Hope, Levy, Marc [good summer reads TXT] 📗

buddy is desperate to take her out to see a highbrow movie. The Great Beauty maybe, or a Visconti masterpiece, or maybe even some classic Capra . . .”

“Hope, seriously,” Josh said. “I’m working. It’s not my fault she’s blocking my view when I’m trying to concentrate.”

“I get it; the heart wants what it wants. So, what are you concentrating so hard on?”

“Neurotransmitters.”

“Of course! Noradrenaline, serotonin, dopamine, melatonin,” Hope recited wryly.

“Just listen to me for a minute. We know neurotransmitters can have a powerful impact on the brain for some things. They can sharpen your focus and memory, impact your sleep cycles, your eating habits, your sex life,” Josh explained. Then he added, “And melatonin levels are key to seasonal affective disorder.”

“If you can tell me which neurotransmitter is responsible for summer bikini dread syndrome, I’ll nominate you for a Nobel Prize . . .”

“But what if these molecules worked the other way? What if neurotransmitters could gather information on the effects they trigger over the course of a lifetime?” Josh continued. “Imagine if they worked like particles of living memory capable of collecting all our experiences, harvesting every little fragment that makes up a personality. Nobody knows where consciousness lies within our brains. Nobody knows what exactly it is that makes each of us unique. So just imagine if neurotransmitters were like a network of computer servers packed full of data, a system where our personalities are stored.”

“That’s incredible. Ingenious, even!” Hope smiled. “But how would you prove it?”

“Why do you think I’m majoring in neuroscience?”

“To get the girls. And I’m pretty sure that the first professor you speak to about your revolutionary ideas will suggest you go into law, or philosophy. Anything to get you out of their class.”

“But what if I’m right? Do you have any idea what that would mean?”

“Let’s suppose for a minute that this theory of yours is right,” Hope started. “Let’s imagine that we could decode the information contained in these molecules. That means we could access any point in a given person’s memory.”

“Not just that. We could also copy the memory, and potentially even transfer human consciousness to a computer.”

“That sounds pretty terrifying to me. Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to work on the project with me.”

Hope burst out laughing, garnering a disapproving glance from the table next to them. Hearing Hope laugh always lifted Josh’s spirits, even when the laughter was aimed at him—which it often was.

“How about you start by taking me to dinner?” she said, lowering her voice. “And I don’t mean some gross takeout. I mean a real dinner.”

“Can it wait? I’m broke right now, but I should be getting paid at the end of the week.”

“Your dad?”

“No.” Josh shook his head. “This kid I tutor in science. His parents think he’s going to be big someday. I hate to break it to them, but . . .”

“You’re mean. Mean, and a snob too. Look, dinner is on me.”

“In that case . . . care to join me for dinner?”

Josh met Hope during their very first month on campus. Fall had arrived, and he and Luke were lying in the grass, smoking something questionable and sharing stories of their latest romantic disappointments. Hope was sitting a few feet away, her back pressed to a cherry blossom tree while she revised her notes, when suddenly she piped up, her voice ringing out loud and clear, asking which one of them was suffering from the kind of incurable disease that would justify self-medication using psychotropic drugs.

Luke sat up and looked around, unsure of where the voice had come from and whether it belonged to a professor or student. Hope waved to them, blowing into her straight-cut bangs and offering up a glimpse of her eyes. Luke was spellbound.

“You seem perfectly healthy to me,” Hope said. “I can only assume the patient is your glassy-eyed friend over there. He looks pretty out of it. Although I’m guessing your joint has something to do with it. I’m starting to feel kind of hazy myself.”

“Want to join us?” Luke asked.

“Thanks, but I’m having trouble focusing as it is. Your debate on the nature of women has had me stuck on this same line for the past half hour. The crap you guys come up with when it comes to girls is crazy.”

“What are you reading?”

“Congenital Malformations in the Central Nervous System by Professor Eugene Ferdinand Algenbruck.” Hope held up her book.

“You remind me of a line I read somewhere,” Luke said. “‘She was a pretty girl, slim and carefree, built to survive from head to toe.’ What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. I’m more of a fiction guy. But hey, if you want to shed a little light on the mystery of women, we’re all ears. It’s much more complicated than the workings of the brain. More interesting too.”

Hope assessed Luke coolly before closing her book and standing.

“Freshmen?” She walked over to join them.

Josh stood to greet her, but to his surprise, Hope remained silent, staring at his outstretched hand, and he sat back down.

Luke felt something in that glance they exchanged, in the light that shifted in Hope’s eyes. This intriguing young woman already enthralled him, but he understood that he wasn’t the one who fascinated her.

Hope would later categorically deny having felt the slightest attraction to Josh on that fateful day, but Luke didn’t believe it. And whenever the subject cropped up, he remembered the events that later unfolded, and how his first impression had been right.

Josh swore he’d noticed nothing particularly attractive about Hope then, and even said she was the kind of woman whose beauty you only really started seeing once you got to know her. Hope was never able to get him to say whether that was a compliment, or whether he was joking.

Once the three had introduced themselves, they sat back to soak up the balmy air of the early-September night. Josh wasn’t talkative, and seemed to enjoy listening as Luke