Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
So far, every time in my life I’ve uttered the word “neuroplasticity” I’ve gotten one of two things: the eye roll gloriously dedicated to tax season, or the pitiful look of “sure, nerd, you may leave now.”
And I get it, I do. But while neuroplasticity is a foreign concept to most, it’s an essential part of your brain that you can’t avoid, nor should you want to.
You see, it’s like the group-chat admin in your skull.
Threads you keep replying to—lyrics, names, that meme you use as a vocal stim—get pinned to the top of your mind; while threads you mute or forget to think about sink into the archive along with that embarrassing story from eighth grade.
Neuroplasticity is, by all intents and purposes, why practice works and why new places stop feeling foreign. Use a pathway and the synapses strengthen; ignore it and they loosen. Circuits reroute, branches sprout. That’s the machinery that lets any of us get better and adapt.
Humans don’t own the patent, though. The animal kingdom is crowded with learners.
But almost no one does adaptation quite like cephalopods because evolution handed them a wild set-up: a distributed nervous system, fast synapses, and a genomic party trick—extensive RNA editing in neurons that tweaks protein blueprints without touching the underlying DNA.
It’s like having a parts catalog you can customize on the fly.
Which is why they feel like a true wonder of nature to me, and why I will evangelize until my last breath.
And yesterday, Damon gave me fresh evidence I’m chasing the right thesis.
His sudden arm swap—green taking over a stacking task it has never initiated—has had my brain buzzing for twelve hours.
While I’m more than aware that every arm is anatomically and neurologically capable of the whole repertoire—grip, probe, flatten, flow— octopuses, Damon included, still develop preferences.
So why the sudden switch? I spent the night running hypotheses in circles and landed on the only rational next step: ask Dr. Kymbert.
She did say I could come by anytime, right? I’m simply holding her to it.
I pull the door of my room shut as quietly as possible, tiptoeing my way out.
Needless to say, Maya was not amused by last night’s desk lamp and muttering; she nailed me with a pillow, added a very rude Lily Allen song to my playlist, and—before going back to sleep—promised to bring fried calamari to our dorm if I ever do it again.
So I make my way to the communal washroom and assemble a version of me that reads scholar.
The dark circles win against the concealer, which is fine, and my curls are beyond negotiation, so I sweep them into a bun.
White canvas pants, white tank, a blue pinstripe linen shirt with the sleeves rolled.
Acceptable, for a meeting with my favorite professor.
Before today, the only person I’ve ever felt truly comfortable going to for academic advice—untangling, translating, reality-checking—has been my mentor, Blythe.
She’s in her forties, frighteningly smart in a way that makes you want to fall a little in love with her brain and, more importantly, she never judged me.
I could walk into her office a knot of half-thoughts and dead ends and, by the time I waved goodbye, we’d have them lined up and labeled.
I miss her. I miss her vendetta against anything non-caffeinated, the jar of Jolly Ranchers on her desk, the slight lisp that made even hard truths sound kind.
She’s also the one who put Dr. Kymbert on my own personal map.
When we were running the Mānoa calculus, Blythe talked me through her papers, her instincts, the way her lab thinks.
A chunk of my admiration is borrowed from Blythe’s confidence—which only makes me more eager to go knock on Kymbert’s door today and ask her to help me think.
I stop for a lemon-poppy scone and an iced coffee in lieu of breakfast, and start back down the path towards the marine sciences building.
A bit of a detour, some would say, since I can practically see the building from my dorm window—but fuel is fuel, and today it’s nonnegotiable.
On three hours of sleep and a case of nerves, sugar and caffeine are the difference between upright and listing.
Balancing the sweet pastry on my cup lid, I pull out my phone with the other hand and cue up yesterday’s Damon footage.
In this clip he’s wrestling a LEGO brick—rightfully so, because I slipped in a different-sized piece that won’t connect—and then he launches it out of the tank.
Angry little things, they are. I’m still giggling at the screen when I slam into a wall.
The scone tips off my coffee; and my balance goes with it.
