Page 45 of Fostering Chemistry
Mia bouncedon the balls of her feet as her friends walked toward us. She was a bundle of nerves, and I couldn't figure out why.
Because I was her partner, perhaps? Since the day she moved in, she’d seemed uncomfortable. That wasn’t abnormal for students who’d been through a lot in their lives, but her discomfort seemed to be only around me. From what I’d observed, she had no problem hanging out with any of the others, even Cody, who was normally very standoffish.
Even Raymond, who was normally a pain in the ass.
It wasn’t that I expected to be universally liked, but she seemed to have no problem talking to anyone else in the house.
Mia’s friend, a pretty young woman with long dark hair, gave her a hug. Then the guy did too.
He almost poked her eye out with the bow slung over his shoulder, which didn’t exactly endear him to me.
“This is my roommate,” Mia said, gesturing my way. “And this is Tori and Jayden.”
“I’m Diego,” I said, since Mia had forgot to mention my name.
Tori smiled, a real one that reached her eyes. “Nice to meet you.”
Jayden held out his hand and we shook, his expression puzzled. “You look familiar.”
Tori elbowed him, but I didn’t see that he’d done anything wrong. Did she think he was implying that all Latino people looked the same? I hadn’t taken it that way.
“Mia says you know this campus backward and forward,” I said.
“He does!” Tori responded like a proud parent. Then she turned to Mia. “You didn’t tell me you were doing this. It doesn’t really seem like your thing.”
Mia shrugged. “I guess we all need a little adventure sometimes.”
It was a good answer, considering she had been browbeaten into doing this just as much as I had. This had been Aaron’s idea, and now he couldn’t even participate. But maybe the fresh air and a change of scenery would do me some good. Sometimes, when I spent too long on my coursework, I hit the point where not even all the coffee in the world could get me to focus.
A woman with a clipboard stood on a table and called the teams to order, going over the rules.
I’d last been on a scavenger hunt in middle school. This one was a little different.
We’d get a list of things to locate on campus, which she called checkpoints, and instead of collecting them, we had to take pictures with them and submit them to the scavenger huntwebsite. The checkpoints could be done in any order—except for the last one.
“Check them off on your paper,” the woman added, “so you know which ones you’ve done.”
Someone began distributing one list per team. Mia took ours. There were a few more instructions, but nothing we hadn’t already heard.
“Want to do the first few together?” Tori asked.
“Sure,” Mia said.
Jayden and I exchanged a look, sizing each other up. Why, I didn’t know. It was just a Halloween scavenger hunt. But men did that sometimes.
The organizer blew a whistle—not as loud as the one I had around my neck—and it felt like the start of a race.
Except I had no idea what we were racing to.
Jayden quickly scanned the list. “Let’s head over to the architecture building. There are a couple of checkpoints in that area.”
“Sounds good,” Mia said, with a quick glance up at me.
Some teams were already running across the quad, but we just took off at a brisk walk. Not that I had anything against running—I jogged most nights—but I was determined to use this opportunity to get to know Mia better, and to see if she could become more comfortable with me.
And neither of those things could happen if we were running around like madmen.
“What’s the first checkpoint?” Tori asked.
