“What I mean is that apparently our schedule is different every day. How in the world are you supposed to plan for that?”

“Um, like this?” I said, grabbing the schedule so I could read it. It was indeed different from the day before, and I was happy to see that the mountain’s version of my favorite Sherlock class, officially called Observation and Nuance, was that afternoon.

“Did you notice it yet?” he asked as I wrinkled my nose at the double study block on Pearl Harbor scheduled first thing that morning.

“Notice what?” I asked. Reaching over, I plucked his toast off his plate and took a bite.

“Stop that,” he said, snatching it back. He ripped off the piece I’d bitten and took a bite of the remaining toast. “The paper,” he said, so quietly I almost didn’t catch it.

“We are the only ones at the table,” I pointed out. “You don’t really need to whisper.”

Elliot grabbed the schedule, crumpled it up, and dropped it into my cup of water. Before I could protest, the entire wad dissolved. My heart gave a startled lurch, and the bite of toast I’d stolen stuck in my throat. I stared at my water for another second before reaching over to take a swig of Elliot’s.

“Hey,” he protested.

“Sorry,” I said, “but you polluted mine. What was I supposed to do?”

“Have some manners,” he grumbled. “For someone raised with a silver spoon in her mouth you sure don’t act like it.”

“Thank you,” I said, peering inside the glass even though I knew that paper was long gone. “What do you think that means?” I asked.

Elliot shrugged. “No idea. But the mystery of where our future selves get the weird disappearing paper is solved.”

“What’s going on?” Tess said, setting her tray down and sliding in next to me. Elliot and I both jumped guiltily, and she paused mid-bite to raise a questioning eyebrow at us.

“Nothing,” I said, a hair too quickly.

“We just discovered that the schedule dissolves in water,” Elliot said. “It’s kind of bizarre.”

“Oh, that,” Tess said, tossing her red hair behind her shoulder. “Most of the products we use here in the mountain dissolve in water. That way we have very little waste to deal with.”

“Smart,” Elliot said, turning his attention back to his eggs.

“So, before you dissolved the schedule, what did it say?” she asked. The rest of our new classmates sat down, and Elliot began to recite the schedule with perfect accuracy. As I watched him, I couldn’t help but be a little impressed. Not that I’d ever tell him that. Everyone groaned at the mention of the double block of studying, and I smiled, enjoying the camaraderie.

“You didn’t do half bad on your first partner sim,” Corban said around a mouthful of eggs.