Two Floors Apart (Louis Tomlinson AU)

III » Studying And Walkabout

III.   T H R E E   //   S T U D Y I N G   A N D   W A L K A B O U T

f e b r u a r y   2 0 1 3

Pyper was stressed.

            Despite already having gone through exams the previous year, she didn't think that second-year exams would be as hard as they ended up being; having three of four exams in the same time wasn't helping in the slightest. She had notification of all her exams before the winter break so, despite leaving to visit her family for one of her two weeks off, she spent almost all her time making notes and reviewing.

            Even afterwards, back in her apartment, she continued to make notes. She refused to let herself stop. "The four different exposures for light, depending on the camera used....oh, I know this..."

            Listing three off the top of her head and checking what was written down after, she cursed herself out loud. She got only one of the answers she said right. "I'm never gonna be ready for my exams."

            She closed her textbook and walked over to the kitchen, deciding to boil water to make instant noodles—nine o'clock dinners were okay, right?—and turned on her radio to listen to whatever it was currently playing, which happened to be I Like It Like That by Hot Chelle Rae. Pyper willed herself to be normal and act like a sane person for once, leaning against the far wall as she scrolled through Twitter and waited for the water to boil; she did her best. Yet when Stereo Hearts began to play she was unable to stop herself. In her underwear, alone in her apartment, she started dancing to the horrible pop song she loved so much.

            When the song was over she opened a ramen package and dropped it into the now-boiling water, waiting for the next song to indicate when the noodles were ready. Continuously singing along to the radio above her fridge, she sat herself down with her steaming bowl and stared at her notes for her photography history and her black-and-white photography courses, whose exams were in a week and a half. She wasn't sure how she was going to make it with all the information she needed to stuff into her head. She had only grabbed her chopsticks when she heard the front door open, Louis walking in with a smile on his face. "Hey, Pipe."

            Pyper looked down at herself—she was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, in underwear and a large t-shirt, holding a bowl of instant noodles with her course notes scattered around her in a half-circle. Yeah, she definitely looked presentable. She gave Louis a small smile as he sat himself down on the sofa, leaning over to look at the work Pyper had. "Coursework?"

            "Yeah," she said. "Let's just say majoring in photography is a lot harder than I assumed it would be. I still like it and all, but exams were never my favourite time of year."

            "When was it anyone's?" Louis scoffed. He picked up the closest stack of notes to him and read a bit of the information out loud. "'The two systems involved the application of long-recognized optical and chemical principles, but aside from this they were only superficially related. The outcome of one process was a unique, unduplicatable, laterally reversed monochrome picture on a metal plate that was called a daguerreotype after one of its inventors, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre—'"

            Louis stopped himself. "Pipe, how long have you been staring at these notes for?"

            "A solid two days for the package you're holding. Longer for the others."

            "And when's your exam?"

            Pyper picked up her phone and checked the calendar on it; her entire life was programmed into the little device, all the way down to colour-coding. She counted the spaces between the day they were in—February 17—and told him, "Eleven days to go. That's on the black-and-white photography. My history exam's a couple days after that."