Dragonfly Girl

by Marti Leimbach

  “You weren’t a runner-up, you were the runner-up,” Will corrects. “It’s just a shame you won’t be getting the matching grant money for your research. But we have to abide by the judges’ decision.” He sighs.

  Aiden looks even more embarrassed. Unlike his brother, it’s clear that he prefers not to be in the spotlight or have his achievements unduly noted. “I am certain I was very much behind you,” he says graciously. He’s about to say something more but is interrupted by Will, who pushes him forward, toward the camera, asking the photographer for a few snaps of him with his brother. The last thing I see as I move away from the hub of media people and back into the party is Will urging Helmi and Carlos to stand along with him and Aiden. As though these four are the rightful winners of the prizes.

  7

  I WAKE WITH a pounding head, my mouth so dry it’s as though I’ve been sucking cotton all night. The darkness of Swedish winters means there’s no sun filtering through the curtains. I use my phone to navigate to the bathroom so I don’t have to switch on a lamp. Bending over the sink, I swallow tap water. This is my first hangover.

  But my headache doesn’t stop me thinking about Rik’s hand on my shoulder, on my waist. I’d put up with a week of hangovers just to feel again his broad palm as he led me to the dance floor and the solidness of his body next to mine.

  A shower would be too noisy, plus I don’t think I could stand water pounding on my head. It’s going to have to be a bath. I fill the tub, then lower myself into the warm water, thinking this time tomorrow the awards will be over. I’ll be packing up, readying to vacate the pretty room, the luxurious hotel, the cold wonder of Stockholm. But meanwhile, I have two important things to do. First, prepare for my presentation. Second, avoid Will.

  For my presentation, Lauren packed a black wool turtleneck and dressy trousers with French pockets. A note in her handwriting reads “Good luck!” She’s also included a silky camisole for under the top and a chunky necklace made of gold shells to break up all the black.

  The outfit is just right. In the mirror, I look serious, professional, stylish. Only my eyes, puffy and small in my head, give away the hangover. I can almost hear Lauren’s voice coaching me on that one, too. Open the makeup bag I gave you! You’ll need a cold pack, then lots of concealer and even more mascara.

  I get some ice from down the hall and lie with a wet washcloth over my face. I know I can’t give a talk even half as interesting as Helmi, who had been so masterful and quick-witted, explaining complex procedures with lucidity and style. Or Carlos, who acted the part of a charming MC as he conducted his game with the cards. And I can only imagine Will’s talk. He is so full of himself, plus he can say the word humdrum and make it sound important.

  I tell myself, Stop thinking and dry your hair. But the sound of the blow-dryer is like an airplane engine. I need coffee, but my legs are shaky. I carry the ankle boots Lauren supplied for this outfit, because even short heels seem too much. At least the elevator is empty.

  The lobby is full of soft morning light and the pine scent of its enormous Christmas tree. I slip on my boots and make my way toward the Veranda. The smell of butter and toast and cinnamon, all of which I normally love, makes me queasy. Passing a table of people feasting on various cold meats and boiled eggs, I feel my stomach lurch.

  I find a tray of orange juice by the waiters’ station and drink two glasses in a row. Under normal circumstances, I’d devour another kanelbulle or two. But all I can cope with is a plain white roll from a basket of bread, which I nibble like a mouse.

  “How are we this morning?” Will’s voice, unmistakable, loud, blasting into my left ear.

  “Fine,” I say. I search for a means of getting around him without actually pushing. I try going left, but he holds out an arm as though to steady me, effectively blocking my way.

  “You don’t look fine,” he says. “Didn’t you enjoy our sail through Stockholm by moonlight?”

  He seems to be speaking exceptionally loudly. “Yes,” I say. I really hope he’ll get out of my way.

  “Why don’t you join us?” he suggests, gesturing toward a table by the glass wall. I look across the room. Beside Will’s empty seat are several committee members in conversation with Will’s brother, Aiden, who smiles a lot. It’s like he’s campaigning for my position of prizewinner once I’m deposed.

