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Chapter Seven: Wherein I get a sunburn, and Adam feeds me cookies

Louis lay in the sun until his face tightened and he feared he would get a nasty sunburn. Not wanting a peeling face for CCC, he got to his feet and brushed what dust he could from the back of his coat and jeans. He ruffled his hair and dislodged a cloud of gritty sand that spattered around on his leather shoulders and down his collar. He would get those out later, he thought as he started back towards his car.

The car was further away than it appeared above the flat only minimally secluding scrub brush. In the heat and dust, Louis licked his dry lips and swallowed, remembering he hadn’t had breakfast, which wasn’t abnormal for him since he slept in much too late most mornings. Usually it wouldn’t matter but in the desert, dehydrated and overheated, he wished he had.

“You’re so pathetic,” he muttered, stepping around a mass of cacti. He hadn’t traveled that far into the desert and would be back to his car in no time.

No time came in ten minutes: longer than desirable, but okay. Louis climbed into the car which if possible, was hotter than outside and clicked his seatbelt on. When he started the motor, he glanced at the little clock in the dashboard resembling a stick of gum in shape and size. 2:04 PM. His next class, chemistry, had just begun. By the time he made it back to campus and into the classroom, class would be half over.

Louis could make it there for half of it, but frankly, he wasn’t in the mood. So when he put the car into gear and began driving towards town, he stopped at his house and went inside. His jacket made a leathery rrrp sound when he unzipped it. He struggled his arms out of the flamethrower straps as he approached the kitchen table. He got his arms free and carefully stored the technological jacket flat on the table. Louis stepped around the junk from his book bag, closed and latched the tool chest and took it to the table where he opened it again and sat in the only chair.

Louis unzipped the sleeve to lay bare the underbelly of the flamethrower and smiled at the ingenuity of putting a zipper there. He was glad Paul had thought of it, and thankful that his mother had taught him how to sew.

Louis investigated the scratch on the machine and carefully removed the strap. He drummed his fingers on the jagged line on the metal. His sleeve was completely soaked with gasoline from his vacation in the desert; soaking over an already soaked and dried sleeve from the police station mission. If Louis didn’t get the leak taken care of, one of these days he would catch himself on fire, which did not sound at all appealing. Louis had been burnt a few times and found it to be the worst type of pain, terrible form the start, lingering for hours, and almost certainly leaving a scar.

Louis traced the crack along the entire underside of the pressure tank, amazed that it kept any pressure at all. It needed welding shut, probably with a long thin sheet of metal on top. Louis stood and went out the back door and down the six wooden steps to ground level. He had just the piece.

He had torn it from his junked VW Bug a week ago, immensely pleased by its shape and sturdiness, but couldn’t think of a place to use it, so he had left it on the seat.

Louis stepped around dismembered tires and bumpers hidden in the knee high grass that hissed as he walked through it up to the vehicle in question. He pulled the rusted door open with a criiitch and found the twelve by two by one-eighth inch strip of chrome painted steel that used to be a part of the front grate. Louis held it in the sun, squinted as he tried to gaze at it and smiled.

Perfect.

Louis took his prize inside and set it on the table. Then he went into the kitchen and dug his welding torch, mask and gloves out from under the sink, setting them also on the table. From his tool chest he took a pair of warped and blackened tongs and then set the tool chest on the chair. He freed the pressure chamber fro its jacket sleeve and disconnected the fuel hose, setting the rest of his contraption onto the floor.

He pulled on the heavy pale leathery grease-stained gloves. It wasn’t clear whether Louis’s house doubled as a machine shop or if his machine shop doubled as a house. It certainly was designed to be a house first and foremost, but Louis rarely used objects for their intended purposes, as was evident by his using a grating bar to patch his flamethrower and welding them together on his kitchen table.

