The week after the “memory” experiment, Brookvale High moved in slow motion.
Rain had come and gone, leaving the air heavy, the hallways damp, and every window streaked with thin lines that caught the light. Emma sat near the back of the classroom, her notebook half-filled with sketches of molecules and cupcakes.
She told herself she was fine. She told herself the experiment was over.
Neither was true.
When the bell rang, she stayed behind for a moment, watching everyone else rush out. The quiet that followed was oddly soothing—the kind of stillness that made her feel like the world had briefly paused for her.
Then a familiar voice said, “You missed two equations.”
She turned. Liam stood at the doorway, holding a sheet of her notes. His hair was slightly damp from the rain, his expression perfectly neutral.
“Were you following me?”
“You left this on the lab table.”
“Right,” she said quickly, taking it back. “Thanks.”
He didn’t move. “Your data from the last run—did you ever calculate the retention curve?”
She blinked. “The what?”
“The pattern of emotional decay over time.”
“That’s… not really something I can chart.”
“It could be.”
She stared at him. “You want me to graph feelings?”
“Technically, you already did.”
He wasn’t wrong. She’d been writing about the taste of moments since the first day of the project. She just hadn’t realized he was reading between the lines.
“I could help,” he added after a pause. “If you want.”
It was the last thing she expected him to say.
“I thought you preferred data to people.”
“People are data.”
“That’s depressing.”
“It’s efficient.”
She smiled despite herself. “Okay, efficiency. Show me how you’d measure nostalgia.”
He hesitated, just long enough for her to notice. “That depends on the subject.”
“I’m the subject?”
“Apparently.”
She should have said something clever, but the words tangled in her throat. The silence between them filled with the faint hum of rain against glass.
“Fine,” she said at last. “You can help. But on one condition.”
“Which is?”
“We do it my way first.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Your way?”
“Less spreadsheets. More flavor.”
He didn’t refuse. That, more than anything, startled her.
By the time they reached the lab, the sky had darkened again. The faint scent of ethanol and sugar lingered like deja vu. Emma set her bag down, grabbed two mugs, and poured what remained of the cocoa mix she kept for emergencies.
“This isn’t part of the syllabus,” Liam said.
“It’s called extracurricular chemistry.”
Steam rose between them. She pushed one mug toward him.
“Try it. Tell me what it reminds you of.”
He took a cautious sip. “Vanilla. Cinnamon. Slightly burnt.”
“Accurate, but boring.”
“It’s descriptive.”
“It’s lazy. Come on, what does it *feel* like?”
He frowned, staring into the cup as if the answer were hidden somewhere in the swirl. “It feels… like something you shouldn’t admit.”
She blinked. “That’s actually pretty good.”
He looked up, and for the first time, didn’t look away immediately. The space between them hummed again, charged and uncertain.
Ms. Green’s voice drifted faintly from the hall, reminding them the next period would begin soon. Neither moved.
“Next week’s experiment,” Emma said softly, “we test gravity.”
“Gravity?”
“The way some people pull you in without permission.”
He didn’t respond, but his fingers tightened slightly around the mug.
When the bell rang, the moment broke. He gathered his notes, she grabbed her bag, and the lab returned to its usual stillness.
But long after they left, the faint scent of cocoa stayed in the air—warm, stubborn, impossible to forget.
The next few days unfolded like a pattern Emma couldn’t quite map.
Classes, notes, laughter that sounded louder than she remembered. She went through the motions, but her thoughts kept orbiting around the same center—Liam, the experiment, the mug of cocoa cooling between them. Every detail lingered longer than it should have.
By Friday, she had stopped pretending she didn’t care.
When she entered the lab, the late-afternoon light had turned golden. Dust motes drifted like lazy snowflakes. Liam was already there, arranging beakers into perfect symmetry.
“You’re early,” she said.
“You’re late.”
“Consistency,” she teased, “is your love language.”
“That’s not a valid measurement.”
“It’s observable behavior.”
He didn’t answer, but one corner of his mouth lifted. She took that as victory.
Ms. Green gave the class a brief reminder about safety, then left them to prepare for the next stage of the project—gravitational reaction in sensory focus, which sounded far less romantic than it was.
Emma rolled up her sleeves. “Ready to defy gravity?”
“Ready to record data,” he said.
“Same thing if you’re doing it right.”
They began with simple compounds, salt and sugar solutions meant to test density changes. But as they worked, Emma’s curiosity tugged elsewhere.
“Do you ever think people can change their chemical balance?” she asked.
“In what sense?”
“In the sense that maybe… emotions are catalysts.”
He glanced at her. “Catalysts accelerate reactions. They don’t change the result.”
“Maybe they do, if the reaction involves people.”
He didn’t argue, which felt like progress.
When she reached for the scale, their hands brushed—barely, but enough. Neither moved.
For a heartbeat, the world felt suspended, gravity paused.
Then Liam cleared his throat. “You’re contaminating the sample.”
She smiled. “Sure. Let’s call it that.”
The experiment continued, numbers filling pages, time slipping unnoticed. Every few minutes, she’d glance at him—how his focus deepened when he measured, how his voice softened when he explained a formula. It was absurd, she thought, that someone could make precision look so alive.
When the bell finally rang, Ms. Green dismissed them with a reminder: “Next week, bring your data summaries. And remember—every observation matters.”
As the room emptied, Emma lingered. Liam was rinsing glassware, sleeves damp, collar open just enough to look human.
“Hey,” she said. “You ever wonder what we’re actually measuring?”
He didn’t look up. “Variables.”
“No,” she said softly. “I mean us.”
He stopped then, fingers resting on the edge of the sink. For a long moment, neither spoke. The light from the window stretched between them like a thread.
Finally, he said, “If gravity is the pull between masses, then maybe people aren’t so different.”
She smiled. “So it’s physics now?”
“It always was.”
He dried his hands, picked up his notebook, and hesitated before leaving. “Emma?”
“Yeah?”
“Your cocoa experiment. It wasn’t bad.”
She laughed. “I’ll take that as praise.”
“Interpretation error,” he said, but his tone wasn’t convincing.
When he left, she stood alone in the quiet, the beakers still glinting with traces of gold light.
That evening, she streamed again.
“Hi,” she said, her voice steady but soft. “Tonight’s flavor is gravity. It’s what keeps us from drifting away, even when we don’t understand why we’re pulled.”
Her hands moved automatically, mixing sugar and milk. “Sometimes sweetness is just the weight that reminds you you’re still here.”
The live chat filled with hearts and silent watchers. And somewhere across the city, a boy with too many equations and not enough answers leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, letting the sound of her voice pull him toward something he couldn’t quite name.
Brookvale’s night hummed with electricity and rain, as if the whole city were caught in the same quiet orbit.
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