  And yes, I’m sure Will means for me to notice this.

  “Perhaps you’d enjoy a chance to chat with the committee?” he says.

  It feels inevitable that I will be disqualified. But if Will expects me to march over and sit with the committee as he unveils the truth about me, he’s wrong.

  “I’m having breakfast with Dr. Munn,” I say, a lie that blooms out of nowhere. It throws Will for a moment. I watch the shock in his eyes before his face darkens with disbelief.

  “How nice for you,” he says. He scans the room, then adds, “I don’t see Munn about. Where exactly are you having this breakfast?”

  According to Rik, Munn has breakfast in the library. If I had a meeting with him, it would be there. But I say nothing as Will stands impatiently before me, waiting for an answer.

  “You’re making it up, aren’t you?” he says, then folds his arms over his chest. “You’re good at making things up.”

  I swallow hard. I feel my stomach tighten as I continue. “Follow me to the library if you’re so sure,” I say.

  Will flinches as though I’ve poked him. He opens his mouth, then closes it again. “I’d like to know why he wishes to see you.”

  As if he is entitled to know why. Just as he imagines he is entitled to know my educational standing, my background, everything about me. Perhaps he thinks that winning the grand prize in the Science for Our Future awards makes him king.

  “Me too. I’d like to know why he wants to see me,” I say, turning on my heel. “I guess I’ll find out.”

  I think that’s the end of it, but it’s not. I hear his voice again and realize that he’s following me. I feel the cool sweat of fear as I move through the corridors toward the library. I hear Will’s footsteps behind me, a kind of drumbeat that echoes in my head as I move out of the restaurant, through the elevator lobby, and then along the corridor.

  A shiny brass sign tells me to turn right to the library and I do so abruptly, pressing my fingers to my throbbing temples. Will’s footsteps quicken. He’s beside me now. He is certain that there is no breakfast, no meeting. It infuriates me that he’s right, that I’m bluffing.

  “My brother has been very gracious about this matter of the prize,” he says. “I’m not so sure he ought to be.”

  And there it is again: the threat. Like a spot of fresh blood from a wound that won’t heal. Maybe I should confess to the committee myself. Or slink away before tonight’s banquet and leave the prize to Aiden. But doing so would have consequences. I think of my mother. I can’t let her down. I think of her health, of our little house back home, of all those bills.

  I see the brass placard with the word Bibliotek ahead and I regret being so bold, so foolish. I’ve walked into a trap. It’s all I can do to continue. Finally, I come to a halt outside the library’s double doors, one of which is open.

  I’m not sure if I should knock as though I were going into Munn’s office or enter as though I’m a legitimate hotel guest. I compromise, knocking just once before stepping gently through the doors.

  Suddenly, all the chaos of rushing through the hotel ends. Everything is still. The library, filled with soft light, its walls brimming with leathery books, holds an array of cherry tables and inviting plush chairs. There’s Munn, sitting beside Rik in an armchair, a cup and saucer in his hand. Resting between them on a low table is a pot of tea and the last remnants of toast. Rik must think I’ve gone nuts. Last night, he told me that Munn took breakfast in the library. But he hadn’t said arrive in the morning and barge in as though escaping enemy fire.

  Munn regards me with a curious expression. I can barely bring myself to lo
ok at him. I’ve followed his research for years, read his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, and listened to podcasts in which he discusses his work. His mind is progressive, extraordinary. In England, he holds a knighthood.

  “Kira Adams,” he says in his clipped English accent. My name comes out sounding like Kira Eddems.

  He has good manners. He’d never show that he feels intruded upon. Instead, he acts as though he’s been expecting me. He puts down his teacup. “Please join us,” he says.

  I glance at Rik, whose face registers mild surprise, then over my shoulder to where I expect Will is glaring at me. But the entrance to the library is empty. Will is gone.

  “I was actually hoping to speak with you,” says Munn.

