may shatter on impact (tronnor)

53. Parapristipomoides Squamimaxillaris & Laughter

all info is, again, from wikipedia. 

The cafeteria was cold. Absentminded chatter filled the space, glass windows giving a view of the ocean with it's green waves and buoys and painted sailboats, the walls covered in models of sharks and posters labeling all the parts of parapristipomoides squamimaxillaris and all the predators of the puffer fish.

I held a paper bag of food in my hand, a plastic bottle of water in my other hand, the condensation dripping down my arm and sending shivers down my spine when I failed to be able to wipe it off.

"What's ichthyology?" Connor asked as we sat down at a table with the group we usually sat with at lunch.

I glanced down at my own paper after swallowing a sip of the somehow crystalline water. "Zoology but about fishes."

"'The branch of zoology that deals with fishes'," Clara reads from her phone. "That's the official definition."

Connor nods, scribbling down Clara's answer. "Okay, what's parapristipomoides squamimaxillaris, or however the heck that's pronounced?"

I blinked at him. "The what?"

"Question four."

"It's the scalemouth jobfish," I answered, "and, Con?" He looked up questioningly. "It's on the wall next to you."

"Oh," he said, not bothering to look up at the blue poster just above his head. "What're it's predators?"

"Also on the poster."

"Got it." He looked up, reading the information quickly and scribbling it down, not really thinking about it. "Wait, did you already write all of this down?"

"Yeah, it's not hard."

"Hm," was all that he said.

"Connor!" Alfie exclaimed before he had even sat down. "What the hell is para - parapristi... po... moi - des squa - mimax... illaris?" he asked, sounding out the word.

"See, Troye! This is not common knowledge! It's confusing! How the heck are any of us supposed - "

"Guys, this is literally all taken from the little info signs in front of each tank. Just read them," I said, chuckling as I took a bite of my sandwich.

"I have been!"

"Well, obviously, not good enough!"

He laughed, showing Alfie his paper and the answer to question four. "Says the one who hasn't been reading them."

"Troye, why do you know all of this?" Alfie asked, staring at the questioned, baffled by both the Latin and the diagrams.

I shrug. "I have absolutely no idea why, but it's come in handy, so I'm not complaining. It was probably something I memorized for school."

Connor snorts. "This is the kind of thing that Dan is studying at 2 in the morning on Wikipedia, not the kind of thing you learn in school."

"What about me?" Dan asked, sitting across from me, breathlessly taking gulping down some water. "Jesus Christ, running up four flights of stairs and across the entire building to get here on time is not fun."

Zoe laughed. "You know there's an elevator right?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?" He laid his head in his arms dramatically. "After all that, there's an elevator." We all laughed at that, and as Phil joined him, also out of breath, we laughed even more. Connor's eyes were bright, his teeth flashing as he smiled; I could practically see the sunrise in his eyes, and all of the colors of the ocean in the green and the black and the little bits of blue and gray.

"Anyways," Dan continued. "What were you saying about me?"

"Well," Connor starts, smiling as he says my name. "Troye here happens to just know all the answers to these questions for some reason. We decided that he's probably doing what you're doing at 2 AM?"

"Tumblr? Wikipedia searches on the stupidest things? Math homework?"

Connor laughed, the happiness bubbling out of his throat. "Wikipedia, I meant."

I smile at him. "Well I doubt it, because I don't know about you, but I'm sleeping at 2 in the morning."

We spent the rest of lunch laughing and trading cookies and answers and teasing each other about anything and everything, and it's not until we're on the bus back to the school that I realize why I know all of this random information about the ocean. It's because of Tyler. Because of the year when he wanted to be a marine biologist and decided to teach me everything he knew about the glittering oceans around us. Because back when we were inseparable, he taught me everything I know about the world.