Volume 9: Eclosion

Issue 2: Study Date

Florian Reyes Honeywell

By Roach

Hannah looked up from her notes as a string of police cars rushed past the street outside our window. We sat across from each other, occupying a booth in a corner of Aesop’s. As the last classes of the day were canceled, our original plan of meeting at the library had been circumvented.

As the howling of sirens moved away from us and toward Chapel, Hannah raised an eyebrow. “What’s… that about?” she said.

Shortly after the “Chapel Trio’s” encounter with the invisible skeleton, Principal Perez had announced over the speakers that the school was closing early for “safety concerns”—allowing plenty of room for speculation among my classmates. However, I had a pretty good idea what it was about.

But I wasn’t about to tell Hannah that. “I don’t know,” I murmured, avoiding her gaze as I stared out the window. Outside, traffic slowly picked up again in the wake of the sirens.

Even though she had no reason to suspect that I had any insider knowledge about what had happened, I didn’t want to accidentally say the wrong thing and let on that I knew something. The faster we moved away from this topic, the better.

“Weird…” She trailed off, although her mouth remained slightly open, as if she were about to say something more.

Just then, from the corner of my eye, Aesop appeared, carrying two mugs with him.

As he set down my chai latte order in front of me, he smiled at me. “So Florian, I see you brought a new player?”

I looked up at him, too taken aback to immediately respond. Instead, Hannah reacted first. “Huh?”

“For DnD?” Now, Aesop set an iced espresso down in front of her before letting out a warm chuckle. “You guys talk about it nonstop.”

We hadn’t had a chance to play again since before our excursion to the Extinction Refuge… But it was probably for the best that Aesop assumed all our conversations revolved around DnD.

“I’m not here to play pretend,” Hannah said, her tone more matter-of-factly than anything else, before taking a careful sip from her coffee.

Underneath my skin, the swarm prickled with self-consciousness. I stared down into my cup, studying the specks of cinnamon sprinkled over a white layer of foam.

“Ah, well. Enjoy your drinks,” Aesop said, then made a tactical retreat to his counter—as if sensing the awkwardness he had created.

Hannah tapped her pen idly against her notes. When I finally looked up, she already seemed distracted; her brown eyes lingered on the window,

Somehow, she didn’t seem terribly impressed that Aesop had suggested that I dragged her here for Dungeons & Dragons.

This was not how I had hoped this would go. As I sank further back into my seat, I found myself wishing I’d never let Amber anywhere near my phone.

“Umh, anyways…” I murmured, searching for a new topic. I reached for my biology textbook, which lay between us on the table. “Where were we?” I flipped through a handful of pages—more frantically than I intended to—before landing on the section we were supposed to read. “Right. So… Transcriptional variation. In relation to…” I squinted at the text. “Changing environments and… phenotypic… plasticity. ” As I said the chapter title out loud, none of the words registered with me.

“Weren’t we supposed to just do Punnett squares?” Hannah said.

“I thought so…” At some point mid-week, Mrs. Porter had announced that she found our curriculum “too light” and she would assign us a new textbook. I had picked up my copy—a brick-sized 5th edition of Biological Science—from the library yesterday, while Hannah was still waiting for hers. Last I remembered, we had been trying to work out potential offsprings based on one or two genetic traits, and not… whatever this was.

Hannah’s raised eyebrow appeared to reflect my own sentiment. “What does it say?” The sharpened point of her pencil hovered over her notes.

“Well…” I scanned the text, trying to gather any useful information—before quickly realizing that I would have better luck dictating the page than trying to summarize something I didn’t understand. “It says… ‘Genetic variation is further complicated by environmental cues and their influences on… polyphenic traits. In this section, we will consider the effects of alternative splicing… on genetic plasticity, before we discuss the third-helix implications of how sequences…”

“Are you sure?” she interrupted, frowning at me.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“I mean… I’m just reading it. Don’t ask me what it means.”

“Let me see.” She got up from her side of the booth, and moved over to mine. Before I knew it, she sat down next to me. Her shoulder brushed against mine as she leaned over the textbook. I froze in place, reminding myself to breathe—my body falling into the habitual motion that my waxed lungs no longer needed.

“Where are you reading?” she asked.

“Here.” I tapped my fingertip on one of the lines.

Hannah tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and squinted at the page. She picked up where she had interrupted me, “...how sequences are relayed throughout the central dogma of molecular biology, taking a step back to consider…” As she read out loud, her fingertip traced each word—then, she stopped, her breath catching as her hand strayed to mine. She froze, as if startled. I didn’t move as I looked at her—equally startled—trying to suppress a buzz as the swarm shifted inside me.

