#discussions by any means necessary because they were told that they should discard all logic and be led by emotion for the “cause”

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

Hot take: I actually think men and women are meant to work together and complement each other and not like,,, dislike each other and be divisive.

[eccacia]

wonderful you came by [part 15]

Summary: Caitlin’s a no-nonsense science major. Barry’s the quintessential charming star athlete. When they’re paired off and forced to interact in class, Caitlin’s determined to resist his charms, but Barry’s also pretty determined to get under her skin… It all boils down to a battle between head and heart, and Caitlin’s not one to give in to her heart so easily. [College AU]

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, or read on ff.net

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I don’t own The Flash. The article that Barry cites here is called “What Is Nothing?” by Fraser Cain from phys.org.

One of the most important things that Caitlin’s father had taught her was the discipline of getting rid of a bad habit. He’d taught her that it wasn’t enough to drop the habit cold turkey: if change was to be sustainable and permanent, the old habit had to be dropped and be immediately replaced by a better habit. For instance, if she wanted to stop watching TV, she couldn’t just spend the rest of the hour avoiding the TV—she had to do something else, like read the encyclopedia.

It was with this logic that Caitlin resolved to excise Barry Allen from her mental life. It did not do to merely stop thinking about him, because it was impossible to stop thinking about him by sheer willpower; so instead, she filled her day with work—with outlining and practicing for the orals, with summarizing journal articles for her thesis, with drafting the next post-lab report—which successfully crowded her mind, so that there was no room for Barry Allen at all.

She had come to this course of action the next morning, after a good night’s rest and after the alcohol had been flushed out of her system. She hadn’t been in a state of mind to think things through the night before—she was too confused and distraught, and her mind was muddled with emotion—but in the light of day, with some distance from Barry, she was finally able to evaluate the recent events with startling clarity.

It seemed that her null hypothesis regarding Barry Allen—that he did not harbor romantic feelings for her—was disproven by that kiss, as a kiss was the pinnacle of romantic feeling. But upon reevaluation of her hypothesis, she realized that a fatal error had occurred in her reasoning. She realized that it didn’t matter if her hypothesis was proven or disproven, because the underlying rationale of her investigation was faulty. It was similar to testing a hypothesis like “There is a significant positive relationship between the width of one’s hand span and the age of one’s maternal grandmother.” The numbers could indeed show that those with wider hand spans also had older maternal grandmothers, but the study itself was irrelevant. Similarly, her hypothesis assumed that it was important to be considered Barry Allen’s object of affection, which implied that romance was a worthwhile endeavor, when, in fact, it was not.

And the reason why it wasn’t worthwhile was simple: Love was temporary insanity. That was by far the most logical explanation for why she—she who was logical, clear-headed, intolerant of frivolity, unseduced by narratives of romantic love—had suddenly fallen for Barry in a span of two weeks, and why she’d found herself doing things that she would never have done, such as spending three hours on the phone, or singing onstage, or dancing with abandon in the midst of a sweaty throng, or leaning in to kiss someone that she barely knew.

In line with that, she realized that Saturday night contained all the necessary conditions to short-circuit reasoning. The context of a party simultaneously created an atmosphere of wild abandon and disabled the tools for rational thought: one is unable to see clearly when one’s vision is assaulted by the bright, blinking lights; one can hardly hear oneself think above the aggressive beat of the music; and, once inebriated, one is unable to wield logic at all.

And, during the party, when Barry had called her onstage to sing with him, she was placed in a context in which it was impossible for her to say no without dire social consequences—rather than to step off the stage, be booed by the crowd, and be labelled a killjoy, she was inclined to take the path of least resistance, which was to simply join him. Their dancing together had also been a function of context: after the sing-off, people were pulling friends and significant others onto the dance floor, and they, conforming to the crowd, had also moved to the dance floor. It was part of the script of a party to dance; it was not part of the script of a party to have a clear-headed discussion on the implications of him naming her as his partner for the sing-off.

That kiss was similarly manufactured by the demands of context. The open balcony under the starry night sky was a favorite setting of the romantic imagination, and with good reason: she suspected that standing under the vast night sky made people feel small and insignificant, and, faced with the overwhelming threat of their insignificance, they naturally gravitated to others, fiercely wanting the other to affirm their significance, wanting to be loved and known in order to save themselves from the reality that they were adrift and alone, a speck of dust on a piece of rock suspended in empty space. In fact, two of her most ill-informed decisions—deciding that she liked Barry, and leaning in to kiss him—were made under the night sky. Had they been around people in the light of day, in a sober setting like the library, such things would never have happened.

In any case, she would allow no more of this nonsense in her life. It was absurd to believe that this new self, this Caitlin-with-Barry self that had been forged in a mere two weeks, could overshadow the self she’d been for over twenty years; it then followed that the new self was a falsehood that had to be discarded, and the self she’d always been—the logical, clear-headed, impervious-to-romance self—was her true self, the self she had to maintain and protect. And, in order to do that, she had to cut Barry Allen off. It was regrettable, but it was necessary. Sometimes, to halt the progress of a disease, it wasn’t enough to scrape away the infected flesh; sometimes, it was necessary to amputate the entire limb.

She resolved to stand by her decision until his persistence waned and until he realized, as she had, that his energies were better directed elsewhere. She, for one, could focus on her career, as she had always intended, and he could focus on his transition into Forensic Science.

It was the most logical decision, and one that would benefit them both. It was, she truly believed, for the best.

Monday, 7:07 PM

Hi Caitlin, it’s me again. I don’t want to sound like a stalker or anything by spamming you with voicemail, so… just tell me to stop if you really want me to stop, okay? I swear I will. But if you won’t say anything, I’m just going to assume that your silence means, Yes, Barry, you can be as annoying as you possibly can. —Why, Caitlin, it’s my pleasure to serve up my specialty. In fact, this is your first daily dose of annoyingness, served fresh from the kissable mouth of CCU Cutie Barry Allen—ah, crap, Wally just heard me saying that. Crap. Now he’s laughing his butt off. Can you hear him? Here, I’ll move closer. He laughs like a hyena. It’s hideous. I don’t think you’ve ever met him, but I hope you will sometime… Anywaaay, uh, I called to let you know that I’m sorry, and I’m not giving up. That’s all for now. I’m going to dig myself a hole if I keep going while Wally’s listening, so call me if you want to talk, I guess. Bye.

Swipe. Delete.

. . .

Tuesday, 10:51 AM

Hi Caitlin. So, uh, welcome to day two of being annoyed by your local cutie. Heh, I can already imagine you wrinkling your brow and trying not to smile but failing not to smile, so you end up biting your lip instead, and you’d say, “Who’re the idiots that put you on the CCU Cutie list”—I’m number eight out of fifty, in case you’re wondering, not to toot my own horn—okay, fine, totally tooting it—“and don’t those idiots know that they’re just ratcheting up your insufferability index?!” Do you remember saying that, insufferability index? I know I should be insulted, but I usually end up flattered instead, knowing that you tailor your insults to me. I like to think of it as you showing your love. Although I’d still prefer compliments... ahem, ahem. Anyway, um… wow, I’ve spent half of this voicemail talking about what you might say. It’s… not as fun talking to imaginary Caitlin than it is talking to real Caitlin. So… give me a call? Or leave a message. Whenever you’re ready. Bye.

Swipe. Delete.

Tuesday, 8:23 PM

Hey, so I just got your e-mail. I’m… kind of bummed that you wanna study separately for the orals, but… if that’s what you want, I guess. Don’t worry, I’ll do my part. It’ll be harder to study without you slave-driving me, but I won’t let you down. I can’t believe I miss you slave-driving me, heh. Anyway, um… what else… Oh yeah, I’m free next Saturday for the make-up class and the STAR Labs tour. It’s so cool that we’re having our make-up class at STAR Labs. I’m almost glad he cancelled class on Monday. Dr. Wells is the best, isn’t he? …Anyway, uh, look, I know I could’ve just e-mailed you back, but… I don’t know, e-mail’s just not our thing, you know? If that makes any sense. Yeah… that’s all for now. You know the drill. See you Thursday for the orals.

