And They Were Roommates(60)

“I think I know this,” I say, sparking back alive. “David Donoghue threw an egg out of a helicopter and onto a golf course in the UK from seven hundred feet. That was considered an egg drop toss.”

“How’d you know that?” Luis asks.

“It just came to me.”

“Jesus, you’re smart.”

My chest warms, but not fully from the compliment. More knowing that I’ll be able to help them. I grab an egg from Luis’s backpack. “Think about—”

Luis points toward the gazebo roof. “Not here. Up there. If I can make a raw egg survive that, I can handle anything.”

“My feet stay on the ground,” Jackson says, shaking his head.

“Agreed,” Michael says.

I clasp Luis’s arm. “I’ll go with Luis. The rest of you, split into pairs and see what you come up with. Hint: Think about your plastic bags.”

While the others wander deeper into the trees, Luis and I climb the gazebo, which isn’t as hard as expected when the vine trellises work as ladders. Soon enough, I’m sitting on the roof, looking out at everything that makes me never want to leave Valentine despite its flaws—the marble cupid fountain and tight-knit academic buildings to my right, the lake to my left, and the woods that stretch for miles.

“These are the only materials we got,” Luis says, sitting beside me. He sets out the plastic bag, string, scissors, and a raw egg, then slings an arm over my shoulder.

“Mhm. What can be made with a plastic bag and string?”

“Another bag.”

“No. What can get trapped inside that bag?”

“Air?”

“Yes. When considering force equaling mass times acceleration, what do you need to do to the acceleration, specifically, while the egg falls?”

That’s all I have to say before Luis connects the dots. He lifts his arm off me to cut four pieces of yarn. He feeds them through the bag, then stands, holding the egg attached to his makeshift parachute over the roof. “This better work.”

I rise to my feet too. “It’ll work—”

My left shoe hooks in Luis’s backpack strap, and then my balance is shaking, and my body is tilting, and I’m slipping off the roof on a yelp.

Luis snatches my arm and yanks me back, pulling me against his chest. “Bro, you’re not an egg!”

My heart hammers as I clutch harder to Luis’s coat. “It’s not like I meant to be!”

Clunking comes from our feet. Twelve eggs, rolling out of Luis’s backpack and off the gazebo.

Then cracking.

“AUGUH—?!”

Furrowing my brow, I peek over the roof. The shattered eggs aren’t on the grass, nor the gazebo steps, but on a blond head of hair and a cross-body bag with a JFG emblem.

Just when I thought my heart couldn’t race faster. “Jasper?”

Jasper outstretches his coat sleeves drenched in translucent goop. His fingers are taut and curled, and his mouth wriggles in revulsion. “What is on me right now.”

“What are you doing out here?”

He rakes a hand through his soaked bangs. “Eggs?”

“They look good on you,” Luis says.

I elbow Luis, and he winces. “I’m coming down.”

According to the theory of relativity, venturing back down the gazebo vine trellis should take as long as it did going up, yet the trip feels endless as my countless thoughts fight for attention. What is Jasper doing here? How am I supposed to look him in the eye after refusing to forgive him last night? He must be angrier at me than the eggs.

My feet hit the grass. I snatch his gooey hand and lead him toward the lake, our dress shoes clumsily sinking into the sand. Once we reach the shore, I unwrap my scarf and dip it in the water. “Use this.”

“N-no, it’ll get dirty.”

Did he stutter? Jasper stuttered?

Maybe he was chattering. His thin Valentine-branded excuse for a peacoat can’t be fighting off the cold when he’s definitely only wearing a dress shirt underneath. “What are you going to use, then? Your coat caked with more egg?”

“Perhaps.”

I roll my eyes. “Come on, Jasper.”

He huffs and closes his eyes. “Thank you.”

I step closer, and his body stiffens way too much to just be from the cold. Like I’m making him nervous.

His nerves spread to me as the sound of waves fills the uncomfortable silence. I wipe his forehead, and his face contorts from the near-freezing water. Inspecting him this closely, all I can think about is the dejected face I saw after he’d apologized for not realizing how I felt. How, eventually, he realized how he felt. How he’s been sleeping on Xavier’s floor since.

I bite the inside of my cheek. “I’m sorry.”

Jasper’s eyes flutter back open, blue and shining.

“About what I said last night,” I say.

“What … specifically?” His voice is breathier, dazed, like he’s in disbelief. Does our past mean this much to him? “You said a lot.”

I hesitate. I hate that I do. I’m in high school—an Excellence Scholar—and still don’t know how to express how I feel? “Specifically, about never wanting to forgive you.”

“What did you want to say?”