For example, when trying to decide whether to help another girl who has embarrassingly tripped on the first day of class, we are told:

So, she helps the poor girl out. And when one of her friends gets cancer, we learn:

Other definitions of "normal" used in similar ways in this story include those of normal vector bundles in differential geometry, normal schemes in algebraic geometry, normal subgroups, normal numbers for which each digit has equal density in the decimal representation, etc. (There sure are a lot of meanings for "normal" in mathematics. And this isn't even all of them. For instance, I don't think this story utilizes it in the sense of a normally distributed random variable!)

I think the whole idea is clever. And, as far as I can tell, the technical definitions are all correct. (Which make sense since "Sam E. Sutin" is the pseudonym of University of Nebraska math PhD candidate Sam MacDonald.) However, I found some of the metaphorical applications to be quite a stretch. And, it bothers me a little that the main character -- a high school student taking pre-calculus-- would probably not know or understand most of these definitions. Still, my compliments to the author for collecting so many mathematical definitions of "normal" in one place, and combining them into a touching YA lesbian romance.

This story appeared in the collection "This Exquisite Topology". Although the title of that collection makes one think that many of the works would be mathematical fiction, and two other stories contained a little math, none of the others quite met my requirements for inclusion in this database.