The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss by Amy Noelle Parks
Caleb loved Evie long before he tried to kiss her at 13. He’s been afraid to try again. Evie is super smart and fearful. Now they are seniors at an elite high school. Evie chooses Leo for her first boyfriend. Is there any hope for Caleb and Evie?
Evie reasons that you can’t be open and comfortable with the same boy (space) friend, BSF, as the boyfriend you kiss. You must be careful what you reveal to the kissing boyfriend. Caleb has been her BSF since kindergarten. He will and has done anything for her. He knows about her phobias (spiders, social anxiety) and mental health issues (panic attacks, periods of silence). He has been there for her during her crises. She trusts and depends on Caleb and doesn’t dare risk that important BSF relationship with a kiss. A high school romance with jealousy, anxiety, and confusion.
Evie was selected for the prestigious Frontier Prize for high school STEM students last year. She won the opportunity to give one of the five presentations, but she had a panic attack. This year, she is entering with Caleb as her co-author so he can be with her if she is selected to present again. Leo is entering the contest on his own. Caleb contrives to meet Evie online as Milo. Evie is torn between boyfriend Leo, BSF Caleb, and BSF #2 Milo.
Caleb has supportive parents, but is on his own to navigate this teen romance. “I am her best friend. And I love her. And I almost kissed her fourteen times. I keep a mental list of almost-kisses.”
Evie is supported by her therapist, her school friend, Bex, and her mother. Her mother studies insanity in mathematicians, uses the DSM-5 as a parenting manual, and believes medication is the best way to deal with mental health problems. Bex’s father is a conservative pastor who “takes the worst parts of the Bible literally” and made her promise not to date while in high school.
This romance is sprinkled with STEM references and jokes:
“Because you know what they call physicists who fail?” No one takes the bait. “Engineers.”
“Do you remember the fine-tuning problem?” I shake my head, thinking she must mean a warm-up we did in physics. “The constants in our universe—the amount of dark matter and dark energy, the strength of electromagnetic and nuclear forces, even the weight of protons—all have to be almost precisely what they are for conscious life to exist. If any of those things were the tiniest bit different, we wouldn’t be here. And yet, here we are, in a universe perfectly suited for us. It’s entirely improbable.”
“Sure. And I want to talk about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.” “Like, why math is so good at describing the world?” “Exactly. Doesn’t it seem a little uncanny that mathematicians keep predicting things that experimental physicists find, sometimes decades before they do?”
Sex? This book about contemporary high school romance is anachronistically chaste. While there is a lot of talk of kissing and actually kissing, the word “tongue” never occurs and “lips” only shows up three times. Hand holding also plays a big role. “As we walk home through the campus, [Leo] takes my hand in his, wrapping his fingers around mine instead of lacing them together the way Caleb does. It’s different, but nice.”
This book is a beautiful view of high school romance. I wonder if it is er like or if it every was like this.
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