Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            “Izzy must be looking for you,” I say, hoping to get rid of him. “She’s upstairs.”

            “I know,” he replies, not heading upstairs. He just studies me—attentive, calm, like he knows something secret about me. That I floss once a week, tops. That I can’t figure out what the Dow Jones is, even after reading the Wikipedia entry. Other, scarier, darker things.

            “Is your girlfriend here?” I ask to fill the silence. He once brought someone to a family thing. A geologist. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Nice. Funny, too. I wish I could say she was out of his league.

            “No.”

            Silence, again. More staring. I smile to hide how aggressively I’m grinding my teeth. “It’s been a while.”

            “Since Labor Day.”

            “Oh, right. I forgot.”

            I did not forget. Before today, I’ve met Jack twice, as in two times, one and then another, and they’re both stubbornly wedged in my brain, as pleasant as spinach leaves stuck between molars.

            The first was Greg’s birthday dinner, when Jack and I shook hands and he nodded back at me tightly, when he spent the night giving me long, searching glances, when I overheard him ask Greg, “Where did you meet her?” and “How long has it been?” and “How serious is this?” with an inquisitive, deceptively casual tone that sent an odd shiver down my spine.

            So Jack Smith wasn’t a fan. Okay. Fine. Whatever.

            And then there was the second. Late in the summer, at the Smiths’ Labor Day pool party, where I didn’t swim. Because there’s no way to hide my pod in a bikini.

            I’m not embarrassed to be diabetic. I’ve had nearly two decades to make peace with my overactive immune system, which has way too much fun destroying necessary cells. But people’s reactions to the knowledge that I must pump insulin into my body on the reg can be unpredictable. When I was diagnosed (at ten, after a seizure in the school gym that earned me the cruel but uncreative nickname of Shaky Elsie), I overheard my parents chat, low whispers behind the hospital room’s divider curtains.

            “Not this, too.” Mom sounded exhausted.

            “I know.” Dad sounded the same. “It’s gotta be on us. Lance is flunking out of high school. Lucas is going to be arrested for fist-fighting in the Walmart parking lot any day now. Of course the one easygoing kid we got turns out to have something.”

            “It’s not her fault.”

            “No.”

            “But it’s going to be expensive.”

            “Yeah.”

            I don’t blame my parents: my brother Lance did eventually flunk out of school (and now makes an excellent living as an electrician), just like Lucas did end up being arrested (albeit behind a Shake Shack, and for possession of drugs that are now legal). Mom and Dad were tired, overwhelmed. A little poor. They’d hoped for a break, something easy for once, and I was truly sorry I wasn’t it. To make it up to them, I’ve tried to make my health issues—and any other subsequent issues—as ignorable as possible.

            I find that people like me better if they don’t have to expend emotional energy on me.

            That’s why I didn’t swim at the Smith Labor Day party, opting to sit on a blanket and eat a slice of cake, an artfully arranged smile on my face. Why I miscalculated the carbs I ate and the insulin I’d need. And why I stumbled across the lawn of the Smiths’ Manchester-by-the-Sea vacation home high on glucose, vision blurry, head pounding, trying to remember where I’d put my phone so that I could adjust my bolus, and—

            I walked right into Jack.

            Literally. I didn’t see him and stepped into his chest like it was a supermassive black hole. Which it wasn’t. A black hole, that is. Plenty supermassive, though.

            “Elsie?” Ugh. His voice. “You okay?”

            “Yeah. Yeah, I . . .” Am going to puke.

            He cupped my cheek, scanning my face. “Should I call Greg?”

            “No nee—” Pain knifed through my head.