Louis pulled the cylindrical mask over his face and ignited the blue flame of his welding torch. Using the tongs, he lay the patch over the crack and carefully fused the edges to the pressure chamber. The metal liquefied and sealed, like wax, and it wasn’t long before the grating spoke was part of Louis’s machine. All except for the one side, since the grate ended up being too long. Louis tapped the offending piece with the tongs and then, through the green tinted safety glass, watched himself melt the section of metal, making it easily removable with the tongs. He pulled it away like a s’more with too much molten marshmallow and let the determined few strings of metal cool. Then in one quick motion, he snapped them and tossed it aside to seal the last side.

As he did, the phone rang. He let it ring once…twice… he couldn’t imagine anyone would be calling except Paul, and Paul was the last person he wanted to talk to. Louis considered for a moment that Summer actually took first in that category, but then discarded that notion. Ring… He did want to talk to Summer, very much in fact. He wanted to ask her what she was thinking by taking his notebook and say some things about honesty and such that would make her feel terribly ashamed. Ring… And then he wouldn’t forgive her. Louis turned off the torch and set it on the table. Ring… That would show her.

The answering machine kicked on with its calm robotic female voice bidding the caller to leave their message, then beeped.

“Hey Louis!” came the cheerful voice that sounded like Adam’s. “This is Adam.” Yup. Louis opened his welding mask so that it stuck straight out from his forehead like a horn. “I was wanting to brainstorm about our project, maybe we could get a project nailed down, I don’t know—“

Before Louis knew what had happened, he was holding the phone to his ear. Perhaps the fact that his machine was finally repaired mixed with the prospect of a scientific distraction from the complex and frustrating mist that swirled around him these days had made him reckless.

“Hi Adam,” he said into the phone. There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Louis!” Adam finally said. “I’m glad I caught you. Are you free right now to discuss our project?”

“Can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” Louis replied taking off his welding mask and setting it next to the answering machine.

“Great! I can come to your place, that way you don’t have to go anywhere.”

“Eh—uhm…”

“Or we could meet at the college. Or my place,” Adam quickly offered. “Either way.”

To be on campus was to increase Louis’s chances of running into Summer. However, he didn’t want Adam there as an audience to their “discussion.” Adam would find some way to smooth over the conflict, and then there would be an ongoing quiz on the contents of the missing notebook, served with a side of playful banter. Louis wasn’t in the mood for that.

“How about your place?” Louis replied.

He could almost hear Adam smiling through the phone. “Great! My apartment is two blocks from campus, Fourth Avenue, 22922, room 109. Do I need to repeat it so you can write it down?”

“No, I got it.”

“Great,” Adam said again. “I’ll see you in, what? Twenty minutes?”

“Sounds good,” Louis said.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Bye!”

Louis placed the receiver back on the stand and stared at it for a moment. The last time he had gone over to anyone’s house besides Paul’s and his mom’s was fifth grade for a birthday party of someone in his class he hardly knew. It had been one of those “invite your whole class” parties, his first and last. It proved to be nothing more than school-annex since the same cliques formed, of which Louis was the only member of his group. He had been awkward and mean; getting an early start on the rebel mentality that is so prevalent in high school. Authority didn’t daunt him. He had learned in fifth grade, actually, that just because someone older did something didn’t make it right, and that just because he was only ten, didn’t mean he had to sit back and take it. He couldn’t take it, especially when his mom was the one who would suffer for it.

Louis grabbed his bag, closed the blinds in the living room, locked the back door and turned off the lights. He pulled his shoes on and left the house.

Well, he could take care of himself now, Louis thought as he locked the front door and walked towards his car. Adam seemed nice, but so had Louis’s dad. He had been charming to everyone outside their home, with what Louis’s mom described as his twenty diamond smile. Adam had a sparkling smile as well and if he turned out to be like Dad, Louis could protect himself. He would never be bullied again.

In that light, it was good that he was going over to Adam’s apartment instead of somewhere on campus. At home, the shady center of a person creeps to the surface and Louis would know from their meeting whether Adam’s was dark or not.

