Page 21 of Ricochet

I could show him a thing or two about torture.

“Trust me. This is definitely not torture.”

“I disagree,” he mutters as he shuts his sketchbook.

“Come on.” I take my lab manual out of my bag and drop it on the table. “I’ve done most of these labs before. You’ll have an advantage.”

He rolls his eyes. “I don’t need an advantage.”

“I’m sure you don’t.” I shrug, grinning. “But, hey, you’re welcome to use me.”

His eyes immediately dart away, leaving my grin to only widen. I watch as he violently shoves his sketchbook into his bag to trade it out for his own lab manual. He places it on the table, then rests his elbows on top of it. With his chin in his hands, he stares at the front of the room.

“Silent treatment again?”

“Just shut up.”

“You know that’s a tall order.”

“Yeah, I’m well aware.”

I laugh quietly but remain silent until the professor walks into the class. Since we’ve already had several lectures, she doesn’t spend much time with an introduction. She tells us a bit of what’ll be expected and where we can find certain equipmentaround the room. When she instructs us to grab the lab papers from the front and colored pencils from the cabinet in the back, Callum stands first.

“I’ll get them,” he says.

It doesn’t take him long to return, dropping papers and a box in front of each of us. My box is ripped, revealing its contents of several short, broken, unsharpened pencils. Of course, his looks brand new.

“How kind of you, Callum.”

His grin feels like mine being thrown back at me. “You’re welcome.”

Okay. I deserve that.

“Everyone, please turn to page fifteen of your lab manuals and begin on the lab for bones and the skull,” the professor says from the front of the room. “You don’t really need a partner for this one, but you’re welcome to work together.”

No surprise, Callum takes that to mean he’s meant to work completely and utterly alone. He even angles his body away from me as he opens his book.

I let him get away with it for now.

We both open our boxes of pencils. I dump all the pieces of mine out on the table while Callum eases his out a few inches so they’re easy to grab. I have to bite back a mocking comment as I turn my focus to read over the instructions on the first page of the lab.

There are six papers, each one showing a different view of the human skull, lines breaking them into sections so we can color and label the facial and cranial bones. I pick up an orange pencil and get started on the anterior view, coloring in the frontal bone first.

Meanwhile, Callum has a red pencil in his hand, the sharpened tip hovering over the skull on his page.

I peer over without lifting my pencil off the paper.

It’s like he’s frozen, staring down at the figure with his brow furrowed. His hand starts to tremble.

I swear he’s holding his breath.

I think I hold mine too, though I’m not sure why.

When he finally moves to shade in the right temporal bone, I relax and get back to my own work. I have no idea what the hell that was about, but I know if I asked, he’d tell me to fuck off.

After filling in and labeling the frontal bone, I switch out the orange pencil for the yellow and move on to the maxilla, wanting to get the larger areas out of the way first. I’m nearly finished with that one when I realize Callum still hasn’t swapped his pencil for a different color.

Looking over at his page, I nearly drop my own pencil.

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