Special topics in calamity physics - By Marisha Pessl Page 0,60

double whammy, the Crown Jewel, the Jewel après orthodontia, the Madonna abs après hatha yoga"—she took a swift breath, swallowed—"the Ted Danson après hair plugs, the J-Lo avant Gigli, the Ben avant J-Lo but après psychiatric treatment for gambling, the Matt après—"

"You think you're like a blind bard and all?" asked Dum, glancing up from Celebrastory Weekly. "I don't think so."

"Okay, so Elena Topolos."

"Elena Topolos?"

"Mediterranean freshman who needs to wax that lip. She told me the

blue person's some weird autistic savant. Not only that, but we lost a man to her."

"What?"

"Hard Body. He's neurotic for her. It's already myth. Everyone on the soccer team calls him Aphrodite and he doesn't even care. He and the blue person have a class together and someone saw him digging through the garbage can to find a paper she threw away because she'd touched it."

"Whatever."

"He's asking her to Christmas formal."

"WHAT?" shrieked Dee.

Mr. Fletcher looked up from The Crossword Fanatic's True Challenge

(Albo, 2002) and fired a disapproving glace at Dee and Dum. They were unfazed.

"Formal's like three months away," Dee said, wincing. "That's all a holy war in high school. People get pregnant, caught with pot, get a bad haircut so you find out it was their only decent feature and they have awful ears. It's way too soon to ask. Is he out of his mind?"

Dee nodded. "He's that haunted. His ex, Lonny, is pissed. She vows she's gonna jihad her ass by the end of the year."

"Ouch."

Dad was fond of pointing out the rule of thumb that "at times, even fools are right," but I was still surprised when, a day later, as I collected books from my locker, I noticed a kid from my AP Physics class passing me not once, but three times, faux-frowning at some giant hardback open in his hands, which I realized the second time he passed was our class textbook, Fundamentals of Physics (Rarreh & Cherish, 2004). I assumed he was waiting for Allison Vaughn, the sedate yet mildly popular senior with a locker near mine who wandered around with a wan smile and polite hair, but when I slammed my locker door, he was behind me.

"Hi," he said. I’m Zach."

"Blue." I spasm-swallowed.

He was a tall, tan, supremely American-looking kid: square chin, big straight teeth, eyes an absurd Jacuzzi blue. I knew, vaguely, based on chatter during labs, he was shy, a little bit funny (my partner, Krista, was forever neglecting our experiment to giggle at something he said), also captain of the soccer team. His lab partner was his supposed ex-girlfriend, Lonny, cocaptain of Gallway Spirit, a girl with soggy platinum hair, a fake tan and a marked tendency to break the equipment. No cloud chamber, potentiometer, friction rod or alligator clip was safe with her. On Mondays, when the class wrote up our results on the dry-erase board, our teacher, Ms. Gershon, consistently threw out Lonny and Zach's findings, as they always flew daringly in the face of Modern Science, discrediting Planck's constant, undermining Boyle's law, amending the theory of relativity from E=mc2 to E=mc5. According to Dee and Dum, Lonny and Zach had gone out since sixth grade, and for the past few years had partaken in something called "lion sex" every Saturday night in the "hineymooner's suite," Room 222 at the Dynasty Motel on Pike Avenue.

He was handsome, sure, but as Dad once said, there were people who'd completely missed their decade, were born at the wrong time—not in the intellectually gifted sense, but due to a certain look on their face more suitable to the Victorian Age than, say, the Me Decade. Well, this kid was some twenty years too late. He was the one with thick brown hair that flyingsaucered over an eye, the one who inspired girls to make their own prom dress, the one from the country club. And maybe he had a secret diamond earring, maybe a sequin glove, maybe he even had a good song at the end with three helpings of keyboard synthesizer, but no one would know, because if you weren't born in your decade you never made it to the ending, you floated around in your middle, unresolved, in oblivion, confused and unrealized. (Pour some sugar on him and blame it on the rain.)

"I was kinda hoping you could help me out with something," he said, contemplating his shoes. "I have a serious problem."

I felt irrationally frightened. "What?"

"There's a girl. . ." He sighed, hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. "I like her.