The Overnight Prodigy

Chapter 6: Interrogation

Jason cornered him at lunch the next day with the specific energy of someone who had clearly spent all of last night's homework time thinking instead of doing homework.

"Okay," he said, dropping his tray down across from Ethan with more force than the tray deserved. "I've been thinking about this."

"About what."

"You know about what. The ninety-eight. You've been acting weird all week, by the way, in case you thought nobody noticed."

"I haven't been acting weird."

"You have. You've got this" Jason gestured vaguely at Ethan's entire face. "thing. Like you know something. It's unsettling. You're not usually a guy who knows things."

"Thanks."

"I mean it as a compliment to the old you. The old you was predictable. I liked that about him."

Ethan poked at his fries and considered, for maybe the fourth time that week, just telling him. Jason wasn't going to let this go that much was obvious from the sheer commitment he was bringing to an interrogation over cafeteria pizza and some part of Ethan, the part that had been carrying this alone since Monday night, wanted badly to just say it out loud to someone and see if it sounded as insane leaving his mouth as it had sounded arriving in his head.

"If I told you something really weird," Ethan said slowly, "would you believe me, or would you tell everyone I've lost it?"

Jason considered this with more gravity than Ethan expected. "Depends how weird."

"Pretty weird."

"Weirder than the time you told everyone you saw a UFO over the football field and it turned out to be a drone?"

"That was one time, and I still think it might not have been a drone."

"It was a drone, Ethan. Everyone saw the guy come pick it up."

"Weirder than that. Maybe."

Jason set down his fork, which for Jason was practically a declaration of seriousness. "Okay. Hit me."

Ethan opened his mouth, got about as far as so I had this dream, and then stalled out completely, because saying it out loud in the middle of a crowded cafeteria suddenly felt like the single dumbest idea he'd had all year. He could picture exactly how it would sound a dream, a voice, some kind of system, here's why I aced my chemistry test and he could picture, with equal clarity, the exact face Jason would make trying not to laugh.

"Never mind," he said. "It's not that interesting."

"You can't do that. You can't open with 'if I told you something really weird' and then just close the door on it. That's a d**k move, Ethan."

"It's really not a big deal."

"You've been weird for a week and you got a ninety-eight on a chemistry test after getting a sixty-one on the last one and you won't tell me why. I'm gonna assume the worst. I'm gonna assume you joined a cult."

"I didn't join a cult."

"That's exactly what someone in a cult would say."

Ethan laughed despite himself, which felt like the first fully unguarded thing he'd done all week, and something in his chest loosened slightly even without actually telling Jason anything real. "I promise I'll tell you eventually. I just need to figure out what it actually is first. It doesn't totally make sense to me yet either."

Jason studied him for a second, and whatever he saw seemed to satisfy some internal test, because he picked his fork back up and let it go, mostly. "Fine. But when you do figure it out, I want to be first. Not Sophie. Me."

"Why would it be Sophie?"

"Because you two have been in love since third grade and everyone knows it except you two."

"That's not we're not she's just my neighbor."

"Sure," Jason said, in the exact tone people use when they mean the opposite of what they're saying, and went back to his pizza before Ethan could figure out a response that wasn't just spluttering.

Ethan spent the rest of lunch quietly relieved he'd stopped himself before actually explaining the dream, and equally aware that the reprieve wouldn't last. Jason wasn't going to forget this conversation. Nobody who knew him that well was going to let a ninety-eight and a week of visible weirdness just slide.

He was going to have to figure out what to tell people, eventually, and how much of it, and who got to know first.

He just didn't expect that "who got to know first" question to get complicated by Sophie noticing something on her own before he'd made up his mind about anything at all.