Chapter 42: Who Has It Worse Than Me?
New JerseyBergen County — Westfield High School
Ding!
Adam's expression did something it hadn't done in a while — it went completely unguarded for a full second.
Intelligence: past 140. The genius threshold, crossed.
The other three had all contributed intelligence points, but Leonard had been the first to contribute strength points. Whatever the system's logic was for that, Leonard Hofstadter had turned out to be unexpectedly generous.
The crossing of the threshold felt different from the smaller incremental gains. It was less like an addition and more like a recalibration — as if the resolution on everything had quietly increased. Memories that had been sitting in a kind of fog sharpened suddenly, the way a photograph looks when you wipe condensation off the glass.
He stood in the hallway of a New Jersey high school, beaten up and slightly out of breath, and let the clarity settle.
Then he looked at the locker.
Right. Leonard was still in there.
"Okay," Adam said, reaching for the door. "Let's get you out."
"You'll want to pull," Leonard said from inside, in the voice of someone sharing practical experience. "Jimmy always does it that way."
Adam pulled. It took some effort. Leonard came out in stages — first his head, then his shoulders, then the rest of him — wearing a neutral-toned sports jacket, brown pants, a physics-themed t-shirt, and thick glasses that had shifted sideways at some point during his time in the locker.
He had a red welt on his forehead. There was something in his hair at the corner of his mouth that Adam chose not to examine closely. He smelled faintly of something that had once been a beverage.
"Are you okay?" Adam asked.
"Fine, thank you," Leonard said, straightening his glasses. "I mean it. Thank you."
"We're friends," Adam said. "That's the deal."
Leonard nodded with surprising conviction for someone who had just been extracted from a locker. "Yeah. Friends." He glanced down the hallway. "We should probably go before Jimmy sends someone."
"Agreed."
Adam had gotten what he came for, and there was no particular value in a second round with a school bully he'd never see again after today.
They headed for the exit. Adam noticed after a few steps that Leonard was walking with a pronounced limp.
"What happened to your leg?"
Leonard's face went slightly red. He was quiet for a moment, then seemed to decide that honesty was less painful than evasion.
"Jimmy gave me a wedgie. A severe one. He said he wanted to recreate the Times Square ball drop."
Adam stopped walking.
"You're still walking," Adam said finally.
"I've had practice."
They kept moving.
"Yesterday he stapled my—" Leonard started.
"Stop," Adam said.
"—my jacket to the bulletin board," Leonard finished.
"Oh." Adam exhaled. "Okay."
"That's not the worst one," Leonard said, with the tone of someone who had decided that if they were going to have a friend, that friend might as well know the full picture. "Last week he put laxatives in my lunch and then the entire football team stood in a circle around me for forty-five minutes."
Adam stopped again.
He stood in the hallway of Bergen County High School and tried to find words for what he was feeling.
"Leonard."
"Yeah."
"That's—"
"I know."
"How are you not in a supervillain origin story right now?"
Leonard considered this seriously. "I've thought about it."
They kept walking.
"The forehead," Adam said, after a moment. "And the — the hair. That was someone else?"
"Different kid," Leonard confirmed, brushing the hair away and touching the welt. "He wanted to crack walnuts and couldn't find anything to use."
Adam said nothing.
"And before you ask," Leonard added, "telling my parents doesn't really work. My mother—" he paused "—you read her book. You know what her parenting philosophy is."
"The book was about you as a scientific subject," Adam said carefully.
"Yes. That's also an accurate description of my childhood." Leonard smiled with the particular warmth of someone who had decided a long time ago not to be destroyed by their circumstances. "My father's not in a much better position than I am, honestly. He built a hug machine because my mother wasn't affectionate. I use it sometimes. So does he."
Adam put his hand on Leonard's shoulder as they walked.
He thought about what he knew of Leonard's life — all of it, the roommate agreement, the friendship that somehow survived years of Sheldon's eccentricities, the patient decency that Leonard brought to every situation even when nobody was asking him to.
The school bully who looked exactly like a certain actor. A mother who'd treated her son's childhood as a research opportunity. A father navigating the same household.
And out of all of that, Leonard Hofstadter had become one of the warmest people Adam had ever encountered in either of his lives.
"You know what," Adam said, "you're going to be fine."
"I'm fine now," Leonard said.
"I know," Adam said. "That's what I mean."
Leonard looked at him sideways and almost smiled.
End of Chapter 42
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