Because you said you loved spectator sports. You think I’m the weird one. (That was a joke, by the way, even though I’m not sure if I’m allowed to joke with you yet. Probably not, since we haven’t spoken out loud to each other since the McCormick’s Incident. This is my new life goal, by the way. To one day have permission to make you laugh again.)
—
On Thursday, in my mailbox, a bonsai tree.
You said your dad loved this kind of tree. I thought/hoped maybe you did too?
—
On Friday, I open my locker to find a new sketch taped to the inside. The picture is of two numbers, 137 and 139, but they are drawn to look human. 139 has a backpack like David’s and his new short hair. 137 carries a shoulder bag like mine, and it wears a big man’s shirt just like my dad’s. The numbers walk down Clancy Street holding hands.
I just wanted you to know these are my favorite numbers and my favorite twin primes: 137 and 139. And since they are my favorite, I wanted to give them to you.
137 and 139.
They’re yours now.
Please take good care of them.
—
On Saturday, when I check my inbox, I have an email from David with the subject “This Gives Me Hope…” It links to an article about a Russian scientist who has, under lab conditions, created two identical snowflakes. I smile goofily at the screen.
—
On Sunday, David leaves an old-fashioned emergency crank radio on my front porch.
So we can always hear each other’s waves. Clearly I need one of these more than you, but buying myself a gift did not seem in the spirit of this multistep apology.
—
On Monday, after last period, Annie stops me from getting into my car. My hands are trembling a little, like they always do before I get into the driver’s seat, but this time I don’t try to hide them.
“David asked me to give this to you,” she says, and hands over a piece of paper that looks ripped from his notebook. I look at her, a question in my eyes: What should I do? She shrugs.
“It never mattered before what I thought of David. It shouldn’t now,” she says, and gives me a go get ’em shoulder punch.
I unfold the paper.
I’ve read all of it before, when his words first found their way onto the Internet from his stolen notebook, but now there is a big X through the entire entry, and written over it, in all caps:
FAVORITE GIRL IN THE WORLD. STILL MY FRIEND?
Please meet me on the bleachers after school. Please. And I’m sorry. Sorrier than any person has ever been sorry in the history of sorry people. I’ll put in one last please for good luck, even though I don’t believe in luck. I believe in science. Sorry. Again.
I wait in the bleachers, in the exact same spot we sat on that first day when Kit was just Kit Lowell to me, an entry in a notebook and someone I cautiously put on the Trust List. A few Notable Encounters. Nothing more. Now it occurs to me that outside of Miney, she’s the first friend I’ve ever made. If she doesn’t come, I will be heartbroken. Not literally, of course. My heart will continue to beat. I think. But there will be a literal and figurative ache.
I close my eyes and remember our first kiss. How she reached up and cupped the back of my neck. That feels like much longer than fourteen days ago. Time has changed shape since I met Kit. Can love be so powerful a force that it can skew the space-time continuum? Does it have the particle and wave heft of something like consciousness? I make a mental note to later think through the implications of applying quantum theory to love, or at least its chemical and hormonal approximations. That could make for a satisfying thesis for my future PhD.
She’s not coming. It’s obvious to me that this past week will turn out to have been just a fruitless series of desperate acts. I watch my classmates spilling out of school, in groups of two or three, their formations intimidatingly organic. Atoms into molecules.
Like usual, I am alone.
My headphones sound a siren call from my bag. I force myself to leave them in there. I will wade through all the noise around me, let it saturate my brain. The distant bell. Car engines revving. The anxiety humming through my body.
It was a long shot and I lost. Kit doesn’t need more friends. Certainly not ones like me.
I direct my attention to the remote possibility that Trey is right. That one day I won’t need Kit. That I will find a way to fill up my life with other people. That there are other girls in the world, and that maybe one of them will also feel like my Goldilocks of a person. Of course, all statistics point to Kit being an outlier. To this never happening again.
I close my eyes and I can’t resist any longer.
I slip on my headphones and start the gentle recitation of pi.
—
“David?” One hundred and thirty-four digits in, I look up, and there Kit is, standing in front of me, looking exactly the same as she always does. There is no readjustment to a new iteration. That, at least, is a relief. She’s not smiling.
The sky is low and gray and bloated. If this were a novel, it would be described as foreboding.
“Hi,” I say, and take off my headphones. I realize I am woefully underprepared for this moment. I should have written a speech. Or drawn a picture. At least figured out what I wanted to say. It occurs to me now that I never thought Kit might actually show up. “Do you want to sit?”
She nods and plops down next to me on the bench. She shields her eyes from the nonexistent sun with a cupped hand. We sit quietly like that for a few minutes.
“So?” she asks. “You asked me to come here.”
“Do you ever think about how your name doesn’t fit you? I mean, you’re usually Kit in my head, but really I think your name should have a Z in it, because you’re confusing and zigzagged and pop up in surprising places—like my lunch table and these bleachers. I really didn’t think you’d come—and maybe also the number eight, because…never mind, and the letter S too. It’s my favorite. S. So yeah, Z8S-139. Or 139-Z8S. That’s how I think of you sometimes. In my head,” I say, glad that words are at least coming out of my mouth. I’m too nervous to evaluate whether they are the right ones.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Kit says.
I keep going.
“And my name doesn’t fit either. I mean, really: David? Did you know there are approximately 3,786,417 Davids in the United States? My parents couldn’t have gotten me more wrong. I should be a…a…I don’t know what. Something with a Y in it.”