Chapter 5

After lunch Monday afternoon

Harborton Senior High School

Harborton, Washington

Ben finished up his lunch, returned his tray to the cafeteria and headed back to his class room to resume his afternoon classes. Luckily Lizzy was in his AP History class for the last period of the day. When Lizzy walked into the classroom later that afternoon she ducked her head down and made her way quickly to her seat in the front row, carefully avoiding looking at Ben. Ben sighed, she must be just about as embarrassed as a teen can get. Ben himself was dismayed that even for an instant he had reacted to her onslaught. It was completely out of character for him and he was determined to figure out what was happening and that it would never happen again.

During class Lizzy was not her usual bubbly, ditzy self. Ben never could understand how a genius like her could also be such an airhead. Usually she was full of insightful, if sometimes irreverent questions and observations. Today she was abnormally subdued and refused to even look up at Ben. As the day’s final bell rang out Ben finally got her attention.

“Lizzy can you please stay for a minute?”

“Sure Mr. C” Lizzy mumbled, pushed her oversized glasses up on her face, looked up at Ben through her slightly uneven brown bangs and remained sitting.

After the classroom had emptied Ben walked over and made sure that no one was outside the open door, then returned and sat on the front of his desk facing Lizzy.

“Lizzy...” he began.

“I’m so sorry!” She wailed. “I don’t know what happened, why I did that, you must think I’m awful!” Lizzy began sniffling.

“No, no, it’s fine ... I don’t think what happened was your fault” Ben said quickly trying desperately to avoid the waterworks he could see coming. Ben had a real problem with women or girls crying. It probably was from living with 3 younger sisters growing up. Ben thought of himself as, if not courageous, as at least not a coward. But the first sign of tears and his resolve would turn to jello and he would do anything to get the tears to stop. He would rather face machine gun fire than listen to Lizzy cry.

Luckily for Ben, Lizzy hesitated a second, gave a slight hiccup and looked up into Ben’s eyes “Really? You’re not just saying that?”.

“No, really. In fact I am hoping that maybe you could help me figure out something that’s been happening to me, or rather around me today. Can you stay for a few minutes?”.

“I, I guess so, But why me?”.

“Well, for one thing you are the smartest person I know. For another you seem to have been caught up in what’s been going on. I could really use someone with an analytic mind to help understand something that seems so unreal that it doesn’t feel possible.”

Lizzy beamed a quick smile at Ben.”Okay, I guess I can try.”

Ben spent the next 10 minutes going over the details of what had been happening to him that day. Lizzy flushed as he recited their encounter from his perspective but otherwise didn’t interrupt. Ben could see her entire demeanor change as she shifted into her problem solving mode.

“Okay. So it wasn’t just me? There were 3 other females just since this morning that had unusual reactions to you?

“Yes, as unbelievable as it seems. Can you tell me a bit about what you were thinking and feeling when you ... ah ... were overcome this morning? Sorry to bring it up, but maybe it would help me to understand what was happening”.

Lizzy hesitated a second and Ben could see her gathering her confidence. “Well nothing at first but then when you touched my hand and leaned in to help me up, I could smell you, You smelled so incredible, like nothing I’ve ever experienced I can’t even describe it. I just felt this rush throughout my body and I just had to get as close to you as possible.” Lizzy glanced down shyly once again. “Um, ah ... parts of me got very excited”.

This description was not at all how Lizzy normally spoke- she must really be rattled Ben thought.

“Oh! I see”. This was not at all how he had envisioned this conversation going! “Anything else that you can think of?

Lizzy paused, “Um no, not really. The ... whatever it was seemed to last for another hour or so and then faded. Can I ask something?”

“Sure, anything.”

“Did you feel anything yourself?” Lizzy really wanted to ask more and she really wanted to come clean and tell him that she was still feeling the effects from this morning, but she was afraid he’d not let her get close to him again!

Ben hesitated, remembering a light floral and citrusy scent and that single moment of intense feeling that he had allowed himself. “Uhhh well...”.

“No never mind, it was a stupid question. Of course you didn’t have any reaction. I’m just a little sophomore nerd. All these beautiful women and girls seem to be into you suddenly. There’s no reason...”

Ben respected Lizzy and thought she deserved honesty no matter what light it showed him in. “Yes Lizzy, I had a moment as well, you are a very attractive young woman, but of course I would never take advantage of you like that so I pushed you away as soon as I could. Not to mention, we were in the middle of the hallway!” Ben finished with a chuckle.

Lizzy blushed in pleasure and one corner of her mouth turned up in a tiny grin, then she returned to the subject at hand. “Okay then. So whatever is happening seems to be at least somewhat reciprocal, and I think we can say it has something to do with proximity and or scent”

“I can’t imagine what has changed about me or around me in the last 24 hours to account for this.” Ben said. He thought about his goat adventure on the mountain but shrugged it off as irrelevant. Then suddenly he flashed on his erotic dreams over the weekend and it was his turn to flush. Luckily, Lizzy seemed to miss this. “I was so tired from a hike that I did over sleep an entire Sunday. And when I woke up I noticed that I was incredibly sore and smelt like I had just ran a marathon.” He had also had an enormous erection, but he wasn’t going to tell a 16 year girl old that!

“Hmmm that points to some possible physical changes in your body. Well, if we are going to be analytical about this, let’s first try to determine what is happening. Then we can figure out the how and the why. Proximity is one factor. For me at least the effect seems to also include smell. This points to some sort of pheromone effect. Pheromones in humans though just aren’t that strong. Their effects tend to be much more limited and human pheromone receptors are mostly inactive, although subjects didn’t have to actually be consciously aware of a smell for it to change their results in behavioral tests. I think there’s more to this than that.”

“How on earth do you know this stuff Lizzy?” Ben said, impressed that she could just pull all this up.

“My dad and my Auntie both work in related fields and I read some of their research papers on this a few years ago”

“Well the premise seems reasonable. Do you have any ideas on how we can test this?” Ben said.

“I’m not sure, I’ll need to think about it a bit and maybe do some digging.”

“Wait a minute, if it may be about smell, would it be helpful to have something that had my scent on it?” Ben was thinking about how tracking dogs used clothing as a scent marker.

“Hmmm. sure. Maybe I can come up with a way to test for unusual chemicals. My Auntie works in a biochem lab in Olympia”.

“Can we keep this as private as possible? I really wouldn’t want this to get out.” Ben reached over to the back of his desk and retrieved his pack. Reaching in he pulled out one of his running shirts. “This should do it. So sorry about the sweat.” Ben rolled the shirt into his towel and handed it to Lizzy.