Kierk and Carmen’s phones buzz simultaneously: a group text from Alex. Carmen’s glad that an inchoate social group is forming. She’s turning twenty-seven this year, so she, Alex, and Kierk are all around the same age. This summer has been the loneliest she has experienced in the city since those long-ago days when she was an undergrad at Columbia. Recently all her close girlfriends had left New York after getting their PhDs, scattered to the far corners of academia. And so, despite all her changes, the work she’s put into her close friendships, her self-perspective and self-consciousness which have been carefully cultivated since her early twenties, Carmen is alone again.

Laughter as they both read: TIME TO GET DRUNK NERDS!

Mike pushes the hood on his Harvard sweatshirt back, watches Kierk and Carmen walking down to the corner of Union Square to where some of the Crick Scholars are supposed to meet. Mike had gotten here five minutes ago but has been hanging back, not wanting to be the first to arrive. Watching Kierk and Carmen he wonders if the two are sleeping together yet, and feels like maybe he should have actually intervened in the situation, but at this point he’s just going to pretend he didn’t care in the first place. Plus Kierk already had all that mystique from being the person who had discovered the break-in to the lab. What had that weirdo been doing in the building that late anyways?

Stepping out beyond the shady street corner where he’s been lurking, he waves, then realizes that Alex and Jessica are with them as well. A reevaluation takes place as he watches Jessica laugh at something Alex says.

Apparently this is the full set of Crick Scholars for tonight. Mike has no idea what the others could be doing instead. He hopes they aren’t in lab—a terrifying thought. The five of them head to this bar that Carmen recommended for pool: Amsterdam Billiards. Mike doesn’t like how Carmen and Alex already seem to be the social center of everything, and how they’ve adopted Kierk like a stray puppy. But after talking to Jessica for a while Mike is starting to feel better as he notices that Jessica, as long as Carmen doesn’t stand directly next to her, is very attractive.

While waiting at an intersection Carmen shows off the Band-Aid still on her forearm, and soon everyone is comparing the scabs on their arms. Jessica complains they’re probably going to have scars but Carmen is delighted—“It’s like we got matching tattoos or something!”