The Brightest Star in a Constellation

15: Texting Like an Idiot

☽ Peter ☽

Facts I Learned at Midnight #2180:
Chewing gum helps your concentration. (Apparently) Reduces stress (apparently) and helps memory (apparently). This is due to multiple factors, e.g. increase in glucose to the brain.

itsnicoleduford: what are the other factors ??

su.peter.nova: Reduce of stress hormones and physiological arousal.

itsnicoleduford: PHYSIOLOGICAL WHAT NOW

su.peter.nova: It does not mean what you think it means.

itsnicoleduford: LET ME HAVE THIS ONE NICE THING

I scoff and slide against the wall, waiting for Nicole to join me at my spot in the basement. The light from the side window overlaps with my shadow, extending over the lockers. Off-centre posters hanging from the walls display this year's events in bright colours, distorted as if looking through a microscope. My hands rest against the flat metallic surface to ground me. I'm still cooling down from yesterday. Thus, I'm beside her locker, my foot tapping against the floor at the same time I take a breath.

Nicole arrives from the stairway, dashing down the stairs and landing on the floor with a loud guffaw and tossing her hands in the air. "Here you go!" She hands me a stick of bubblegum.

"How did you know?" I ask flatly, unwrapping it. On the inside, a typed text reads, Did You Know? On every continent, there is a city named Rome.

I did know that, actually. My research (if I can call it that) for facts at midnight had led me to seek out obscure things, but the fun of it comes from stumbling onto them by accident, and not from endlessly scouring the Internet's Top Ten Facts You've Never Heard before, (as I had tried more than once, and that never actually seemed to have anything I hadn't heard of before).

This is why fact number 2180 is a cop-out. I'm testing the waters, to see if the usual Sam-related replies are finished dredging up the same arguments, over and over, trapped inside a cyclone of safety in anonymity.

So far, it seems I'm alone, left in the calm after the storm.

"I'm a psychic," Nicole replies, equally toneless, "who picked up on your little mind trick. It cost me fifteen cents, by the way, which is basically highway robbery."

I scoff. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. What's up with you today? You're brooding in the only patch of darkness in this entire school. Talk about dramatic." She twirls a strand of her dirty blonde hair around her mechanical pencil with intense precision.

"Nothing," I reply.

"Liar," she hisses. "I swear, if this is about sporty-hottie boy again, I'm going to stop talking to you. We need to move on, as a society, and accept the fact that he's—"

I refuse to accept this nickname she's given Evan. I mean, Nicole nicknames everything. My car is Europa, I'm Peter-pretentious, and her computer is Nelson. If I use another name, she feigns ignorance. It's only fair that Evan McKenna gets an equally dumb name attached to him, but here's the thing: I don't see it. Maybe it's something about him that throws me off, that clashes with how I should perceive him. I keep cycling back and forth, between wanting him around (because we kind of need him) to wanting him gone, (for his connection for Sam).