Free The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke Page B

processors. She knew they were there. She'd heard her father talking about them with his scientist friends, his colleagues from the university two towns over. She had memorized Finn's specifications years earlier: the only information she'd ever been able to wring out of her father about Finn's history. She used to recite those specifications to herself when she couldn't sleep, a string of meaningless numbers and abbreviations.
       Meaningless, Cat thought. Meaningless to her. Finn combed the weft thread across the loom. Meaningless to her, but not to him.
     
    Cat broke up with Oscar underneath the tree in the courtyard. All their friends watched from the branches like wild cats. She did it first thing in the morning because the minute she saw him – his long knotted hair, his ratty old band shirt – her heart began to pound and she tasted wax on her tongue. Predictably, he called her a bitch. Cat fled the courtyard before he could say anything more hurtful, about her father, her family, Finn.
      Miranda found her at lunch, hiding in the muggy cafeteria, surrounded on all sides by a wall of noise. She slid onto the bench across from Cat and folded her hands on top of the table.
      "I heard you broke up with Oscar," she said. "Good idea. I totally beat him up for you at the party. I guess you got home OK?" It was hard to see the concern beneath all her eye makeup.
      "Finn came and picked me up."
      Miranda nodded. Cat stirred the lumpy gravy on her plastic tray. It was unrecognizable as food.
      "So what'd you think?" Miranda leaned forward over the table and lowered her voice. "I mean, obviously it's better if you're prepared for it. But–"
      "I don't want to talk about it." Cat stood up, took the tray to the stack next to the trash cans, and walked away.
      Some days went by, then weeks. Cat avoided Oscar despite the smallness of the school, and she didn't talk to Miranda as much as she used to. The days grew longer and hotter. It didn't rain. Every time Cat went outside the sky was a clear wash of bright blue, utterly cloudless, but after a while that cloudlessness felt oppressive, like there was nothing between Cat and the blinding sun. The grass dried up. The garden withered. The river turned into white rocks.
      One day Finn knocked on Cat's door while she was lying under the fan and listening to music. He came in and sat down in the chair at her desk.
      "I was thinking," he said, "about the question you posed to me."
      "What question?" Cat swept half of her hair to the side and began to comb it into a braid.
      "You asked if I thought you were pretty."
      "What?" she said. "Oh my god, that was like two years ago." She had forgotten it – mostly. At night sometimes, or soaking in a cool, lavender-scented bath – then she remembered, how he didn't answer.
      "It was a difficult question," he said. "It's not something I'm generally called upon to consider. Previously, I had only contemplated the concept of beauty with regards to works of art."
      Cat finished braiding the other side of her hair. She sat up and stared at him.
      "If you're going to say no," she said, "I don't really want an explanation."
      "I'm not going to say no."
      Cat's heart stopped beating, and then started again, fluttery and strange.
      "I realized, after you asked me, that I needed to work with a different algorithm. The definition of beauty in a human being is different than the definition of beauty in an object. This is a philosophical question, of course, and philosophy is difficult for me. It's too abstract. I still have problems with abstraction." He paused. His eyes shook. "I considered facial shape and the writings of Vitruvius. I also took into account my own experiences with you. I find it… pleasant to be around you." He looked at her then. Cat's skin warmed.
      "So my answer to your question," he said, "is yes. I do think you are pretty."
      All the breath left Cat's body. Since the