I knew that my day was going to be wild when I was the first to arrive at the lab, and Silas would typically beat me here by at least two hours and start scribbling notes and diagrams on the whiteboard that made up an entire wall of the lab. When I flipped on the lights, I let out a sigh and rubbed my eyes. “It’s six twenty-three, I haven’t had my coffee yet, and he’s already up to something,” I muttered as I strode past the whiteboard to the desk in my corner of the classroom.

After dropping my bag full of transcripts of Monday’s lecture on chemical thermodynamics in my chair, I turned to decipher my co-worker’s message that he had written in red, green, and blue dry-erase markers on the board. “Needed supplies. Get five beakers for each lab station and label tape. I’ll explain when I get back.” Each sentence was written in a different color, and I could feel my need for coffee increase exponentially.
Silas was unusual to say the least. He had engineered a pair of glasses to look like a set of lizard eyes and rigged them to randomly blink and scare students, and he refused to wear any lab coat that wasn’t covered in swirls, splotches, and stripes of seemingly random colors. Normally, I would have had at least three cups of coffee by the time I left my house, but my alarm clock hadn’t gone off, my coffee maker broke, and my hair had refused to behave this morning. In short, I didn’t have anywhere near the energy required to deal with Silas, and I would have to settle for the caffeinated, brown, lukewarm water in the break room three doors down the hall.
As I opened the door to the classroom, I ran face first into someone’s chest. “Andrea! Wonderful, you're here!” Silas exclaimed as I pried my face from his sternum. “I hope you’ve had your coffee because we need to move fast. We only have an hour and a half before students should start arriving.”
“S-Silas, wha-” I stuttered as I noticed the plastic bags filled with different types of clear soda. “Why do you have so much soda?” He grinned like a madman, and I felt a shiver of fear run down my spine. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Probably not,” he chirped with a shrug. He placed a kiss on my forehead and slipped past me into the lab and began yanking the soda bottles out of the white plastic bags from Wal-Mart. “Oh, I almost forgot!” Silas dug a scrap of paper out of the pocket of his technicolored lab coat and held it out to me. “I need you to label all of the beakers with these, six of each.”
I took the paper from him and felt my jaw drop as I read the list of substances. “Hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, perchloric aci- Silas, these are all incredibly dangerous! Why didn't you tell me we were going to be working with acids today?” I screeched.
He snorted and shook his head. “My dear, sweet Andrea, I didn't tell you because we aren't going to be working with acid today. We are going to pull a prank,” he laughed with a grin that split his face in half.
“Silas, you know I love a good laugh, but the last prank I helped you with ended with three students accidentally burning off their eyebrows,” I sighed as I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Silas paused for a moment. His eyebrows drew together into a “v” shape, and his glasses blinked as he stroked his mustache. “I don't remember that,” he mused, “Who burned off their eyebrows? Was it Mr. Anders? I bet it was. Silly boy. He’s always focused on other-”
“That's not my point!” I snapped, “My point is, I really hope you know what you're doing because it’s way too early for me to be averting a disaster, and I haven't had my coffee yet because my coffee maker died this morning, and I only got about three hours of sleep, my hair's a mess, and-”
“Andrea!” Silas shouted, grabbing my shoulders and crushing me to his chest in a bear hug. “Calm down, sweetheart. I promise you, everything is going to be fine. Take a deep breath, calm down, relax,” he murmured as he ran a hand through my hair, and I felt my muscles relax as his long, spindly fingers separated knots and tangles in the short, curly, crimson mess that was my hair. “I’m going to go to the break room and get you some coffee. In the meantime, I want you to start labeling these beakers. Can you do that?”
“Yes, but I-”
“Fantastic! I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he crowed as he released me and bolted for the door. I didn't even have to look when I heard the thump to know that he had just tripped over his own feet and hit the wall about a foot to the right of the door.
By the time Silas returned with a steaming cup of questionable brown liquid, I had managed to label four of the six sets of beakers for his prank. He placed a cup on the table in front of me, ruffled my hair, and sat down next to me to help label the beakers. I murmured my thanks as I took the cup and raised it to my mouth. The first sip seared my lips and scalded the tip of my tongue, and I choked and coughed as I put the cup to the side. “Andrea, did you just-”
“Shut up! It’s early, and my brain isn't exactly putting two and two together all that well. Should I have guessed it was too hot from the wall of steam rising from the cup? Yes. Should the heat burning my fingers through the foam of the cup have tipped me off? Possibly. Will I get my daily dose of caffeine before eight o’clock? Probably not,” I whined, and as I spoke, I swept my arm out in an attempt to show my frustration and knocked the cup onto the floor. Silas was biting his lower lip to the point that it was white. “Don’t,” I warned. The corners of his mouth quirked upwards. “Don’t you dare laugh.” My voice cracked on the last word, and Silas lost it. He started cackling and snorting, and I found myself giggling with him.
When class started, each lab station had five beakers with clear liquid in them, the empty soda bottles were gone, and the only evidence of my mishap with the coffee was the lingering smell at one of the lab tables. I had taken my usual seat behind my desk with a notepad and a pen to jot down the lecture of the day that I would have to type up and print for the class. Silas had a rotten habit of speaking at nearly thirty words per millisecond, and I was the only person who had spent enough time around him to be able to decipher his gibberish when he got excited.
“Alright, class, as you know, I encourage exploration, adventure, and experimentation,” Silas bubbled when everyone had shuffled in and claimed their seats, “Now, I want everyone to take hold of the beaker in front of you, take a large gulp of the liquid contained in it, and inform me of the flavor. Four of the five beakers contain soda. One contains an actual acid.”
