Here's part two of this three-part story.
The first line of this chapter mirrors the first line of the last.
I got too good at fighting chemicals
And dodging arrows I was asking for
Wading through the fog and then it disappeared
And why should I deny what's all at once so crystal clear?
And, oh my love, I lied to you
But I never needed to
Oh my love, I lied to you
But you always knew the truth
-Liar, Paramore
He could pinpoint the exact moment he knew she was going to be his greatest weakness.
While his parents were busy instructing the movers where to position the furniture from their old home, Jimmy was trying to get ahold of Goddard, who was restless after a long car ride, and as a result, was going absolutely berserk.
"Come back here, boy!" Jimmy ran haphazardly across the street and into their new neighbors' yard to chase his pet. A girl with blonde braids and fierce green eyes was sitting on the front porch, glaring at him and his robot companion.
After a moment, she got up and started walking, and Jimmy wondered if she was going to help him try and get his dog to calm down. Instead, she made for the side of the house, and he was hit with a blast of cold water, that truthfully was kind of refreshing under the blazing heat of the unforgiving Texas sun.
But still, the shock of it sent a shiver down his spine and then all he could think was: robots and water did not mix well.He had to save his pal before he shorted a circuit or something. He quickly raced towards Goddard, who was now frozen on a dewy patch of grass.
He was angry. Why was this girl being so mean? She didn't even know him. He'd suffered his fair share of bullies back in his last town, but he had wished for a fresh start in Retroville.
Tears sprang unbidden to his eyes and he unsuccessfully tried to wipe them away as he scooped up the whimpering dog in his arms. For a split second before making his way back to his parents, he shared a glance with her. There was the tiniest glimmer of regret there, before she turned her attention to the faucet mechanism again.
By the time she'd turned the sprinkler off, he was safely on his side of the street, determined never to let a girl, let alone this girl ever see him cry again. But somehow, even at six, he had a premonition this would not be the last occasion on which he cried over her.
Later, he learned her name. Cynthia Aurora Vortex. Cindy for short.
She was going to make his life hell, wasn't she?
He was a scrawny, strange kid. He still got picked on at Lindbergh Elementary, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been in Houston. At least he had friends here, real ones. Even though Sheen and Carl were spectacularly dumb, they were loyal and fun, and that was all he could ask for at the end of the day. Even genius children were still children.
Soon, he adjusted to his new life. He aced his classes, he went on joyrides in his freshly configured hover-car, and argued with Cindy. A lot.
He wasn't sure what it was about her that intrigued him. But she was sharp. Definitely smarter than any other kid at school. She was an only child, like he was, and excelled in every subject. He'd been told not to get on her bad side because she knew karate, but somehow, he felt there was an understanding of sorts between them since the day they'd first met. He had no way to prove this claim, of course. Which frustrated him to no end. Why shouldn't there be a way to quantify what was unsaid or simply felt? Everything could be boiled down to simple chemical and physical reactions, after all.
Maybe he'd figure it out one day.
When he and Cindy were eleven, she joined his friend group, although he wasn't quite comfortable calling her...a friend. She clearly wasn't sure about the designation either. Nevertheless, she tagged along on many of his adventures, and often, he couldn't make up his mind whether he loathed her annoying presence or whether he craved it.
Sometimes, when she didn't come along, either because of her over-bearing mother, or because of her other extra-curricular commitments, he felt a pang in his gut at her absence.
He hated that he felt this way, but he couldn't control it. So his preferred method of dealing with it was to simply ignore that he felt anything at all.
True men of science did not waste their time trying to comprehend the female species. It was a futile endeavor at best, and a potentially dangerous one, at worst.
Science was always the priority. But even someone like him was not immune to feminine grace and charm. In the fifth grade, he experienced his first real crush on a girl named Elizabeth Ava Quinlan. She went by Betty, and somehow, that was even cuter than if she went by her full name. She was always wearing vintage-looking dresses and sneakers. Her dark curls were styled in a chic bob that framed her face, and the little mole by her lips made him wonder what it might be like to kiss someone.
He had photos of her in his lab, and often thought about how idiotic he sounded anytime he was around her, even though his IQ rivaled Einstein's.
For some reason, Cindy did not like Betty. This became fairly evident early on.
He was uncertain as to why this was. To his knowledge, Betty had never done anything to transgress any of Cindy's boundaries. They hadn't even spoken much before.
But every time he was in close proximity to Betty, Cindy would somehow be glowering not too far away.
His standing hypothesis was that she preferred when he was miserable.
He amended his hypothesis slightly after the magic show—not only did Cindy like to see him miserable, she also liked to see the object of his affections suffer a bit.
