It started as simple as asking to borrow a pencil.

Laika Kapitha always had more than she needed, and Caleb Cosgrove often left his pencils in places he didn’t remember.

All it took was one act of kindness...

...of lending a little boy a pencil that started their friendship.

For several years, Lai and Caleb’s friendship was built upon rituals, structured times, and events that came and went with the seasons.

In the autumn, they’d compare their new school year’s goods; Lai always had an impressive collection of pencils, many she was willing to let him borrow, and Caleb’s organization of notebooks couldn’t be beat. After school, they would ride their bikes around Isla Del Kashmire, through the colorful leaves before stopping at Lai’s house to get snacks and chat about the school day.

They would regale each other with the facts they’d retained. Knowledge was power, and they were the most powerful students in their class. A duo. In complete sync. The best study buddies anyone could have asked for.

The winter brought snow and it was a sure sign that two would be out rolling in it or rolling it up into snowballs and throwing it at each other as soon as they were able to button their jackets and get one of their parents to drive them to the others’ home.

Caleb had better aim but Lai was more precise in her snow angel creations. They’d follow it up with well-deserved cups of hot cocoa.

In the spring they’d play outside when the weather was getting warmer. Caleb often showed off his physical prowess, which was a lot to be desired–but he managed wobbly headstands without falling all the way over.

Lai loved bubbles and made Caleb blow them with her on slightly breezy days. If it was too windy, they all were ripped away and popped faster. No wind and they’d just float straight down.

In the hot summers, when school was out of session and they could relax; they would swim in Caleb’s pool or he would bring over his latest issue of ‘Action Cat’

He'd read it to her despite already having read it fifty times over himself.

On Sunday afternoons barring any previous engagements, they would watch movies together at one or the others’ homes.

“Why do they kiss? I thought that spreads cooties?”

“Maybe if you’re in love it doesn’t count,” Lai offered a reason.

Caleb gave Lai a once over, “How do you figure that?”

Lai stuffed another handful of popcorn in her mouth and chews before answering, “Our parents kiss, they have to be in love, right? Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gotten married. Maybe the love thing is a sorta…vaccination against the cooties? Or Love makes someone immune to them?”

She was thinking of it all from a biological perspective, which was typical of Lai. She liked dissecting things in science class to understand how they worked and often poked and prodded Caleb for the same reasons.

“I have an idea!” she suddenly blurted.

“What?”

“Let's kiss!”

If he’d have been chewing popcorn he would have spat it out in shock, his voice nearly cracked from how high it piped up, “What!? Us, kiss!??”

She threw a handful of popcorn at him with a laugh before taking the bowl for herself, “Yes! To prove cooties aren’t real!”

“But..but…you just said people had to be in love to not get the cooties!”

“That was just a hypothesis!” she waved it away so flippantly, she's been really into the concept of 'hypothesis' ever since they learned about them in science.

“But my new one is they don’t exist at all! It’s something like a myth and the only thing that spreads is the belief, not cooties. I bet you if we asked around, no one would be able to give us a real example of someone who caught cooties and got sick, and even if they did say it, I bet they couldn’t tell us what the effects are.”

He was dubious but she had a point. No one they ever knew actually caught a case of the cooties. However, to be fair, everyone got a ‘cootie shot’ on Mondays before class started. It was a precaution.

Lai formulated the plan for them to forgo the shots, observe the way their parents acted around each other, and then meet in a week to test her hypothesis.

She called it ‘Kiss Science’ and it made Caleb so, so anxious.

The next Sunday arrived. Their parents left them to their regular movie, but as soon as the room was empty, Lai nodded to Caleb. It was time.

Caleb gulped, he knew Lai would be furious if he told her he was ruining the experiment.

He thought perhaps he was in love with her.

Maybe he didn’t understand it fully but he knew at the present moment she made him smile more than anyone else, and he would share any candy he had because it made her happy and he liked to make her smile. She was the first person he wanted to tell when he learned something new or interesting and she was the last person he thought about before falling asleep. He liked the way her eyes squinted and her nose wrinkled when she laughed, and the way her hair bounced around her shoulders in the summer, or how she rid it of snowflakes in the winter. She was fun to be with, interesting to talk to, and the thought of kissing her didn’t gross him out completely either. In fact, it did something weird to his chest whenever he thought about it.

So, when Lai bravely leaned forward and puckered her lips out, he met them with nervous excitement, and for one brief moment, time stopped.

It was agreed three seconds was optimal exposure for this experiment.

Three seconds of eternity. Blissful, life-changing eternity.

When they pulled apart, his jaw dropped in awe while Lai doubled over in laughter.

“Whoa! How do you feel?” he asked, hoping if their experiment failed, his cooties weren’t negatively affecting her.

“I feel the same, but your face! You look like you just saw someone put mushrooms on your pizza! Are you okay?”

He clamped his mouth closed after saying, “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“So am I. This at least proves they aren’t a fast-acting disease if they are real.”

She casually sat back down on the sofa and un-paused the movie, “We’ll just have to wait and see!”

“Yeah,” he agreed and joined her.

Though had a feeling even if the cooties weren’t real, the way he felt about Lai still was.