  I can’t imagine this is the case, but I try to smile.

  “Here,” Rik says, pulling out a chair.

  I’m given a cup of tea, a lump of sugar, a slice of almond cake. I try to say thank you, but it comes out as a squeak.

  “Am I correct in saying that you’re from Palo Alto?” asks Munn. “You must visit us at the Mellin Institute. We’re not far from you.”

  Not far in distance, but light-years away. Palo Alto is the home of Stanford University and the Cantor Arts Center, as well as some of the richest neighborhoods in America. Lauren lives there, surrounded by newly minted tech entrepreneurs. It couldn’t be more different from my neighborhood, crammed with tiny single-story houses and manufactured homes on unkempt plots.

  “Tell me about your family. Any brothers or sisters?” Munn asks.

  I shake my head. “It’s just my mom and me.”

  “Any special schooling?”

  “Um . . . no.”

  “Your mother . . . is she an academic?”

  I might have said that she never even went to college, but that would feel as though I’m admitting to some great failure in her life. Or that she didn’t try hard enough. Neither is true.

  I shake my head.

  “Are you going to ask me why I hoped we’d have a chance to chat?” he says teasingly.

  I feel myself blush. The truth is I’m almost afraid to speak.

  “Because I knew your father. Your father,” he says, as though reminding me I had one, “Cyril Adams.”

  My father’s name is so unexpected, and for a moment it’s as though his ghost has entered the room.

  “He was an extraordinary young man. When I was reading your paper it was like déjà vu. It could have been his work.”

  I never knew my father. He had a drinking problem and made stupid decisions when drunk. One was to try to interrupt an armed robbery not far from our house. I was only a baby when he died.

  “You are very like him,” Munn says.

  I can’t just sit here mute. He’ll think I’m even more ridiculous than I am. “How did you . . . how did you know him?” I say.

  Munn clears his throat and smiles. “I was a fan, really. I take an interest in people who are, one might say, preternaturally gifted. He didn’t have the benefit of higher education, yet there he was. Something bordering on the miraculous. I used to visit him in that garage where he worked.”

  I nod. The garage was an outbuilding on a poultry farm. More like a shed. And the reason he was there instead of at a proper engineering lab was, again, because of the alcohol.

  “It was as though he could pluck things from the future and bring them back to the present day,” Munn continues. “I’d find him in his workspace in grubby coveralls with heavy tongs, forging a tool he’d had to invent himself because whatever he’d dreamed up couldn’t be built without it. Do you understand what I’m telling you? He was so far ahead of us that the tools needed to make his inventions had not yet themselves been invented.” He leans back in his seat and smiles. “He must have found us all a very dull lot.”

  There’s a pause, and I don’t know what to say. My father was very smart. I know that. He was also very troubled.

  “My mother told me stories,” I say.

  Munn nods, as though he can imagine stories, many stories. In fact, there have been few. My mother doesn’t talk about my father, or anything about the past, really. It’s as if her whole life began the day I was born.

  “He was a true genius, Kira,” Munn says quietly. “An impossible maverick, and yes, he had his problems. But he was remarkable. And so are you.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. I stare down at my knees. Rik senses that I’m overwhelmed and fills the silence, discussing a detail of my dragonfly paper. I try to nod along and act, you know, normal.

  At last, it’s time for Dr. Munn to go. Rik holds out Dr. Munn’s coat and valise for him. “I’ve enjoyed our chat,” Munn says, and extends his hand. “Keep your work as pure and honest as you can while still keeping the wolf from the door.”

  This last remark rings through my mind. It sounds almost as though Munn has figured out that I’m here to do exactly that, keep the wolf from the door. And that in order to do so, I can’t be completely honest.

  By the time we gather for Will’s presentation, my hangover has mostly resolved, but I’m still a bundle of nerves, sitting in the front row on the gold-leaf chair and waiting for him to begin. I feel my heart vibrating in my chest, my skin growing hot, then cold.

