The next week felt off. Chloe was already mentally done with the project. Silver was still there, but he was acting distant, professional but still polite. He didn't make those his usual joke anymore. It should have been okay. Instead, it felt like something had broken, and I wasn't sure what, how or why.
I was leaving the library on Thursday when I heard my name. I turned. Dr. Vance, my Neural Networks professor, was hurrying to catch up, a stack of papers in his arms.
"Cameron! Just the person I was looking for. Have a minute?"
"Sure, Dr. Vance."
"That project of yours was exceptional." He said. "I'd like you to turn it into a paper. With my help, of course. We could submit it to the Journal of Computational Intelligence. It would be a huge credit for an undergraduate."
A published paper. My heart jumped. "That… sounds amazing."
