Chrissy Kolaya - Charmed Particles

WHILE MOST OF THE TOWN’S READING MATERIAL INCLUDED THE Herald-Gleaner ’s latest accounts of the battle over the collider and the voluminous final version of the Environmental Impact Statement that had been delivered to their doorsteps, Sarala continued her own informal education. After finishing the Mary Kay autobiography, she had become a regular borrower of the Nicolet Public Library’s significant collection of self-improvement and motivational literature. She was especially taken with Color Me Beautiful , breaking what she understood to be a cardinal rule about marking a library book by underlining (very lightly and in pencil) the following (feeling justified on the grounds that it was good advice, and, one might argue that she was doing future readers the service of directing their attention toward it):

Practice standing this way in front of a mirror, looking at yourself from the front and from the side. Practice walking while pulling up through your midriff, head carried high, shoulders down. When you walk, swing your leg from the joint at the hip rather than the knee. This stride is smooth and elegant .

Her attention was caught again, later, by the following:

Long hair is fine for young women, but after thirty-five it is aging. Then it is best to keep shoulder-length the limit .

She was not, however, eager that Abhijat should find and comment upon her choice of reading material, so she kept these books in a drawer in the china cabinet in the dining room, a part of the house into which Abhijat rarely ventured.

Meena and Lily had been the recipients of two socially uncoveted invitations to Erick Jarvis’s birthday party, and although Lily indicated that she had no intention of going, Meena urged her to reconsider. “It would be nice, Lily.”

“Oh, fine,” Lily acquiesced, and the two had been dropped off at the Jarvis house by Abhijat, as rare an excursion for him as for the

girls.

Erick’s mother had insisted that he invite not only his brother to the party, but also his cousins, with whom Erick had an uneasy relationship, themselves being dedicated students of the high school’s auto shop classes and finding nothing so damaging to their social reputations as having a cousin in the nerd classes.

Lily had not strayed far from Meena’s side the whole evening.

“I hear you’re going to that school for geniuses,” Erick said, addressing Lily, who responded to this attention by turning slightly away.

“You mean the nerd academy,” Tom Hebert said loudly, hoping to attract the admiration of Erick’s brother and cousins with his quip.

“You don’t just decide you’re going to go,” Lily explained, her eyes half closed, arms crossed in front of her, a posture Meena noticed that Lily adopted when she was nervous. “It’s a competitive application process.”

“So do you think you’ll get in?” Erick asked, ignoring both Tom and his cousins, who were now shotgunning cans of Mountain Dew in the living room.

“I don’t know,” Lily responded, eyes still half closed, arms still crossed. “I hope so.”

“Will you guys be roommates?” he pressed on.

“Probably,” Lily answered. But at the same moment, Meena responded, “I don’t know if I’ll get in.”

Lily looked at her, perplexed. “Of course you’ll get in.”

Most of the town’s residents were now nervously anticipating the public hearing on the matter of the super collider, which had been scheduled for May and would be held in the auditorium of the Nicolet Public High School.

Lily’s mind, however, had turned entirely to the matter of the Academy. She worked diligently on her application each evening and could, it seemed to Meena, be counted on to talk about nothing else.

For Lily, the Academy represented the promise of a world of peers who would understand her eagerness in the classroom, to whom her quirks might seem normal. The idea that such a place existed, a ready home for her, seemed to Lily like a dream come true.

At school, she found herself poring over the Academy brochure, imagining the room she would share with Meena, how she would come to think of her single year of regular high school as a lost year — a horrible glimpse at the tiresome football games and ridiculous cafeteria dances she would soon shake off in favor of more worthy endeavors.

Meena had counted on her father’s preoccupation with the matter of the collider to allow the announcement of the opening of the Math and Science Academy to slip, unnoticed, past eyes that were otherwise ever vigilant for opportunities to enrich her academic environment.

The plan she had settled on was to say nothing, and with any luck, by the time the matter of the collider had been settled, should her father catch wind of the Academy opportunity, the deadline for application would have long since passed.

She had a sense, though they hadn’t discussed it, that her mother would have taken her side. Would have argued that the Nicolet school system was perfectly fine, better than fine. That it was, after all, why they had chosen to live there. That Meena would have time enough on her own in college and beyond without forcing her out into the world at this age. And she had a sense also that her mother (whom she sometimes noticed watching longingly as the other fathers on the block conversed easily with one another, leaning against their lawnmowers or snow blowers) would understand Meena’s wariness about moving so completely away from her classmates, her concern that she might become as unable as her father was to connect with them.

This was not, however, a decision Meena had shared with Lily, who, she imagined, would find it nearly impossible to comprehend.

Lately, Meena had begun to realize that the more time she spent with Lily, the more isolated she felt. There were an increasing number of moments in which she’d noticed, growing within her, a lurking and unpleasant suspicion: that it would be easier to do some things without Lily — social events she would have liked to enjoy without the specter of Lily at her side, needing to be attended to. This, though, had left Meena feeling both guilty and ashamed.

How different it was from when they were younger, Meena thought. She could still remember the first time she’d been invited to Lily’s house to play. She’d understood it to be a great honor and a sign of the depth of their friendship when, one Saturday afternoon, Lily invited her into Randolph’s study — a grand cabinet of curiosities filled with specimens in glass jars, the fossilized bones of strange creatures, sculptures, wood carvings, well-worn travel books (his favorites, Lily explained, and thus, well loved). It was as though Lily’s house contained within it a miniature museum.

Meena thought how unlike Randolph Lily had turned out to be, and how a bit more of his curiosity about the world might serve her friend well.

As for breaking the news about the Academy to Lily, Meena did not yet have a plan. Instead, she kept silent while Lily pored over her application, too engrossed in her own application materials to notice that, rather than commiserating, Meena barely responded each time Lily brought up the subject of her application essay, her quest for the strongest letters of recommendation.

Meena never told Lily that she had applied. But she never told her that she hadn’t, either. For Meena, this seemed an important distinction — a talisman against any future accusation that she had acted with dishonesty or deceit.