Gravity, my oldest frenemy, takes over. Then the wall grows hands—one catches the scone seconds before it hits the ground, the other closes on my elbow and stops the floor from meeting my face.
Have I really spent this much time with an octopus that I now picture extra arms on anything with a flat surface?
One look up says the “wall” isn’t brick at all—it’s Holden. My scone sits on his open palm; my elbow is still cradled in his other hand, warm and steady, his thumb right where my pulse betrays me. His brows are knit—concern, annoyance, maybe both—and for a second I forget how to stand on my own.
“Oh—um—Holden.” I step out of his hold and reassemble what passes for composure. “You’re not a wall.”
One brow lifts; so does one corner of his mouth. “You don’t say.”
I roll my eyes, reclaim the scone from his palm, and slide past him toward Dr. Kymbert’s office. “It’s not my fault you’re built like one.”
A sound rumbles out of him—almost a laugh, low enough to catch at my spine.
I glance back, but the moment’s already filed away; his face is neutral again, eyes unreadable.
I exhale, because of course my social skills choose now to glitch—ten minutes before I’m supposed to discuss a thesis with a genius woman.
“Thanks for saving my scone. And me. Again.” I point my thumb behind me. “I should go.”
He nods and keeps walking—toward me, then past. “Going to the lab?” He doesn’t stop.
“Uh, no. I have a question for my thesis.” I fall into step next to him. If there’s a godly committee up there, I blame them for their twisted sense of humour.
He looks at me from the corner of his eyes, hands in his pockets. One stride of his is three of mine, but I refuse to slow down and fall behind.
“Maybe I can help?”
I snort, then slap a hand over my mouth when he frowns. “Sorry. I mean—thanks, but no thanks. It’s just that Dr. Kymbert is a biologist and, well, you’re not. Also, you don’t like cephalopods.”
His frown stays. “I took marine biology for years, Coralie.” Gosh I hate the way he says my name, with a perfectly rolled r. “And I never said I hated your invertebrates.”
“I’m pretty sure you did. And you study storms.” I don’t know why it comes out like an insult; I’m mostly hoping he’ll stretch that impossible pace so I can stop matching it and put some distance between us. He doesn’t.
He shakes his head and doesn’t bother answering.
So I do what any logical person would do in my situation, I think, and take him in—dark blue jeans, black T-shirt that does unfair things to his shoulders, the same metal watch he seems married to—and look away fast enough to notice I’m not the only one tracking him.
A freshman straightens as we pass by; someone drops a Hydro Flask; two girls elbow each other and forget to whisper.
Half the faces are wary, the other half have intentions that are… less than holy.
“You, um… are you going to the lab?”
He gives me the Holden version of puzzled. “No. It’s my office hours.”
Right. I never checked his schedule, because voluntarily sitting in a small room with him felt like playing with voltage, and because I’ve made it this far without using anyone’s open door policy, especially his.
We reach the building and he steps ahead to hold the door. Some feral corner of my brain where trust issues originate from braces for a last-second slam in my face or a finger pinch for sport, but he just waits, steady, the heat of him intoxicating as I pass.
Maybe he isn’t as hostile as I decided. Current evidence is annoyingly clear: he didn’t let me drown, he threw a misogynistic jerk out of his lab, he saved my scone.
We aren’t about to be friends, I know that; I’m still fairly sure I top his list of irritating students.
But a civil semester? It’s now a possibility.
Then again, who knows. Maybe it’s just basic decency and a soft spot for pastries.
“Holden, why is it that every time I land in a pickle, you’re there?”
“A pickle?”
“A proverbial pickle.”
He almost smiles. “I’m not omnipresent, Coralie.” Again, my stomach does this weird, twisty thing. Would I feel the same if my name was Gertrude? If he inhaled helium? “Are you telling me you only get in trouble when I’m around?”
We head down the hallway toward the offices. I scoff because deflection is free. “I’d hardly call it trouble.”
“You almost got taken out by the Pacific. I think you are trouble.”
“It was a tiny wave. I was admiring the seafloor.”
“Right.” His mouth goes flat, the kind of deadpan that says he watched me disappear underwater and didn’t breathe until I did.