff—big, ornate, well-constructed stuff—like no big deal.

In walk her mom-n-dad, in matching hoodie sweats, matching lambskin slippers, holding matching mugs of tea. They are of identical small stature and seem to have come from the same lat and long within Europe many stout generations ago, and remind me of kindly druids from a video game I used to play.

“We’ll be upstairs,” says Brit’s mom, and then she smiles this tilted corny smile. It’s the same tilted corny smile my mom gave to me and Joy at the last Gathering.

What is happening?

“Nice to meet you, Frank,” says Brit’s dad.

They vanish upstairs in unison.

Brit and I sit alone.

Brit regards me for a moment, like you would a favorite painting in a museum, and speaks suddenly: “You take the odd ones, I’ll take the evens.”

She means the assignment. She tucks her hair behind her ear and flicks her Zeichner Profi 5.0 mm mechanical pencil, effortlessly performing Around-the-Worlds, Weaves, See-Saws, regular Sassys, and Ultra Sassys.

More like Ultra Sexys.

I try to eat my lower lip. Then I remember the first Rule of Being a Person: no auto-cannibalism. I eat a garlic pita chip instead. So does Brit. We compulsively reach for more, munching and munching, and of course our hands touch in the bowl. We both draw back as if the chips are electrified.

“Sorry,” she says.

“Me too,” I say.

“Huh?” says Brit.

“I don’t know,” I say.

For some reason, this makes Brit smile this smile that says: But I do.

“Wanna get through this stuff?” she says.

“Right,” I say.

Solving the problems is the easy part. It’s the sketching that takes time. Brit plays some music on her phone, but then switches to a proper wireless speaker.

“I hate listening on tiny speakers,” she says, seconds before I can, and my heart does a triple jump.

Once I recover, I get started on the work. I sketch small—less surface area to cover—and finish fast. Brit picks up on my tactic and sketches small, too. Our pencil leads scritch and scratch. She elbows me.