He'd figured out that Betty loved magic and decided to indulge in some prestidigitation for her pleasure. He thought it was a plebeian form of entertainment, but still appreciated her enthusiasm.
Cindy had stepped in and sabotaged things, sending them all into an alternate dimension. At one point, she and Betty had taken some time apart from the group to have a little chat, and he had never learned what his longtime crush had said to Cindy to get her to ease up on him just the tiniest bit.
He had a few conjectures as to her behaviour, but none seemed entirely plausible. So he moved on from the whole incident, although he still wondered why in the name of Heisenberg Cindy would purposely try to stand in the way of his attempt to impress Betty.
A couple months later, the town was overtaken by Grandma Taters, and Jimmy found himself embroiled in the middle of the creepy "Happy Show" incident (which for once, was not his fault). He had unexpectedly joined forces with Cindy to take down the unsettling senior citizen behind the whole mess, and dispel the effect her hypnotic broadcast had.
His crush on Betty faded away after that. She was pretty, no doubt, and was kind to Jimmy although she was one of the most popular girls in the school, and one year older than he was. But whenever he pictured her from then on, his mind brought forth the image of her disturbing Grandma Taters induced-grin, and he didn't exactly find that appealing.
Instead, he found his hormone riddled brain fixating on how lucky it was that he'd ran into Cindy at that bus-stop, and how it had felt to have her arms around him as they rode his jetpack through the stars. She hadn't had any fear. She'd trusted him implicitly, after just a quip or two instead of the usual haranguing about why he was endangering everyone with his abnormally large head.
Blast it all! Couldn't he have one moment of peace without some girl plaguing his mind? Was he doomed to become subservient to his baser instincts instead of focusing his talents and time on solving equations and coming up with cutting edge inventions?
The first time he noticed her was on Mars. Of course he'd noticed her before, it was hard not to. She was always around, dominating any room she was in with her shrill voice and barrage of offensive remarks, but this was the first time he really saw her.
She'd worn a heather gray space suit that was perfectly contoured to her slender form, and had applied some shimmery stuff on her eyelids, making her all the more unmissable in the moonlight.
His brain function had been erratic at best all day; he couldn't take his eyes off her, and was wary of anyone catching him in the act of indulging in some harmless staring.
He tried to tell himself he would be firing on all cylinders again tomorrow, and that it just happened to be a fluke that Cindy was a source of distraction.
But as the night dragged on, he found it hard to think about anything but her. After they fought and she stormed off, he couldn't sleep. He laid awake on his rough blanket, inhaling the dusty red air, wondering if he should have run after her. He tried to calm his worries by counting prime numbers and picturing Betty pre-Taters. But neither approach worked. When he finally passed out, he had distorted dreams about Cindy that wouldn't let up. He tossed and turned into the early hours of morning, when suddenly, it was as if she was right there.
"Wake up Jimmy. I finally found a way to make you notice me."
He had flailed about, only half-awake, until a cold metal hook wound its way around his body and bound him tightly in its grip.
"Leaping leptons!" He cried out, waking the others.
And there she was, sitting in Strych's tripod, waggling her fingers at him with a smug smile.
"Some guys just know how to treat a lady, huh?"
He couldn't ignore the pit in his stomach at the sight of her. How could she betray them like this? Betray him like this?
Of course Strych was not a man of his word, and so he dropped Cindy like a hot potato the second he no longer had use for her.
And that's when Jimmy should have cut her loose, told her to get lost, or called her crazy.
But instead, she turned it on him.
"It's all your fault!"
He was furious. How did she chalk up this whole thing to him?
"Don't act dumb. At least Eustace treated me like an equal. You act like I don't even exist."
Her words rang in his ears and for a moment, he could feel his mind sifting through all the permutations of things he could say back to her.
But his heart and tongue worked in tandem instead. "You are so clueless Vortex. Of course I know you exist. That's why I pretend to ignore you."
He knew it was true as he said it, but that didn't make it any less shocking to him. Or to her, evidently.
They had a few more charged moments like this in their teenage years, but he never figured out what it was he felt for her, all he knew was that there was something there and it wasn't necessarily good. He didn't like to dwell on his emotions.
His mom came home from the dry cleaner's one day, with an armful of her husband's trousers and her own dresses.
Jimmy helped her bring them in from the car and sat in the kitchen while she poured him a glass of lemonade.
"I ran into Cindy, dear." His mother's tone was measured.
"Oh." He wasn't quite sure what to say.
"A couple women in my book club were talking about Sasha last week. That lady sounds like a real piece of work."
He'd heard the rumors. It seemed everyone had some supporting evidence for the claim that Cindy's mother was a nightmare.
