Read Parallel for Free Online

I promise you, if there are sci-track kids in there, they’ll all be freshmen.”
    “Great,” I say sarcastically. “So a bunch of fourteen-year-olds can make me feel stupid. I feel better already.”
    “It’s senior year, baby!” We look up. Tyler is grinning down at us, flanked by four guys from the golf team.
    “What are you so happy about?” I grumble as Tyler plops down on the grass next to Caitlin, lunch bag in hand. The other guys sit down at a picnic table a few feet away, no doubt worried about wrinkling their pressed khakis.
    Caitlin, Tyler, and I have been eating lunch together every day since sixth grade. My parents met Tyler’s parents—both classical musicians—at a fund-raiser for the National Endowment for the Arts two weeks after they moved here, so Ty and I have been spending cookouts and game nights together since we were babies. There was a period in elementary school when we professed to despise each other, but by fifth grade we were inseparable. We didn’t meet Caitlin until sixth grade, when her family moved here from San Francisco. The three of us have been best friends ever since. These days, Caitlin and I are closer than either of us is to Tyler, mainly because he spends all his time playing golf and hooking up with volleyball players. And cheerleaders.
    Tyler shrugs out of his blazer and drapes it over the fence behind us. Yes, he’s sporting a seersucker suit at school. That’s Tyler. A walking contradiction. The choirboy who uses a fake ID to buy beer every weekend but refuses to jaywalk. The jock with an unyielding Carrie Underwood obsession. The city boy who wears seersucker and plays competitive croquet.
    “We’re seniors. What’s not to be happy about?” Tyler turns his lunch bag over and dumps its contents onto the lawn. Four sandwiches, two apples, an orange, two bags of potato chips, a carton of blueberry yogurt, and an entire sleeve of Chips Ahoy.
    “Abby’s freaking out because she has to take astronomy,” Caitlin tells him.
    “I am not freaking out.”
    Caitlin looks at me, eyebrows raised.
    “Ugh, I’d be freaking out, too,” says Tyler. Caitlin elbows him.
    “Ignore him,” Caitlin instructs. “You’ll be fine. Mr. Kang is a great teacher.”
    “He isn’t teaching it,” I tell her.
    “What are you talking about? It’s Kang’s class.”
    “Not this semester,” I reply, handing her the printout of my new schedule. Caitlin glances down at it and immediately reacts.
    “No way!”
    “What?” I demand.
    “Unless this is a different Gustav P. Mann, the guy teaching your astronomy class is a Nobel Prize winner.”
    Memories of tenth-grade Botany Basics come barreling back. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” I moan.
    “There’s still room in all my classes,” Tyler says sympathetically. “History of the Southern Narrative, Prop Design, Intro to Tempo and Beats, Practical Physics, Senior Math, and Conversational Spanish.” Listening to him rattle off this laughable lineup, I am envious of Tyler and his utter lack of scholastic ambition. It’s not that he’s not smart, but when you’re a golf star, the college application process goes a little differently.
    “Are those even real classes?” I ask him.
    “Barely,” Tyler replies, polishing off the last of his sandwiches.
    “What is he doing teaching here?” Caitlin is still staring at my schedule. “I know there was pressure for him to resign, but how did he end up down here?”
    “Resign from where?” I ask.
    “Yale,” Caitlin replies. “He has tenure there.” She frowns. “ Had tenure.”
    “What, did he molest a student or something?” Tyler jokes. Caitlin glares at him.
    “No, he did not molest a student. He published a book the scientific establishment couldn’t stomach, mostly because it read like the plot of a sci-fi novel. When they weren’t able to dismantle his theory, they laughed at it. And him.”
    “What’s the theory?” I ask.
    “It has to do with parallel