Eva had the uncanny urge to brush the dripping hair away off his forehead and out of his eyes, but she managed to suppress it, fiddling with the towel instead. She looked over at him with a concerned expression as he explained about school. She knew that regular school must have been really tough for him, especially before Byrne. But now, he seemed to be able to control his speed so much better... It hadn't occurred to her that it might be tougher to go back to a regular school after the haven of the academy. Her heart squeezed at how he looked - he seemed confused, lost even... Abandoned? It was hard to describe it precisely.
There was a moment of silence, but it was a pensive silence, not one troubled by hesitation and timidity. "I don't think I'm going to go to college, either, Jake. I think what we're doing here is too important and I don't think I should be dividing my time between the League and other obligations right now. When things get better," because they would, she had no doubt, "we can go back then." It was important to Eva to let him know that he wasn't the only one who wouldn't fit in a regular school - it wasn't a failure not to go back. "I don't know that any of us who went to Byrne could really go back," she added.
Having said her piece, there was another silence when something occurred to her. She seemed to pause a moment and then cock her head to the side as she pondered this new thought. "What if... What if we did workshops? I mean, there are lots of kids here who are now like, living here. What if the older kids taught like, classes, but not like regular classes. Since they wouldn't be mandatory, it wouldn't really be like school - you could just go to the stuff that was interesting." And then they couldn't call us uneducated apes. It was more than that, though. If this was going to be over someday - and Eva's optimism (naive or not) said it would be - it would be better not to lose so much time trying to get back to where they had been. "What do you think?" she asked, turning her brown eyes on her friend.