Swipe. Delete.

. . .

Wednesday, 1:34 PM

Happy third-day-sary of being annoyed by me! Er, I wasn’t sure if it’s a cause for celebration, but I guess I’m feeling pretty optimistic. I mean, at least you haven’t told me to stop talking yet, right? …Anyway, awhile ago, just for kicks, I typed “Is nothing really nothing?” in Google. Not sure if you remember, but you told me the last time we talked that whatever happened between us was nothing, and nothing is nothing so it’s smart of me to pin my hopes on it. So I thought, Is nothing really nothing? and I figured it’d be fun to ask Google. Anyway, Google has this to say about nothing: “There are physicists like Lawrence Krauss that argue the ‘universe from nothing’, really means ‘the universe from a potentiality’. Which comes down to if you add all the mass and energy in the universe, all the gravitational curvature, everything… it looks like it all sums up to zero. So it is possible that the universe really did come from nothing. And if that’s the case, then ‘nothing’ is everything we see around us, and ‘everything’ is nothing.” Neat, huh? Nothing is everything. I know you super disapprove of me typing the whole question into the search bar instead of just typing the keywords, but I swear I didn’t get it from Yahoo Answers. It’s from a site called phys.org, which sounds pretty legit to me. Anyway, see you tomorrow for orals. I studied like hell for it, and you study enough for the both of us, so we should do great. I… I’m actually looking forward to it. Not the orals, but seeing you. So… see you tomorrow. Bye.

Swipe. Delete.

“Cait? Cait.”

Caitlin startled when she felt a hand on her wrist, gently lifting it from the keyboard of her laptop. She turned to see Felicity giving her a worried look.

“You’ve been pressing the spacebar,” she said.

“Oh.” Caitlin glanced at her screen. She had begun the post-lab document at page 1. She was now on page 15, and all the pages in between were blank.

“Are you okay?” Felicity ventured. “Did something happen between you and Barry?”

“No.” She highlighted the blank pages and pressed delete.

Felicity sighed. “Cait, you haven’t been talking to us since Sunday, so something obviously happened on Saturday night. Did he hurt you? Because if he did, I swear I’ll—”

“No.” She reread the paragraph she’d written so far. “We’re fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Felicity pursed her lips. “Cait, please. Talk to me. You’re overworking, you haven’t been sleeping, and you have lapses like this, when you don’t even realize that you’re spacing out.”

“I’m fine.”

“Cait—”

“Felicity! God, stop!” she snapped. “I’m fine, okay? I just, I have a lot of deadlines coming up, alright?”

Felicity recoiled.

“Okay,” she said, with barely concealed hurt. “Okay. Fine. Whatever.”

She turned away and slinked back to her desk.

Caitlin concentrated on her screen, trying to ignore the pain in her chest.

The next day Caitlin woke with a start. She blinked a few times at the light streaming in through her windows, peeled away a piece of paper that had stuck to her cheek, and shot out of her chair to get ready for the orals.

Or, rather, she stumbled out of her chair, felt around for the reviewers on her desk, and shuffled around the room to gather her other things—towel, clothes, shoes, backpack—as if blind, hitting the corners of tables and countertops as she went. Despite her astounding stamina for studying, Caitlin was not immune to the effects of sleep deprivation, and after totaling only six hours of sleep for the past three days, her mind was foggy, her eyes were dry, and her stomach (also owing to an overdose of caffeine and a diet of crackers and instant noodles) roiled with acid. She felt like either wanting to vomit or wanting to die.

But she was fine. This was fine. This was familiar. At the very least, her physical unease consumed such a significant portion of her attention that she was unable to obsessively rehearse all the worst-case scenarios in her mind, as she usually did.

She took the long route to the science and engineering complex, which ensured that she would meet less people along the way, and silently recited reagent names and reaction mechanisms as she went. Benedict’s Test. Positive results: orange to brick red. Indicates the presence of sugar. Negative results: no change in color. Indicates the absence of sugar. She paused at a vendo machine for some coffee and downed it in one gulp, grimacing when it scalded her tongue. Molisch’s Test. Positive results: purple appearing at the junction of the two layers of liquids. Indicates the presence of carbohydrates. Negative results: no purple at the junction of the liquids. Indicates the absence of carbohydrates. She took the stairs to the fourth floor, and then turned to the row of rooms that professors used for consultations and oral exams. They were usually occupied towards the end of the semester, but right now there was only one occupied room with the light on and the door ajar.

Caitlin crushed her coffee cup, tossed it into a nearby trash bin, and took a deep breath. Fifteen minutes, she told herself. She only had to endure fifteen minutes of this—and of Barry Allen—and she was free. She could do this.

When she entered the room, she immediately recognized the outline of Barry’s back, seated in front of Dr. Wells’s wide wooden desk, and Dr. Wells himself sat across him with his arms folded. They seemed to be in the middle of a conversation, but when she slipped inside, Barry turned around quickly and shot her a grin.

She ignored him. She put on her deadpan mask and hoped that it wouldn’t crack.

Dr. Wells smiled at her. “Ms. Snow, nice of you to join us,” he said, as she took a seat across him and beside Barry. “Well, since you’re both here now, why don’t we start?”

“Ready when you are, Dr. Wells,” Barry said.

Caitlin merely nodded. Her anxiety was building now; her palms were beginning to sweat and her throat felt dry. She absolutely hated oral exams and anything that resembled it—presentations, panel interviews, defenses, anything at all that required her to speak, to be judged for each word she spoke, and to witness the judgment passed on her through the facial expressions (or lack thereof) of the professor or the panel even as she was still speaking. It was an absolute nightmare. The only time when she didn’t feel that way was when she was drunk—her drunk alter ego enjoyed being the center of attention, for reasons she didn’t want to contemplate—but she couldn’t very well show up drunk during an oral exam or a panel interview. Of course, she’d gotten better at hiding her fear as she went through college, but the beginning was still the worst part.

“Alright, let’s start with something easy,” Dr. Wells said. “Ms. Snow, enumerate the tests for carbohydrates and their indicators for positive results.”

This was easy. She knew this. She’d rehearsed for it just a few moments ago, and she also distinctly remembered summarizing the tests in table format for their post-laboratory report. She remembered inputting each entry and polishing the format of the table—bolding the headings, alternating the row colors, affixing the caption—and the memory remained so vivid in her mind that she could recite the answer as if she were reading directly from that table. She had this. She had this.

But when she opened her mouth to speak, no sound came. She was paralyzed. The table was still etched in her mind’s eye, but fear constricted her throat and scrambled the words she’d intended to say. Oh God, she thought, her hands fisting in the fabric of her jeans, not now not now not now—

A second passed. Then two. When three seconds crawled by, the silence became tense, and Caitlin felt all the more the crushing pressure of having to say something, if only to fill the silence; but anxiety and humiliation collapsed her airways, bound her mouth in a steel trap. She felt like she literally could not speak.

Beside her, Barry cleared his throat.

“Mind if I go first, Dr. Wells?” he said, careful not to look at her. He continued lightly, “I’d like to volunteer to answer all the easy questions before they run out.”

Dr. Wells shifted his piercing blue gaze from her to Barry, and he leaned back against his chair with a slight smile. “I can’t guarantee you any more ‘easy questions,’ Mr. Allen, but go ahead.”

Barry grinned and launched into his answer, completely at ease as he talked—so much so, in fact, that he even made a joke while he was at it. When he finished, he pretended to bow to an imaginary audience, and Dr. Wells was shaking his head in barely disguised amusement.

He paused to write something on a sheaf of stapled papers, and then looked up at Caitlin again.

“Ms. Snow?” he said expectantly. “Ready for the next question?”

Her breath caught in her throat. No, she wasn’t. She felt like fading away from the scene. It was one of her defense mechanisms—during stress, she shut down. She disengaged. She was there-not-there. Each passing second with her fear felt like a knife-tip grating down the notched bones of her spine—

She was so caught up in her internal struggle that she startled when she felt something warm cover her hand.

What the—

Her eyes flickered down, and she saw that Barry was holding her hand.

