I had a reputation for talking so much I could cure three cases of autism just by chatting. As a result, the aloof and reclusive Cole Hayes was essentially gifted to me as an arranged, live-in boyfriend. I used to hit him with terrible pickup lines: "Did you just fart? Because you blew me away. But not as much as I think about you." He would snap his head up: "I did not." Mr. and Mrs. Hayes' eyes lit up with hope. From then on, I kept him company for four years. Until he met another girl. He talked with her all night about the Riemann Hypothesis. In the early hours of the morning, he turned to me and said for the very first time: "You're very loud. "Can you shut up?" That night, he received a text message: [Take one of these pills, and Maya Evans will stay five hundred feet away from you.] Cole swallowed the entire bottle of pills. But what he didn't know was that the bottle only contained calcium vitamins I had swapped in. 01 I was born with the gift of gab. I talked so much that cats and dogs found me annoying. In an attempt to mold me into a "proper young lady," my mom forbade everyone in our house from talking to me. As a result, my masochistic tendencies skyrocketed. Silenced at home, I would go outside and strike up conversations with stray dogs. My crowning achievement was using just my mouth to "cure" three kids with autism. Unsurprisingly, my mom got called into the principal's office. The teacher spoke earnestly: "Since she loves to talk so much, keep her home until she's talked enough, then send her back. She's disrupting the other students." My mom immediately abandoned me and the whole mess: "Are you doing this on purpose to make me look bad? "I can't control you. Do whatever you want, but once you step out of this door, don't expect me to come to school and clean up your messes." Also called to the office that day was the top student in our class—Cole Hayes. "Your son, Cole, has excellent grades. He's clearly Ivy League material. "It's just his personality... he's too isolated. When teachers or classmates ask him something, he ignores them completely." Mrs. Hayes sighed helplessly and explained to the female teacher: "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Davis. Our son was born with a touch of autism." Suddenly, the math teacher at the next desk had a flash of inspiration: "Mrs. Evans, Maya Evans can strike up a conversation with a dog on campus! Whenever we sit her next to an autistic kid, she manages to talk them into a milder point on the spectrum. "How about we sit her next to Cole Hayes!" Mrs. Hayes' eyes lit up. 02 My mom didn't want to deal with a problem child. But Mrs. Hayes did. Not only did she beg the teacher to let me sit next to Cole, but she also had me stay at the Hayes' house to accompany Cole to and from school. But Cole wasn't autistic. He just had Asperger's syndrome, often called the "genius disease," and possessed extraordinary talent in math and computer science. He just felt that his peers were too immature and therefore found it beneath him to communicate with us. Under Mrs. Hayes' expectant gaze, I felt the task was incredibly daunting. I babbled at Cole: "Bro, who do you think is a better cook, Gordon Ramsay or Bobby Flay?" "Which chicken makes the best fried chicken?" Cole turned a deaf ear, lowering his eyes to quietly solve math problems. I leaned in close, staring blankly, trying to count exactly how many lower eyelashes he had. I was counting so intently that my warm breath puffed entirely onto his eye. Cole's eyelashes fluttered, and then he shot me a cold glare. His mouth was sealed tighter than a vault. I didn't want to disappoint Mrs. Hayes, so I frantically fired off terrible pickup lines: "Did you just fart? Because you blew me away. But not as much as I think about you." Three seconds later, he snapped his head up: "I did not." Huh, I think I figured out the access code to get Cole to speak. 03 I lived at the Hayes' house for four years. In Cole's world, besides vibrant and complex mathematics, there was now a shadow who scored a solid 30% in math. While I was furiously scribbling down his homework, he would coldly interject: "That's an integral sign, not a giant parenthesis. Also, the density of water is not equal to 5." I would immediately bow and scrape: "You're absolutely right, bro. This problem is too advanced for me. I won't copy it." Occasionally, he would chime in on my random ramblings: "Yeah, Professor Snape hated Harry Potter because James Potter bullied him in school." "Hamilton was Jefferson's biggest rival. They disagreed on almost everything. Left leg." I gnawed on my popsicle and obediently propped my left leg on Cole's lap. Watching him tie my shoelaces. His brow was furrowed deep, as if contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Only I knew that his OCD gave him an inexplicable urge to perfectly control the bows on my shoes. After high school graduation, he started preparing for his college applications. He supervised me every day as I memorized vocabulary for the SATs. At that time, I felt my life revolved entirely around the 26 letters of the alphabet. And it also revolved entirely around Cole. It couldn't be helped; Cole couldn't do without me. 04 Until Cole went to Boston to attend a mathematics salon. He met a girl, Chloe Zhou. White dress, low ponytail; you could tell at a glance she was smarter than me. They sat together, chatting all evening about the Riemann Hypothesis. I just felt a bit stuffed from the lobster roll I had for dinner. Cole was exceptionally talkative that day, but I couldn't understand a single word of what they were discussing. I couldn't even get a word in edgewise. In the past, during such awkward moments, Cole would always lower his intellectual level to say a few words to me. So I wouldn't sit there looking like an idiot. But today he seemed to be enjoying the conversation too much and forgot about me. Luckily, a chatterbox can fit in anywhere. I met another guy whose math score was probably also hovering around 30%. Julian lowered his voice: "Does it feel like listening to a foreign language?" I nodded: "Tell me about it! Especially those two over there," I jutted my chin toward Cole's direction, "I feel like they're going to ascend to a higher plane of existence any second." Julian