Special topics in calamity physics - By Marisha Pessl Page 0,61

Yeah. I really do." He was doing an embarrassed thing with his head, chin down, eyes sticking to me. "I've never talked to her. Never said a word. And normally this wouldn't throw me —normally, I'd go right up to her, ask her for pizza . . . movie . . . yeah. But this one. She throws me."

He ran his right hand through his hair and it was absurdly knot free like a shampoo commercial. His left hand was still cradling our Physics textbook, bookmarking, for some bizarre reason p. 123, which featured a sizeable diagram of a magenta Plasma Ball. I was able to make out, upsidedown, around the crook of his arm: "Plasma is the fourth state ofmatter."

"So I say to myself, fine," he said with a shrug. "It's not meant to be. 'Cause if you don't feel comfortable talking to someone, how're you gonna handle . . . well, you have to trust the person, right, or what's the point. But then" —frowning, he gazed all the way down the hall toward the EXIT—"it's like every time I see her I feel... I feel. . ."

I didn't think he was going to continue, but then he broke into a smile. "Fucking.Great."

The smile was pinned to his face, delicate as a prom corsage.

It was my turn to speak. Words were in my throat—advice, council, some pithy line from a screwball comedy—but they were grinding together, disappearing fast like celery in a sink disposal.

"I..." I began.

I could feel his minty breath on my forehead, and he was staring at me with his eyes the color of a kiddy pool (blue, green, suspicious hints of yellow). He was searching my face as if he took me to be a cruddy masterpiece in somebody's attic and if he scrutinized my deft use of color and shading as well as the direction of my brushstrokes, he'd figure out who my artist was.

"Hurl?"

I turned. Nigel was inching his way toward us, visibly amused.

"I really can't help you, so if you'd be so kind as to excuse me," I blurted quickly, then darted past his shoulder and the Physics textbook. I didn't turn around, not even when I reached Nigel and the German Language Bulletin Board and then the EXIT. I assumed he stood in the hall staring after me with his mouth open like a newscaster reading Breaking News when the teleprompter goes dead.

"What'd the Chippendale want?" Nigel asked as we headed downstairs.

I shrugged. "Who knows. I-I couldn't really follow his logic."

"Oh, you're terrible." Nigel laughed, a quick, skidding sound, then linked his arm through mine. We were Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion.

Obviously, a few short months ago, I would have been astounded, maybe even knock-kneed that the El Dorado rode over to me and made a long speech about A Girl. ("All of history comes down to a girl," Dad said with a hint of regret as we watched The Dark Prince, the award-winning documentary on Hitler's youth.) In the past, I had all sorts of Hidden Desire moments when I gazed at El Dorados riding through the hushed corridors, the empty football fields of a lonesome school—like old Howie Easton at Clearwood Day with the cleft chin and gap in his teeth making him such a sophisticated whistler he could've whistled Wagner's entire Der Ring des Nibelungen (1848-74) if he'd wanted to (he didn't want to)—and I'd wished, just once, I might ride into the wilderness with them, that I, not Kaytee Jones with the Hawaiian eyes nor Priscilla Pastor Owensby with legs as long as highways, could be their favorite Appaloosa.

But now things were different. Now I had copper hair and sticky, myrtle lips, and as Jade said that Sunday dinner at Hannah's: "The Zach Soderbergs of the world are cute, sure, but they're boring as Saltines. Okay—you hope if you scratch one you'll find Luke Wilson. Even Johnny Depp with his clothing missteps at major award ceremonies you'd be happy with. But trust me, all you get is bland cracker."

"Who's this?" asked Hannah.

"Some kid in my physics class," I said.

"He's a pretty popular senior," said Lu.

"You should see his rug," Nigel said. "I think he has hair plugs."

"Well, he's barking up the wrong tree," Jade said. "Retch is already in a puddle over someone."

She gazed triumphantly at Milton, but to my relief, he was cutting into his Danish roasted chicken with sunflower seasoning and hash of sweet potato and didn't see her.

"So Blue's breaking hearts," Hannah said and