During an oral exam.

In front of Dr. Wells.

She was so livid that she couldn’t move. What was he thinking? Scratch that—was he even thinking? She was going to kill him—

But, no, wait—he wasn’t really holding her hand, per se—he was only running his fingers over her clenched fists, cautiously coaxing them to open. She hadn’t realized she’d been clenching them so tightly that the muscles were strained from the tension. When she finally unclenched them, he quickly withdrew his hand, and continued rambling to Dr. Wells—he’d been managing a conversation this whole time—as if nothing had happened.  

She blinked and took a slow, deep breath. She felt like she was coming out of her stupor, as if unclenching her fists had also uncoiled the anxiety that had gripped her body.

“Mr. Allen,” she dimly registered Dr. Wells saying, “most people answer after they’ve been asked a question, not before.”

“Just wanna show off how much I studied,” Barry said, grinning.

Dr. Wells shook his head and turned to her. “I have to apologize for pairing you off with him, Ms. Snow.”

“Hey! I resent that,” Barry protested. “I’m a pretty decent lab partner.”

“Perhaps ‘highly distractible’ is more appropriate.”

“But I can’t help it, Dr. Wells,” he said. “It’s just how I am. I get really excited about anything science.”

“Ah, Mr. Allen,” Dr. Wells said, his eyes shifting briefly to her, “I don’t think science is the only thing you get excited about.”

Oh my God, does he mean—she didn’t even want to continue that train of thought, but when she saw that Barry, for once, had been struck speechless, she supposed the implication was clear. Oh, God. This was embarrassing. Had he seen Barry reach for her hand? But it was a wide, high desk—he couldn’t have seen it—and Barry had been so discreet that she hadn’t even seen him move—

“Dr. Wells,” she blurted out, just to end the humiliation, “I believe it’s my turn…”

“So it is.” His usually stern features softened into a reassuring look. “Don’t be nervous, Ms. Snow. This isn’t so different from reciting in class or conversing with the panel in open forums.”

Caitlin swallowed and nodded.

“Ms. Snow, can you tell me why Molisch’s test for carbohydrates yields a purple color? An explanation of the reaction mechanism will do.”

She took a discreet breath. She could do this. From the corner of her eye she could see Barry glancing at her out of concern, no doubt readying another excuse to answer for her if she blanked out, and somehow the thought that he had her back quelled the anxiety rising in her throat.

“Molisch’s test determines the presence of carbohydrates by dehydrating them in the presence of sulfuric acid,” she began. She spoke with some hesitance at first, but as she continued speaking, her confidence rose, and she forgot her fear.

When she finished, there was a faint smile on Dr. Wells’s face.

“Good,” he said. “Very thoroughly explained. Now, Mr. Allen, the third question…”

While he briefly consulted his notes, Barry turned to her and smiled with a mixture of pride and relief, but she quickly turned away. She turned away because guilt had crept into the void that anxiety had carved, and this guilt—the origin of which she could not yet name—made her unable to look at him for the rest of the exam.

. . .

The rest of the orals was a breeze. Caitlin told herself that she could have gotten over her fear without Barry’s help—she’d always managed (to her own surprise) to pull through those first few minutes—but there was another part of her that said that wasn’t exactly true. When before, anxiety seized her afresh each time a new question was asked, this time, right after that first question, she felt like she’d entered a state of flow, like the question-answer sequences had already been programmed in her mind and all she had to do was to produce the answer when prompted by the question. That thoughtful gesture of his had played no small part in helping her get over her fear.

She felt, then, that the situation obliged her to thank him—if not the situation, then common courtesy, at the very least, required her to reciprocate his act of kindness with gratitude. Yet, when he’d beamed at her after they’d stepped out of the room, she’d brushed past him as if he didn’t exist; and to add insult to injury, she’d even kept her eyes trained on a spot in the distance to avoid seeing the naked hurt on his face.

Caitlin knew, objectively, that a curt “thank you” would have been no big deal in any other scenario. But this scenario was not any other scenario, and in this case a “thank you” wouldn’t be a mere expression of gratitude: a “thank you” would also be the first crack in her silence, and if she allowed that crack, she would render herself helpless against his efforts to worm his way back into her affections. A “thank you” in this case was also thus an implicit “I’m sorry for ignoring you” and “I want to talk to you again”—both of which she could not allow herself to say, because if her campaign to dissuade Barry from ever speaking to her again her was to be successful, she could allow no exceptions.

But driving him away with silence wasn’t without its consequences—she felt guilty for repaying his kindness so coldly. Normally, one could assuage one’s guilt by approaching the wronged party to make amends, but she already established that she could not approach him, so she felt doubly worse—from being unable to thank him, and from being unable to apologize to him for not thanking him.

With this guilt, too, came shame at the person she had to be in order to reject him so completely. She’d been afraid of the person she was becoming when she was with him, but now she was appalled at who she was becoming in order to drive him away. It seemed that Barry’s kindness only magnified her heartlessness; his gentle persistence, her haste in cutting him off; his unwavering thoughtfulness, her ruthless excision of him from her mental life.

She sighed. Why did he have to be so nice, anyway? She would have welcomed his anger and his resentment, because those would have made sense; but instead he was kind, and she was completely disarmed by his kindness. It was a sincere, pure-hearted kindness at that, without any undercurrent of manipulating her into guilt. But then again, that wasn’t Barry’s style, and come to think of it, she couldn’t imagine him angry and resentful… If she were to become the cause such ugly, blistering emotions in someone as good-natured as he, she was going to feel like a monster.

The least she could hope for, she thought as she settled down in her next class, was for him to give up soon. That way she didn’t have to keep hurting him—or rather, she didn’t have to keep hurting them both.

. . .

Still, that night, as she lay alone in her dark room—Felicity had been avoiding her for the past few days, and she knew she deserved it but she was yet too ashamed to apologize—she placed her phone on her pillow, beside her head. As usual, he’d left a voicemail, half an hour after the orals.

She allowed it to play.

Hey. Are you okay? I knew you told me you didn’t like orals, but I didn’t know you were that terrified of them. I hope you’re okay now. Sorry for holding your hand, I know you’re still iffy with the whole touch thing, but I didn’t know how else to comfort you. I’m really glad you got over it, though. Actually, everything turned out great in the end, don’t you think? We made quite the pair, with me slaying all the easy questions and you slaying all the hard ones, heh. Well, anyway, that’s all for now, I have to meet up with Coach. He’s been really hard on all of us lately since tomorrow’s the finals. It’ll be great if you could come watch, or even if you could drop by to say hi. I really miss you. Call me or message me or something, you know the drill. Bye.

His voice dissolved into the silence.

Caitlin swiped left, and her finger hovered above the bright red Delete button. But, right before she pressed it, the memory of his hand over hers during the orals flitted through her mind, and she shut her eyes and took a shaky breath.

She was just… so tired of this. She was so tired of resisting him, of constructing all these elaborate denials and rationalizations and justifications. She knew that there were to be absolutely no exceptions, but…

She drew her phone close.

She played the voicemail again.

Hey. Are you okay? I knew you told me you didn’t like orals, but I didn’t know you were that terrified of them. I hope you’re okay now…

He lost by 0.91 seconds.

To make up for her momentary lapse in resolve the night before, she’d adamantly avoided his meet, but she might as well have been there with the way she obsessively refreshed her Twitter feed; and, when she saw the headline “KCU’s Hunter Zolomon Bags First Place, Dethrones CCU’s Reigning Champ Barry Allen” an hour or so after the meet, she could hardly believe it.

He lost, she repeated, the thought sinking in. She could only imagine what he was feeling right now. He’d told her, during one of their phone calls, that he wanted to finish this season strong before quitting. “My heart’s not in it anymore,” he’d said, “but my ego is. Does that make sense? I mean, everyone was so proud of me when I won my first national meet. It was unbelievable. My mom and dad couldn’t stop telling their friends about it. For the first time in decades the track team finally got support from the school. Stores wanted to sponsor us. People were flocking to our meets. My teammates were so psyched, and Coach hadn’t smiled so much since his wife gave birth. It was… a pretty great feeling, I guess.” “You just like the attention,” she’d said, and he’d laughed. “Not denying that. But it’s really nice, you know, having started all that, making people proud. It makes me feel like I matter.”

