CHAPTER TWO

The Beginning II

As we started the walk over to Thomas' room, it was relatively peaceful. Maddy and I walked abreast through the vast halls of our university. It was a lovely autumn day, perfect weather to walk around in pants and a shirt. Not too warm to warrant shorts, but not too cold to put on something with long sleeves.

When we finally made it outside to walk between the different buildings, it struck me where we live again, San Francisco, the city of wind. While the campus looked absolutely stunning from the waving trees and the flowers that seemed to be dancing in the wind, it didn't do wonders from my look. About five seconds into the outdoor walk, my hair was a mess, and I think I got a stick lost somewhere up there.

Maddy watched me as we walked through the courtyard, just smiling while I was searching for the stick that I had lost in my hair. Well, I'm pretty sure one got lost up there. After noticing her staring, I asked, "you gonna sit there and smile or will you please tell me if there is actually something up there," I snipped, pointing to my head, "because I'm only like ninety percent sure that there is."

"Yeah, no stick. You have been ruffling through your hair for nothing," Maddy spat out between breaths from laughing at me. I stopped fidgeting with my hair after she said that, feeling even more stupid than I had before.

We finally made it back to the inside of the building and had just a few more doors before we got to Thomas' room, but I didn't want this walk to end. It was fun walking with Maddy, bickering with her, and I had a fun time for the first time in what felt like forever since we stopped seeing each other.

The walk to Thomas' room, which was only around a hundred feet, seemed to take hours. Us just walking filled me with a sense of calm, and it took away all of the uneasy feelings that had slowly been creeping up to me. After that walk, I had to try and collect myself right in front of his door.

Before entering Thomas' room, I wanted to ensure I didn't look like some dirty vagabond. After taking a quick peek down at my outfit, I realized It looked like I had just tumbled down a small hill. With half of my shirt untucked, from jumping in excitement at the news. My hair was a rat's nest from the winds outside, which could almost be considered a tempest. Even my belt was unstrung from my belt loops.

While fixing my hair, I heard a light chuckle from Maddy. Questioning why there was a chuckle, I quipped, "What was that for?"

"Nothing, it's just cute seeing you getting so worked up about your impressions onto your friends," Maddy said. I noticed that she spoke in a slightly higher voice than usual, which confused me.

"Huh? Did you just-" I stuttered out, wholly baffled.

Maddy reached out to grab my shoulders before blurting, "No, no, not like that. That's not what I meant." It was apparent that even she was surprised at what she had just said to me.

During our minor scuffle, neither of us heard the footsteps of somebody making their way to the opposite side of Thomas' door than us. That is until we could feel the slamming of the sliding door smashing into the wall, as well as the deafening bang that made us both scream.

"Who is it mak-!" Thomas started angrily before realizing who we were and what position we were in. Maddy was standing there holding my shoulders, each of us looking into each other's eyes, stunned.

Releasing that Thomas was looking at us, we each jumped back, startled, and scrambled to explain what we were doing.

"It's n-not what it looks like. We were here to talk to you," Maddy attempted to say while she was still slowly backing away from me.

"I didn't say it looked like anything," Thomas said with a huge grin plastered on his face. "Nevermind, whatever that was, what were you here to talk about."

"We can talk about it in a moment, seeing as you still have class," I said, still trying to wrap my head around what just happened with Maddy. I mean, she just called me cute.

"What is it that yall need to talk about? It's not like my students want to learn about what I'm teaching, and they just want to get back to what they were doing before my class," Thomas sniped, clearly annoyed with his class' lack of care for his lessons.

"Josh, do you just want to tell him now?" Maddy asked, now back to normal after the whole fiasco that just occurred.

"I don't mind, to be honest, it's probably up to you if you want to tell him or not. You were the one that got it done," I said.

"No, you can te-"

"Tell me WHAT!" Thomas interrupted impatiently.

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"THE EXPERIMENT, IT GOT APPROVED!" I yelled back, seeing as he so rudely interrupted me before.

"What! Really! How did you manage that? They denied me all four times I took it up there."

"I wasn't me. It was Her," I pointed to Maddy as I continued, "somehow she was able to convince them to allow us to make some progress."

"Hold on before we continue this let me dismiss my class."

After Thomas told his class that they were done for the day, I stood there just watching them leave class, wishing again that I had a normal time at college.

Noticing this, Thomas patted my back, saying not to think into it too much. Even from such a small gesture, I appreciated it a lot. After all, Thomas was the only person that knew what I went through. Even with my messed-up past, Thomas still chose to stay by my side.

With the three of us moving into his office, we got to see him open his lock. When he did, Maddy shot me a glare that you could just tell said, 'that's why you should get a new lock.' After brushing her off, we made it into his office.