The students all began glancing around to ask each other if he was serious. “Professor, isn't nitric acid a strong acid?” Matthew, a freshman with the attention span of a goldfish, asked.
“Yes, and I was not joking. I want everyone to taste what’s in the beakers and write down a description of the flavor,” Silas stated.
Shannon, a sophomore whose right hand seemed to be glued to her phone, raised her left hand. “Uh, Ms. O’mara, Nick isn’t here today, so we only have four people in our group. What do want us to do?”
“I’ll stand in for Rick!” Silas exclaimed.
“Nick,” I corrected.
“Isn’t that what I said?” Silas asked.
I rolled my eyes and glanced back to Shannon who looked like she was ready to faint. Most of the students loved Silas, but none of them were ever excited to have him working at their lab station. Silas was a genius, but he was, unfortunately, classified as a mad genius. I gave Shannon a sympathetic smile and a thumbs up, which the class understood as my silent way of saying “good luck. I hope you don’t die.”
Shannon blanched as Silas skipped over to her lab station, and the other students at the table took several steps back. “Alright, so, who wants to go first?” Silas asked. He bounced on the balls of his feet as the students glanced at each other and began stuttering out excuses. “No volunteers? Alright! I’ll go first then,” he chirped. Silas grabbed the beaker labeled Hydrochloric Acid and chugged it. He smacked his lips and frowned. “Well, it’s sour. Has a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste. And, I think… Uh, ahem,” he cleared his throat and coughed a little. “Oh no. I think, ahem,” he started coughing and put a hand on his throat. I tensed in my seat and put my pen and notepad on my desk as Silas shakily put the beaker back on the table and bent over hacking. Silas dropped to his knees, and I lurched to my feet and sprinted over to him.
Several students gasped and started asking if he was okay. In the back of my mind, I knew he had to be fine. None of the beakers actually had acid in them, right? Unless Silas went too far. “Oh God,” I breathed as I knelt beside Silas. “Silas? Silas, look at me!” He kept hacking and fell forward onto his hands and knees before slumping forward onto the floor and convulsing. “Silas!”
“Oh my god! Someone get help!” a girl shouted, and students started shouting and wailing.
“Silas, that’s enough! You’ve scared them enough! Cut it out!” I shouted, shaking Silas. “Dammit, Silas, you’re really scaring me now! Stop it!”
In the blink of an eye, Silas had pushed himself upright and bounced to his feet. “And that, kids, is why you should never drink in the lab even if I tell you to!” he hollered above the panicked clamor of the students.
Everyone stopped and stared at Silas in silence, and I grabbed the sleeve of Silas’s lab coat and used it to pull myself up. Silas gave me a lopsided grin, and I punched his arm. “Silas Remington Winchester don’t you dare do that ever again!” I shouted, “I swear to God, you scared me so bad! Oh my god, why are you laughing? I’m trying to be mad at you!”
Silas snorted with laughter and gripped my shoulders for support. “I’m sorry, but you are just too adorable! Sweetheart, you knew none of the beakers had acid in them! Why are you so upset? Ow!” He yelped and jumped back as I punched his arm again.
“Why do I put up with you?”
“Because you love him?” Alice, a typically shy sophomore, suggested.
“That could be it, but it’s probably because I’m paid to handle his nonsense,” I laughed.
Silas placed a hand over his heart in mock injury. “Oh, and here I thought we were happy together. Oh well, I suppose I’ll have to ease my pain with a discussion on electromagnetic radiation,” he sighed before launching into a lecture.
Twelve minutes before class was supposed to end, Allen Richards, the college dean, stormed into the lab. His face was so red that it was almost purple, and his already receding hair line seemed to have jumped back an inch since the last time I saw him. “Professor Winchester, Ms. O’mara, I would like to speak with you two in private,” he snarled.
Silas was grinning and opened his mouth to respond, but I beat him to it. “Of course, sir. Everyone, class is dismissed. You can go now. Be sure to see me if you didn't at the beginning of class, so I can give you a transcript of Monday’s lecture. Also, be sure to read chapters thirty-three and thirty-four tonight and have a good day,” I said quickly, silencing Silas and scattering the students.
Dean Richards glared at Silas’s unruly mane of chocolate brown hair that stuck up in every direction. Fire flew from Dean Richard’s eyes, yet Silas smiled and held out a beaker of Sprite that was labeled perchloric acid. A vein on the dean’s temple bulged, and I cleared my throat to capture their attention. “Sir, you wanted to speak with us?” I prompted politely.
“Why did I get three phone calls from concerned parents about students being encouraged to drink acid?” Dean Richards snarled. “Professor Winchester, I made it very clear after the incident with the hairspray-flamethrower that I did not want you endangering students, so what the hell was this? Ms. O’mara, I hired you to keep an eye on him-”
“Actually, sir, you hired me to help teach the class because I was the only person he agreed to work with, and I’m the only person on this planet who can keep him under control,” I corrected.
“So why did this happen?” Dean Richards raged.
“Well, it isn't like the students were in any danger in the first place,” Silas sighed.
The dean glared at Silas then looked to me for confirmation. “The beakers were full of soda, not acid,” I explained, “If the students were in danger, I would have stopped them from drinking from the beakers.”
The dean’s face lost some of its color, and the bulging vein in his temple seemed to disappear. “So you’re telling me that this was all some elaborate joke, and I don't have to worry about any lawsuits?” Dean Richards asked. Silas and I nodded, and the dean rubbed his face with his hands. “Why didn't you tell me that sooner?”
“Because I still haven't had my coffee.”