Crow Flight Page 8

  He was focused now, body tensed. Obviously, this was important to him, but he was sounding like an arrogant jerk.

  “That’s not the same as someone struggling to pay their bills or buy shoes for their kids,” she said. This was another side of Felix she hadn’t seen—the privileged, out-of-touch-with-reality side—and she didn’t like it.

  “No, totally not the same. You’re right. It’s all . . . relative.” He rubbed his chin, thinking. “Sometimes it feels like everyone thinks being rich is the same as being happy. And it’s not. Here, I want to read you something.”

  He leapt to his feet and took three long strides to one of the built-in cabinets on the back wall. He ran his finger along the book spines, pulling a large, black book off the shelf.

  “The Bible?” Gin asked.

  “Precisely. Don’t worry, I’m not about to preach. It’s just one of the best documented, really old books out there. And there’s this story in here.” He flipped through, fast, until he was about halfway in.

  Then he leaned back on the couch and held the book up, his long arms resting against his legs. He glanced up at Gin, cocked one eyebrow, and started to read.

  “‘The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem.’” He looked back at Gin and shrugged. “Just the intro, you know? Anyway. ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’ What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? . . .’”

  At first, she wanted to roll her eyes. But then she started watching him. How his long eyelashes swooped out over his cheeks. How his wide hands almost engulfed the book.

  She had heard the story before, she thought. This man, a king, had everything in the world that anyone could possibly want. Gold and jewels, women, rich food, satisfying work, palaces. He made it his mission to try all of it and see what fulfilled him. But nothing was good enough.

  After reading for ten minutes, Felix stopped and looked at her, apologetic. “I’m boring you, right?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, stretched her arms up, and made herself focus. “No. Definitely not boring.” She opened her eyes and glanced at Felix.

  He grinned, and she felt her face flush, but she held his gaze for a few seconds longer. Then he closed the book and tossed it on the table.

  “You get it, right? This guy goes after everything that can possibly make him happy. And none of it is enough.”

  A clock chimed, low and quiet, somewhere in the hall.

  “Nothing, at least when it comes to stuff, is ever enough. For anyone.” Felix leaned forward, his eyes bright with intensity. “I mean, the Bible tells us that. And everything else we do reinforces it. So you can keep chasing it—getting more and more stuff, like cars and accomplishments and bits of paper.” He reached in his back pocket, pulled out four $50 bills, and waved them in the air. “Or you can be different. Like, in the present. Figure out what really matters. That’s part of why I build models. To remember that there’s no point trying to figure out the future. Because you’ll never get it right. What matters is this moment. Right now. The only place you can be.”

  He sunk back into the couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table. “So now, Gin, I ask you again. What do you want?

  Sunlight hit his eyes, playing the colors off each other—cedar and grass and plains and lakes.

  And before she could change her mind, take back her choice and ask for something more clever, more substantial, she said it. “An orange soda.”

  He clapped his hands together and jumped up to his feet. “Yes! That’s good. And that, we can do. Let’s go.”

  Felix’s house backed up to the woods, with a large, wraparound porch that, like the living room, was spacious enough to be a small house itself. There were well-placed fire pits, a tasteful stone bar, and modern-looking lounge chairs and swings.

  Gin had given up on even thinking about the model and watched the woods instead. Birds flitted among the branches and rustled down in the piles of brown leaves. The sky was clear, a late-afternoon wintry blue. The air was crisp on her cheeks and smelled like wood fires and snow. She had a sudden and clear memory from when she was in kindergarten, of squatting down at the edge of a creek and poking a stick into the mud, hands icy cold because she had left her mittens at home.

  A group of geese flew past, their easy arrow shape high overhead, and she took a sip of her soda—a fancy tangerine one, with natural sugar and a pretty glass bottle.

  “Lifestyle of the rich and famous.” Felix held his arms out, then let his hands dangle over the rail. His body was a couple feet from hers, but it felt close in the vast woods. “Where you can buy beautiful vistas and enjoy them all alone.”

  “Or with your very own modeling friend,” she said.

  He laughed. “We should add that to the neighborhood’s brochure. Enjoy these views with your high school honors class modeling buddy.”

  The sun lowered, buttering the woods below and pulling a hazy pink glow up above the treetops. Swallows swooped. Somewhere further away, crows cawed.

  “Hear them?” Felix asked.

  Suddenly Gin understood. She wasn’t hearing a group of random crows in a tree somewhere, but Felix’s crows. The ones he had trained.

  “I can introduce you, if you’d like?” His eyes were expectant, his face hopeful.

  She had millions of questions about the crows—what exactly could they do? Why was Felix’s dad training them? Were they actually just a hobby?

  “Okay.” The word bubbled up through her.

  And he took her hand and pulled her away, playful. As they started to walk, he didn’t let go.

  Her insides welled up, and her mouth was suddenly dry. She chewed on her bottom lip, breathing deep to steady herself. It felt electric, Felix’s hand holding hers. His hand was nice. Solid and strong. Calloused along the inside of his thumb. Warm. This hand that wrote models and trained crows and tamed the wind with a windsurfing sail.

