CHAPTER SIXTEEN: STUDY SESSION PART TWO
Some plants have seeds, and some don't.
Trent's pen is blue, and he's got a swatch of it on the side of his hand from dragging it against his notebook page.
Plants that don't make seeds and have no roots, stems, or leave structures are algae.
Trent twirls his pen between his fingertips. He tucks it under and over his first three fingers before swinging it back.
Plants that don't make seeds and have some structure are moss. Plants that don't make seeds, but have structure are ferns.
Trent places the end of his pen between his lips.
Plants that have seeds, but no flowers are conifers. Plants that have seeds and flowers are flowers.
Trent tips his head ever so slightly in my direction. His pen is still pressed up against his lips as his eyes burn into the side of my head.
I don't move my head. I just use my eyes to look up at him.
He looks away.
Back to the plant kingdom.
Repeat.
Trent's actions are easier to memorize than my classwork. They always are. A pen twirl, pen to lip, a glance, and repeat. A jaw scratch, a neck scratch, an arm or leg stretch, and repeat. I thought it would be easier to ignore now that we no longer have any classes together, but I was wrong.
"I have a question."
"I have an answer," I say without looking up.
"If you could switch bodies with anyone or anything for one whole day, would you do it?"
My pen drops. "Really?"
"What?"
"We're not in philosophy anymore."
He chuckles. "You really hated it that much?"
"No, not hate just . . ." My lips pull together as I attempt not to mirror his smile, but it's hard. It's always hard. His amusement is contagious like an invasive plant species. "Okay, yeah, sometimes. It's just sometimes science"—I use my thighs to lift up my textbook— "is easier."
"Point taken." He tilts his head as if to make an invisible tally mark in the air. "But you still didn't answer my question."
I mockingly roll my eyes. "My sister I guess."
"You guess?"
"Yeah." I laugh. "I seriously want to know what it's like to be the younger sibling for a change, but I think she'd hate me for it." His eyebrows crinkle, and I lift my textbook up again. "She'd never be able to handle all of this. Even if it's just for a day."
"Makes sense." He laughs. "Hell, it even looks like gibberish to me." He leans over, passing a glance at all the black pen ink covering my notebook.
I shoo him away. "What about you?"
"Me?" He sprawls as hand across his chest. "Well, I'd have to think about that." The pretend cigar comes back as he purses his lips, but he throws in a pointer finger and thumb check mark below his chin, making me gently reach out and whack him.
"You're such a weirdo."
He sobers up. "No, that's Zack."
I laugh. "I don't know."
"Believe me. I know, which is why I definitely wouldn't switch bodies with him."
"That's mean!"
"But I'd never be able to get the showtunes out of my head, or the country music."
"Uh, uh, uh," I wag my finger, "Zack said you're the one with the country music obsession."
His mouth drops. "Lies."
My laughter bounces off the walls. "I don't think so."
"Lies, I say, lies," he hisses before reaching out and tickling my sides.
"Okay, okay!" I squeal as I try to shoo him away without bending the pages of my notebook. Too bad he rips it from my hands.
"Clear!" He jokes just before pretending to zap my sides with electric wires.
"Stop!" I continue to laugh. He really is the weirdo. I never would have guessed. One minute he's slouched down in a hoodie in the back of a lecture hall, and the next he's pulling cartoon voices and tickling my sides.
He lets me sit back up after a few seconds as his own chuckles fade.
"You're so distracting," I huff as I tug at my sweatshirt and fix my hair.
"Sorry." He continues to chuckle to himself. "I'll stop." He holds his hand up as if taking a vow. "Scouts honor."
I curl my legs back up in a pretzel position and go back to my plants. All flora no fauna. Native and non-native. Invasive and non-invasive. Trent goes back to pen twirling and reading, or maybe even pretending to read at this point. I'll never know, but my eyes flicker up to find his teeth surrounding his pen this time as he's looks down at me. A nervous stretch of teeth.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." His eyes dart away, but then he almost drops his pen. "I just have another question." He looks back. "A serious one this time, I promise."
"Okay." I nod as I go back to scribbling some more stuff down. A few seconds pass with only the wind blowing against the window outside before Trent shifts on the grey fuzzy blanket.
"Do you believe in all this? This education, I mean?"
I breathe out a laugh through my nose. "Do you believe that there are almost four hundred thousand plant species?"
A ghost of a smile traces his lips, but he tugs it away and continues to stare at the notebook perched on his outstretched legs. I blink away the pictures of moss and algae I've been looking at in my textbook as I sit up straighter.
"On the good days." I sigh. "But sometimes it's overwhelming, all the information. Makes me feel like a bobble head." I wiggle my head with a laugh as I turn back to my algae.
