“It’s the universal constant.Besides, even Dr.Thorne would lose her mind over this.It’s a perfect closed loop.High efficiency.Zero waste.”
“Your scary professor?”Maya asked, taking a bite of her pretzel.
“She’s not scary,” I said, tracking Luke as he stretched.“But, she will ruin my GPA if I don’t come up with a senior thesis topic soon.”
Maya looked from me to Luke, then back to me, a slow smile spreading across her face.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she laughed.“You’re turning hockey into homework.”
“I’m turning it into something solvable.”
Down on the ice, Luke squared to the first shooter.Pads clicked; puck ricocheted.Routine.
Crowd noise washed over us, but the vectors behaved.Like he’d said, constants kept you honest.He was the constant right now, bright blue paint framing a problem set he solved in real time.
My pulse ticked a half-beat faster.I leaned forward, elbows on knees.I could see the mathematical proof developing in front of me.
Chapter 6
Signal Noise
Austen
Silence in a double-occupancy dorm room is a statistical anomaly.It usually indicates one of two things: vacancy or tension.At 4:15 p.m.on a Tuesday in early October, our room was heavy with the latter.
I sat at my desk grading a stack of Linear Algebra quizzes that suggested the first-year students believed numbers were decorative.The room was quiet, but not peaceful.
Luke was pacing.
He’d come back from the athletic center twenty minutes early, skipping the post-lift meal he usually treated like a religious rite.He hadn’t greeted me.He hadn’t lined his shoes up.He’d dropped his bag and started pacing the six feet of floor between our beds.
Step, step, pivot.Step, step, pivot.
I kept my eyes on the red pen in my hand, but my peripheral vision tracked him.He was vibrating.Not the usual post-practice adrenaline, but something jagged.He kept checking his phone, screen lighting up, thumb hovering, then screen dark again.
I considered putting my headphones in.Noise-canceling technology was my primary defense mechanism against the chaos of shared living.But curiosity—or maybe a survival instinct that wanted to know when the explosion was coming—kept them on the desk.
Then his phone rang.
Not a ringtone; a jarring, standard-issue buzzer.Luke stopped mid-pivot.He stared at the screen for exactly one second, his posture snapping from agitated to rigid.He looked like a soldier called to attention.
He swiped answer.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
The “sir” scraped against the air.Not respectful; fearful.
I capped my red pen.I shouldn’t listen.The roommate social contract demanded I pretend to be deaf, or at least deeply absorbed in vector spaces.I turned a page, staring at a student’s illegible proof, but the room was too small.
“I know the stats,” Luke said.His voice was tight, stripped of the easy confidence he wore.“I’m on the depth chart.Harper said—”
He stopped.Cut off.
I couldn’t hear the words coming from the other end, but I could hear the cadence.Staccato rhythm.Sharp.Loud enough that tinny distortion leaked from the speaker.
Luke flinched.Physically flinched, his shoulders curled inward.
“I am focused,” he said.“I’m at the rink six days a week.My grades are…” He swallowed, throat bobbing visibly.“My grades are fine.I’m handling it.”