  They were walking back toward the side of the porch, down the steps, and into the yard. And as much as she wanted to see the crows, she didn’t want their walk to end.

  Something shifted. A cloud slid over the sun, darkening the woods, and there was the soft hum of an engine.

  Felix let got of her hand and walked back around the porch to the side of the house. Her hand felt too cold, and she tucked it into the pocket of her sweater.

  He came back, his face pale, worried.

  “Sorry,” he said. “My dad’s here. And he’s kind of funny about guests. I’ll have to show you the crows another time.”

  “It’s okay. I should get going anyway.” She said the words quickly as if convincing herself.

  “But we still have to finish our model.” Felix’s voice was soft as though his dad could hear them. “We’ll make sure that happens. Soon. And the crows, they want to see you, too.”

  There was a flicker of an apology in his gaze.

  He led her to the side gate and she slipped out, walking along the brick walkway to her car. Ahead of her, the trees at the horizon were black silhouettes on the pale sky. She opened her car door and glanced back at the brightly lit house, where she could see Felix entering the living room.

  She closed the door with a thud, and put her hand—the hand he had just held—to her mouth. She closed her eyes and breathed in deep. Then she turned the ignition. Her headlights carved out a clear path in the quiet night, and she followed it home.

  // Sixteen

  Rain beat against Gin’s bedroom window in waves. Her homework was finished, except for one more exercise for Ancient Worldviews. Meditation.

  Everyone in the class had to meditate—or sit still and try not to think, whatever they wanted to call it—every day until winter break. The class had groaned when they heard the assignment, but Mr. Ryan promised it’d be easy. After the week, they’d write a few paragraphs about the experience.

  “Regular meditati
on,” he had said, “changes you.”

  It was only fifteen minutes a day. Akin to exercise for the brain. A few months ago, Gin could’ve done the assignment without a second thought.

  But now, it was nearly impossible. Granted, she had a lot to think about—college applications, Ms. Sandlin’s computer simulations class, Love Fractal, school. But the hardest thing to stop thinking about was Felix.

  She’d start the meditation off well enough. Maybe a line of code or a sentence for her college essays would drift through her mind, all easily set aside.

  And then, Felix would appear. It probably didn’t help that she was wearing his fleece. But each time he popped into her mind, it was so vivid. His pretty lips. The back of his neck. His beaded necklace. The crows.

  And once he was there, in her brain, stretching through her chest and into her fingertips and toes, it was impossible to get him out. It was like another one of Mr. Ryan’s practices. One cold afternoon, they had sat outside on the empty metal bleachers, and he told them to think about anything they wanted, anything at all, except for a pink polar bear. And of course, in trying not to think about the pink polar bear, everyone found their thoughts littered with just that.

  Felix was the same. Gin would steady her mind, clear it, and he’d be there again. She’d stand up, take a sip of water, try again. Maybe last another minute. And he’d be back, infusing her thoughts with his nonchalant smile, his happy eyes.

  A bucket of rain hit the window. There was a low roll of thunder, and the lights flickered. She gave up on the meditation, pulled a blanket over her lap, and called Hannah.

  “Are you calling me because your time model told you to?” Hannah had picked up on the first ring. “Because I have to finish this paper. Like, right now.”

  “Hi, Hannah.”

  “I’m not joking. This is serious. I actually have to do some work this year. So, is this for real?”

  Gin sighed. “This is for real. I haven’t checked TimeKeeper all day, if that makes you feel better.”

  “Oh. Good. So what’s up?”

  Einstein jumped up on the bed and circled a few times, settling back down by Gin’s feet. “Nothing. I’m just . . . tired of it all. Classes and work and the models.”

  What she wanted to do was to talk about Felix. Parse out what had happened, what he did or didn’t mean by the hand holding, whether having trained crows meant his family was bona fide crazy. But now, with Hannah there on the phone, it felt silly. He had held her hand, that was all. It wasn’t like he had asked her out, or kissed her, or . . .

  “Yeah, I totally get it. Senior slump, right? Well, I know something that will cheer you up. Because it means your love model is working. Really working. You won’t believe what Aidan did the other day.”

  And just like that, Hannah launched into a story about Aidan. And, in a roundabout way, it made Gin feel a bit better.

  Gin and Felix met again at his house the following Saturday morning. Felix promised they’d have the entire day to work. And this time no one else would be there. Not his dad, who was working. Or his mom, who was at a tropical beach somewhere. “That’s what she always does in the winter,” he said with an I-don’t-care smile.

  When Gin arrived, a maid opened the door, but then Felix was there, leading her upstairs. The wide wooden stairs were like the rest of the house: open and modern, perfect and cold.

  At the top of the stairs was Felix’s room, which was more of a suite. There was a massive king-sized bed, a leather couch, a huge television, and a hanging chair that was situated perfectly near an immense window wall, overlooking the woods. The woods looked different from high up in the house; the faraway trees were almost like toys. She could see the long driveway with her gray Honda Accord, technically her mom’s, as well as a separate building that she hadn’t noticed from the driveway. She looked harder at the building, which appeared to be a barn, and that’s when she saw the immense, cage-like structure next to it.

