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CHAPTER TWO
The Integer Crowd
“Who knows the difference between integral calculus and differential calculus?”
Andrew Zion raises his hand. “Doesn’t it have something to do with how you use the differentials?”
“That’s getting there,” Mr. Douglas, the teacher, says. “Anyone else have a theory?”
The Mouse raises her hand. “In differential calculus you take an infinitesimal small point and calculate the rate of change from one variable to another. In integral calculus you take a small differential element and you integrate it from one lower limit to another limit. So you sum up all those infinitesimal small points into one large amount.”
Jeez, I think. How the hell does The Mouse know that?
I’m never going to be able to get through this course. It will be the first time math has failed me. Ever since I was a kid, math was one of my easiest subjects. I’d do the homework and ace the tests, and hardly have to study. But I’ll have to study now, if I plan to survive.
I’m sitting there wondering how I can get out of this course, when there’s a knock on the door. Sebastian Kydd walks in, wearing an ancient navy blue polo shirt. His eyes are hazel with long lashes, and his hair is bleached dark blond from seawater and sun. His nose, slightly crooked, as if he was punched in a fight and never had it fixed, is the only thing that saves him from being too pretty.
“Ah, Mr. Kydd. I was wondering when you were planning to show up,” Mr. Douglas says.
Sebastian looks him straight in the eye, unfazed. “I had a few things I needed to take care of first.”
I sneak a glance at him from behind my hand. Here is someone who truly does come from another planet—a planet where all humans are perfectly formed and have amazing hair.
“Please. Sit down.”
Sebastian looks around the room, his glance pausing on me. He takes in my white go-go boots, slides his eyes up my light blue tartan skirt and sleeveless turtleneck, up to my face, which is now on fire. One corner of his mouth lifts i
n amusement, then pulls back in confusion before coming to rest on indifference. He takes a seat in the back of the room.
“Carrie,” Mr. Douglas says. “Can you give me the basic equation for movement?”
Thank God we learned that equation last year. I rattle it off like a robot: “X to the fifth degree times Y to the tenth degree minus a random integer usually known as N.”
“Right,” Mr. Douglas says. He scribbles another equation on the board, steps back, and looks directly at Sebastian.
I put my hand on my chest to keep it from thumping.
“Mr. Kydd?” he asks. “Can you tell me what this equation represents?”
I give up being coy. I turn around and stare.
Sebastian leans back in his chair and taps his pen on his calculus book. His smile is tense, as if he either doesn’t know the answer, or does know it and can’t believe anyone would be so stupid as to ask. “It represents infinity, sir. But not any old infinity. The kind of infinity you find in a black hole.”
He catches my eye and winks.
Wow. Black hole indeed.
“Sebastian Kydd is in my calculus class,” I hiss to Walt, cutting behind him in the cafeteria line.
“Christ, Carrie,” Walt says. “Not you, too. Every single girl in this school is talking about Sebastian Kydd. Including Maggie.”
The hot meal is pizza—the same pizza our school system has been serving for years, which tastes like barf and must be the result of some secret school-system recipe. I pick up a tray, then an apple and a piece of lemon meringue pie.
“But Maggie is dating you.”
“Try telling Maggie that.”
We carry our trays to our usual table. The Pod People sit at the opposite end of the cafeteria, near the vending machines. Being seniors, we should have claimed a table next to them. But Walt and I decided a long time ago that high school was disturbingly like India—a perfect example of a caste system—and we vowed not to participate by never changing our table. Unfortunately, like most protests against the overwhelming tide of human nature, ours goes largely unnoticed.
