And Kai knows it all too well. “You know what you need?” He eases my pH meter out of my hands like he’s confiscating contraband. “A day out of this place.” He gestures at the gloss-white walls and surgical tables. “Self-care.”
“Idoself-care.” Which, for me, is lowering my shoulders from earring height, letting Maya’s playlists pressure-wash my brain, and consuming an irresponsible number of spam musubi. Maya says I should go outside more. I told her I spent six hours in a tide pool last week. She says that doesn’t count.
I respectfully disagree.
I can’t help it; the reason I’m here requires stellar grades, perfect attendance, compliance with every rule in thebinder. I owe the version of me who fought for this scholarship the courtesy of not fumbling it.
“Prove it, then. Let’s get out of here.”
The panic must flash across my face, because Kai laughs. “Just an hour, Taylor. A tiny one. In the real world.”
I look at my station, still frozen in the aftermath of the Colt fiasco, then at his lopsided grin. Fine. I cap what needs capping, wipe the bench, hang my lab coat like it can sulk without me, and we’re out.
Ethanol gives way to chlorophyll as we push through the door and onto the freshly cut campus lawn. The sun feels indecent in the best way.
One thing is for certain: I might never get used to the island’s vibrancy. It’s like borrowing a mantis shrimp’s eyes—every channel cranked, every color saturated to the brim and then some. Even Kai, who moved here in his early teens, says it still blindsides him.
Biology has a reason for all this color. Evolution is a wonderful thing; and in a species-rich environment like this, plants and animals have to be legible fast. Flowers push pigment to steer pollinators, birds and geckos flash throat patches like uniforms, and a few neon show-offs go bright on purpose—to send a message. When the backdrop is loud, you either speak in color or you disappear.
Some species use it as a straight-up threat display: vibrant saysdo not touch. Holden’s eyes, for example—smoky at the rim, warm amber in the center—read like a hazard sign to my nervous system. A threat to, well, my sanity. And Idobelieve in signs. Especially cautionary ones. I’m just apparently very good at ignoring them.
We veer into a small bookstore a few streets from the marine sciences building—part of the deal I struck with Kai. I’ll kick academia to the curb for a couple of hours if he buys a book that isn’t about the ocean. No reef IDs, no field guides, no “Fishes of the…” anything. He admits he can’t remember the last time he picked up something that wasn’t a manual. And after the day I’ve had, I’m allowed a few romance tropes myself. On paper, of course.
We skim the aisles. It’s cooler in here, the air faintly papery-sweet, a ceiling fan clicking like a metronome. I hate to say it, but I’m having fun. More than fun. Kai is adorably out of his depth, reading blurbs with his eyebrows raised and firing questions I have all the answers to.Yes, two beds at the inn is a crime against humanity. Of course, “who did this to you” is the superior trope. And no, Holden and I are not grumpy/sunshine.I don’t think.
I round the endcap and nearly walk into Dr. Kymbert. She has a neat stack tucked under one arm—field guides and essays by the look of the spines—but she’s currently considering a display of steamy STEM romances. When she turns, the smile she gives me is wide and unguarded, nothing like the dry, surgical smirk she wears behind a lectern.
“Coralie. How lovely to run into you outside of my class.”
“Hi, Dr. Kymbert.” I have no idea what one does with their hands when meeting a professional hero in the wild. Discuss her latest methods paper? Curtsy? This is a special category of awkward.
Kai appears at my shoulder, eyes glued to a paperback. “So, let me get this straight—falling for your brother’s best friend is… appropriate?” He’s holding a title on my TBR and looks genuinely concerned for society.
“Yes,” my professor and I answer in unison. My head snaps toward her—pinpricks of light from the speed of the movement, excellent—and her grin goes conspiratorial.
“I, um—this is my friend Kai,” I manage. “He’s excellent at many things, though currently acclimating to bookstores.”
“Welcome, Kai.” She gives him a courteous nod, then glances—pointedly, amused—at the stack in my arms. “Looks like you’re in capable hands. I’ll see you next week, Coralie. Stop by if you want to talk thesis. Or to weigh in on which of these I should read first.”
My eyes widen at the open admission—romance reader, noted—but then again, why wouldn’t she be? She lifts her science books in a small salute and heads for the register, leaving a faint wake of paper and possibility.
An hour later I’m a few dollars lighter, sugared with chocolate-covered strawberries from a street cart, and armed with a very good, very comfy read. As we walked around campus, Kai finished what he considers crucial campus gossip: this girl named Kacey allegedly ran three air fryers at once and nearly smoked out her dorm, and some guy took a drunk photo with the Rainbow Warrior statue and went viral. Most of it went over my head, but his animated retelling had me laughing until my stomach cramped. Now he hugs me goodbye and heads beachward with friends while I, regrettably responsible, shrug off the sunnier, off-duty version of myself like a borrowed sweatshirt and head back to the lab for a few more hours.
I’m rewarded with an empty space; the earlier crowd has vanished and—miracle—left almost no mess. Labs are great at outing who washed dishes as a teenager and who grew up with a dishwasher.
As much as I love my friends, there’s relief in returning to the work. Outside, a conversation can reroute a day; in here, it tilts on method. Even when results don’t add up, the attempt still counts.
Here I get to steer: the protocol, the questions, the pace, the shape of what comes next. Every hour laid like a tile, every run a small vote for the future I’m building.
I want a life that would disappoint my laziest self and delight my bravest one. This room lets me build it—one clean label, one solved problem, one quiet hour at a time.
I grab what I need for a quick husbandry-and-enrichment session—logbook, tongs, thawed shrimp, the bin of sanitized LEGO, a new section of PVC—and head to Damon. He’s dead center, pupils a neat slit, already watching. I always feel a flicker of guilt seeing him like this; for all the care we pour into water quality and enrichment, a tank isn’t a reef. I take what comfort I can from the fact that he was tank-hatched and has been looked after, properly, for all nine months of his life.
“If we both pretend I didn’t humiliate myself in here earlier, I’ll give you an extra block,” I tell him.
Two arms extend—his usual scouts—and he takes the toys with that efficient, unfussy grip. A few days ago, I dotted the base of each arm with food-safe gel dyes so I could track who initiates what. Octopuses aren’t nine-brained in the way people like to say, but they do run a distributed system: one central brain and big neural hubs in each arm, with most of the neurons out in the limbs. The result is a kind of delegated intelligence. They also show context-dependent “handedness.”
Case in point: Damon tends to start LEGO stacks withthe arms I tagged blue and yellow, while the red-marked arm is his favorite for probing anything new—like the pipe I’m about to add.
