“Do you need anything?” asks the guard, but I shake my head.
“Just make sure he’s gone,” I say, and the man leaves. After he locks the door, I get back to my desk.
I try to focus back on my work, but my otherwise very structured mind won’t let me, so I pack my bag after half an hour of trying and writing exactly nothing and call it a day.
I extra check my surroundings and don’t use my noise-canceling headphones, just to be sure.
I take the subway for four stops to my Upper West Side apartment. Routine, as always.
When I open the door to my apartment, my cat is already waiting for me. More or less, because I am the one providing food. She sat on my windowsill one day, all skin and bones, so I fed her. She came back and stayed.
I named her Black Matter, because she is the blackest void and impossible to see without light pointed directly at her. She dislikes being touched or cuddled in any way, so we’re the perfect match. Our life is a mutual coexistence, with the requirement that I feed her on time.
“Closed the door,” I tell myself as I close it behind me and lock it. “Locked it.”
I put my bag into its designated space on the spindle table by the door.
“I think I’m hungry,” I say. I narrate my entire life. It helps me structure everything, and with all the dialogue in my mind, all the thoughts and equations, it is a tool so I don’t forget bodily needs.
I walk into my meticulously organized kitchen and get a yogurt from the fridge. I eat the same things every day for a certain amount of time. It’s been a yogurt in the morning and evening, and a broccoli-rice bowl with chicken for the past few months.
I eat the yogurt, feed Black Matter, put the spoons in their designated spot in the dishwasher, and start my evening routine.
Now that I am in my own home, had my comfort food, and am back into my routine, the stress from what happened falls from me.
Tomorrow will be the first day with the new students, and I am excited and frightened to meet them. Social situations are always exhausting for me to navigate, but I have met some curious minds over the years, which is something I look forward to. With that thought, I get to bed.
The next morning comes, and I find myself standing in front of eighty new faces for one of the two courses I teach, An Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience.
I create a mental map of all their faces before I start speaking. There is one young woman with long brown hair who stares at me with an intensity that irritates me. I dislike staring, so I try to ignore her by starting the lecture and avoiding the spot where she sits.
“Welcome, everyone,” I begin. “I hope you had great introductory weeks and got accustomed to the new chapter in your life. I am Professor Jane McKenzie, and we’ll dive into the neuroscience of behavior in this course.”
I watch them all closely to identify the overachievers, the disinterested, the troublemakers, and the silent ones. I stack all the information in my mind map.
One young man in the back is on his laptop, not listening to a word I am saying. In the first row sits a woman reading every word from my lips as if I were a god. She reminds me of myself when I studied. I annoyed every single one of my professors, but I rather enjoy excitement, drive, and perfectionism.
Two rows behind her, the young woman with the intense gaze is still staring at me—now with her chin resting high on her praying hands, with her elbows on the desk. Something about her feels superior, as if everything here is beneath her. If I had tomake a guess, from the way she looks, behaves, dresses, I’d say very wealthy parents, no boundaries set, ever.
She is distracting me more than I’d like to acknowledge, and because she does, I get nervous.
She reminds me of my childhood bully. Just thinking about Melissa Rogan, the rich girl who pushed me down a staircase because I was in her way, makes me shudder internally.
I am so distracted that I lost what I wanted to say. It makes me flatten my blouse because my t-rex hands and arms can’t show in front of the students.
Breathe in, breathe out,I tell myself.
Whispering.I hear whispering. Suddenly, I am back in school where I had to present in front of the other students, all of them three to four years older than me, and Melissa Rogan whispered with the others. Everyone laughed. Ignored me. Made me feel less.
Remember who you are,I tell myself.
You’re Jane McKenzie.
Youngest professor ever appointed at Columbia.
An Ivy League Institution.
You got the fellowship.
