“Question four,” the emcee droned.“What is the principle that states you cannot simultaneously know the position and momentum of a particle with perfect accuracy?”
The table went silent.Ryan looked at his beer.Decker looked at the ceiling.
I picked up the answer slip.
“Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle,” I wrote in block letters.
“Wait,” Ryan said.“Are you sure?Maybe it’s the… Schrödinger thing?The cat?”
“The cat is a thought experiment about superposition,” I said, not looking up.“Uncertainty is position and momentum.Trust me.”
I handed the slip to Luke.He looked at it, then at me, grinning.
“Running it to the judge,” Luke said.
We swept the category.
By Round 3, the dynamic had shifted.I wasn’t the outsider; I was the asset.Ryan was high-fiving me after every correct answer.Even Javier nodded approvingly when I calculated the conversion of kilometers to miles in my head for a travel question.
I was sipping my club soda, feeling a strange, warm buzz that had nothing to do with alcohol, when a shadow fell over the table.
Three guys stood there.They wore polos with popped collars—lacrosse team, if I recalled the campus hierarchy correctly.
“Carter,” the lead guy sneered.He was holding a pitcher of cheap beer.“Didn’t know the hockey team allowed tutors at the varsity table.”
The noise at our table died instantly.
“Beat it, Kyle,” Ryan said, his voice dropping an octave.
“Just asking,” Kyle said, eyes sliding to me.“Heard you needed help counting to ten, Carter.Brought the babysitter?”
My stomach twisted.I gripped my glass.This was the variable I hated—the one where I became a prop in someone else’s status game.
I started to slide out of the booth.“I should go get a refill.”
Luke’s hand clamped onto my thigh under the table.Firm.Immovable.
“Stay,” he said.
He didn’t look at me.He looked at Kyle.His expression hadn’t changed much—he still looked calm—but the air around him dropped ten degrees.The same look he had in the crease right before a penalty kill.
“Austen isn’tthe tutor,” Luke said, his voice carrying over the bar noise.“He’s my roommate and probably the smartest guy in the room.Which puts him about one-hundred IQ points north of you, Kyle.”
The table went dead silent.
Kyle flushed.“Whatever, man.Just saying it looks weird.”
“What looks weird,” Luke continued, standing up slowly, “is you interrupting my team’s dinner.We’re celebrating.You’re blocking the view.”
Javier stood up too.Then Ryan.The booth became a wall of Frost Demons.
Kyle looked at the three of them, did the math, and realized his probability of winning was zero.
“Whatever,” Kyle muttered.He turned and shoved his way back into the crowd.
Luke sat down.He didn’t make a big deal of it.He looked at me.
“You okay?”
