Silently Falling in Love: Lucky Charm

Book 2 - 1989

September - Alex

“Ed, who’s the girl in the front row?”

“You’re kidding me – you don’t know her? We’ve only been here on campus at MIT for two years and you’re just now noticing Christina.  There’s already a dearth of women on campus and you haven’t noticed her before.”

“Well, I’m noticing her now.  Tell me what you know about her.” I stated as I stared at the beautiful brunette in the front row.

“Alex, my California boy, forget about her, she’s an Ice Princess.”

“Isn’t California known for its sunshine?  I’ll melt her down.” I chuckled.

“More realistically is that her black clouds will block you out and you’ll no longer shine.  Prepare to have your ball handed to you.” Ed retorted.

“We’ll see.”

I sat through class and completely ignored it as the professor droned on.  I was more interested in watching my Ice Princess.  She sat in the front row and diligently took notes, interacted with the professor and never once turned around to look at the back row.  As soon as class was dismissed I raced down the steps to catch up with her.  Maybe I could ask her to tutor me since I hadn’t paid attention in class.  Hell, I’d even purposely fail the class to get her attention. 

I ran up to her.  “Hi.  I don’t think we’ve met before, I’m Alex Shergill.  We’re in class together for Differential Equations.”

She kept walking and fast, I had to pick up my pace to keep up with her.  “I know who you are Alexandar Shergill.  You worked on the Economic simulation last year for your project.  It was interesting how you assigned a mathematical value to different political scenarios to predict the impact on the global economy.  But, isn’t the problem that it’s impossible to predict how people will react to different scenarios? I mean look at the reaction to the Vietnam War compared to the Korean War.  People’s sentiment completely changed.  Also, aren’t people’s attitudes based on a variety of factors rather than just one political event, isn’t that why they use the term the Perfect Storm.  I mean the idea of being able to predict these types of things is great, but really how reliable is it?”

“I’m glad you liked my work and I’m even more impressed that you noticed it.  Maybe it’s not a perfect model, but it’s a step in the right direction.  I’m still working on tweaking it you know because I think it has value.  Do you have any suggestions? Maybe we can meet for coffee and you can share them with me.”

“You really want my help?”

“Yes, I’d love your help.  You’re math major aren’t you? So who better to ask for help on modeling mathematical formulas?”

“I’ll help you just as long as you know this is not a date.  I buy my own coffee.  Meet me in the library tomorrow at 10am.”

“Got it.  Tomorrow at 10.  See you.”

Later that evening at dinner.

“So you didn’t think I had a chance, huh?” I teased Ed.

“Just for the record gentlemen I’m meeting Ms. Christina tomorrow morning at 10am!”

“And pray tell how did you melt the Ice Princess?” Ed asked with one eyebrow arched.

I shuffled my feet, “Well she’s not melted, yet.  And, by the way I’m working on the Econ model project I did last year in case she asks.”

“You’re re-working last year’s project, which you barely worked on in the first place.  Or did you forget that it was our project, which I mostly worked on.”