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Page 16 of The Chemistry Test

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Nestled on the corner of a quiet street where the shops and houses meet sits Hilliary’s Hideaway, my favourite tea house south of the Thames.

Seeing it now, with its thatched roof and cheery sign, I feel just as comforted as I did the first time I came across it.

And it strikes me how much has changed since then, but also how much hasn’t.

It was a few weeks before I dropped out of university when I first stumbled across it, after walking for miles, not knowing or caring where I was going. But something about it caught my eye. And so, after walking past it, I turned and walked straight back.

Apart from the extensive bay windows and the teahouse sign above the open door, it looked more like a cosy cottage than a café. And as I gazed in through the window, I imagined the customers were one big family who had finally come home to share several pots of tea. Perhaps that’s what drew me in.

Now, as I open the arched door for the umpteenth time, I realise I don’t feel quite as bad as I did then.

I guess I’ve been so focused on comparing each day to the last, that I hadn’t been able to notice the differences that were slowly building up over time.

Hilliary, the shop’s owner and namesake, gives me and Penny a floury-handed wave as we walk past the open counter.

And Penny, unable to wave back while she steers herself forward, beams up at her.

‘This is more like it,’ she says, beaming at me too as we sit down at table four. Over the past few months, I somehow managed to sit at every table, but this one, overlooking the stream out the back, is definitely the best.

‘Here we are,’ Hilliary says, coming over with my signature flat white and a falafel wrap.

‘Can you tell I’m a regular?’ I say, after thanking her.

‘I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ Hilliary says, placing a hand on my arm.

‘And what can I get you, petal?’ she says, turning to Penny.

I try to stop myself from smiling; being shown respect shouldn’t be something out of the ordinary, but it’s so nice to see her being treated like an actual human instead of a roadblock, like she was in the last place.

You did good, pet, I can hear my gran saying, if she were here.

Penny’s still telling me about her first few weeks at university when Hilliary comes back over with her latte. Penny picks it up to take a sip, looking over the glass at me with heavy eyelashes.

‘What about you? What was your first year like?’ she says.

And it’s not really something I want to think about, so I answer it from a purely academic standpoint, telling her which modules I completed and which ones I’ve yet to do.

She seems genuinely interested in everything I’m saying, but before she has a chance to ask me any further questions about studying part-time, I offer to help with anything she’s finding difficult instead.

She thinks for a second before answering.

‘You could test me on stuff,’ she says, pulling her laptop out of the tan backpack on her wheelchair. ‘If that’s okay?’

She takes a second to find her Biochemistry notes, then pushes it over to me.

‘Don’t worry if you don’t know a lot of it, though,’ I say as I scan through her notes.

They’re separated into clear sections with both bullet points and tables, so it’s incredibly easy to read.

I don’t expect her to know much at this point – literally no one does, so I pick something she should remember from high school.

I figure she could probably do with a confidence boost right about now.

‘Here’s a good one,’ I say, turning the laptop a bit more so she definitely can’t see it. ‘Amino acids undergo what type of reaction to form a peptide bond?’

‘Condensation.’ She smiles, already knowing that she’s right. ‘You can ask ones with longer answers as well if you like.’

I scroll further down the page. ‘Okay, tell me about a fibrous protein of your choice.’

She picks collagen, which is the protein responsible for many types of Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes, so I’m not surprised when she gives a perfect account of what it is and all its properties.

What does surprise me, though, is when she recites her notes for two of the other fibrous proteins word for word.

Verbatim. After the second one, I stop her.

‘Penny, I don’t think you need any help.

How have you managed to learn it like this?

’ I can only imagine how long she must have spent on it.

I barely knew the content at all this time last year.

And the thing is, she’s wasting her time – she’ll have to learn it all over again when the exams roll around in mid-December.

She shrugs. ‘Lucky guess?’

I frown. ‘Seemed pretty certain to me.’

Now she’s frowning. That’s not what I was going for. ‘I mean, in a good way. You should be certain, you were absolutely spot on. How did you do that?’

She shrugs again. ‘I genuinely wasn’t certain, but if I like something, I can sort of just remember it word for word. Like, not a hundred per cent obviously, but pretty close – that’s where the lucky guess comes in.’

‘Do you have a photographic memory?’ To be honest, I wouldn’t have offered to help her if I’d known about this. I may have gotten the best grades in my classes before I dropped out last year, but she still knows this stuff better than I did.

‘No, it’s not that. I just learn by reading – like, literally just reading, so stuff goes in faster for me than for other people, I suppose,’ she says, her cheeks flushing a little. ‘So, I don’t have to write stuff over and over like I’ve seen some people do.’

I shake my head. ‘You have no idea how jealous I am of you right now,’ I say, thinking back to the months I spent last year doing exactly that.

She takes a sip of her latte and looks up at me with a mischievous smile, making her eyes dazzle even more than usual.

‘Do you want to know the worst part?’ she asks, pushing on before I can answer her. ‘I like to treat exam days as though I’m a child on Christmas morning,’ she says, eyes alight.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard something so ridiculous, and my face clearly shows it. It spurs her on even more.

‘Seriously.’ She laughs. ‘I like to think of the questions as presents. So, I read through them as quickly as I can, which is like opening all my presents to see what I’ve got.

Then I play with my favourite ones first, which is where I answer all the questions that seem like they were hand-picked just for me.

And then finally, I go and play with the toys I didn’t really want, just because I might as well since they’re there.

And that part is definitely the least fun, as that’s where I answer the crappy questions that are either really hard or worded weirdly or something.

’ She’s grinning at me like she’s making perfect sense.

‘So, you actually like exams?’

‘Yes and no. Yes, because it’s like winning the lottery when those good questions come up and you just know you’ve got some good marks there. But no, because the bad questions stress me out.’ Her eyes widen. ‘I mean, what if they ask us something we’ve not covered properly?’

I point to her notes. ‘I don’t think you need to be worried about that.’

‘You just never know, though! And of course there’s the other issue, which is that I’m not actually smart, I just remember things that are interesting to me.’

‘Penny, that’s not “not being smart”, that’s part of being human. It’s human nature to be better at the things that interest us – or interested in the things we’re better at, whichever way round it is.’

‘I’m really good at Maths despite hating it though, there’s no interest there.’

I bite the inside of my lip lightly, resisting the urge to smirk.

‘Rich words from someone who’s not smart .

..’ I say, letting myself trail off. She might’ve found a flaw in my logic, but she’s also found a much bigger one in hers.

I settle back in my chair as she grins back at me, open-mouthed. ‘I rest my case.’

She looks like she wants to object at first, but then she laughs instead, meeting my gaze. ‘Maybe you’re right then. Maybe I’m just naturally gifted and I should sit back and enjoy exams even more’ – she kicks me lightly under the table, maintaining that devilish eye-contact – ‘than I already do.’

‘You are actually the worst,’ I say, giving her laptop back to her. It makes her giggle even more. Trust me to end up sitting with the only person in the world who enjoys exams. I didn’t even know that was possible. But I can feel myself smiling too.

I look at her, sitting there in her pretty white dress and twinkling brown eyes that, for some reason, remind me of Bambi.

You’d never know she had a secret computer-like brain buried in her head.

People like her, who don’t have to work as hard as everyone else to get good grades, usually annoy me.

But for some reason, there’s nothing that annoys me about Penny.