Tammy and I sat there in silence for a minute before she finally spoke. "What's with that, anyway? Is that a thing with guys, or is it just some dumb frat thing?"

I shrugged. "Beats me. There's definitely people out there who are into that, but I'm not sure there's a connection. I think it's more the dumb frat thing. Like they think it's a 'conquest,' some kind of dominance display or something."

She shook her head. "Friggin' weirdos."

I nodded. "It's bizarre alright."

"Honestly, it'd probably be less disturbing if it was just some creepy fetish thing." She frowned. "I mean, only a little, but still."

"Maybe so," I said. "I don't get that either, why they're more obsessed with the wrapper than the candy, but at least it's probably something weird about how they're wired and they can't help it."

Tammy looked a little put-off by the metaphor, but shrugged. "I s'pose the behavioral-science folks would say it's all just something in the wiring, but...yeah. Not givin' the creepers any passes on self-control."

I nodded, thinking to myself: maybe it was all in how we were wired. Maybe I was just here because I was destined to be; maybe my entire life was all just a confluence of factors, a sequence of external stimuli triggering predictable...no, predetermined responses from my own...what did Gil's crowd call it again? "Wetware?" Maybe "I" was really just-

"Hey, Earth to Stuart," Tammy said. "The hell're you spacing out over?"

"Huh? Oh, uh, nothing," I said. "Just...stuff."

"Uh-huh." She didn't sound convinced, but before she could say anything more there was a chime from the elevator, and a moment later Emma burst through the door with a small plastic cage in hand.

We both stared at her, then at the cage, then back at her. "You, uh, you were serious about the rat, then?" Tammy said.

She nodded. "One of the bio students slipped it to me for a quart of tequila yesterday. I named him Lucky."

I cocked an eyebrow. "You named him and you're...I mean, obviously you're going to use him as an experimental subject?" I had plenty of questions, but somehow this seemed like the most blatant absurdity.

Emma shrugged. "My family names our cows, too, and they're still delicious."

Lucky, for his part, seemed confused and distressed by the rocking of his cage as Emma shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Hey, ease up, there," Tammy said. "You'll make the poor li'l guy seasick. Here, gimme."

Can rats even vomit? I wondered; but Emma handed the cage over, and Tammy checked to make sure the bottom was solid before setting it on her lap. She wasn't eager to get rodent poop on her skirt, but otherwise she didn't seem to have any issue with Lucky; of course, the way she told it, she was used to dealing with rats.

I turned back to Emma. "So...you're really doing this."

She nodded with a conviction rarely seen outside of war movies as the three of us set off down the tunnel. "Fate has handed us this opportunity on a silver platter," she announced melodramatically. "It'd be a crime not to take advantage of it."

My eyes narrowed. "I'm not convinced it isn't a crime to take advantage of it."

She laughed, and the light caught her glasses in that unnerving way again. "Seriously? The lab's still open to students, and the only official rules are that we stay out of locked areas and listen to the supervisors. If the supervisor happens to be engrossed in a hockey game a half-mile away, that's not our problem. Besides, I doubt he's even locked anything."

I wasn't really convinced, but I inevitably found myself following along anyway. Why did I do this? Why did I let everyone around me make my decisions for me? Was it really always the easier course to just go along with what other people wanted? Was I secretly desperate to please, or was I just a passive entity, eternally following the path of least resistance? Was I just "wired" that way?

"Hey, you're doing it again," Tammy said. "If you need to have deep inner thoughts that's fine, but keep your eyes on the road. Or let me go in front of you."

"Huh?" said Emma, from up in front. "Oh, is he brooding again?"

I frowned. "'Again?'"

She cocked her head back toward me with a curious look. "Wait, were you not aware that it's written all over your face when you do that?"

"Honestly, you could just talk to us about it," Tammy added. "Or to somebody, anyway. The whole semester you've kept looking like you're halfway to having a nervous breakdown sometimes, but you never say anything."

I pulled as much of a full-body cringe as was possible while walking. I thought that I'd managed to keep my inner angst to myself... "I-look, it's just...I'm fine," I sputtered, my face turning red. "It's nothing major, just...stuff. Stupid stuff. And I didn't want to bother anybody with it."

"Well that's obvious B.S. if I ever heard it," Tammy said. "Listen to you. You don't even believe what you're saying. Okay, fine, maybe it's not important. But if it is, we're here, okay?"

I nodded, biting my lip, and we walked on in silence until Emma came to a stop in front of another double door. "And here we are," she said, barely able to hide her excitement.