But, she wondered now, if winning made him feel like he mattered, what did losing make him feel?

Disturbed by her own question, she put her phone aside and stared at the articles open on her laptop, willing her focus to return, but she couldn’t bring herself to get back to work. Guilt nagged at her conscience even more insistently now. He’d held her hand when she’d frozen up in fear during the orals, and now that he was the one who needed comfort, she was refusing to be there for him.

She knew that she couldn’t afford to make any more exceptions, but…

She dug the heels of her hand into her eyes and sighed in frustration. Sure, she could ignore a happy, cheery Barry, the Barry who sent her all those chipper voicemails, but can she really just ignore a sad, hurting Barry…?

The thought of him like that had her rising from her desk. Vaguely, she cursed herself for making that first exception last night, because now she’d set herself on the slippery slope of exception-making; but that sentiment wasn’t strong enough to stop her from heading out her door. She didn’t even think to message him to ask him where he was—it seemed her feet moved on their own accord, following the invisible trail that led to him. She knew, without knowing how she knew, where he was going to be.

. . .

She did find him there, at the Observatory.

It was sunset, like the last time they were here, and the soft light cast a warm glow on his skin. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back on his hands, silent and unmoving as a statue.

She watched him from a distance. She watched the wind tug at his hair, watched him turn his face to the dying sun and stare blankly at the smattering of stores, at the specks of people moving mutely below.

Minutes passed. Still, she remained behind a copse of trees, standing on a patch of flat ground in the midst of gnarled roots, too afraid to approach. She didn’t know what to say. She’d never been good with words, and she’d never been good at filling silences, and she didn’t know what to offer as solace. Should she begin with the bland reassurance, as most people did, that everything was going to be okay? Should she ask him how he was feeling? Should she make him laugh, offer him a hug…?

Lost as she was in her thoughts, she only dimly registered the crunch of leaves underfoot. Barry looked to his right, and, more out of instinct than curiosity, she mimicked his movement and turned to look.

At first, Caitlin couldn’t make out the person’s features, as her profile was cast against the light; but as she neared, she caught sight of a head of blond hair and a flash of straight, white teeth.

“Hey,” she said. “Thought you’d be here.”

“Patty, hey,” Barry said, and Caitlin’s world stilled.

Patty. Patty, the girl with the dimpled smile who went to all his meets, the one everyone believed he was with. How did Patty know that he’d be here? Had he brought her here, too? But how could he bring her here? Wasn’t the Observatory their place—?

Wait—why did she even think of the Observatory as theirs? In the first place, there was no ‘they’ to speak of; they weren’t even together! And wasn’t this place Barry’s safe haven? Since he was the one who’d discovered it, didn’t he have the right to share it with whomever he chose?

Caitlin took a deep breath, trying to stamp down the unfamiliar burn of jealousy in her chest.

“Can I sit here?” Patty said.

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Patty folded into a sitting position, the movement supple and fluid. “So, how’re you feeling?”

The question echoed numbly in Caitlin’s mind. It was the same question she’d thought of asking him when she’d first seen the headline, the question she would have asked him had she approached him first.

“Pretty bummed, I guess,” Barry said after a lengthy pause. He exhaled. “I knew I was going to quit anyway, but I didn’t know how badly I wanted to quit a winner… Does that make sense?”

Caitlin swallowed the rising bitterness in her throat. Does that make sense—he’d always asked her that whenever he shared something serious and personal about himself, and it had always seemed an intimate phrase to Caitlin: in that question he was allowing himself to be vulnerable, to lay bare his need to be wholly understood. It had never occurred to her that he also used it while speaking to other people.

While speaking to Patty.

She felt doubly betrayed—Patty also knew about this place, and she was also privy to this more vulnerable side of him, as she was—but what, exactly, had been betrayed? Why was she the one who felt betrayed, when she’d cut him off first?

Patty nodded and touched his shoulder. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Her eyes lingered on that touch. Another small intimacy.

Her fingers curled and scraped the bark of the tree, and she had the sudden, violent urge to tear it apart—and then she caught herself in horror. What was jealousy turning her into? She did not recognize herself in these feelings, these thoughts; jealousy was making her illogical, melodramatic, and it was extremely unlike her.

She closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down, and when she did she continued to watch them. She knew she shouldn’t be eavesdropping on this conversation—the second time it was happening, it seemed—but she found herself unable to leave. She just… had to know. She had to know what everyone else saw in them. She would leave, of course, when things became too private, and while she didn’t want to imagine how private things could get, a part of her also wanted to see whatever intimacy might unfold between them. It would hurt, of course, but at least the hurt would be allayed by the grim triumph of knowing that if he had such intimate moments with Patty, then he didn’t really like her, which rendered her decision to cut him off all the more justified.

“But you know,” Patty was saying, “I don’t think people will remember you as the guy who broke CCU’s winning streak. They’ll remember you for putting CCU on the map.”

He scoffed, but Patty insisted, “No, really. We’ve never been known for sports, but since you joined the track team, everyone’s suddenly crazy about track. School spirit’s the strongest during your meets. That’s really something to be proud of, you know?”

“…I guess.”

“Hey, cheer up,” she said, bumping shoulders with him. “Look, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but the whole block’s waiting for you at Jitters. We’re throwing you a party, and it’d be nice if you could show up, being the guest of honor and all.”

“I don’t know,” he said, reluctant. “I’m not really hungry.”

“No way. Is that really you, Mr. ‘I Never Say No to Food’ Allen?”

He cracked a smile, and she continued, “Come on. You can have a whole tray of lasagna to yourself.”

He was grinning now. “Are you bribing me to attend my own party, Spivot?”

“Bribing? Who said we were paying for your lasagna?”

He laughed, and Patty smiled and stood, mockingly offering him a hand after she did.

Caitlin felt faint. She couldn’t bear to watch this. It had been a mistake to assume that she would only be hurt by a dramatic show of intimacy, because watching them during those few ordinary moments hurt like hell, too. They just made so much sense together—they had the same sunny good-naturedness, and they carried themselves with the same ease around people. She could never be like that. She couldn’t have comforted him the way Patty had, and it would never have occurred to her that, for someone who loved people as much as he did, he would have been cheered by a party, by being with good friends…

She whirled around, hurt and confused and keen to leave; but she’d forgotten she was standing on the only patch of flat ground in the middle of thick, gnarled roots, so when her toe snagged under one, she tripped and fell with a barely contained yelp.

Barry and Patty fell silent.

“What was that?” Patty said.

“Don’t know,” Barry said. “Must’ve been the wind…”

Caitlin winced, hoping they wouldn’t see her. Great. Just great. Why did she have to be cursed with such terrible bodily coordination? And what was it with this bleeding tree root? Couldn’t it have at least allowed her to walk away with dignity? She knew it was wrong to take her frustration out on it, but she viciously tore it away from her foot anyway.

“No, really, I think there’s someone—”

Caitlin froze at how close their voices suddenly were. Shit, now she couldn’t move until they passed by. It was getting dark—she had that on her side, at least—and she just hoped to God that they wouldn’t look too closely between the trees.

“Nah,” Barry said, turning to face Patty, “no one else really knows about this pla—”

And then he froze, his gaze landing right on her.

Oh shit.

He quickly placed his hands on Patty’s shoulders, steering her so that her back was turned to Caitlin, and said, “Look, why don’t you go ahead to Jitters?”

“What? Why?” Patty said.

Caitlin quickly got to her feet—wincing slightly when she put weight on the foot that had caught in the root—and turned to the opposite direction. He’d already seen her, anyway, so it was best to get the hell out while he was still talking to Patty.

“…need a little more time alone before I face everyone…” he was saying, his voice growing faint. She moved as quietly as she could, like she did when she first made her way up, and she was thankful for the night breeze that rustled the leaves and disguised the sound of her footsteps.

She glanced back to assess her progress. She saw Patty heading down the more well-worn path, and Barry… heading right towards her.

