Nouveau

Chapter 12: Learning

Laive

"Go BACK to the table." Tremaine scolded her.

L didn't even see him come down the stairs, let alone around the corner. Did he have eyes in the back of his head?

"Don't cut them eyes at me either gotdamn."

"You're impossible!" Laive exasperated. "I just wanted to take a break."

"Nah. You not even focused right now. You been scribbling on that same piece of paper for 30 minutes."

She was about to open her mouth and protest his observant truth. As soon as Laive was about to lie to save face, he cut her off.

"We not doing that either."

"Stop thinking you know what I'm about to say."

"You're a professional bullshitter Laive. I always know what you about to say."

She wished she didn't laugh at him.

Tremaine grabbed her stack of color coordinated note cards and held them in the air. "You get five of these right, you can take a break for 15 minutes."

"Five? That's all?" She smiled.

"Five."

Tremaine begin to read a lavender card from the stack. "60 to 100 beats per minute. Each beat generates from the SA node and propagates through a normal conductive pathway"

"Arrhythmia."

"That one was too easy...let me see," Tremaine shuffled the cards again. "Inflammation in the small and large intestine"

"Really?" Laive giggled. "Can you read something other than the first bullet point?"

"What's the answer smart ass?"

"Inflammatory bowel disease"

"AAAAAANNNNNNN, Wron-"

"Formally called ulcerative colitis"

"Spell it." Tremaine teased.

"Tremaine! Stop it.." Laive was trying to snatch her notecards back.

"Spell it then," he was running in circles around his glass dining table to get away from her.

"U-l-c-e-r-a-t-i-v-e" Laive grunted as she lunged toward him. "C-o-l-i-t-i-s. You're being childish."

She caught the end of his arm and pulled, as he turned away from her. "Tremaine!"

"Alright L...Alright," Laughing, he handed her the stack of cards.

"You're such a jerk!"

"Sometimes," He shrugged.

Laive sat down in the Black leather, square-backed, dining room chair. Overwhelmed wasn't even good enough to describe how she felt. Tremaine thought she needed a vacation after all the shit she had just been through. L gave all her books and notes that were scattered across the table, a fed-up grimace. She was just ready for her last exam to be over.

"You so organized," Tremaine pointed out. Her notes were super detailed on graph and college lined paper. Every page was outlined and contained a well-drawn diagram with fancy hand lettering. They were even color coordinated.

"Too much information to consume for me not to be."

When she glanced at her MacBook screen, Tremaine sat next to her.

"I know you hate doing anything class related online, but I couldn't let you stay after what I found out."

L huffed and continued to switch screens between a slide show and practice test.