Laura Steven - The Love Hypothesis

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 . . .’