XXX

Louis found Adam’s apartment building quickly, though it would have been quicker if the street it was on hadn’t been a one-way going the other way. Once around the block had remedied the situation and soon he had parallel parked and was strolling under the treated wooden balcony. Perfectly round shrubs as green as the crayon lined the stone pathway. A palm tree rose at the corner whenever the walkway bent, as though serving as a brace to the building. The mess of crumpled dead branches and bark that surrounded the top half of the palm trees on campus was non existent on these and Louis tried to imagine how the gardeners had reached the top of such tall trees.

Louis snapped his eyes back to the doors he was quickly passing. He should be watching for room 109. He was already at 112, so he backtracked. Louis stopped at 109, checked to make sure his bag was still over his shoulder, and knocked on the door.

In two seconds, the door opened to Adam in basketball shorts and a red tee-shirt. He grinned his incredible full-faced grin upon seeing his wrinkled Rolling Stones tee-shirt clad friend.

“Hi-ya!” the giant greeted and pulled the door fully open, stepping out of the way. “Come on in.”

Louis stepped over the doorframe and inside the surprisingly large apartment decorated as well as a homemaker’s magazine photo. Very clean, very homey. Almost overly so. And it was air-conditioned: such a contrast to the temperature outside that Louis felt like he had stepped into a refrigerator.

“I made some chocolate chip cookies that finished baking literally just a minute before you arrived,” Adam prattled as he shut the door. “Would you like some?”

“Ah, sure,” Louis agreed, still scanning the living room. Adam had a widescreen TV with surround sound by the look of the randomly placed speakers around his leather couch. The kitchen was its own room, weirdly enough.

Louis followed Adam further into the room, leaving dusty footprints as he went. Adam’s laptop and science books were lying on the coffee table in the living room.

“I figured we could sit on the couch,” Adam explained, noticing Louis’s eye line. “Since the kitchen is like eighty degrees from the oven.”

Louis’s house was usually eighty degrees.

“Whatever’s fine,” Louis replied following Adam into the kitchen.

Adam took a porcelain plate from the cabinet, a spatula from the drawer by the sink and began scraping the palm-sized cookies from the cookie sheet on the stove.

“Do you like milk?” he asked.

“With cookies, yes,” Louis answered.

Adam smiled. “You have good taste, my friend.” He pointed at the cupboard near Louis’s head. “Would you get two glasses out of there and pour milk into them? The milk is in the refrigerator.”

Louis set the clear sixteen ounce glasses onto the counter and opened the refrigerator. He couldn’t help noticing the amount of food crowding the shelves. He took the half-gallon from the door, let the door seal back into place and took the milk over to the glasses.

“You seem a little preoccupied, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Adam mentioned, piling the last cookie onto the plate.

“I do mind you saying so,” Louis muttered as he poured the milk.

“Okay,” Adam held up his hands. “I won’t go there,” he promised, picking up the plate of cookies. “Just know I’m always here if you need to talk.”

Adam left the kitchen, not waiting for Louis to answer, which is good since Louis didn’t know what he would have said. He grabbed the glasses of milk and followed Adam into the living room. Adam already had one cookie in his mouth and, with a grateful “Mmmr!” he took one of the glasses from Louis and washed it down. Louis set his own glass beside the plate on the coffee table and sat on the opposite end of the couch.

“So,” Adam began as he took another cookie. “I really like your idea about scar tissue. It’s interesting, broad, applicable, and unique. I don’t think anyone else will be doing it. So long as we keep it a secret, or there may be some copycats.” He said the last part with a mischievous smile.

Well, Louis was good at keeping secrets.

“Sounds good to me,” Louis replied, opening up his biology notebook.

“There are only a few things we can do with it, though, without it getting gory,” Adam added. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like cutting rats to study how quickly scar tissue forms.”

“We don’t actually have to do an experiment, I don’t think,” Louis mentioned, searching his pages for the flier detailing the project that he had stuffed in his notebook.

Adam opened his folder and pulled out his own copy, as crisp as it had been when the professor had handed it out. He skimmed the yellow page for a moment, taking a bite of his cookie and then shook his head.

“Nope,” he concluded. “It doesn’t say we need an experiment.”

“It’s way too simple, but we could start by investigating into how scar tissue forms and if it changes based on the type of injury,” Louis offered.