In the office, there was an L-shaped desk with two monitors, along with the keyboard and mouse, stacks upon stacks of papers, around five staplers, and what seemed to be the only organized thing on the entire desk; His pencil holder. The little metal divider separated each type of pencil and pen. All the mechanical in one side, even those were split by color. Then, the standard wooden pencils were all only one type and were unsharpened. The only sharpener pencil that he had was out right in front of his keyboard. Finally, there were all his pens in a separate section.

Around his desk, there were two regular chairs in from of the desk. Behind the desk, on the inside of the L, there was Thomas' chair that he took a LOT of pride in. I had heard him brag about it all the time in how it was a heated seat, all he had to do was press a single button, and it would start heating. It was just like almost all car seats these days, but I wasn't one to judge him. It made him happy. Who would I be to diminish that?

After taking note of his messy desk and room in general, Maddy and I took the two seats in front of his desk. We sat in awkward silence before Thomas finally asked, "What were yall doing out in the hallway?"

Expecting him to ask about the experiment, it was safe to say that I was flustered when he asked about that. With me in no state to talk, steam basically rolling out of my ears, Maddy responded instead, "It was nothing; I was just giving him trouble for being so excited to see you."

"Yeah, that's what it was, nothing else," I sputtered out, wishing that he would just start talking about the experiment already.

"Ok, I'm don't teasing for now. What I really am wondering about is the experiment. A few things that I wanna ask about, first how the hell did you get something like this approved, Josh?" Thomas asked with enough enthusiasm to make me excited about what he was talking about just from hearing him.

"Well, it wasn't me that got it approved," I chipped back slyly.

"That would be me that got it approved, thank you," Maddy snapped in a way that wasn't angry but instead mockingly. After her little remark, we slowly talked about our experiment and how we would progress with it.

After talking till we were all hungry, we decided to call it a night. With that, I asked both of them if they wanted to get some food, and Maddy politely declined, but Thomas was down to get something.

Thomas and I talked a little further about the experiment on the walk out to our cars. We mostly talked about the minute details of the experiment, things like the amount of time to expose the subject and running through the superficial parts of the experiment as a whole.

When we made it to the cars, we stood for a little while, finally talking about where we wanted to eat. After a while, I suggested that we stop by a little sushi place on the corner of Center and Oxford street. After agreeing to meet there, we hopped in our cars and drove to the restaurant.

After we sat down, I got some of my favorite salmon sushi and ordered a bottle of sake for us to share. While eating, we made mindless small talk while slowly and slowly losing our ability to form words coherently from the alcohol.

After we were around four bottles deep, I realized that I still had to drive myself home. Along with that realization was the realization that I was in absolutely no state to drive myself home, nor was Thomas in a functional enough state.

We ended up calling a cab for the ride home after signaling for our check. We made sure to tip more than expected because of how loud we were, and I think we were keeping them late. That said, my sense of time was not the best due to the four bottles of sake that we drank.

When the cab dropped me off at home, I staggered up to my door, already starting to feel the hangover that was bound to hit me tomorrow. As I approached my door, I felt for my keys, and when I didn't feel them, I went into full-fledged panic mode. Luckily they were just in my right pocket which I thought was strange. They were always in my left pocket. Trying not to be paranoid, I put my key into the lock after missing about five times and gave it a turn unlocking my door.

Walking into my house, the first thing I did was take off my shoes, courtesy of my mother drilling that into my head when I was a child. After that little moment of reminiscing, I thought to myself, 'i should see her and dad sometime. I also need to remember to bring the cleaning supplies. It has been a while since I've straightened up their graves.'

Shaking off my thoughts, I made my way to my room and hopped into the shower. Immediately after getting in, I felt nauseous and decided to take a cold shower instead. Though I had the idea to take a cold shower, I only turned it down to around room temperature water. After all, I have always hated the cold.

After my shower, I got dressed and was lying in my bed when it hit me. The spinning, THE GODDAMNED SPINNING. After that started, I rushed my way back to the bathroom, trying to keep from puking. When I made it there, I just layed down on the bathroom floor, relishing the cold tile that felt absolutely blissful. Not long after that, I fell asleep still on the tile.

In the morning, I still had a splitting headache and decided that it would be 'best for my classes performance not to hinder them with my mental state,' so I sent them an email saying that class was canceled, of course leaving out the reason as to why there was no class.

After that day, time seemed to fly by. That was until the day finally came. It was finally here, the day of the experiment. With all the work that had gone into even just getting this approved, there was no way to describe how excited I was for this, but what went down during that experiment is something that I will absolutely never forget.