Chapter 20: What Was Coming Has Finally Arrived
In the Car
"So we're splitting it evenly?"
Emmett stroked his share of the bills with visible satisfaction, then looked at Adam. "A thousand each?"
"Obviously," Adam said. "How else would we split it?"
"No complaints here." Emmett raised his hand immediately, grinning. "Adam, man, we owe you one."
His tone carried exactly the kind of implication Adam had expected.
"We really do," Juno agreed, laughing.
Adam let it go. He could see through both of them perfectly well and simply didn't have the energy to argue with a subtext.
Early The Next Morning
Ding!
Wisdom +0.005
Ding!
Wisdom +0.005
Juno and Sheldon, right on schedule. Adam pulled up the full panel in his head and looked it over properly for the first time in a few days.
Intelligence: 114.6 Strength: 180 Endurance: 310 Speed: 160 Lifespan: 35.04 Others: Locked
He stopped at Endurance.
It had been 300 the last time he'd checked, and there had been no notification, no ping, nothing to explain the jump.
He stared at it for a while, turning it over, looking for the pattern. Strength seemed connected to close bonds — family, real friendship. Speed had moved when he was scared. Intelligence tracked with genius proximity. Lifespan responded to genuine acts of service.
Endurance, though — he still hadn't cracked it. Whatever was driving it had happened quietly, without announcing itself.
He eventually let it go. There were too many unknowns in this system to expect every answer immediately. The variables that mattered most were intelligence and lifespan, and both of those were moving in the right direction.
A wave of drowsiness settled over him and he went back to sleep.
The Next Day — School
"Why are you grinning like that?"
Sheldon looked at Emmett with the expression of someone filing a formal complaint with the universe.
"Because I had a great night," Emmett said cheerfully. "Sheldon, you genuinely missed out."
"How so?"
"Never mind," Adam cut in. "You think Sheldon cares about money, Emmett?"
He thought about what he knew of Sheldon's relationship with money. It was genuinely unusual — not careless, just uncomplicated. Sheldon understood its function without being particularly moved by its presence or absence. Adam remembered the story of Penny borrowing money from him in a tight month, and how Sheldon had held out his piggy bank without ceremony and told her to take what she needed, expression completely neutral throughout.
In a country where splitting the check between close friends was standard practice, that kind of uncalculated generosity was genuinely rare.
"What money?" Sheldon's eyes sharpened.
Emmett recounted the previous evening with considerable dramatic embellishment. Adam watched Sheldon absorb this information.
Then Sheldon said, with complete seriousness: "I've been reconsidering. Next time there's an event like this, I'd like to participate."
Adam stared at him. "Why?"
This was not the response he'd expected. Sheldon at a crowded birthday party full of teenagers was a recipe for either a full retreat or a medical situation.
"I owe my father two hundred dollars," Sheldon said, frowning. "I need to pay him back."
"What did you do?" Emmett asked.
"It started with my hearing," Sheldon said. "The refrigerator in our kitchen was making a sound. My parents couldn't detect it, but I could hear it clearly and it was distracting. So I took it apart."
Emmett and Juno looked at each other.
"You couldn't put it back together?" Emmett said.
"I absolutely could put it back together," Sheldon said, with some indignation. "I simply didn't have the correct tools available at that moment. My father didn't accept this explanation and was very upset. Hence the two hundred dollars."
"He didn't just get upset, did he," Juno said, suppressing a smile.
Sheldon looked slightly to the side. "He raised his voice. It was an uncomfortable evening."
He left out that he had cried, which had embarrassed him significantly, since he considered himself functionally an adult.
"That's fair, Sheldon," Adam said, taking a moment of private sympathy for George Sr. "Your dad works hard to keep the household running. A refrigerator costs real money to repair or replace. From his perspective, a perfectly functional appliance got disassembled because it was making a noise only you could hear. I'd be upset too."
Sheldon considered this carefully. "That does provide useful context for his emotional response."
"You genuinely couldn't figure out why he was angry until just now?"
"I understand it now," Sheldon said, with dignity.
Lunch Break
The School Library
Emmett had peeled off after lunch to roam the hallways under the banner of Hard Candy, which was working less well for him than he'd hoped given that he was the drummer and not the front man, but he remained committed to the strategy.
Adam, Juno, and Sheldon settled into their usual corner of the library.
"Sheldon." The librarian — a warm, heavyset woman who had clearly made peace with the unusual nature of her most frequent visitor — appeared with a book already in hand. "Quantum mechanics today?"
"Please," Sheldon said happily, and disappeared into it immediately.
Adam spread his own work out and tried to focus. His intelligence was at 114.6, still short of the 120 threshold where things would genuinely start to get easier. Until he crossed that line, everything required real effort and real time, and a 4.0 GPA wasn't going to maintain itself.
He was settling in when he glanced sideways at Juno.
She had pulled a book out of her bag and set it on the table.
Adam went completely still.
"What?" Juno looked at him.
"Nothing." He looked back at his own work. His heart was doing something it hadn't done in a while.
He recognized the book. He knew exactly what it was, what it was about, and what it meant that Juno MacGuff was sitting across from him reading it.
What was coming had finally arrived.
End of Chapter 20
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