“I don’t think that’s too simple,” Adam protested. “So long as we go deep enough into the ‘how’ of it.”

“It is freshman Biology, I guess,” Louis consented.

“That’s the spirit.” Adam punched him in the shoulder. Louis rubbed the spot, annoyed. Why did Adam have to keep touching him?
Adam opened his folder and taking the pencil lying on the coffee table, wrote the gist of their project idea on the top of his flier. “Do you want to research the process of its formation or investigate whether there are different types for different injuries?”

“I’ll take the second one,” Louis replied. He already had scars from burns and cuts and he was sure Paul had some interesting chemicals scars if the man would let Louis see them. However, Paul might claim he never makes mistakes and therefore has no scars.

“And I’ll take the first one,” Adam finished as he wrote his task on the flier below their topic. “Well, that was quick,” he commented. “You haven’t even eaten anything yet.”

Louis leaned over and took a cookie from the plate like a construction crane. It melted as he bit into it.

“That Summer is a neat girl,” Adam mentioned.

Louis almost choked on his food.

“Are you alright?” Adam asked, shocked.

“Yeah,” Louis wheezed, his eyes beginning to water. “Swallowed wrong.” He took a drink of milk, swallowed and then coughed to loosen the remaining crumbs in his throat.

“Like I was saying,” Adam continued, “I ran into her today after class and we got to talking. She mentioned you.” He took another cookie.

Adam sure ate a lot.

“Did she now?” Louis asked more forcefully than necessary.

“Yeah. She said she found your notebook on the floor of her car.” Adam’s eyebrows rose. “Now what was it doing there?”

So she had kept it! What if she had read through it already?

Louis shoveled his belongings back into his bag and shot to his feet. Somehow Adam managed to go slack-jawed and chew at the same time.
“What is it?” he asked.

Louis grabbed his bag by the strap and jumped over the corner of the coffee table in his path to the door.

Adam stood. “What happened?”

The only answer he received was the banging of the front door against the wall as Louis threw it open and darted outside, bag in tow.

Description
Chapter Seven: Wherein I get a sunburn, and Adam feeds me cookies

Louis lay in the sun until his face tightened and he feared he would get a nasty sunburn. Not wanting a peeling face for CCC, he got to his feet and brushed what dust he could from the back of his coat and jeans. He ruffled his hair and dislodged a cloud of gritty sand that spattered around on his leather shoulders and down his collar. He would get those out later, he thought as he started back towards his car.

The car was further away than it appeared above the flat only minimally secluding scrub brush. In the heat and dust, Louis licked his dry lips and swallowed, remembering he hadn’t had breakfast, which wasn’t abnormal for him since he slept in much too late most mornings. Usually it wouldn’t matter but in the desert, dehydrated and overheated, he wished he had.

“You’re so pathetic,” he muttered, stepping around a mass of cacti. He hadn’t traveled that far into the desert and would be back to his car in no time.

No time came in ten minutes: longer than desirable, but okay. Louis climbed into the car which if possible, was hotter than outside and clicked his seatbelt on. When he started the motor, he glanced at the little clock in the dashboard resembling a stick of gum in shape and size. 2:04 PM. His next class, chemistry, had just begun. By the time he made it back to campus and into the classroom, class would be half over.

Louis could make it there for half of it, but frankly, he wasn’t in the mood. So when he put the car into gear and began driving towards town, he stopped at his house and went inside. His jacket made a leathery rrrp sound when he unzipped it. He struggled his arms out of the flamethrower straps as he approached the kitchen table. He got his arms free and carefully stored the technological jacket flat on the table. Louis stepped around the junk from his book bag, closed and latched the tool chest and took it to the table where he opened it again and sat in the only chair.

Louis unzipped the sleeve to lay bare the underbelly of the flamethrower and smiled at the ingenuity of putting a zipper there. He was glad Paul had thought of it, and thankful that his mother had taught him how to sew.

