She was tutting him like his mother would, which was vaguely comforting. He took the potion with ease, smiling a little at Frankie as she doctored his hands. "Thank you," he even added after a moment.

But then she asked how he'd done this, and he hesitated. He could lie and say he'd gotten detention, but then he imagined the first person that she asked about him and detention would laugh. Brian would die before being given detention. There were sickly people that got detention!

"Uh...no...I, uh...my roommate sneezed, and I had to clean the room. He might have had a cold, and it would have been really bad if I caught it too. Then we both could die." He winced a little as he said it, knowing how ridiculous it sounded out loud. "I had to..."