Amy Noelle Parks - The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss

PUBLISHERS NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4197-3972-9
eISBN 978-1-68335-715-5

Text copyright 2020 Amy Noelle Parks

Cover illustration 2020 Andi Porretta

Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura

Published in 2020 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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For Perry. My best friend. For always.

I am not in love with Evie Beckham.

Id like to be more emphatic about this, but Leo and I are twenty minutes into a sprints workout, so I can barely talk at all, much less with any intensity. I drop to the ground and lie flat on my back.

Not time to stop, Leo says, checking his watch.

He is smack in the middle of his soccer season, but I am a pitcher, and baseball is still months away. Im only here because I felt bad about his solo workouts. No one should have to endure this torture alone, and despite the searing pain in my lungs, I didnt mind all that much until he started up about Evie.

Feel free to keep going, I tell him.

Instead, he sits beside me. You and Evieyoure always together.

Were friends, I say, although that doesnt begin to cover it.

Evie and I grew up in each others pockets. When we were five, she came home from kindergarten to a locked house in the dead of winter because her absentminded parents (a mathematician and a psychologist) briefly forgot they had a daughter. My mom and dad rescued her, and weve been inseparable ever since.

Almost four years ago, she talked me into applying to Newton Academy, the ridiculously selective math and science boarding school she, Leo, and I now attend. I agreed only because I thought I had zero chance of getting in, unlike Evie, who turned in her screening exam in half the allotted time. Her flex probably improved my chances, since it intimidated the hell out of everyone else, while I expected it.

When, to my everlasting surprise, we both got acceptance letters, I tried to talk Evie out of going. Despite the rosy picture she painted of days spent coding and building robots, I hadnt wanted to leave my family in Wisconsin for what is practically an all-boys school in downstate Illinois, wear uniforms, and work my ass off. My plan had been to coast through high school into my inevitable role as valedictorian, because while Evie will win the Fields Medal for mathematics someday, she will never get anything above a B in an English class.

But Evie had opened her big gray eyes, laid her hand on my arm, and said, Please? And so six months later, I packed my bags. Not that I regret it. I could have taught the coding classes at our high school back home, but our instructor here actually worked for Microsoft.

Do you think I have a shot? Leo asks, interrupting my thoughts.

Maybe, I say. The answer is no.

Evie is not a fan of new experiences. She eats about twelve foods (half of them beige), doesnt like talking to strangers, and at seventeen years old is still so afraid of learning to ride a bike that when were at home, she uses her scooter for trips to the librarya habit that is both irritating and adorable.

So far, Evie has shown absolutely no interest in dating and has discouraged all comers with brutal efficiency.

A typical encounter usually goes something like this:

Gabe: You want to see a movie sometime?

Evie: I dont like movies. As soon as I figure out who everyone is, theyre over.

Gabe: Well, the movie isnt actually the point.

Evie: Im going to do my physics now.

I find these interactions hilarious, but the victims of her unapologetic refusals tend to be less amused.

Why Evie? I ask Leo. Because I am protective.

Like a brother.

Or a cousin.

Or a concerned citizen with no familial relationship whatsoever.

Leos quiet for a moment. Then he says, I like how you can tell shes thinking so much more than shes saying, and how she never backs down with Dr. Lewis. And the way she bites her lip when shes working on a problem? My physics grade dropped four points since I noticed her doing it.

Theres nothing I can reasonably object to here. No hint that Evie is just some challenging level on a video game hed like to be the first to unlock.

If youre really not interested, you could talk to her for me? Leo says.

He is not the first to ask for help jailbreaking Evies code, but I never provide tech support for my classmates. I like watching them crash and burn.

Because lets face it:

I am totally in love with Evie Beckham.

These are the stories of my childhood:

Georg Cantor, the inventor of set theory, spent much of his life locked within the walls of an asylum.

Kurt Gdel wrote two of the most famous theorems in all of mathematics and then starved to death when his wife got sick, because he refused to eat food prepared by anyone else.

And game theorist John Nash disappeared into his own head.

I could go on, but the last time I saw Anita, she told me I needed to stop perseverating on ill-fated mathematicians. She said fixating on their troubles is unproductive. I wish someone would tell my mother.

Today, Anita invites me in before I have a chance to start my homework. The living room of the turn-of-the-century house has been converted into a therapists office, including the requisite lounge on which to recline and French doors that lead out to a walkway so patients never have to encounter each other coming and going. This system is supposed to protect my privacy, but it just makes me feel as though I ought to be ashamed to be here.

The one consolation is Anita herself. She has a big smile, wild curly hair traced with gray, and feels more like an aunt than a doctor. She is the first therapist I found myself.

Mom, who wrote her dissertation on the relationship between mental illness and mathematical genius, sees my visits as preventative maintenance, and she picked a psychiatrist for me when I came to Newton. But I left him last year when I started to feel more anxious about going to appointments than I did about staying away.

How is everything? Anita asks, taking one of the chairs in front of the French doors because I refuse to lie down on that ridiculous couch.

Bex and I finished our applications for the University of Chicago. We applied because it has a top-notch theoretical physics department for me and an amazing med school acceptance rate for Bex. Knowing well be together makes me less panicky about the whole thing.