Louis investigated the scratch on the machine and carefully removed the strap. He drummed his fingers on the jagged line on the metal. His sleeve was completely soaked with gasoline from his vacation in the desert; soaking over an already soaked and dried sleeve from the police station mission. If Louis didn’t get the leak taken care of, one of these days he would catch himself on fire, which did not sound at all appealing. Louis had been burnt a few times and found it to be the worst type of pain, terrible form the start, lingering for hours, and almost certainly leaving a scar.

Louis traced the crack along the entire underside of the pressure tank, amazed that it kept any pressure at all. It needed welding shut, probably with a long thin sheet of metal on top. Louis stood and went out the back door and down the six wooden steps to ground level. He had just the piece.

He had torn it from his junked VW Bug a week ago, immensely pleased by its shape and sturdiness, but couldn’t think of a place to use it, so he had left it on the seat.

Louis stepped around dismembered tires and bumpers hidden in the knee high grass that hissed as he walked through it up to the vehicle in question. He pulled the rusted door open with a criiitch and found the twelve by two by one-eighth inch strip of chrome painted steel that used to be a part of the front grate. Louis held it in the sun, squinted as he tried to gaze at it and smiled.

Perfect.

Louis took his prize inside and set it on the table. Then he went into the kitchen and dug his welding torch, mask and gloves out from under the sink, setting them also on the table. From his tool chest he took a pair of warped and blackened tongs and then set the tool chest on the chair. He freed the pressure chamber fro its jacket sleeve and disconnected the fuel hose, setting the rest of his contraption onto the floor.

He pulled on the heavy pale leathery grease-stained gloves. It wasn’t clear whether Louis’s house doubled as a machine shop or if his machine shop doubled as a house. It certainly was designed to be a house first and foremost, but Louis rarely used objects for their intended purposes, as was evident by his using a grating bar to patch his flamethrower and welding them together on his kitchen table.

Louis pulled the cylindrical mask over his face and ignited the blue flame of his welding torch. Using the tongs, he lay the patch over the crack and carefully fused the edges to the pressure chamber. The metal liquefied and sealed, like wax, and it wasn’t long before the grating spoke was part of Louis’s machine. All except for the one side, since the grate ended up being too long. Louis tapped the offending piece with the tongs and then, through the green tinted safety glass, watched himself melt the section of metal, making it easily removable with the tongs. He pulled it away like a s’more with too much molten marshmallow and let the determined few strings of metal cool. Then in one quick motion, he snapped them and tossed it aside to seal the last side.

As he did, the phone rang. He let it ring once…twice… he couldn’t imagine anyone would be calling except Paul, and Paul was the last person he wanted to talk to. Louis considered for a moment that Summer actually took first in that category, but then discarded that notion. Ring… He did want to talk to Summer, very much in fact. He wanted to ask her what she was thinking by taking his notebook and say some things about honesty and such that would make her feel terribly ashamed. Ring… And then he wouldn’t forgive her. Louis turned off the torch and set it on the table. Ring… That would show her.

The answering machine kicked on with its calm robotic female voice bidding the caller to leave their message, then beeped.

“Hey Louis!” came the cheerful voice that sounded like Adam’s. “This is Adam.” Yup. Louis opened his welding mask so that it stuck straight out from his forehead like a horn. “I was wanting to brainstorm about our project, maybe we could get a project nailed down, I don’t know—“

Before Louis knew what had happened, he was holding the phone to his ear. Perhaps the fact that his machine was finally repaired mixed with the prospect of a scientific distraction from the complex and frustrating mist that swirled around him these days had made him reckless.

“Hi Adam,” he said into the phone. There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Louis!” Adam finally said. “I’m glad I caught you. Are you free right now to discuss our project?”

“Can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” Louis replied taking off his welding mask and setting it next to the answering machine.

“Great! I can come to your place, that way you don’t have to go anywhere.”

“Eh—uhm…”

“Or we could meet at the college. Or my place,” Adam quickly offered. “Either way.”

To be on campus was to increase Louis’s chances of running into Summer. However, he didn’t want Adam there as an audience to their “discussion.” Adam would find some way to smooth over the conflict, and then there would be an ongoing quiz on the contents of the missing notebook, served with a side of playful banter. Louis wasn’t in the mood for that.

