“Brainsandbeauty,” Cooper kept saying. “Amirite?”
Was he Jedi-mind-tricking us all?
Who cared? It wasworking.
“This girl,” Cooper told our next-door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Dunn, pointing at me to drive the point home, “is the Einstein of the street.” Then he turned to me and said, “Tell them your IQ.”
What a question. “I have no idea,” I said.
Cooper nodded at the Dunns, likeSee?Then he said, “How smart do you have to be for your own mom to hide your IQ like a state secret?”
When the Vargases said they’d heard I was left at the altar, Cooper set the record straight by telling the whole story—adding a totally fictional grand finale of Pearce bursting into tears and “crying like a donkey.”
“Wow,” the Vargases said.
“She’s a heartbreaker,” Cooper said. Then he added, like it was good advice for everyone: “Watch yourselves.”
Even when people like the elderly Bishops were, in fact, just making pleasant chitchat and asking what I was up to—Cooper couldn’t help but be aggressive.
“Tell them about your thesis paper for your math major,” he said, elbowing me.
“They don’t want to hear about that,” I said.
Didn’t Cooper realize that nobody wanted to talk about math? Most people on earth had either (worst-case scenario) active PTSD from terrible math teachers growing up or (best-case) a pleasant, glazed-over disinterest. Math was the last subject on earth anybody should use for small talk.
“Iwant to hear about it,” Cooper said.
I glanced at the Bishops. Then I said, “Well, it was based on the mathematics of knot theory.”
I checked for any sign of recognition.
Seeing none, I explained. “Knot theory, likeknots.” Then I spelled it: “K-n-o-t-s. Which is a mathematical exploration of how knots are shaped.”
Had I lost them yet?
“So…” I went on. “I used knot theory to explore the loops you make with yarn in knitting”—here, I mimed knitting something—“you know, like sweaters and scarves…”
Their eyes still seemed focused.
“To extrapolate mathematical models,” I went on, for my big finish,“that could help physicists understand how strands of DNA fold themselves.”
And…now I’d lost them.
Their smiles had stiffened. Their eyes had glazed. As if to prove me right, they both caught sight of some other neighbors—and hurried to go greet them.
But guess who I hadn’t lost?
Cooper.
He was still right there with me, wearing an expression you might callastonished admiration. “Holy shit,” Cooper said. “Thatwas your math thesis?”
Now I felt shy. “It was pretty esoteric.”
“It’sincredible,” Cooper said, staring at me with new eyes. “It’s the most bad-to-the-bone thing ever.”
I’d never heard a regular person saybad-to-the-boneto describe math. But he wasn’t wrong.
A smile took over my face, and I looked at Cooper with some new eyes myself.