burst out laughing: "I get it. I was dragged here by my dad for 'exposure'. What about you?" I blanked for a second: "I'm here accompanying my tutoring client. My job is to teach him how to talk to people more." Julian suddenly looked toward Cole and said, "Then I'd say you've over-delivered on your assignment?" His good-natured teasing felt like a tiny thorn, pricking me ever so slightly. I instinctively looked over at Cole again. He had his head turned slightly, focused intently on whatever Chloe was saying, a very faint smile even playing on his lips. That was an expression I had spent four years, countless terrible pickup lines, and meaningless chatter to earn on rare occasions. And in this moment, Chloe had easily achieved it with a bunch of symbols I couldn't understand. Somewhere in my chest, it felt like that lobster roll was making me even more uncomfortably full. "Yeah, over-delivered. Looks like I can retire early." I retracted my gaze. "What about you? Has the 'exposure' yielded any results?" 05 "I discovered the cake here is pretty good," Julian shrugged, pointing to the half-empty fruit wine I had been drinking. "The wine is good too." We steered clear of the unfathomable math discussions and started chatting about everything under the sun. "I think the sweet and sour ribs at Dining Hall Two are the best!" "I vote for Dining Hall One!" "Is the male lead in that newly popular anime a jerk or what?" "I think so. He goes off to conquer the world with the second female lead and leaves the main girl at home. Pfft." "Our school just introduced a bizarre new rule—boys and girls aren't allowed to have physical contact for more than ten seconds." "So, is the dean going to patrol with a stopwatch? Hahaha." ... Our laughter wasn't loud, but in a salon so quiet you could hear a pin drop—save for the math jargon—it seemed a bit out of place. Until I felt a gaze land on me. I instinctively turned my head. At some point, Cole had stopped his discussion with Chloe. His brow was slightly furrowed. Those aloof eyes, usually immersed in their own world, were looking at me. More precisely, they were looking at me laughing hysterically, and at Julian beside me, who was laughing just as unreservedly. The smile on my face froze a bit, and that uncomfortable fullness in my chest sharply morphed into a stinging sourness. "What's wrong?" Julian noticed something was off. "Nothing." I shook my head. 06 After the salon ended, Mrs. Hayes happened to swing by to pick us up. I didn't expect the fruit wine to have such a kick. I was feeling incredibly dizzy. "Bro, why are there two of you? When did you learn to clone yourself?" I squinted, trying hard to figure out which one was real. Cole, caught between laughing and crying, pinched my cheek to stop me from leaning in closer: "Maya Evans, you're drunk." I thought, Cole really is cured. I don't even have to use pickup lines, and he can say this many words. But I had memorized quite a few lines today; I had to use them. "Bro, I might not be able to fawn over you for a while. Do you know why?" He asked, "Why?" I giggled: "I've been running a fever lately, and I'm afraid I'll burn you if I get too close." "Bro, if you cheat once, I'll let you off the hook. If you cheat twice, I'll let you off the hook. If you cheat three times, I'll let you off the hook." "But bro, remember this: I'm a forgiving goddess, not your wife." After I finished, I cracked myself up, bending over with laughter. Cole was acting very out of character today. He nudged me and asked: "What else?" I instinctively replied: "I say ten sentences and you only reply with one..." Before I could finish, my arm was grabbed, and I was hauled up from the sofa like a carrot being pulled from the dirt. I hadn't fully processed it as I slowly spat out the second half of the sentence: "...Then fine, from now on, for every ten times you thrust, I'll only moan once." The other Cole—the one with the deadpan face—was as cold as ice. He gripped me with one hand and covered my mouth with the other: "Shut up." "We're going home." Mrs. Hayes was standing behind him, instinctively reaching out to take me from him, but Cole dodged her. It turned out I had mistaken someone else for him. I clamped my mouth shut tight. Chloe looked surprised: "Oh, you came with someone." Mrs. Hayes smiled: "Yes, Cole and Maya are always inseparable. He's basically her arranged husband." Cole's face turned instantly grim. He looked at Chloe and said seriously: "No, I'm not." "I have nothing to do with her." "I hate stupidity." 07 I was remarkably well-behaved even when drunk; no screaming or yelling, just extremely chatty. With my face wedged in the gap of the car seats, I could even chat with Mrs. Hayes. Mrs. Hayes said: "You seemed to be having a great time chatting with that boy today." I nodded: "Auntie Hayes, you don't even know. He goes to the same school as Cole! We hit it off so well." Mrs. Hayes smiled: "He seems good at making you laugh?" I instinctively replied: "My sense of humor is just broken, I laugh at everything. Not everyone can be like Cole, walking around with a scowl every day like someone owes him money." "Auntie Hayes, you don't even know. He told me the spicy stir-fry at the East Dining Hall is the best. It's a shame I've graduated and never got to try it." "He said the city youth chess tournament is happening at the rec center the day after tomorrow and asked if I wanted to go watch. I told him the only game I know how to play is Connect Four..." Cole suddenly whipped his head around, snapping, his voice cold and distant: "You're very loud." "Can you shut up?" A suffocating silence fell over the car. Only the sound of the traffic outside, flowing like a silent river, separated us. Mrs. Hayes was the first to speak: "Cole, what nonsense are you talking about?" "Maya, don't take it to heart. You know him, his EQ is terrible. He doesn't know how to talk." I nodded, but didn't know what to say. I felt inexplicably terrible. I figured it must have been because I was drunk. The next day, Cole received a text message on his phone: [Take one of these pills, and Maya Evans will stay five hundred feet away from you.] Without a moment's hesitation, Cole swallowed the entire bottle of pills.
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