“How about your place?” Louis replied.

He could almost hear Adam smiling through the phone. “Great! My apartment is two blocks from campus, Fourth Avenue, 22922, room 109. Do I need to repeat it so you can write it down?”

“No, I got it.”

“Great,” Adam said again. “I’ll see you in, what? Twenty minutes?”

“Sounds good,” Louis said.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Bye!”

Louis placed the receiver back on the stand and stared at it for a moment. The last time he had gone over to anyone’s house besides Paul’s and his mom’s was fifth grade for a birthday party of someone in his class he hardly knew. It had been one of those “invite your whole class” parties, his first and last. It proved to be nothing more than school-annex since the same cliques formed, of which Louis was the only member of his group. He had been awkward and mean; getting an early start on the rebel mentality that is so prevalent in high school. Authority didn’t daunt him. He had learned in fifth grade, actually, that just because someone older did something didn’t make it right, and that just because he was only ten, didn’t mean he had to sit back and take it. He couldn’t take it, especially when his mom was the one who would suffer for it.

Louis grabbed his bag, closed the blinds in the living room, locked the back door and turned off the lights. He pulled his shoes on and left the house.

Well, he could take care of himself now, Louis thought as he locked the front door and walked towards his car. Adam seemed nice, but so had Louis’s dad. He had been charming to everyone outside their home, with what Louis’s mom described as his twenty diamond smile. Adam had a sparkling smile as well and if he turned out to be like Dad, Louis could protect himself. He would never be bullied again.

In that light, it was good that he was going over to Adam’s apartment instead of somewhere on campus. At home, the shady center of a person creeps to the surface and Louis would know from their meeting whether Adam’s was dark or not.

XXX

Louis found Adam’s apartment building quickly, though it would have been quicker if the street it was on hadn’t been a one-way going the other way. Once around the block had remedied the situation and soon he had parallel parked and was strolling under the treated wooden balcony. Perfectly round shrubs as green as the crayon lined the stone pathway. A palm tree rose at the corner whenever the walkway bent, as though serving as a brace to the building. The mess of crumpled dead branches and bark that surrounded the top half of the palm trees on campus was non existent on these and Louis tried to imagine how the gardeners had reached the top of such tall trees.

Louis snapped his eyes back to the doors he was quickly passing. He should be watching for room 109. He was already at 112, so he backtracked. Louis stopped at 109, checked to make sure his bag was still over his shoulder, and knocked on the door.

In two seconds, the door opened to Adam in basketball shorts and a red tee-shirt. He grinned his incredible full-faced grin upon seeing his wrinkled Rolling Stones tee-shirt clad friend.

“Hi-ya!” the giant greeted and pulled the door fully open, stepping out of the way. “Come on in.”

Louis stepped over the doorframe and inside the surprisingly large apartment decorated as well as a homemaker’s magazine photo. Very clean, very homey. Almost overly so. And it was air-conditioned: such a contrast to the temperature outside that Louis felt like he had stepped into a refrigerator.

“I made some chocolate chip cookies that finished baking literally just a minute before you arrived,” Adam prattled as he shut the door. “Would you like some?”

“Ah, sure,” Louis agreed, still scanning the living room. Adam had a widescreen TV with surround sound by the look of the randomly placed speakers around his leather couch. The kitchen was its own room, weirdly enough.

Louis followed Adam further into the room, leaving dusty footprints as he went. Adam’s laptop and science books were lying on the coffee table in the living room.

“I figured we could sit on the couch,” Adam explained, noticing Louis’s eye line. “Since the kitchen is like eighty degrees from the oven.”

Louis’s house was usually eighty degrees.

“Whatever’s fine,” Louis replied following Adam into the kitchen.

Adam took a porcelain plate from the cabinet, a spatula from the drawer by the sink and began scraping the palm-sized cookies from the cookie sheet on the stove.

“Do you like milk?” he asked.

“With cookies, yes,” Louis answered.