She cursed inwardly, unable to believe her terrible luck. She had the urge to break into a run, but it was already dark and she didn’t want to trip again… And besides, if she broke into a run, he would, too, and he could catch up to her in no time.

Damn it. She was trapped.

“Cait,” he said, his voice a lot nearer now, “wait, don’t go—”

She exhaled and turned to face him. A maelstrom of emotions roiled inside her, more violently now that she’d come face to face with its cause; but she held them under tight rein, and she willed her face into a blank mask.

He slowed when she turned, looking windswept and bewildered. “It really is you,” he murmured. “What’re you doing here?”

For a brief moment, she considered telling a lie, but she knew how easily he would see through it; there was simply no other believable excuse for her being here. She had no choice, then, but to tell the truth, and an irrational resentment welled inside her at this choicelessness, one that flattened her tone and blunted her words.

“I saw the tweets,” she said. “I’m sorry you lost.”

“Oh,” he said. “Uh… thanks.”

“Look, I have to go—”

“What time did you get here?” he said. They had spoken at the same time, but he chose to ignore what she just said, looking determined to steer the conversation. “How long have you been standing there?”

Caitlin’s face burned with humiliation. So he’d realized that she was eavesdropping. Another lie waited on the tip of her tongue—Just now, actually—but she couldn’t bring herself to say it, not when he was looking at her like that. “Long enough,” she said. And then, before she could stop it: “I overheard some parts of your conversation. I’m sorry.”

She thought he would have been mad, or at the very least annoyed, but instead he softened and took a cautious step towards her.

“I never brought her here,” he said.

Her breath caught in her throat; the maelstrom inside her surged, strained from the leash of her composure. He wasn’t supposed to say that. He was supposed to be annoyed or angry; he was supposed to throw his hands up in frustration; he was supposed to give up and walk away. Those reactions she could deal with, could categorize. But this? This was leading her into unknown territory, and she was afraid that if she stepped into it, she would find no solid ground beneath.

He continued, “I did mention it to her, because she once asked what my favorite place in campus was, but I never—”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, willing her voice to remain even. “You’re free to bring whomever you want.”

“I know,” he said softly. “That’s why I brought you.”

The leash snapped. A flood of emotions assaulted her—first relief and hope, so strong that she wanted to move towards him, touch him, hold him and be held by him; but, only moments later, panic overpowered that—panic that she was no longer in control of the situation, that she was no longer in control of even herself; panic that she was standing on the precipice, on the verge of hurtling into something she would later regret. She could not allow herself this, she could not allow any emotional excess; she should not feel, else she could not think.

“Look,” she told him, gathering the remaining threads of her frayed resolve, “it was a mistake for me to come—”

“No, Cait, don’t do that—don’t shut me out again.” He sidestepped just as she turned away, so that she came face-to-face with him again, but she stubbornly refused to meet his gaze. “Please, can we talk?”

“We just did.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you already know what I have to say,” she gritted out. “I’ve already said everything that needs to be said.”

“Then,” he said, “why are you here?”

Her airways constricted. Even if he’d said it so gently, she felt like she’d been disarmed and trapped. Because that was the real question, wasn’t it? Why, after all her efforts to push him away, did she still seek him out? Why did the idea of him hurting sadden her? Why was she so compelled to cheer him up, to be there for him? She knew she’d had an answer to that, one that contained unthreatening truths, but she couldn’t summon it to mind now. Instead the answer that flashed into her mind—that flashed and then branded itself there, so searing that she couldn’t unthink it—was the truth she was too afraid to face, let alone say aloud.

So instead she lashed out.

“I don’t know, okay?” she snapped. “I. Don’t. Know. I feel like I’m always fumbling around in the dark when it comes to you—I don’t have answers ninety percent of the time, and the ten percent of answers I do have, I’m not completely convinced of. So, please. Don’t. Ask.”

His gaze softened, and he drew closer to her, but she remained rigid, her spine cast in steel. “Is that so bad?” he said. “Not having all the answers?”

“Of course it is,” she said vehemently. “Nothing is ever complicated for you, so of course you wouldn’t understand—”

“I wouldn’t understand?” he said, incredulous. “Cait, I don’t have all the answers either, but you don’t see me running away—”

“I’m not running away,” she said, hands balling into fists, “I’m solving the problem once and for all!”

“How?” he said, raking his hair in frustration. “By completely ignoring me?”

“Yes!” she seethed. “But you don’t seem to be taking the hint—”

“No, you’re right, that part I don’t understand,” he said, his voice rising, his features contorting in confusion and anguish. “Tell me, Cait, what exactly does that solve?”

She opened her mouth, but suddenly all words fled her, withered under the fire in his eyes.

“Well? Enlighten me,” he said, the word twisting his mouth in bitter irony, and it was such an unfamiliar expression on him that her gut wrenched in horror. Had she really been the one to put that expression on his face? She thought she’d be able to handle his anger, but it seemed that it only weighed her down with the guilt of being its cause. But couldn’t dwell on that now—not when she had to take control of the situation, not when she had a fight to win. “Maybe then we can be on the same page.”

“I’d be wasting my breath,” she said tightly. “You wouldn’t understand.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Then make me,” he said, his voice strained. “Make me understand your problem, Cait! I’m not a mind-reader!”

“My problem?” she bristled at the accusation in his tone; the blood rushed to her face, and the confusion, jealousy, and barely-leashed longing that she’d bottled and sealed finally burst and boiled over. “My problem is you! My problem is that you came along and threw my entire life off-course!” All rationality had fled her now, and she was running on the adrenaline of her anger. “Like I said, you wouldn’t understand. You’ve had crushes and girlfriends since middle school. I haven’t. It’s just not who I am. And I was perfectly fine with that.” Barry looked as if he were about to interject, but she couldn’t stop talking; the words rushed out of her in a raging torrent. “Actually, I was grateful for it, because it meant my work would never suffer from the unnecessary angst of romantic entanglements. My life was uncomplicated. All my efforts revolved around school and internships and scholarship programs, anything that could bring me closer to becoming a bioengineer. And for the most part, I was in control of everything in that world.”

She took a shaky breath. “But then you come along,” she accused with renewed vehemence, “and suddenly I’m not in control of anything. Everything’s incomprehensible. Every time you talk to me, it’s like you’re speaking in code. Every time a conundrum is solved, ten new ones appear.” The words burned like acid on her tongue. “My own feelings are incomprehensible to me. I’ve always been able to analyze them to death, but this time, the more I analyze, the more confused I get, and the stronger they become.”

His lips parted in surprise. “What do you—”

“So, Barry, tell me,” she said bitterly, her throat closing. “Tell me, how is it possible that in a span of two weeks, I’ve gone from being single-mindedly focused on building a career in bioengineering, to thinking of you every single moment of the day? How is it possible that I’ve gone from not being attracted to anyone, to liking you so much that I feel I’m going out of my mind?”

He stared at her, stunned.

The instant that last sentence fell from her lips, the invigorating haze of her anger cleared and left in its wake a cold dread that coiled in her stomach. Fuck, what did she just say? And why the hell did she have to go out and say it? She felt like she had just torn down her own defenses, and now she was standing in front of him, stripped of all her armor. Fuck, she hated this. She hated feeling so vulnerable.

“You like me,” he said in disbelief. And then, his lips stretched into a slow smile. “You like me.”

“Oh my God,” she breathed, wanting nothing more than to find a hole in the ground to bury her head in. If she could, she would have already raced back in time to take back everything she said, but instead she had to suffer the humiliating crush of the present. “That’s not the point—”

“No, Cait, I think that’s exactly the point,” he said. “Everything else is beside it.”

“You can’t call everything I’ve just said beside the point—”

“Okay, okay, you’re right, they’re not,” he quickly amended, holding both hands out in surrender to appease her. “What I meant was, can we start from this point?” He took a step closer, his eyes luminescent with hope. “Can we start from the fact that we both like each other and then figure out what happens from here?”

