He had on a black sweater and jeans—slightly more neat and tidy than usual. He didn’t say a word. In fact, he didn’t even look at her. He just paged through his notes, and then when they got the word to clear their spaces for the test, he just put them away and looked at the model embryo in the corner.

She found herself burning with the need to speak to him, but just then, eight pages of exam were dropped in front of her, along with a look of “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you, but get it together” from Ms. Fitzweld.

Scarlett pulled the exam closer and opened it to find a lot of familiar-looking gibberish. In the first rush of panic, everything appeared broken. After flipping uselessly through the pages, she finally found something on page three that she felt like she could answer. The fetal pig diagram on page four should have been easy, but all the different pieces kept getting mixed up in her mind. Kidneys? Pancreas? Aorta?

She had to look through it three times to figure out where to begin, her brain working in starts and fits. She had just decided to answer the short fill-in-the-blanks on page five when she became aware of the fact that Max was moving, getting steadily closer, in millimeters. Her first instinct was to throw her arm around her test protectively, even though there was nothing written there.

Then she realized, he wasn’t trying to copy. Max was offering her his test to cheat from. He was filling everything in with certainty.

Her head felt light and funny, and there was a pulse beating over her left eye.

Scarlett kept her eyes averted for the rest of period. As the time went on, more things came back into her head. At the thirty-fiveminute mark, information came flooding back, and she tried to go back and fill in as much as she could. But it was too late. The bell rang.

“Bring them up,” Ms. Fitzweld said.

Max said nothing as he slipped off his stool, and he didn’t turn around when he walked out of the room. Apparently, whatever had happened was something he was prepared to sweep aside as brusquely as he did everything else—and maybe in the bargain, he would leave her alone.

“What the hell?” Dakota said, sliding up to her station. “What the hell was that? On page six?”

“I have no idea,” Scarlett said. The test had been over for thirty seconds, and already the experience was fading.

“Did he bother you?” Dakota asked, indicating Max’s empty seat.

“Nope. He acted like it didn’t even happen.”

“Thank God.”