Third period chemistry would have been fine if Jon was allowed to choose his own lab partner. Mr. Wilkinson assigned groups entirely randomly at different points throughout the year, though, so Jon's mild euphoria at his and Karyn's first kiss - first two kisses actually, things were going great, bad wishes be damned - dampened a little as he sat down on his stool next to Tiffany Sanders.
"Hi, Jon," Tiffany smiled and wiggled her eyebrows at him. This was new.
"Um, hi, Tiffany. Let's not set things on fire again, okay?" Tiffany rarely did much to actually contribute to the experiments they had to run, but just enough that Jon always made sure he had a clear pathway to the fire extinguisher, just in case.
"Oh, Jon, that hasn't happened for, like, weeks, and I'm pretty sure it was your fault anyway," Tiffany ran her fingers along Jon's newly muscled arm. "Hard to pay attention when I've got these arms of yours distracting me."
Jon stared. Tiffany had never once expressed any interest in him. And she expressed interest in everyone. No shame in that, he supposed, do whatever and whoever you want as often as you want as long as you're not a bitch about things, but her eye had always passed right over him. This is because of what Biff gave me, isn't it? he thought. And Steve made that weirdly supportive comment earlier, too. Is this how reality accommodates me being like this?
"I appreciate it, Tiffany, but I'm currently taken," Jon informed her.
Tiffany let out a quick squeal. "Oh my god, Jon. Since when? Who? I want all the details."
Just then, Mr. North spoke up at the front of the room. "Alright, everyone, settle down, let's focus up here. We've been talking about acids and bases for the last week, so we're going to try a couple of simple titrations today. Work with your partner, and try to determine exactly how much material you need to add to induce the color change in your solvent. And be careful! Make sure you add material only drop by drop."
Jon sighed and pulled out his notebook, throwing on his pair of safety glasses. Tiffany leaned in. "Come on, tell me! This is exciting!" she eagerly whispered.
He handed her a pair of safety glasses from the lab bench and tried to start the experiment. "It's Karyn. We kissed in the hallway right before class."
Tiffany sat back with a not unkind smirk. "Exactly who I would have guessed. Well, I'm not going to stand in the way of a budding romance!" She began chatting up other students at nearby tables and left Jon to things, like usual.
Class went mostly smoothly from there. The liquid changed color, Mr. North went around the room checking in and asking questions here and there to see who was actually learning anything, Jon half-heartedly answered when it was his turn, and Tiffany didn't cause Jon to knock over any acid.
Mr. North looked at the clock near the end of class. "Alright, everyone, we're just about out of time. If you've neutralized your solvents, then you should be able to pour everything down the drain, so clean up your stations and you should be done before the bell rings."
Jon did most of the work while Tiffany scrolled through her phone, her neon pink acrylic nails tapping and tapping again. Just as he finished, he pointed across their lab bench. "Tiffany, can you hand me that last beaker and I'll wash it out for us?"
Tiffany looked up, saw the beaker, and started to hand it to Jon. As she did, she looked down at his hands. "Jon! You've got to take better care of your hands than that," she admonished.
Jon glanced down. "What are you talking about?"
Tiffany grabbed the beaker back out of his hand, placed it down, then flipped Jon's hands so they were palm-side down. "Your nails, Jon, look at them. They're terrible."
Jon stared at her. "Well, yeah, I got some of the experiment dye on them. It'll wash off eventually."
Tiffany shook her head. "It's not just that, Jon. You've got dirt under your nails and they look like you've been chewing on them." She tsked. "Girls notice things like this, Jon, and here you are, just starting something with Karyn, and she's going to notice, believe me."
Jon rolled his eyes, washed the beaker, and began to grab his notebook. "I think Karyn will be fine with it."
"No, Jon!" she repeated. "It's something simple and says how you take care of yourself. All girls notice. You need to take better care of them!"
Jon's head snapped up, eyes wide. Wait, he thought, hold on, how fast can I get out of-
Tiffany sighed and grabbed his hands. "Here," she said. "Copy off me!"
She reached down to her own hands, and seemingly popped duplicates out of each of her own nails in rapid succession, and rapidly applied each one to Jon's hands. Jon started to look down in horror at the bright, glaring, impossible-to-ignore neon pink, but Tiffany was still doing.... something. She reached up to the side of her head with one hand, pinched two fingers together, and pulled. Out came a glowing, wispy strand, almost like a multi-colored, twinkling spider web. Tiffany smiled in seemingly no pain at all, and then quickly reached over and tapped her two fingers into Jon's head right above his ear, the wisp disappearing as she did so.
Tiffany looked down at her work on Jon's hands. "Much better," she chirped. "See you later, Jon!" And she grabbed her purse and waltzed out of the room, right as the bell rang.
Jon stared. The nails weren't that long, but they were still longer than he had ever had his nails before. And acrylics were certainly a new experience. He tried to grab a pen off the lab bench and felt them scratch the table surface.
"Maybe there are some scissors inside a drawer here or something and I can try to cut them-" he started to mutter in desperation, but then Jon stopped. Why would I possibly want to destroy my nails now that they're better? he thought. And then he shook his head. Why did I think THAT?
Jon reached up and touched the side of his head where Tiffany had seemingly inserted the wisp. What had that been? He looked down at his nails and felt a small sense of pride. They certainly are better than they normally have been. Wait, why do I even care?
Jon tried to think. What had Tiffany said? She... she hadn't said he needed better nails, she had said... he needed to take better care of them. So of course someone who took care of their nails like she did would interpret that as having fantastic colors - Jon realized another brief thought of happiness had just percolated through out of nowhere - but now Jon was struggling to understand why he would want to make his nails look more like they used to. She... she made it so I feel obligated to take care of my nails. That's what this is, isn't it? he realized. It's a compulsion. Two different urges were flipping back and forth through his mind. I don't just have Tiffany's nails, I have her whole mindset about them.
Jon closed his eyes and screamed inside his head. Seemingly ironically, he felt his hands shake in front of him, his fingers spread far apart, his new nails presented clearly in doing so.
"I've got to find Karyn," he muttered, and picked up his notebook as best he could. "I'll copy off her and overwrite this. That'll fix it." And he ran out into the hall to meet Karyn at lunch, as fast as he could.