"That's too bad." He kept his voice even. He didn't want to appear too inquisitive. Although truthfully, he was interested to hear about Cindy's home life. She never shared much about it with him. Libby probably knew what went on.
"Having a mother like that probably explains why she's always been a bit...brash?"
He shrugged, feeling a tiny bit defensive of her. "I don't know if brash is the right word, Mom. Passionate?"
Judy raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth as if to say something, but left it.
"Anyways, what do you think we should have for dinner tonight?"
When they were seventeen years old and in their senior year of high school, other girls took more interest in him.
But while the attention was certainly a gift to his ego, whenever he thought about actually going on dates with one of them, there was a hollow feeling inside him he couldn't will away, no matter how hard he tried.
It wasn't until their senior prom, when Cindy waltzed in on the arm of some guy from the track team, looking drop dead gorgeous in a silk, sea foam gown, her golden hair pinned up in an elegant updo, that he realized something he should have realized ages ago.
Maybe he liked her.
It made no logical sense.
But, as detective extraordinaire Sherlock Holmes had once famously said, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
He'd gotten good at fighting the chemical reactions in his mind every time she was near. Lobbing insults. Lying to himself about why it was that she provoked him so badly, why he didn't just give up on her or tell her to fuck off.
The funny thing was, part of him wondered if maybe he was also afraid of her. She was an intimidating girl, and one trained in various martial arts, at that.
But he was afraid that she really did hate him. His very first memory of her was of her almost causing his beloved pet to malfunction, and greeting him with a flurry of ice-cold water, after all. So he had good reason to believe she detested him as much as she said she did.
Maybe he was conjuring up the sparks between them. He did have an over-active imagination. And besides, she was as popular and pretty as Betty had been back in the day, and he had no business trying his luck with either of them.
She'd probably drop kick him into the fifth dimension if he ever told her about this latest epiphany.
So he pushed down his feelings and tried to enjoy the last few moments of his high school career.
By the end of the night, Cindy's date had already left, presumably because she had arranged to ride back home with Libby and Sheen.
Jimmy approached her cautiously, feeling a little more bold than usual. He wasn't going to ask for anything too crazy.
Just a dance, if she'd have him.
"Your track date sprinted home, huh, Vortex?" He teased.
"At least I brought someone, Neutron." She shot back.
He threw up his arms in surrender. "Okay, let's not end the evening bickering. I think Libby would actually kill us."
"Agreed. Truce?" She extended her hand for him to shake. He took it.
"I'll do you one better. How about a dance?"
She looked like her eyes would pop out of her head at the question.
"Wh-What? Did I hear you correctly, Geektron?"
"C'mon." He tugged at her lightly and she followed in a daze into the center of the dimly lit dance floor.
He placed his hands on her waist, as she placed hers around his neck. They swayed in time to the last drawling song of the evening.
Up close, she looked exhausted. Maybe a little unhappy. Despite having gotten into the best school in the country.
"Hey, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Neutron, just don't step on my feet."
He wasn't as bad at this as he had thought he would be. He hadn't stepped on her feet once.
After a second, she opened up a bit. "It's just—I've imagined my freedom and my future for so long. And now it's so close. But everything's going to change, isn't it?"
"Not everything has to change." He countered, offering her a warm smile.
"Yeah, I can always count on you to make the news for all the wrong reasons, can't I?"
They were pressed so close together he was afraid she would hear his pounding heart beating against her chest and let go of him, in utter repulsion.
"You know what, I'll give it to you. I got valedictorian so your consolation prize is me admitting I have made some poor scientific choices sometimes."
"Your speech at the rehearsal the other night was...interesting. ChatGPT write it for you?" She ribbed.
Tonight, he was willing to let every little crack at his expense slide. He was losing his resolve. He wanted desperately to share with her the realization he'd come to.
"Cindy—I—" He tripped on her name.
"Spit it out Neutron." Her words were harsh but there was a soft curiosity in her searching gaze.
He suppressed his longing into a ball and instead, told her what he thought she wanted to hear.
"I'm so proud of you."
She looked like she might cry. He wondered if she'd ever heard those words from her parents before. He would venture to guess not by the way she was trying her best to keep it together.
"Do you think—" She hesitated. A blush rose to her cheeks. "Do you think we could keep in touch in Boston?"
He didn't want to hold her back or limit her well-earned freedom in any way. So he answered the only way he thought he could.
"Maybe it's best we just...have fresh slates." It wasn't what he'd wanted to say, but his brain had run through a series of calculations in the moment following her query and had settled on a no.
She assented, all the fight gone out of her, for once. "Sure, okay, yeah."
And with her resigned assent, the magic of the night vanished into thin air.