I saw her swallow, before she continued softly, “Umh, to consider all of these factors together. Namely, the relationship between splicing plasticity, dynamic helix-structures, and the resulting protein codes in changing environments.” Once she reached the end of the paragraph, she glanced up at me.

I was acutely aware of her shoulder’s warmth pressed up against mine, somehow contrasting the swarm’s hollowed wax chambers. Her hand hadn’t moved from where it rested on the page, next to mine, and any concentration I had on the words was gone—all I could focus on was the softness of her skin. A feeling I hadn’t felt since we sat by the campfire—trapped in the Extinction Refuge—now welled through me, freezing me into place.

As I caught her gaze, the corners of her lips lifted into an unsure smile, and I thought I could stay in that moment forever. Neither of us said anything and, in the quiet, all I could hear was the soft muzak of the other booth’s conversations and the gentle clacking of rolling dice.

A loud, chipper ringtone pierced through the air. I jumped slightly, while Hannah flinched away from me.

She reached for her phone. The device buzzed wildly, while the screen flashed at her. “Shit,” she muttered. “Sorry, gotta take this.”

Before I could say anything, she got up, and hurried past shelves of board games and comic books.

Stunned, I remained seated, watching as she left through the door.

I found myself alone in Aesop’s quiet hum; there were a few other students, doing homework at their respective tables. Aside from their chatter, I heard the clinking of dishes and mugs, the rustling of paper and shuffling of cards. In one corner, I recognized Holly and Jannette playing something. They were too quiet for me to make out any conversation, but even at a distance, I couldn’t help but think they looked more relaxed than I had seen either of them in a while.

I returned my focus to the textbook again, but—if the words had seemed nonsensical before—they were in a different language now. My thoughts wandered as restlessly as my bees’ hum. Hannah had been in such a rush to get out. Was the call that urgent, or just an excuse to escape an undoubtedly awkward situation? Should I have said something, or done something differently? I buried my face in my hands, wishing the ground would open up underneath me and swallow me whole.

Only a brief moment later, two knocks sounded to my left, prompting me to look up again. On the other side of the window, Amber pressed her face up against the glass, waving at me. She had a disgruntled look—narrowing her eyes at me and wrinkling her nose slightly.

I reflected the same look back at her, annoyance rising through me. Had she been spying on us? Why? Was she here to critique my complete inadequacy? Because I could handle that on my own. I shrugged at her, as if to ask, what are you doing here?

She held her phone up, pointing at it. Then, in an equally bewildering gesture, she flipped her middle finger at me.

I gave her the middle finger, too, but she didn’t even see it—she had already turned to walk away, disappearing down the street.

Realizing what she had really wanted me to do, I reached for my phone. I had silenced it in preparation for my meeting with Hannah, but now, I had three missed calls from Amber and two more from Camilo—along a string of texts from both of them, all to the effect of “pick up your damn phone.” What the hell was going on?

Just then, the bell above Aesop’s door rang, signaling Hannah’s return.

God, had she seen my exchange with Amber? Even if Amber thought that whatever was happening was important enough to interrupt this, I hoped she had been discreet enough to stay out of sight…

Hannah approached the booth with an unreadable expression. “Sorry Florian, something came up…” She barely looked at me as she scrambled to put her things into her backpack. “I forgot about badminton… I’m late, and coach’s going to be pretty upset if I miss this one.” Pages of notes rustled as she stuffed them into her backpack. “Big game coming up.”

“Oh,” I managed to say, trying to collect myself. “I, uh, that’s okay. No worries.” I was almost relieved—at least I wouldn’t have to excuse myself to figure out what Amber and Camilo wanted from me. But any relief I would have felt was muted by a sense of disappointed dread.

Something, between when we got here and now, had gone terribly wrong. Was it Aesop’s DnD comment? Was it the awkward reading from the textbook? Did I miss something? Had I just completely misread the situation?

She slung her backpack over one shoulder, halting as she looked me over. “Sorry… Talk to you later?” she said with a half-smile.

I nodded, slowly. “Yeah. Good luck with practice,” I said, forcing a smile.

And, with that, she walked toward the exit. The bell chimed softly above the door, and she was gone.

I glanced out the window—half-way expecting to see either her or Amber, but neither of them reappeared. I wrapped my hands around my now cold chai latte. On the table, my phone screen lit up, and Amber’s name silently flashed across it. I stared for a few seconds, then braced myself.

I picked up.

“Fucking finally,” Amber groaned. “We…”

Before she could say anything else, I interrupted her. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Remember that Reticle problem you keep bugging me about?” Amber asked. “Well, I have a lead,” she said, without waiting for me to answer.

“A… lead?”

“Yeah. She’s making a move in Chinatown tonight… and we’re going to be there.”