Adam smiled. “You have good taste, my friend.” He pointed at the cupboard near Louis’s head. “Would you get two glasses out of there and pour milk into them? The milk is in the refrigerator.”

Louis set the clear sixteen ounce glasses onto the counter and opened the refrigerator. He couldn’t help noticing the amount of food crowding the shelves. He took the half-gallon from the door, let the door seal back into place and took the milk over to the glasses.

“You seem a little preoccupied, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Adam mentioned, piling the last cookie onto the plate.

“I do mind you saying so,” Louis muttered as he poured the milk.

“Okay,” Adam held up his hands. “I won’t go there,” he promised, picking up the plate of cookies. “Just know I’m always here if you need to talk.”

Adam left the kitchen, not waiting for Louis to answer, which is good since Louis didn’t know what he would have said. He grabbed the glasses of milk and followed Adam into the living room. Adam already had one cookie in his mouth and, with a grateful “Mmmr!” he took one of the glasses from Louis and washed it down. Louis set his own glass beside the plate on the coffee table and sat on the opposite end of the couch.

“So,” Adam began as he took another cookie. “I really like your idea about scar tissue. It’s interesting, broad, applicable, and unique. I don’t think anyone else will be doing it. So long as we keep it a secret, or there may be some copycats.” He said the last part with a mischievous smile.

Well, Louis was good at keeping secrets.

“Sounds good to me,” Louis replied, opening up his biology notebook.

“There are only a few things we can do with it, though, without it getting gory,” Adam added. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like cutting rats to study how quickly scar tissue forms.”

“We don’t actually have to do an experiment, I don’t think,” Louis mentioned, searching his pages for the flier detailing the project that he had stuffed in his notebook.

Adam opened his folder and pulled out his own copy, as crisp as it had been when the professor had handed it out. He skimmed the yellow page for a moment, taking a bite of his cookie and then shook his head.

“Nope,” he concluded. “It doesn’t say we need an experiment.”

“It’s way too simple, but we could start by investigating into how scar tissue forms and if it changes based on the type of injury,” Louis offered.

“I don’t think that’s too simple,” Adam protested. “So long as we go deep enough into the ‘how’ of it.”

“It is freshman Biology, I guess,” Louis consented.

“That’s the spirit.” Adam punched him in the shoulder. Louis rubbed the spot, annoyed. Why did Adam have to keep touching him?
Adam opened his folder and taking the pencil lying on the coffee table, wrote the gist of their project idea on the top of his flier. “Do you want to research the process of its formation or investigate whether there are different types for different injuries?”

“I’ll take the second one,” Louis replied. He already had scars from burns and cuts and he was sure Paul had some interesting chemicals scars if the man would let Louis see them. However, Paul might claim he never makes mistakes and therefore has no scars.

“And I’ll take the first one,” Adam finished as he wrote his task on the flier below their topic. “Well, that was quick,” he commented. “You haven’t even eaten anything yet.”

Louis leaned over and took a cookie from the plate like a construction crane. It melted as he bit into it.

“That Summer is a neat girl,” Adam mentioned.

Louis almost choked on his food.

“Are you alright?” Adam asked, shocked.

“Yeah,” Louis wheezed, his eyes beginning to water. “Swallowed wrong.” He took a drink of milk, swallowed and then coughed to loosen the remaining crumbs in his throat.

“Like I was saying,” Adam continued, “I ran into her today after class and we got to talking. She mentioned you.” He took another cookie.

Adam sure ate a lot.

“Did she now?” Louis asked more forcefully than necessary.

“Yeah. She said she found your notebook on the floor of her car.” Adam’s eyebrows rose. “Now what was it doing there?”

So she had kept it! What if she had read through it already?

Louis shoveled his belongings back into his bag and shot to his feet. Somehow Adam managed to go slack-jawed and chew at the same time.
“What is it?” he asked.

Louis grabbed his bag by the strap and jumped over the corner of the coffee table in his path to the door.

Adam stood. “What happened?”

The only answer he received was the banging of the front door against the wall as Louis threw it open and darted outside, bag in tow.