“We should find you a name. Maybe Damon—Day octopus, Damon. No? Okay. I’ll see myself out.”
The lab door swings open and a crisp “hello?” cuts through the room.
A woman steps in who could have been cast as 2007 Megan Fox: long legs, black tube top, dark hair straight as a ruler and glossy enough to catch the fluorescents, silver jewelry flashing at wrist and ear. Her face is a work of art worth studying. She is stunning in the most womanly, intimidating way there is. She scans the space, which takes one second—it’s me, the octopus, and the clam tank humming in the corner.
“Hi. Have you seen Holden? Holden Wilkes?”
My pulse does an unhelpful kick. I do not want to unpack the why. “Not since yesterday, sorry.”
“Who were you talking to? I thought I heard voices.”
I rub the back of my neck and nod at the tank. Damon pauses mid-build, chromatophores settling. “Just him.”
“The octopus?”
“The octopus.”
She considers that, then steps back, eyes running over me with the same cool efficiency she used on the room. “Right,” she says, perching on a stool. She taps in a number and sets the phone on the counter.
“Yeah?” Comes the voice I could identify through a hurricane at this point, thinned by wind and background chatter through the speakers.
“Holden,” she says, a thread of impatience in it, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I even came to your little lab.”
“Summer? What?” he says, confused. I pivot back to Damon because my job is enrichment and not eavesdropping, and because he is very clearly building something that rivals even my best LEGO work.
“Yes, Summer, dummy. I thought maybe we could hang out. I miss you.”
The pang that hits my chest is absolutelynotjealousy, and surely just a harmless cardiac glitch brought on by humidity and a potassium deficiency, which I will address later with a banana. I have no reason to be jealous. Except, perhaps, the wish for two extra inches below my knees, a fraction of her effortless poise, and the ability to “hang out” at will. Not with Holden, obviously. Certainly not.
“Um, sure, but I’m kinda busy. And off campus.”
“Okay? So just tell me where you are and I’ll meet you. I don’t feel like staying here a minute longer, not with this girl talking to fish.”
My teeth catch my tongue. Not a fish—cephalopod—three hearts, copper blood, distributed nervous system. I swallow the correction because apparently I like living.
“Coralie is with you?”
My head snaps up so fast my ponytail brushes my shoulder. There could be another Coralie on this island, or even on campus, or maybe in this program, right? There’s no way he figured out she was talking about me. Summer’s gaze slides to me and narrows like she just solved for x.
“Are youCoralie?”
“Um… yeah.”
She stands in one smooth line, scoops up a handbag stamped with a very confident silver G, and heads for the door. The heels—silver-strapped, razor-thin—click once, twice, sharp as the AC hum. “What the heck, H, I thought you were going to—” Her voice thins as the hallway swallows it.
Behind me, water filters murmur and Damon’s arms go still, a single LEGO brick hovering between two suckers like he’s waiting for my cue. Heat climbs my neck. So, he knew my name. She now knows my face. And I have just become the shiny new variable in a system that already runs too hot.
If Holden didn’t already dislike me, irritating his girlfriend by existing within his range will probably do the trick.
“You’d tell me if there were fumes in here making me hallucinate that entire exchange, right?”
Damon offers no opinion. He resumes stacking with the same unbothered focus he gives everything that isn’t my personal life, which is probably the healthiest response in the room. My imagination is decent, but it does not have the horsepower to fabricate a woman like Summer from scratch, much less the dialogue that followed.
The quiet after she leaves is enormous. I let it close over me while I watch the octopus do what he does best. He solves the bait puzzle in under two minutes, tasting each seam with careful suckers before twisting the lid as if he’s done this many times before. He checks the new rock I slipped into his den when he wasn’t looking, tests it with the edge of his beak, then decides it can stay. His chromatophores ripple when he shifts strategies, dark to pale and back again, and theslit of his pupil thins whenever he narrows his attention. The data tell a simple story. He is tracking the environment with more care than most people track their own words.
I install a length of pipe from one end of the tank to the other and log the time. He taps the opening with a single arm, retreats, returns, and finally disappears through in a smooth glide. I tell myself I will check back in a few days to see if the route has joined his mental map.
When I reach for the LEGO, he tightens, suckers sealing with a decisive pop. We have a short, civil tug-of-war that I win on a technicality after I promise to bring a new set next time. He lets go as if we drew up a contract. I leave the pipe, the notes, and the echo of a phone call I did not ask to overhear, and remind myself that at least one of us knows how to adapt quickly to a new structure.