“I’ll tell you what happens from here,” she said through gritted teeth, trying to hold on to the last shreds of control that had so rapidly slipped from her hands. “We’ll go out on a few dates. You’ll find out that we’re not suited for each other. I’m too serious and uptight, and you’re too sunny and carefree. Everything that occurred over the past two weeks was exciting because of the novelty, but once the novelty wears off you’ll lose interest—”

“I’ll lose interest?” he said, drawing back in hurt. “Do you really think so little of me?”

“—and you’ll move on to someone else more suited to your personality.”

There was a beat of silence, and then comprehension dawned on his features.

“Like Patty, you mean?” he said.

“I’m not implying—”

His tone turned teasing. “Is that jealousy I’m hearing, Caitlin?”

She glared at him. “I’m just making a realistic assessment of the situation,” she said.

“Well, let me give you my realistic assessment of the situation,” he said. He was looking at her now with such tenderness that the steel in her spine had begun to melt; and before she could move away, he took her hands in his, just like he had during the orals; and he ran his fingers over hers, his touch warm and light and reassuring.

That was it, she was a goner. The last drop of resistance drained from her body. Deep down she knew that she had already lost—and she knew, even deeper down, that just maybe, she was glad to lose.

He slowly threaded his fingers through hers, his eyes trained on her, bright in the moonlight. “You have nothing to be jealous about,” he said, bringing up her hand and pressing a quick kiss onto her knuckles. The gesture struck her as so sweet and innocent that, even if she still had half her mind about her, she didn’t protest or pull away. He tugged on their joined hands to pull her even closer, and again she let him. She would never admit it to him—she would hardly even admit it to herself—but she was relieved to be so close to him again, after trying so hard to push him away.

His lips now ghosted the shell of her ear. “No one,” he said, with quiet resolution, “comes close to you.” He leaned his forehead against hers, and he was gazing at her through half-lidded eyes; his breath was warm on her skin, and it seemed that her world had narrowed to just him, in this moment, in the moonlit forest. “Look, I don’t have all the answers either,” he said softly. “Two weeks is a crazy-short amount time, but I’m already so in love with you I can barely breathe. I can’t explain it; all I know is that it is.”

A blush crept up her face. Her eyes fluttered close, and she swallowed, unable to speak; an unfamiliar happiness thrummed through her body, about to burst from her skin. She had never been schmaltzy or sentimental, but right now, she supposed she could make this exception for him.

“We don’t have to think about what’ll happen to us in a few months, or even after a few dates,” he said. “We can take it one day at a time, one moment at a time. At whatever pace you’d like.”

A few dates… She bit her lip, feeling her old apprehension return. There was a reason she avoided him so assiduously, and she’d disguised that reason in so many other layers of peripheral truths that she’d almost lost sight of it; but now that he’d brought it up, it emerged from the debris of her logic, demanding to be noticed.

Caitlin took a deep breath. If anything was to happen between them, she had to tell him this.

“I think—”

“Oh, that can’t be good,” he teased.

She wrinkled her nose at him and continued slowly, “I think I need some time alone to let this all sink in. No, wait, let me finish.” She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze to ease his alarm. “Barry, I’m terrified. That was the problem—I’m completely terrified of this. Of going out with you and being with you.” She swallowed. “I was avoiding you because I like you enough to know you could hurt me, and I don’t want to get hurt. I figured that if I cut you off first, you wouldn’t be able to hurt me.”

His expression mellowed. “I wish I could say something like ‘I’ll never hurt you,’” he said, “but that’d be a lie. I think the more you let someone in, the more power you give them to hurt you. So I get what you’re saying.” His grip on her hand tightened. “But I think it’ll all be worth it in the end.”

“You don’t know that,” she said.

“But we never know anything for sure, anyway,” he said. “Even the most thoroughly researched predictions turn out wrong, and even the most improbable events come to happen, against all odds.” He flashed her a boyish smile. “As for me, I’m willing to take a chance on this”—he gestured between them—“improbable event.”

She shook her head and huffed a laugh. “For once, I don’t think I can argue with that logic.” He beamed, but she continued, “But I still need to let this all sink in. I just came to terms with everything, and it’s still extremely confusing…”

“Okay,” he said softly. “Okay. I understand. But promise me you won’t shut me out again,” he pleaded. “I don’t think I can bear any more of that. And besides, I’m running out of ideas for voicemails…”

She smiled, amused. “Alright,” she said. “I promise I won’t.”

“So… when’ll you talk to me again?” he grinned.

She pursed her lips. “Maybe after a week?”

“A week?!” he said, and then he cleared his throat and amended, “I mean, alright, sure, a week. I think I can do a week.”

She rolled her eyes fondly. “Thank you,” she said, and, on impulse, she tilted her head to press a kiss on his jaw.

He looked surprised, but he recovered quickly with a mischievous smile. “Can I have more of those to get me through the week?” he said. “Like, one for each day—”

“Don’t push your luck,” she said, and he laughed.

“I’m kidding,” he said. “Really, take your time. Just, you know, not too much time. Okay, to be honest, I can’t wait for next week to come…”

“You really have no patience, do you?”

“Absolutely none,” he chirped. “But when it comes to you, I guess I have a little bit more than my baseline patience.”

“How romantic,” she said dryly, and he grinned.

“Now that I have a ton of,” he said.

“Well, I don’t have a romantic bone in my body,” she said, with a teasing smile, “but when it comes to you, I guess I have a bit more than a scaphoid to spare.”

He laughed. “I’ll take it,” he said, brushing his lips on the inside of her wrist, right where her scaphoid was. When he looked up at her again, his eyes were shining with mirth. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?”

“Yes we are,” she said quietly. “We definitely are.”

They fell into a comfortable silence, surrounded by the soft rustling of leaves, the glow of streetlamps along the well-worn path, and the smell of the earth.

After a few moments, Caitlin ventured to speak.

“By the way, how’re you feeling?” she asked. “After that meet…”

“Oh… I’m still upset about it,” he said. “But it was partly my fault—Hunter was a new contender so I might’ve underestimated him—but you win some, you lose some, I guess.” He pulled away briefly to give her a pout. “I’m really hurt you didn’t come, though.”

“You’ll get over it,” she said dryly.

“The least you could do is kiss the hurt better,” he said, and she swatted his arm. “Ow, ow—fine, fine, I’ll stop soliciting kisses… But can I at least have a hug?”

He grinned, and she sighed.

“Fine. One second.”

“…Are you seriously giving me a hug time limit?”

“No such thing as free lunch, as they say.”

“But hugs are supposed to be free!”

“Not in my currency,” she returned.

“Well, how about two seconds?” he wheedled, giving her the smile that she couldn’t resist. “I mean, I was second place and all…”

She pretended to consider it. “I suppose that’s fair.”

“Yesss!” he cheered, disentangling his hands from hers to spread his arms open for the hug, but she pushed him back lightly at the shoulders.

“Wait, don’t you have a party to go to?”

“A par—oh, that. That can wait,” he said. “Not fair. You’re doing that on purpose.”

She tilted her head to the side innocently. “Doing what on purpose?”

“Cait, seriously, this is the worst time to make me wait,” he said, petulant. “I would really like to avail of my hug now, please.”

She smiled. Oh, she missed him. She really missed him. “Well, since you asked so nicely…”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he quickly pulled her flush against him, his arms strong around her waist. He let out a contented sigh and buried his face in the crook of her neck, and she closed her eyes and melted into his embrace.

They stayed like that for far longer than two seconds, but neither of them were counting.

[trentteti]

December 2017 LSAT Recap

When the scores for the most recent LSAT are released, test takers receive a series of documents: their score report, their question responses, the score distribution, a copy of their exam (unless you happen to take the undisclosed February exam), and the like. Most normal people, who see the LSAT as merely a hurdle in their path two a law school and a legal career, just look at their score and discard the rest.

But for the decidedly not normal and exceedingly nerdy — read: LSAT instructors — those discarded documents tantalize us. We love to pour over each released exam to analyze the questions, try to discern trends, and to predict changes in what is tested on the LSAT. We often compare each LSAT release to Christmas morning. We’re a very sad lot. But it was nonetheless very fitting that the December 2017 LSAT drop occurred so close to Christmas, giving us our favorite gift of all: the opportunity to gain insights into the LSAT that we can then pass along to our students.

