Platypus

Chapter Eight

 "He made a new friend," muttered Caspian.

His phone had Fenton and Zenfred's image on it. Caspian stared at the dog, and he felt a sudden pang in his heart. He missed his own dog, Betty, whom he had to give up when he moved to a chosen city.

He enlarged the picture. The dog was wearing a red vest, but Caspian couldn't make out what it said. Having nothing better to do, he exited the picture and opened up Lacey's profile. There were a few pictures of Zenfred going back a few years.

A support animal? Caspian wondered what kind of disability Lacey had. Without the ability to stop himself, he had fallen down the rabbit hole. Looking deep into Lacey's past as well as into Albert and Rafi... Especially Albert. Who was he and why was he living with Fenton?

Caspian suddenly sat up from his reclined position on the couch. This wasn't good. He had promised himself that he'd ignore Fenton's existence, but only a day had passed before he was obsessed with finding out every little detail.

He couldn't put it off any longer. Caspian clicked "follow" on Fenton's page and closed True. The phone was tossed off to the side so he could drag his hands across his face. What was he doing with his life?

The rest of his evening was spent putting together a plan. If he was going to be Fenton's babysitter, he needed to be mentally prepared for it. He had to know his opponent. Get inside his head, and understand how he approached life.

During his morning day class, he was pleased to discover that Fenton had remembered to check in on his attendance. He was sitting in the same seat as last time. Caspian checked his hand. His otter was chilling on the back of it, ticking nervously, but much calmer than last time.

"I've been reading the class forums, and there were some excellent discussions in them," said Caspian as he addressed the class. "We're going to go over the best examples today and look at the solutions you've come up with. Before that, we're going to look at a real-life program that the city uses to plan their tram schedules."

All of the students received a video on their tablets. It was a mock-up of the city. The buildings were in boxes, the streets were lines, and there were little dots moving all around them.

"The city knows your work and school schedules," continued Caspian. "Each of these dots represents you going on your ideal day to day schedule. Every month, the city looks at this data and changes the tram schedule to fit your needs. We cannot always predict what the public needs, but we must be willing to adapt our products to fit them."

He continued on with his class. The awkwardness of the first day had been broken. No one brought up his partner or asked any personal questions. Finally, he was in his comfort zone. Where he could work smoothly and efficiently without unpredictable variables.

"And that concludes class for this week. Be sure to check in with the forums on Friday to see if there are any changes to next week's lesson plans."

Caspian's eyes followed his students for a moment as they began to get out of their seats. He quickly began to tap at his tablet. As soon as his message was sent, he sat down at his desk.

A beeping resonated from Fenton's bag. He dug around inside until he found his tablet, then checked to see what the notification was. It had popped up on his lock screen.

"Lunch in my office?"

Caspian kept glancing between his mark and his tablet. He was terrified that another student might catch on if they saw him even sneak a peek at Fenton right now. The otter was now spinning around his wrist in a pink blur.