Special topics in calamity physics - By Marisha Pessl Page 0,43

one instance Hannah had asked me a question ("You just moved here from Ohio?"), I was so taken aback my voice stumbled on the curb of my teeth. And then, minutes later, when I was pretending to be fascinated by the paperback cookbook Hannah had wedged next to her CD player, Cooking Without Processed Foods (Chiobi, 1984), I overhead Milton and Jade in the kitchen. He was asking her—in all seriousness it seemed —if I spoke English.

She laughed. "She must be one of those Russian mail-order brides," she said. "With those looks though, Hannah got seriously ripped off. I wonder what the return policy is. Hopefully we can send her back COD."

Minutes later, Jade was driving me home like a bat out of hell (Hannah must have only paid minimum wage) and I stared out the window, thinking it had been the most horrible night of my life. Obviously I'd never speak to these halfwits, these simpletons ("banal, spiritless teenagers," Dad would add) everagain. And I wouldn't give that sadistic Hannah Schneider the time of day either; it was she, after all, who'd lured me to that snake pit, let me flail around with nothing but a chic smile on her face as she chitchatted about homework or what fifth-tier college those slack-jawed mopes hoped to squeeeeze their way into, and then after dinner, that unforgivable way she calmly lit a cigarette, her manicured hand tipped into the air like a delicate teakettle, as if all was fantastic with the world.

But then I don't know what happened. The following Tuesday, I passed Hannah briefly in Hanover Hall—"See you this weekend?" she called out brightly through the crowd of students; naturally my reaction was that of a deer in headlights—and then, on Sunday, Jade appeared in the driveway again, this time at 2:15 P.M. and the entire window unrolled.

"Coming?" she shouted.

I was powerless as a maiden who'd been fed upon by vampires. Zombielike, I told Dad I'd forgotten about my Study Group and before he could protest, I'd kissed him on the cheek, assured him it was a St. Gallwaysponsored event and fled the house.

Embarrassedly—and then, after a month, kind of resignedly—I settled into my appointed role as fly on the wall, as barely tolerated mute, because the truth was, when it came down to it (and I could never admit this to Dad), being snubbed at Hannah's was infinitely more electrifying than being mulled over back at the Van Meer's.

Wrapped up like an expensive gift in her emerald batik caftan, her purple and gold sari or some wheat-colored housedress straight out of Peyton Place (for this comparison you had to pretend you didn't see the cigarette burn at the hip), on Sunday afternoons, Hannah entertained, in the old-fashioned, European sense of the word. Even now, I don't understand how she managed to prepare those extravagant dinners in her tiny mustard-yellow kitchen — Turkish lamb chops ("with mint sauce"), Thai steak ("with ginger-infused potatoes"), beef noodle soup ("Authentic Pho Bo"), on one less successful occasion, a goose ("with cranberry rub and sage carrot fries").

She cooked. The very air began to sauté in a reduction of candle, wine, wood, her perfume, and damp animal. We picked through the remains of our homework. The kitchen door swung open, and she stepped forth, a Birth of Venus in a red apron smeared with mint sauce, walking with the fast, swingy grace of Tracy Lord in The PhiladelphiaStory, all soft bare feet (if those were toes, what you had was something else altogether, tuds), twinkles at her earlobes, the pronunciation of certain words with little shivers on the endings. (The same word, when you said it, went limp.)

"How's everything? Getting everything done, I hope?" she said in her alwaysalittlehoarse voice.

She carried the silver tray to the hunchback coffee table, kicking a paperback on the floor missing half its cover (The Lib Wo by Ari So): more Gruyère and British farmhouse cheddar fanned around the plate like Busby Berkeley girls, another pot of oolong tea. Her appearance caused the dogs and cats to come out of their salooned shadows and band around her, and when she returned in a swoosh to the kitchen (they weren't allowed, when she was cooking), they roamed the living room like dazed cowboys, unsure what to do with themselves with no showdown.

Her house ("Noah's Arc," Charles called it) I found fascinating, schizophrenic, in fact. Its original personality was old-fashioned and charming, albeit slightly outmoded and wooden (the two-floor log cabin structure