Chapter 4
The morning after is always a letdown. The world is too bright, too cold, and the noise of campus is a reminder that the universe does not care if you reinvented yourself last night. Or if you kissed a boy in the dark and then evaporated like a volatile organic.
I’m halfway through rehearsing my excuse for Professor Ely when I catch a voice—Aaron’s—honed to that perfect volume where you can pretend not to listen but still catch every word.
He’s leaning against a marble planter under a lamppost, just outside the math building, with his friend Malik, who looks like he should be on a recruitment poster for Division I basketball.
“Bro, I’m telling you, we had real chemistry,” Aaron says. He’s wearing a navy jacket over a black tee, the sleeves pushed up so you can see the flex of his forearms even from a distance. “But like Cinderella at midnight, she just vanished. No one even knows her name.”
Malik adjusts his baseball cap, squinting. “So, no one’s seen her anywhere? It’s like she disappeared off campus.”
Aaron leans back, scanning the parade of students with a kind of hopeful predation. “I keep scrolling through the photos, hoping someone tagged her. Nothing. It’s like she’s a glitch in the Matrix.”
My stomach twinges, a weird, traitorous spark of guilt. The part of me that wants to dissolve into the cement wishes I could be anywhere but here. The other part—the one that noticed the way Aaron’s mouth curled around the word “chemistry”—wants to keep listening forever.
Malik snorts. “You sure you didn’t hallucinate her?”
Aaron elbows him, grinning. “If I did, it was the best hallucination of my life.”
I slow my walk, letting a cluster of guys in matching parkas overtake me. The trick is to act casual, like you’re not registering anything at all, but my face prickles with heat even as the wind chafes my cheeks. I don’t look over. I don’t have to—Aaron’s voice carries.
He’s not talking about me, I remind myself. Not really. He’s talking about “Jessica.” The impossibility of her. The night that split in two, before and after, and the way he kept his hand on my hip even after the knock on the door.
Malik shrugs. “You sure you want to find her? What if she’s, like, a Psych major?”
“You’re a Psych major.”
“Exactly.”
They both laugh, a sound that bounces off the planter and through the cold air.
I duck my head and kneel to re-tie my sneaker, even though it’s already double-knotted.
From this angle I can see the curve of Aaron’s jaw, the way his hair looks darker in the morning sun, and the raw pink scrape on his knuckle.
I remember, with embarrassing clarity, how his hands felt at my waist.
I knot my shoe with a violence that surprises me, then stand and brush the grit off my jeans. The urge to turn and run is strong. Instead, I make myself walk forward, posture straight, eyes fixed on the Porter Hall sign as if it’s a lighthouse and I’m a ship about to crash.
As I pass, Aaron’s gaze flickers. Not at me, not really—he’s scanning for miracles, not suspects—but for a nanosecond our eyes meet, and I am a supernova of nerves. I look away first. I always do.
I reach the shade of the building and let out the breath I’ve been holding. After adjusting my backpack strap, I wipe my sweaty palm on my thigh and keep moving.
Inside, the echo of their conversation follows me, a vapor trail of possibility and danger. It’s not just that he noticed me. It’s that he’s still looking.
I try not to smile. It doesn’t work.
—ΠΩ—
I’m convinced lecture halls are designed for humiliation.
Tiered seating, walls painted the color of raw panic, banks of fluorescent lights that bleach the world until even the air looks synthetic.
I take my usual spot in the fourth row, dead center, as if being as far from both escape and authority will somehow make me invisible.
By 9:59 AM, the room hums with the susurrus of caffeine and last-minute cramming.
I arrange my pens—three colors, plus a mechanical pencil for diagrams—and flatten my notebook open to a clean, uncreased page.
I know the sequence by heart: title, date, running header. It’s the only ritual that works.
Professor Collins sweeps in at exactly 10:00, carrying three things: a battered thermos, a laser pointer, and a stack of handouts so sharply squared they could draw blood. His tie is crooked, but his hair is perfect, every gray strand swept back with military precision.
Today’s lecture topic is nucleophilic aromatic substitution, but Collins opens with a thinly veiled threat. “There are two kinds of students in organic chemistry,” he says, eyes raking the hall. “Those who respect the rules—and those who become the cautionary tale.”
The class titters. I don’t.
I’m already three lines into my notes when someone slides into the seat next to mine. It’s a minor seismic event, a ripple in the force, and I clock the cologne and the heavy-lidded confidence before I even look up.
