Page 33 of Fundamentals of Chemistry

I huffed a laugh. “Wow. I didn’t know you were so generous.”

“I can be generous.”

We both froze. Was that… an innuendo? Was it intentional? Were we flirting? A wave of heat flowed up my chest and neck, and I knew that my face must be flooding with color. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out, so I did what I always did—smiled.

Our gazes held for another second. Two seconds. A fucking eternity. And then, as if in mutual agreement, we both abruptly turned away.

I snatched up my bag and fled the room without a backward glance. I had planned on spending my second period break reviewing my next lesson plan, but as I sat heavily on the stone bench outside of Franklin Hall, I knew I would be spending the next hour thinking about Cooper and trying to figure out what had changed.

After fifty-five minutes of postmortem dissection, I reached two conclusions. One—I couldn’t let things end there with Cooper. I had just gotten him to start opening up to me. I didn’t want to lose all of the progress we had made and go back to square one. I needed to keep going. I needed to come up with a new prank, and quickly.

Two—the cat was out of the bag with my students. They absolutely knew that Cooper had played a practical joke on me, and they were also completely fine with it. I still did not want them getting involved, but having their support meant that I could take my pranks up a notch. That little fact opened up a whole new world of prank opportunities, assuming they really could be trusted to look the other way.

That doubt was confirmed the following morning when David, showing more energy than I had ever seen from him, demanded to know what my plans were for Cooper. I laughed, relieved, and assured him and the rest of the class that I had a few ideas.

The students were all sworn to secrecy, but they reveled in seeing what Cooper and I did next, as well as making their own recommendations. I had to shoot down someone’s idea to mislabel all of the reagents—a huge safety hazard—but I loved the babyproof locks on every cabinet that could only be opened with a special magnetic key.

They didn’t know that I had already procured hundreds of googly eyes and planned to apply them to every piece of glassware in the storage closet over my lunch break.

Chapter 11

The Cat’s Out of the Bag

After two and a half weeks of nonstop escalating pranks and practical jokes, it was all I could think about. I was eating pranks for breakfast. I was seeing pranks in my sleep. Cooper was firmly planted in my head, and I found that I didn’t particularly mind. I even sort of liked it. While we only ever said a few words to each other in passing or between classes, his continued dedication to the game spoke volumes.

Every time I was sure I had won our little war, he would counter.

I would leave a stapler in a Jell-O mold—a classic prank, inspired by The Office.

He would paper the cabinets with fifty copies of my—cheesy and painfully dated—yearbook photo.

I would replace all of the test tubes with manicotti noodles.

He would line the file drawer with plastic to create a live aquarium—complete with goldfish.

It went on and on, day after day, and I loved it. He had the same sense of humor that I did, and it was inexplicably attractive.

Every now and then, I would catch his eye across the cafeteria or when we were trading the room between classes. The way his lips pulled into a grin that walked the line between devious and mischievous, and the way his eyes darkened when they found mine, had my cheeks flushing, even as I became distinctly aware of my pelvic floor.

I seriously needed to get a grip on myself before I did something stupid. Er—stupider. I was already well passed stupid and barreling straight toward insanity.

***

“What are you doing?” said a low voice.

I froze like a flower dipped in liquid nitrogen. He shouldn’t be here. It was lunch hour, and he should have been in the cafeteria or his apartment or anywhere that wasn’t the classroom. Alone. With me.

But in hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised. He probably came to gloat about today’s prank—admittedly, his best yet. When the students and I heard a meow during first period, I assumed we were hearing things. But, when we heard another meow about ten minutes later, then the wild goose—cat—chase began.

By the end of first period, we had found three tiny speakers, the size of a penny, hidden around the classroom, and I had assumed that was everything. But when the meowing started up again during third period, that class somehow managed to find two more speakers.

At this point, I was extra confident that we had all of them. Five “cats” seemed more than sufficient for a respectable—and distracting—prank.

But right before the bell rang signaling the end of third period, we heard another distinct meow. I considered leaving the “cat” in the room. My classes were done for the day, so I wouldn’t be terrorized by this prank any longer. But my pride wouldn’t let me do that.

What would my students think if there was still meowing tomorrow? I couldn’t let them think that Cooper had beaten me. And more importantly, I couldn’t have Cooper thinking he had gotten one over on me either.

No. I had to find the damn cat speaker.