So today we’re going to look over each section of the December exam to try to shed some light on some perplexing questions, to discuss which concepts this exam emphasized and downplayed, and to place this LSAT into the bigger picture of recent exams. If you took the December exam and are now hard at work filling out your application materials, hopefully this will be a revealing — and not too traumatic — walk down memory lane. If you’re studying for a future exam, hopefully this will be somewhat prescient in what your exam might look like.

So enough preamble, let’s do some quick hits on each section …

Logical Reasoning

• The first thing I check out with Logical Reasoning sections is the question distribution. Although an LR section could conceivably discuss any topic — and there were some bonkers topics, on this and every other exam — there are only a few different kinds of questions they ask (about 18 common question types, according to our classification system). And the number of each type of questions included remains fairly constant over time, although there have been some changes on recent exams.

The biggest change to the question distribution for Dec 2017? There were a ton of Strengthen questions. By my count, there were 11 overall. I believe that’s more than any other LSAT, ever. However, this is of a piece with a larger trend on recent LSATs. Strengthen questions have become increasingly prominent over the last few years. So much so that they have recently overtaken Flaw questions as the most common question type.

• A few of these Strengthen questions were presented in an unusual way. Often, an LSAT question will ask you to select the answer choice that “most logically completes” the argument. You look up to the passage, and you see a big blank space following a word like “therefore” or “thus.” Those words tell that you’ll be “completing” that argument by providing the conclusion. Since you’re trying to infer what a supported conclusion might look like, those questions are what we call Soft Must Be True questions.

Several questions on the December exam asked you to select the answer choice that “most logically completes” the argument, but when you looked up to the passage, it used words like “because” and “since” before the blank space. That means that you’re adding a premise to the argument that will support the conclusion already included in the argument. In other words, these questions were asking you to pick an answer choice that would strengthen the argument, not draw a conclusion from that argument. These were Strengthen questions.

Your approach to Soft Must Be True and Strengthen questions are very, very different (for one, you should prefer weaker answer choices on Soft Must Be True questions and stronger answer choices on Strengthen questions), so realizing that these were Strengthen questions was pretty important.

Still confused on the difference between the two “most logically completes” questions? It’s simple. If the blank space follows words like “therefore,” “thus,” “hence,” or “so,” treat it like a Soft Must Be True question. If the blank space follows words like “since,” “because,” “for,” or “as,” treat it like a Strengthen question.

• Another interesting tidbit was the number of Disagree questions. The typical LSAT will have 1 or 2 of these questions. This one had 5. Plus, there were 4 Disagree questions on the September 2017 exam. So it appears as if Disagree questions are becoming a little more prevalent. And I, for one, see this as a welcome development. For a test that prepares students to enter law school — where they will learn about our two party, adversarial legal system and spend quite a bit of time pouring over old legal cases and describing the two sides of the suit — it makes sense that test takers will see several questions that test their ability to describe a disagreement.

• Otherwise, this was a pretty normal test in terms of question distribution. Other than Strengthen questions, Flaw, Necessary, and Soft Must Be True questions were the most common question types, as they pretty much always are. There were two Parallel and two Parallel Flaw questions, as always. There was only 1 Describe question, 1 Role question, and 1 Sufficient question. And there weren’t any Main Point, Crux, or Explain questions. But those are less common question types, so getting one or none of each isn’t unheard of.

• There were a few questions that lodged themselves in test takers’ memories following the exam, and, unsurprisingly, these were the most interesting questions to unpack. One question that stuck out for many — which has shot straight to my short list of favorite LSAT questions ever (again, see the above statement about LSAT instructors being a sad lot) — was a Soft Must Be True question about T. Rex bones. Apparently, some fossilized T. Rexes bear evidence of bite marks that could only come from another T. Rex trying to fight them or eat them. The question then told us that these bite marks would have been impossible to inflict on a live T. Rex. Which should have led the astute test taker to deduce that the bite marks couldn’t have come from live combat, but instead would have to come from a T. Rex mawing on the dead T. Rex’s rotting corpse. The right answer required a bit of common sense and outside knowledge — that eating dead kin constitutes cannibalism — but if you figured that out, then bang a gong and get it on to the next question, because you aced that one.

Also, we predicted there would be some death metal on this exam. And this question literally gave us a cannibal corpse.

• The hardest question, I thought, was a Strengthen question about Caligula, the vilified Roman emperor, alleged freak, and subject of a very bad 70s film. This question asked us to support the position held by modern historians, who claim that Caligula isn’t as bad as he’s made out to be, since there isn’t that much documentation of his evil acts and the historical accounts of him were written by his enemies. Usually, getting a Strengthen question right is just a matter of figuring out what’s wrong with the argument. On this question, figuring out that part was easy. Just because enemies of Caligula described his bad behavior doesn’t mean that their descriptions were inaccurate. Befitting the Latin language Caligula spoke, that’s a classic ad hominem attack.

However, finding the answer choice that fixed that problem — by showing the enemies’ descriptions were inaccurate — was pretty tough. The right answer showed that these descriptions were inaccurate in a very oblique way. It said that the bad behavior attributed to Caligula is very similar to the bad behavior attributed to other cruel tyrants. That opens up the possibility that the enemies are either lying about the cruel stuff Caligula did (and using the older tyrants as their inspiration) or are confused about who committed the cruel acts (and misattributing them to Caligula). And either would buttress the position that Caligula — who reportedly engaged in incest and fed humans to wild beasts for pleasure — really wasn’t all that bad of a guy. Pretty damn difficult. What this question asked of you, at the end of the day, well, Caligula would have blushed.

• Aside from that question, how difficult was Logical Reasoning overall? Well after doing the exam, I assigned a number from 1 (least difficult) to 5 (most difficult) to each question. Not exactly the most scientific of methods, but I probably wouldn’t be doing this if I were good at math or science. Anyway, the average difficulty of each question was 2.68 for the first LR section and 2.65 for the second. So, there you have it, very average difficulty!

Reading Comprehension

• My students’ reports following the December exam suggested that this Reading Comprehension section was uncharacteristically easy, especially after many, many exams of excruciatingly difficult Reading Comp sections. I held out hope that students just felt that way because I did an especially good job of teaching them the strategies of how to do this section. While I know our approach to Reading Comp is sound, my ego is reluctantly taking this L, because this was a pretty forgiving section.

• One noteworthy thing about this Reading Comp section? All but the last passage were organized around answering an explicit or implicit question. This is a common rhetorical device on Reading Comp passages, and identifying it can help you understand the passage and destroy on the questions. That’s because the main point of the passage will always be the answer the author agrees with (or a summary of each answer described, if the author doesn’t agree with any). So the first passage asked whether the “Chinatown Chinese” dialect from San Francisco’s Chinatown was a distinct Chinese dialect (Answer: Nope). The second passage asked whether life developing in our universe was really as improbable as some cosmologists believe (Answer: Probably not). In the third, comparative passage, passage A asked why comedians don’t use the legal system to protect their jokes (Answer: it’s expensive and uncertain, and social norms do the same thing) and passage B asked why chefs don’t use the legal system to protect their recipes (Answer: again, social norms do the same thing). By my count, just recognizing this would have directly answered or helped answer 13 of the 20 questions distributed among these passages.

• San Francisco’s Chinatown was discussed at length in the first passage, so let me use this space to offer my hot take. Aside from a few decent bars, San Francisco’s Chinatown is hugely overrated. Los Angeles’s Chinatown, which is smaller and not even the nexus of Chinese activity in the city, is much better. NorCal types, don’t @ me.

• The second passage is all about the theory of the multiverse — that there are an infinite number of universes, occurring parallel to ours, in which things played out differently than they did in our universe. The concept of infinite parallel universes is pretty wild if you think about it — literally every possible scenario exists in some other universe. Since LSAC brought that up, I think this opens up a great opportunity for you to write an explanatory essay on why your LSAT score isn’t up to some schools’ standards. Just explain, as calmly and rationally as you can, that although you didn’t get a 180 on this LSAT, there is a version of you in some other parallel universe that earned a 180 on the LSAT, and that the admissions officers should take that into account. Hey, if they’re going to take past scores into consideration, they should take parallel scores into consideration as well.