  “Is that—”

  “Where the crows live.” Felix stood by her. Just then, a crow—a small black smudge from where they were—flew up and around. “I’ll show you after we get a little work done, right? Here, you take the fun chair.” He pushed the hanging chair towards her.

  She folded herself inside it, her legs crisscrossed in front of her and laptop ready. The chair wrapped around her, like a cocoon, and limited her view to one window and the floor in front of her, where Felix was already sprawled out with a notebook, pencil, and laptop. It made everything feel more reasonable. Like Felix was an ordinary guy with a little room and a twin bed in the corner.

  “Okay, Gin the model-maker. Where do we start with this one?”

  Gin tapped her fingers on her keyboard, light, to help her think.

  “I started last night. So maybe you go first, for practice?”

  He looked up and grinned. “As long as you know that this class is way more important to you than it’ll ever be to me, right?”

  “That’s a given.”

  “Okay.” He lay on his back, hands on his chest. “Well, let’s talk about weather, first. Think about Chicago and Buffalo, the classic example. Chicago’s to the west of Lake Michigan, Buffalo’s to the east of Lake Erie. They’re both at the same latitude, with similar temperatures. And yet, Chicago gets half the amount of snow that Buffalo does. Big difference, right? So weather is very location specific. We have to remember that.”

  It was a good example. Gin had read about it in one of the weather books.

  “Maybe we start with the data, all easy to get from big government sites. We can use linear regressions to map out how the variables interact. And then use stepwise regression to figure out which of the variables—maybe five or ten—best predict the weather.”

  He sat up and looked at her. “You’re not saying anything. Does it all sound crazy?”

  Her face flushed slightly, and she shook her head. Truth was, Felix’s line of logic was similar to her own, only he seemed to think through it in seconds, while it had taken her an hour to get to the same place.

  “No, actually,” she said. “That’s what I was thinking, too. And I downloaded some data last night.”

  “All right.” Felix rolled over to his stomach and opened his laptop. “Let’s get started.”

  They worked quietly, clicking through the data and running equations. It was surprisingly comfortable.

  Gin had gone to the library the day before to check out a climate book with collections of scientific papers, and after an hour on her laptop, she started to thumb through it.

  “Ahh, a weather book,” Felix said. “Can I see?”

  Before she knew what was happening, he was sliding into the cocoon chair with her, his side pressed next to hers. She swore she felt sparks everywhere their bodies met, from her shoulders down to her arms, through her hips and thighs. Her left side touched his right. So close, she could barely breathe.

  The chair expanded to fit him, but then shot their bodies back together, pressing them even closer. He kept his legs out, feet steady on the floor, and Gin had no choice but to set her left knee over his thigh.

  It was all she could do to continue to flip through the book as though it were perfectly commonplace for her to be wedged into a hanging chair next to a boy. Not that she could comprehend anything in the book now. Felix Gartner was sitting right next to her. So close, she could feel his arm flex and relax each time he wrote a word, his stomach tense when he leaned forward.

  “Wait, that’s a good one.” He turned the page back over. “El Niño, La Niña. That interplay of ocean and air temperatures near the equator.” He nudged her with his elbow, playful. “We have to know whether we’re talking El Niño or La Niña, right?”

  She laughed. “Yes. El Niño, La Niña. Maybe we can throw in an abuela or two?”

  “Precisely,” he said.

  They worked all morning, breaking at noon when yet another maid brought in a platter of san
dwiches, chips, fruit, and still-warm chocolate chip cookies. Between mouthfuls, they crafted the model framework and started in on the details.

  After lunch, Gin sat back in the chair, guessing Felix would spread out somewhere else. But he sat next to her again. Her stomach flip-flopped with the closeness, and it took twenty minutes before she could focus again. But she did focus, and by late afternoon, they had made incredible progress. The model would rely on six core variables: temperature, humidity, the previous day’s weather to the west, time of year, wind speed, and wind direction. They’d try several “extreme” variables, things like intensity of that year’s wildfire season or recent traffic levels, and see which of those had an impact. And, Felix would code in his soul bits.

  All things considered, they were in better shape than she had expected.

  Felix stretched. His notebook slipped down to the floor, and the fabric chair shook with the movement. “I need a break. You?”

  It was four. They had worked for almost six hours. Intense, focused, brain-work. TimeKeeper would definitely say it was good to take a break. Even five minutes would do wonders.

  “Yes. Let’s break.” Gin unfolded herself from the chair. She was actually excited to use Felix’s bathroom again: it looked like something out of a penthouse in a fancy hotel, with its marble floors, huge soaking tub, stone shower, and big mirrors.

  When she washed her hands, she could catch a bit of his scent, the mellow soapy part. If he smelled like a color, it’d be green. When she came out, he handed her a fancy soda.

  “Orange work again?”

  She took a sip. “Definitely.”

  She started to head back for the chair when he stood behind her and tugged the bottom hem of her shirt, playful. “Uh-uh, we need a real break.” He directed her to the door and took off down the stairs. “Come on, I’ll show you the crows.”