Aaron Thompson. Alive, upright, and apparently oblivious to last night’s existential crisis.
He smells like Old Spice and new laundry, and his hair is still damp, like he rolled out of bed and into the world in one motion.
“Morning, Montgomery,” he whispers, voice pitched for my ears only.
I grunt something noncommittal and focus on my paper. The words “rate-determining step” march across the page in tight, orderly script. I will not be the first to crack.
Professor Collins launches into the lecture, voice clipped and dry as sandpaper. “Recall that nucleophilicity and basicity are not the same property. This is a common point of confusion.” He stalks the front row, eyes sharp behind his glasses.
Aaron leans closer. “Hey. You were at that Pi Omega party last night, right?”
I refrain from looking at him and keep writing. “A lot of people were.”
He ignores the brush-off. “Did you see that girl? The one in the red dress looking like Jessica Rabbit. I swear, she was like… an actual cartoon come to life.”
My pencil falters, just a blip, but I recover by drawing an unnecessary methyl group. “I did not,” I mumble.
Aaron’s gaze doesn’t let up. “You sure? She was, like, kind of impossible to miss.”
I make the mistake of glancing up. His eyes are brown, deep and insistent, and for a second I wonder if he can see through the layers of makeup and bravado that kept him at bay last night. “I mostly kept to dark corners. Searched for signs of intelligent life. Found none.”
Aaron chokes and quickly subdues a laugh.
I look down, adjust my glasses, and push ahead in the notes.
Aaron smirks, like he’s enjoying the chase. “I mean, maybe she left early or something? Nobody seems to know who she is.”
Professor Collins is mid-explanation, drawing aromatic rings on the whiteboard with surgical precision. “Resonance stabilization, ladies and gentlemen. It’s all about the delocalization of electrons.”
I try to anchor myself in the mechanism. Benzene ring. Nitro group. Curved arrows. All simple, predictable, governed by rules. Unlike this conversation, which has gone entirely off-script.
Aaron bumps my elbow, his voice dropping even lower. “You seem like the kind of guy who’d notice stuff. You must’ve seen her.”
Sweat beads at my hairline, a slow tickle behind my right ear. My knuckles whiten around my mechanical pencil. “Honestly, I was kind of hammered,” I say, willing my voice to sound casual. “Don’t remember much.”
He laughs, soft and surprised. “You? Hammered? Come on, man, you’ve got Ely first thing in the morning. That guy is unforgiving.”
“And I’ll pay later for missing that class this morning.”
Aaron grins, exposing perfect teeth. “Fair. But seriously, if you hear anything, let me know. My friend made a bet and now he owes me a 6-pack if I can prove she was real.”
There is a beat where I almost tell him. It’s right there, fluttering at the back of my throat, but then I remember the way he looked through me in the hall, scanning for someone who wasn’t me. I let the silence settle, then nod like I’m making a note to myself.
“Got it,” I say. “If I hear anything.”
Aaron leans back, satisfied, and starts doodling molecular structures in the margin of his own notebook. His handwriting is chaotic—loops, arrows, too many exclamation points—but the drawings are weirdly accurate.
I chance a peek, and he catches me. He lifts an eyebrow, the tiniest invitation.
I look away. Focus. Nitro group. Rate-determining step.
Then, from the front of the room: “Mr. Montgomery, Mr. Thompson—perhaps you’d like to share your insights with the rest of the class?”
It’s a surgical strike. The cold hard glares are immediate, a ripple of ire or maybe exasperation at my expense. My cheeks ignite, blood roaring in my ears. Collins stares, one eyebrow raised, arms folded.
Aaron recovers first. “Just discussing the role of substituent effects, Professor.”
Collins doesn’t buy it. “Perhaps you can demonstrate on the board?”
Aaron shrugs, stands, and strolls down the aisle with all the casual grace of a man who’s never tripped over his own feet in his life.
He takes the marker and, without hesitation, sketches the entire mechanism—aromatic ring, nucleophile, curved arrows—then circles the rate-determining step. He even adds a little smiley face.
Collins is not amused, but he nods. “Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Montgomery, do you concur with your colleague’s analysis?”
I’m so rattled I nearly drop my pen. “Y-yes, sir,” I stammer, voice thin.
“Good.” Collins turns back to the board. “Moving on.”
Aaron winks at me as he sits, and my hand is shaking so badly I knock over my water bottle. The cap is loose, and the spill is immediate: a spreading stain across my notes, the ink bleeding into Rorschach blots of molecular failure.