• The final passage illustrated an important lesson many test takers unfortunately fail to learn for Reading Comp. So many test takers spend way too much time trying to understand every last detail of the passage, and don’t give themselves enough time to answer the questions. Now, understanding the structure of the passage and the author’s attitude are the most important tasks in Reading Comp, and you should take adequate time to do those. But you don’t have to understand every last little detail.

Parts of the fourth passage, about how a novelist and social theorist named Charlotte Perkins Gilman took her understanding of Social Darwinism and used it to support a feminist theory of human progress, were confusing as hell. You could have easily wasted 10 minutes on them. But the questions, I thought, were super easy, and really just depended on you understanding which camp of Social Darwinists Gilman belonged to. So remember: focus on the structure and author in Reading Comp. If you need the details of a passage, you can always re-read the relevant parts of the passage.

• Using the 1 to 5 scale for the Reading Comp section, the average difficulty was a 2.75. That’s a half-point lower than the September 2017 section and a full point lower than the June 2017 section. Is this the end of brutal Reading Comp sections? I wouldn’t bet my life’s savings on that. There is still far more evidence of tough Reading Comp sections to come. But we’ll see February!

Logic Games

• Finally, logic games. After a few exams of straightforward games with straightforward deductions, which followed a few years of the LSAT getting a little bit wild with some of its games, December 2017 gave a set of straightforward(-ish) games with straightforward(-ish) deductions. I’d place the difficulty of this section somewhere between the notoriously easy September 2017 section and some of the really difficult recent sections, like say, December 2016.

Now, I heard many frustrated test takers who found this to be a really difficult games section. I understand where they were coming from, as these games were decidedly more difficult than the games they did on their final practice exams, assuming they took the September and June 2017 exams last. But these weren’t really mind-melting or unfair or even usual games. I suspect a big reason so many found this lot of games difficult was that this section was the last of the exam, and students had to tackle them while fatigued.

• The common element to each game was making scenarios. Every game benefitted from the use of scenarios. If you made the right set of scenarios for each game, they were actually really easy (I completed all four games in about 20 minutes). Unfortunately, none of these games included the rules that obviously lend themselves to scenarios. Like a giant constrained block in an ordering game or a “must be together” relationship in a grouping game. So test takers had to get a little creative to find ways to construct scenarios. But those ways were definitely there.

• The first game was a “combo” game — combining an ordering game with an In & Out grouping game. Basically, a travel agent (which, btw, is a profession that’s antiquated even to me, who is part of an age group that could generously be referred to as “Washed Millennials”) has to select four of six Asian cities for a tour, and then schedule the selected cities from the first to fourth city traveled to.

The key to constructing scenarios in this game was realizing that, since Hanoi and Taipei were cities that must be included in the tour, the only cities that could fill out the remaining two open slots were Jakarta, Manila, and either Osaka or Shanghai (a rule forbid selecting both). Selecting two of three is always a potential way to make three scenarios, and that was the route to take for this game. Making one scenario where the last two cities were Jakarta and Manila, one where they were Jakarta and either Osaka or Shanghai, and one where they were Manila and either Osaka or Shanghai answered every question.

• The second game was a straightforward 1:1 Ordering game that used a difficult, but common, ordering rule: that a player had to be either before or after two other players. Rules that present two mutually exclusive options are pretty much always good for two scenarios. These scenarios combined nicely with another rule that presented two mutually exclusive options — that a player was either before or after another player — to create scenarios that helped out with each question.

• The third game was a source of consternation for many test takers, with many failing to figure out what type of game it was. The game involved a passenger railway system needing to close some of its six stations. So some stations would be left open, and some would be closed. Some open. Some closed. Open/Closed. In/Out. “Open” and “closed” may be the binary, but it’s still not all that different from an “in” and “out” binary.

This is an important lesson — a game may seem strange at first blush, but odds are that it fits in the paradigm of a safe and familiar game. And you’ll be so much better off doing that game using the same set-up and rules as a game you’ve down dozens of times before. For those studying for the next exam, btw, this was very similar to game 2 in the October 2005 exam (in which light switches are either turned “on” or “off”) and game 1 in the 2008 exam (in which dancers are either “on” or “off” the stage”).

Once you figured out this was an In & Out game, where the “In” group was stations left open and the “Out” group were stations that were closed, scenarios presented themselves with the first rule: that either N or R had to be “In.” That restriction combined with other rules and, by making the deductions in each scenario, the clever test taker should realize that N and R couldn’t both be “In.” There were many unrestricted players in this game, but the scenarios still provided a framework to quickly answer every question.

• The fourth and final game was admittedly difficult. Again, many test takers struggled to even set this up. Here’s an easy tip for setting up games, though: scheduling is an act of ordering. So whenever you get days of the week in a game, it’s an ordering game. So in this game, we had to schedule a day, Wednesday through Saturday, for an environmental consultant to examine the air quality on floors 1 through 8 of a building. The consultant would examine two floors each day, making this an Overbooked Ordering game.

One hard part of this game was the first rule, which prevented the consultant from examining consecutive floors on the same day. Seems inefficient, but sure, do your thing environmental consultant. Anyway, I suspect many got hung up on symbolizing this rule. But it’s more important to understand and apply the rule. This rule just means that if, say, floor 4 is examined on Thursday, floor 3 and floor 5 couldn’t also be examined on Thursday.

A pretty unique set of scenarios emerged in this game. The game placed a series of mutually exclusive options on certain floors. Floor 3 could only be examined on Wednesday or Thursday. Floor 4 could only be examined on Thursday or Friday. And Floor 5 could only be examined on Friday or Saturday. As on the second game of this exam, these mutually exclusive options were the basis of scenarios. These constraints, plus the first rule, which prevented floors 3 and 4 and floors 4 and 5 from going on the same day, gave us four scenarios: One were 3 was on Wednesday, 4 on Thursday, and 5 on Friday; one where 3 was on Wednesday, 4 on Thursday, and 5 on Saturday; one where 3 was on Wednesday, 4 on Friday, and 5 on Saturday; and one where 3 was on Thursday, 4 on Friday, and 5 on Saturday. Again, these scenarios helped on pretty much every question.

• Hopefully the above descriptions make clear one point about learning how to do logic games. Practice making scenarios! It can even be worthwhile to do games multiple times — once with scenarios and once without. Experiment on each game, and see which approach is better. This will help you begin to recognize which types of constraints are most useful for scenarios, and will help you choose the most efficient path for each game on your exam.

• Here’s a final point about games: If you’re reading this blog (and made it this far into the post), then you clearly take your studies very seriously. Bully to you! Hopefully that means you’re practicing more than the typical test taker. If so, you should want a difficult games section. Nay, you should crave a difficult games section. You’re going to be better equipped to handle more complex or unusual games than others. Take it from a guy who has taught hundreds of people — most fear difficult games more than anything on the exam. However, with the right practice, difficult games are the most conquerable “difficult” part of the LSAT. On the easier games sections this year, most people did very well on logic games. To distinguish yourself from the crowd and get a good score, you had to do really well on a much more difficult to master Reading Comp section. Trust, it’s a lot easier to distinguish yourself on a difficult games section. So don’t fear difficult games. You can master them. And then tests like December’s will be all the more conquerable for you.

Final take-aways

• So in all, this wound up being a slightly more difficult test than September or June 2017, but with a slightly more forgiving curve. For the December exam, you could miss 12 questions and still get a 170. This is much more generous than the 9 you could miss on the June 2017 exam and a little more generous than the 11 you could miss on the September exam.

• It also caps off a year when the LSATs were all fairly straightforward and predictable. At least more so than usual. Once 2018, with its slightly revised schedule of LSAT administrations, begin to roll around, we’ll see if this old dog of a test still has some tricks up its sleeves, or if it’ll be more of the same.

December 2017 LSAT Recap was originally published on LSAT Blog