Chapter 3 Variable Factors
Emmy
By Thursday afternoon, Emmy had come to one important conclusion.
Noah Callahan was exhausting.
Not the kind of exhausting that came from waking up before sunrise for track practice, or spending three hours rewriting anatomy notes because one diagram looked uneven.
Noah was a special category.
A loud, charming, chemically incompetent category.
“How are you this bad at chemistry?” Emmy asked.
Noah looked up from his worksheet. “Talent.”
“That isn’t how talent works.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Maybe chemistry and I just have different love languages.”
“Chemistry’s love language is math.”
“Exactly. We’re incompatible.”
Emmy stared at him.
He smiled.
She hated that his smile made him look so pleased with himself, like being academically hopeless was somehow part of his personal brand.
The rest of the study group had already left. Harper had rushed off to debate practice, Eli had robotics, and Mina had orchestra. Which left Emmy alone in the third-floor science room with Harrison Prep’s two most inconvenient captains.
Noah sat at the front table, surrounded by rejected scratch paper.
Luka Petrov sat near the window, completely silent, one leg stretched out beneath the desk as he worked through his chemistry packet like it had personally challenged him.
“You’re staring,” Noah said.
“I’m observing.”
“That sounds worse.”
Across the room, Luka’s pencil paused.
Emmy glanced at him. “Do you need help?”
“No.”
Of course he didn’t.
Noah dropped his pencil dramatically. “I need help.”
“You always need help.”
“And yet you keep not helping me.”
Emmy picked up his worksheet and scanned the first problem.
Then she scanned it again.
“Noah.”
“That tone feels bad.”
“You wrote that carbon has twelve feelings.”
He blinked. “I meant electrons.”
“You wrote feelings.”
“Autocorrect?”
“This is handwritten.”
He looked down at the paper, then back at her. “My hand autocorrected.”
A quiet sound came from the window.
Emmy turned.
Luka was looking down at his textbook, but the corner of his mouth had moved. Barely.
A smile.
Maybe.
Noah noticed too and pointed at him. “See? He thinks I’m funny.”
“I think you’re a problem,” Luka said.
“Same thing, emotionally.”
Emmy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
“Okay,” Emmy said. “Atoms do not have feelings.”
“Debatable.”
“No.”
“I feel like we don’t know that for sure.”
“We do.”
Noah leaned forward. “Have you asked one?”
Luka shut his book.
Emmy looked at him. “Are you done?”
“I’m done.”
“With the packet?”
“Yes.”
She walked over and picked it up, already prepared to find rushed work.
Instead, every answer was complete.
Most of them were right.
Emmy frowned.
Luka watched her carefully. “What?”
“You’re good at this.”
“I know.”
“That was not an invitation to be arrogant.”
“You sounded surprised.”
“I was.”
“Then I answered honestly.”
Noah snorted. “That’s just his personality. Horrifyingly honest.”
Luka ignored him.
Emmy looked back at the worksheet. His work was clean and methodical. No skipped steps. No messy guesses. No panic scribbles. He understood it.
So why was he here?
Before she could ask, Noah’s phone buzzed against the table.
He glanced at the screen.
The smile slipped off his face.
It happened so fast Emmy almost missed it. One second he was Noah Callahan, human distraction. The next he looked like someone had tightened a rope around his chest.
He turned the phone facedown.
“You okay?” she asked before she could stop herself.
His smile came back, but it was different this time.
“Always.”
That was a lie.
Emmy knew lies when she saw them. She told herself enough of them.
I’m fine.
I’m not tired.
I can handle more.
Noah picked up his pencil again, but he didn’t write anything.
The room went quiet except for the hum of the old air conditioner and the distant sound of whistles from football practice outside.
“So,” Noah said suddenly, like he needed to shove the silence away. “Where are you applying?”
Emmy blinked. “What?”
“College.” He tapped his pencil against the table again. “You know everything about everyone else’s applications. What about yours?”
“I don’t talk about mine during study group.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t about me.”
Noah tilted his head. “Maybe it should be sometimes.”
She didn’t know what to do with that.
People didn’t usually ask Emmy about her dreams. They assumed them.
Perfect GPA. Medical school. White coat. Stable future.
Her mother told people Emmy had been organizing her own life since kindergarten. Her father joked that she was born with a five-year plan.
Neither of them were wrong.
“Harvard,” she said finally.
Noah let out a low whistle. “Of course.”
Her shoulders stiffened. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing bad.” His expression softened. “Just… it fits you.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment.
“Also probably Johns Hopkins, Brown. Stanford. Duke. safety schools.”
Noah blinked. “Your safety schools are harder to get into than my dream schools.”
She looked down at her notes. “I need options.”
“For medicine?” Luka asked.
His voice was quiet, but it pulled her attention immediately.
Emmy turned. “Yes.”
“Johns Hopkins makes sense, then.”
She stared at him.
Most people at school knew Harvard because everyone knew Harvard. But Johns Hopkins? That meant he had either looked into medical programs or paid attention when someone talked about them.
“You know Johns Hopkins?”
Luka lifted one shoulder. “It’s one of the best for medicine.”
Noah looked between them. “Do you two have a secret smart-person language I don’t know about?”
“Yes,” Emmy said.
Luka leaned back in his chair, eyes on Emmy. “Why medicine?”
The question was simple.
And somehow impossible.
Because the honest answer was too big for a Thursday afternoon study session.
Because she liked understanding the body. Because she liked problems with answers. Because when her dad tore his knee during his last season, she had watched doctors become the only people in the room who didn’t look helpless. Because she remembered sitting beside his hospital bed, eleven years old, wishing she knew enough to fix him.
“I like knowing how people work,” she said.
Noah’s expression turned thoughtful.
Luka didn’t look away.
For some reason, that made her feel more seen than she wanted to be.
She cleared her throat and reached for Noah’s worksheet. “Anyway. Carbon has electrons, not feelings.”
Noah smiled, but this time it was gentler. “Got it, Doc.”
The nickname landed strangely in her chest.
The bell rang, breaking the moment.
Noah stood first, grabbing his backpack. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I’m growing on you.”
“Like mold.”
“Still growth.”
He grinned and left before she could respond.
Luka packed more slowly.
Emmy erased the whiteboard, trying not to notice him. Trying very hard not to wonder why he had asked about medicine like the answer actually mattered.
When she turned around, he was standing beside her desk.
“You should apply to Johns Hopkins,”
Her fingers tightened around the eraser. “I am.”
“I mean you should want it.”
She looked up. “Why?”
“Because when you talk about medicine, you stop looking like you are carrying the whole world.”
Emmy forgot how to answer.
Luka adjusted the strap of his bag and left.
Emmy stood alone, heart beating fast.
