“Well, you know the paper you told us about, with Dr. Singh?”
My face heats. I have to give my answer to him tomorrow, and it still makes me feel edgy and unsure. I don’t want to upset the balance I’d created at my job. I don’t want to change the relationship I have with Dr. Singh. All this week, I’d let myself be distracted from thinking about it, which was easy enough, really, given what I’d been up to with Ben.
“Just thinking about something doesn’t mean you have todoit. And putting your name on this paper, it doesn’t mean you have to start—I don’t know—totally changing the way you do your job. You get to decide what you do with your life, Kit. That’s the best luck we got on the day we bought that ticket. And considering things, trying new things—actually letting yourself take credit for something you worked really, really hard on—that doesn’t force you to decide one way or another. And whatever you’d decide—even if there was some light sedation involved—it’d be okay. We’d all be okay.”
Gah, Zoe’s speeches. They always hit you right in your soft parts. I look toward Greer, who nods in agreement. I breathe out a sigh, and we set to walking again. After a minute, I say,“It doesn’t always feel that way, though. It feels—I just want to stay in my lane, you know? And if I get in the passing lane, even for a little bit, what if there’s no room for me to get back over?”
Greer unlinks her arm from mine, but only so she can grab my hand, squeezing slightly. Then Zoe moves to my other side, grabs my other hand so that the three of us are walking all together along the path—it’s silly, what we’re doing, swinging our arms as if we’re kids in the park, nothing to do or think about but play.“Kit-Kat,” Zoe says, after we walk a bit.“You can get in that passing lane whenever you want. With us, there’s always room for you to get back over.”
* * * *
Dr. Singh is frowning at his computer screen when I knock on his open door on Monday morning, but as soon as he raises his head and sees me there, he smiles the way he always does.
I first met Dr. Singh when I was twenty-one, on a campus visit I’d done in my senior year of undergrad. There were three schools on my list for master’s programs, all of them top ten in materials science, all of them with a PhD program too, in case I’d decide to go that route. It should’ve been an exciting time—I was top of my class, had one of my summer research projects headed toward publication, and had full fellowship offers for all three schools.
But, predictably, I’d been terrified. I’d stayed in Ohio for college, at least close to the general region of my nomadic childhood. I hung out mostly with other students within my major, dated a little, had a boyfriend for all of junior year until he got sulky about how high my GRE score had been compared to his. At the time, it’d seemed I was maybe making my way, finding a community, and the thought of moving on, uprooting everything to go to a new place, had me up late at night, every night, reading everything I could about my prospective schools.
When I’d come here, though, I’d realized quickly that I didn’t have the community I thought I did at college, and it was Dr. Singh who showed me that. The first night, he’d had me and the four other visiting students over to his and Ria’s house for dinner. We’d all sat around a big dining room table and talked about everything from Feynman’s lectures to our favorite movies. The next day, Dr. Singh and Dr. Harroway had taken us on a tour of the labs, then they’d handed us off to some second-year grad students who’d shown us around town. By then, I’d been sold—the facilities weren’t state of the art, but we were seeing them during the height of the semester, busy and full of small groups of students, and then I’d loved Barden itself, how much history it had, how many neighborhood enclaves there were, each with its own character. When I’d had my one-on-one meeting with Dr. Singh on my last morning, he’d been the first professor I’d ever had to really ask after the way I went about learning. He paid attention to what I liked best about the science, thought hard about what projects I’d work best on.
When I’d moved here, he’d been a steady, calm presence, giving me exactly the right amount of guidance and freedom. He was an incredible teacher, an ideal mentor, and just a good, kind person who wanted the best for me.
I keep my mind on that as I sit in my regular seat across his desk and tell him that I’m okay with being lead author, and as he clasps his hands together and does this cartoonish victory shake with them, which makes us both laugh.
“I’m so glad,” he says.“I thought I overplayed my hand last week, threatening to pull the article.”
“You wouldn’t have?”
He shrugs.“I wasn’t kidding about being uncomfortable publishing it as it is. But it is such good work—it would have been hard to pull it. So I’m so glad you’re going this route.”
“Me too,” I say, and I am.
Last night in bed, as we were drifting off to sleep, I’d told Ben about the paper, and he’d gone from drowsy to awake faster than I’d ever seen, propping himself up on his elbow and asking me question after question.“Do it,” he’d said.“You’ve got to do it. Finally, it’ll be you out front!” He’d sounded so proud of me. I hadn’t known what to do except to kiss him hard, delaying our sleep for even longer. It may have been Zoe and Greer to convince me to say yes, but it meant something to me to have Ben in my corner too.
We talk about some light revisions to do, and when I turn to go, I noticeDr. Singh looks a little tired. “Everything okay?” I ask.
“Sure, sure. I didn’t get the Handel grant, though. So it’s back to the drawing board.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” The Handel would have covered him and two grad students for three years of funding on his fractography project, and I knew he’d had high hopes. Funding was brutal in our field, competitive, money scarce, and Dr. Singh was selective about the grants he’d apply for—I’d learned a lot of my values about corporate science from him.
“Ah, it’s part of the job,” he says, but I know it’s more than that—of the faculty here, he lags behind in funding, and it’s important for his upcoming review for promotion. But he’s already cleared his face of any strain, and he’s looking across the desk at me fondly.“Ekaterina, I must say, I’m very happy about the paper. Very proud to have my nameafteryours.” This is too new for me to be cool and collected about, and I know my face has pinked up. So I’m grateful when Dr. Singh waves a hand and says,“Now wrap up your day early today. Get out there and celebrate.”
* * * *
Ben, too, insists that we celebrate. He picks me up after closing down the yard, a bottle of champagne tucked in between our seats in his truck.“Where are we going?” I ask, fiddling with the radio. I find a top 40 station and beam in triumph across the seat at him. He hates it when I pick the music. Last week when he taught me how to switch out the wall boxes for my electric, I’d had a full-on girl group playlist blaring, and Ben had complained so much I thought he’d pull a muscle.“You have the worst taste,”he grumbles.
My answer is to sing back, off-key, rolling my window down.
When he can’t keep a straight face anymore, I nudge him again, ask him where he’s taking me.
“Just this place I know about. You’ll love it.”
“Is it the science museum?”
“No. I figure you’ve been to the science museum at least ten times.”
“Oh, twenty, probably. I gave a lecture there once, for an exhibit they had on railway construction. It was awesome. I met this man who has two and a half total miles of miniature rail built all around his backyard.”
“Oh, you mean George Billingsley?”
