The Shippers(32)

But Cooper didn’t let that stop him.

“You wouldn’t think a person who looks this good could be smart, too, would you?” he demanded of everyone.

Did I look good? I was too self-conscious to have a read on that.

“Brains and beauty,” Cooper kept saying. “Amirite?”

Was he Jedi-mind-tricking us all?

Who cared? It was working.

“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, like See? 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.

“I want 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, like knots.” 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 call astonished admiration. “Holy shit,” Cooper said. “That was your math thesis?”

Now I felt shy. “It was pretty esoteric.”

“It’s incredible,” 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 say bad-to-the-bone to describe math. But he wasn’t wrong.

A smile took over my face, and I looked at Cooper with some new eyes myself.

“What?” Cooper asked as I kept smiling.

“Nothing.”

“What?” he prodded.

“I’ve just never seen a non–math person get excited about knot theory.”

“And knitting,” Cooper pointed out. “And DNA. Is that why you became an art teacher? So you could teach your kids to knit strands of DNA?”

“Not exactly, but kind of,” I said. I mostly became an art teacher because I felt like the world vastly underappreciated the awe-inspiring beauty of mathematics. And I wanted to get that fixed. One middle schooler at a time.

Then Cooper added, “Guess you didn’t knit me that beanie in high school for nothing.”

I shrugged. “Must’ve been destiny.”

“I still wear it, by the way.”

“You do?” I thought he might have thrown it away.

He nodded to confirm. “Prized possession.”

The idea that he’d kept it felt important somehow.

That’s when Cooper said, “Anyway. I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

He put both his hands out for a furtive—and considerate—low five and leaned closer. “That you were smarter than all the rest of us put together.”



* * *



COOPER AND I continued chatting for a while because Finn took forever to show up, and Ashley wasn’t starting the Putt-Putt tournament without him.

This was part of the plan.

With great precision, Ashley had sorted all the young people into mini-golf teams that had the potential for love connections—and the old people were not included. They self-sorted off toward the snack table while the rest of us gathered in our teams.

I went along while wondering about Finn. Did he have a last-minute work thing? Did his plane from Chicago get delayed? Did he get back with his ex-wife?

He wouldn’t mess up my plans for radical self-transformation, would he?