Trent goes back to pen twirling and stretching, but still doesn't stop tugging at his lips. "Do you—" He twists his torso around but hesitates. "Do you," he starts again, but this time he shifts his left leg up on the floor as well. "Do you believe mental health is just as important as physical health?"
"Of course!" I sputter but continue copying down information in my notebook.
"Same!" Trent stuffs his hand into his hair in my peripheral vision. "But the other day my professor he . . . he kind of brushed me off about it. At least when it comes to little kids."
I slowly lift my head up to reveal just how far my mouth fell open. Trent's lips curl up again, but he's quick to shake his head.
"I don't know. It was weird." He shifts back around and picks up his laptop. "That's why I asked the other question. It's things like that that make me question all of this." He picks at the grey fuzzy blanket underneath us. The same little fuzzies that are stuck to the black leggings I decided to wear to our study session today. "Makes me feel like a bobble head." He mimics my head shake, but throws in some extra arm flails, and I shove his shoulder so his head bobbles even more.
If he was a bobble head or even a cartoon character, I think this would be his outfit anyway. T-shirt and sweatpants. Today, the specific variation is a grey t-shirt and black sweatpants, but I also happen to be wearing a similar get-up. The only difference is my white socks have grey polka-dots on them, but the pattern is nothing compared to all the different patterns and pairs of vans strewn under Zack's bed.
Trent uses the blanket to slide his backpack closer.
My eyes land on my backpack beside me, and the words on my notebook that I'm supposed to be absorbing before I turn my head back over to him. "You know I think the problem is we tend to oversimplify complex things and make simple things too complex."
Trent's eyebrows rise above his water bottle. "Who's the philosophical one now?"
"I'm serious." I laugh. "But you started it."
The amusement shines in his eyes as he shrugsand continues drinking so I continue so I continue spilling all the thoughts I've been thinking since I got my midterm grade for philosophy last semester.
"It's just, we're always searching for two sides instead of seeing that there's multiple. Like when testing a hypothesis"—I twist my body around to face him—"the most annoying part of lab write ups is the evaluation before the conclusion. I mean, yeah, it's because its more work, but in a way, it's also because none of us like to admit where we went wrong or where things can be flawed. We don't like taking blame. Also, the whole point of the evaluation is to show that there's always more to research and more to learn. Things are always changing, and so perspectives have to change with it. The problem is when they don't." I drop my hand and allow my high ponytail to swing back to the back of head after twirling the end of it out of habit. "Then the sides come back, and people rather grab their pitchforks than talk to each other. At least, in my opinion. But then again, it's not that simple!" I throw my hands up as I breathe another laugh through my nose.
The silence that follows is expected. My big mouth did it again, went eighty miles per hour in a thirty-mile zone. Blew past all the red lights and stop signs.
But then the puppeteer tugs Trent forward and reminds me just how big his head is. It's as if my fingers stretched out across Trent's face and zoomed right in on his forehead. His eyebrows rise up again, and I'm able to count the four big wrinkles that stretch out across his forehead before he tips his head down.
The air gets caught in the back of my throat as his lips hover over mine. He pushes his hand into the ground beside me and presses his lips against mine just enough to seal my eyelids closed.
My heart drums in my ears before Trent pulls back just enough for my exhale to become his inhale. Just enough for those green eyes to lock with mine and then flick down again. Just enough for my eyes to notice those baby pink lips of his before they fall on mine again.
My hands fly up to catch his ears and his head as it continues to lean down and down and down, while his hands find my waist again, only this time they slide back and hold me close as my head leans up and up and up. Plants need oxygen for photosynthesis to create glucose to survive. I'm no longer convinced I need oxygen. I just need Trent and his soft lips closer and closer and closer.
Trent seems to be having a similar dilemma because even as his hands fall away and his chest pulls back, it still takes him another extra second to pull his lips away from mine—just enough for us to catch our breath. Just enough for the heat pounding through our veins to sear across our cheeks. Just enough for me to see another beautiful upward stretch of his teeth. Who needs photosynthesis?
Trent's eyebrows quirk up, making me laugh, but now I feel hot everywhere as if I were the green leaf of a plant turned up to face the bright burning sun.
"Photosynthesis?" He adds more fuel to the amused fire in his eyes.
I gently push at his shoulder. "Stop distracting me."
He chuckles as he moves back into an upright position. It doesn't take long for his pen to be back in his left hand and his gaze to return to his computer screen.
I readjust my textbook and notebook in my lap and scoot back against the pillows Trent always lays out, but my eyes still dart to the disheveled, dark grey handprint resting on the blanket beside my thigh. Trent's gaze follows mine. His teeth sink into his lower lip as his hand flings up and grabs the back of his neck. We trade nervous stretches of teeth before looking back down at our homework, but neither of us move to erase it. Even if we did, it's still forever imprinted in my brain and seared across my lips.