Chapter 9: Lab Partner

"I'm late for what?" I said.

"For me." She lowered the sign. "I'm Lena Maddox."

"The physics department put us in the same lab section and told me to collect you."

"Everyone else's partner got here an hour ago."

"Nobody emailed me."

"They emailed you all week." She checked her phone. "Four of them were in all caps."

I took out my own phone and found the unread messages from Kingswell.

I had put them in a folder called Later, back when all I could think about was Chelsea and Toby.

"Sorry," I said. "I had a thing at home."

"A thing."

"A long one."

She waited. When I didn't go on, she didn't ask.

She looked at my face for a moment.

Then she lifted her chin and picked up my duffel before I could stop her.

"Fine. Be mysterious. I'm just here to show you where you live."

Her flannel shirt was three sizes too big and the cuffs were rolled twice.

She walked fast, talking to me over her shoulder.

She was from Pittsburgh.

She had eaten the same dining hall cereal four mornings in a row and ranked the options.

Her roommate, whom she hadn't met, had already put up a poster of a physicist with the caption Be Charged.

"It's a pun," she said. "That's the worst part. It's a good pun."

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