Calculatingly Wise

13

Season Five

Tessa sat cross-legged on the hood of Stiles' Jeep while Scott sat a short distance in front of her. Stiles had a map open that was covering part of her knee. It was of the San Francisco Bay Area. "All right, so I found some cool two bedroom apartments in the Mission District, but they're pretty expensive. A couple in Haight and Ashbury. Also expensive."

"What about Berkeley?" Scott wondered.

"Two bedroom?" Tessa asked.

Stiles nodded. "Yeah. But of course, you're going to MIT or Cornell, Tess, so..."

"There's always UC Berkeley."

Scott frowned. "Don't a lot of students live around Berkeley?"

Stiles shot his hand into the air. "Well, yeah, we could try Nob Hill. But, the Jeep would probably burn through a lot of clutches."

"You're bringing the Jeep?" Scott questioned.

Stiles glanced to the blonde in disbelief before turning back to his friend. "Did you ask that? Did you really just ask that? You know the plan, okay? No one gets left behind. That's the plan. Lydia's not gonna have a problem getting into Stanford. Kira's thinking USF. Malia's, uh, gonna you know, she'll figure something out, okay? And Tessa's gonna study architecture in one of the three previously mentioned schools. The plan's perfect."

Scott let out a sigh. "Or we could also wait until we actually get into college and then figure out where to live."

Tessa shot him a look. "Don't ruin the vision."

Stiles took her hand. "Yeah. Don't ruin the vision. You, Tessa and me always wanted to go to college together. We can check out East Bay. Haven't looked at Oakland yet, you know."

Scott turned around to look at something and Tessa frowned. "Are you okay, Scott? Is the full moon causing you to feel something?"

He shook his head and gave her a small smile. "No. Just thinking."

"About what?"

"Senior year."

Stiles threw his hand into the air once again. "Senior year, come on, that's, that's... That's nothing. That's going to be easy."

Scott sat up. "It's more like something Deaton told me once. You ever hear of regression to the mean?"

Stiles shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

Tessa nodded. "To basically sum it up, we're in a gray area. Things are good, but not the best they could be."

Scott glanced to Stiles. "Like Tessa touched upon, it was his way of saying that life can't ever be all bad or all good. You know, eventually things have to come back to the middle. So, think about the last few months. Things have been good, right? But not amazing."

Stiles sighed. "Yeah, but no one's tried to kill us in six months either."

Tessa shot her friend a look. "And we're going to keep it that way."

Scott nodded at her words. "Right. We've been pretty much in the middle for awhile. Which means at some point, the scale has to tip one way or the other. Things are gonna get really good again..."

"Or really bad," Stiles said as a loud crack of thunder sounded. "Think it's been long enough?"

"Yes!" Liam cried from the tree he'd been chained to.

"I wonder who pissed off my grandfather this time," Tessa muttered with a frown.

Scott glanced at her. "It's just rain."