  “What’s happened to you?” asks Helmi. “You have the fidgets.”

  “Are fidgeting,” says Carlos, correcting her English.

  Helmi rolls her eyes.

  It’s true, my legs seem to vibrate with their own power as I try in vain to keep still. I pretend to Helmi and Carlos that I’m nervous because I ran into Munn at breakfast, but that’s not the real reason. The reason is the man in front of me, preparing for his talk. Every so often, Will glances my way, and it makes me shudder.

  “What did Munn say to you?” Carlos says.

  “That she never stops moving,” says Helmi, then smiles at her own joke.

  The room’s lights dim. Will begins.

  First, he thanks the committee. Then he thanks the judging panel. He goes on to thank the organizers of Scientists for Our Future, its sponsors and contributors. Finally, he starts thanking individuals by name. Anyone would have imagined this was the last talk to be given at the event; it certainly feels like it is.

  I have fresh regret at agreeing to speak after him. But, of course, I’d had no choice but to agree. Even now, I can see Aiden off to the side, one row behind. Next to him is Elsa, who sits elegantly with her long legs crossed, recording the talk on her phone.

  Will begins by describing how the brain doesn’t age as we once imagined. Each of us has genes that express what we understand as “aging” according to a schedule within our own individual genome. That schedule is difficult to influence. “Yes, we can delay certain problems like heart attack or cancer through lifestyle choices,” says Will, “but our cells possess their own time clock, so moving the dial on our overall life-span is unlikely no matter what the health gurus say.”

  He flips through a series of slides. The screen fills with different kinds of cells. Neural cells grown from stem cells, glowing purple and red, burst with color rising from their surfaces, looking like the solar flares on tiny suns. Skin cells make patterns like a kaleidoscope. “Stem cells often don’t perform in the human body the way they do in a lab. The question I am asking is, why not? My hypothesis is that they lack the time clock I’ve just spoken of.”

  Will’s presentation is exciting, even profound. The whole room is enchanted by him. He times his talk beautifully, filling the screen with graphs and slides. He makes jokes, gets serious, draws unlikely parallels, and convinces everyone.

  Helmi scribbles notes hurriedly onto a pad. Carlos scratches pencil marks onto the margins of a printout of Will’s original paper. But all I can focus on is whatever trap he’s set up for later tonight.

  Finally, the talk ends. The audience erupts into applause. Will is nothing if not impressive: a handsome, brilliant scientist whose qualities make it all the more withering that he has taken a dis
like to me. I watch him nod to the audience, first to those on the right, then those on the left, then finally us in the center. He levels his gaze straight at me and purses his lips disapprovingly. Follow that, he seems to say.

  Lunch is short. That is, I can’t eat. The conference continues through the afternoon with talks given by different groups. A class of schoolchildren arrive for a hands-on experiment conducted in the small courtyard. A petition or two floats about. Private meetings take place in the far reaches of the hotel, some of them quite secret.

  “Do you want to know why they have locked that door there?” Helmi says, pointing toward a heavy closed door, as solid as a wall. “Because Dr. Munn and his group are discussing work for the military.”

  “What kind of work for the military?” I say.

  Helmi raises an eyebrow and shrugs. “Unlock the door and I will tell you.”

  I wade through the afternoon, mostly hiding in my room. Everyone is excited about the final presentation in the Hall of Mirrors—my presentation—and the award ceremony afterward. Everyone except me.

  I don’t know how this great gift of coming to Stockholm has been transformed into such a grim task. Well, I do know. It’s been ruined by Will. Or maybe it was doomed from the moment I sent in the award application with a blank where the degree and date should have been written. At least Will is gone now, off with his lovely journalist. Elsa is taking him to the party at the Royal Palace. I hope she keeps him late.

  Evening arrives and I wish more than anything that the schedule hadn’t changed. The idea of taking the stage in the Hall of Mirrors terrifies me. So much buildup, so much expectation for this last presentation. I’m not even sure I can talk in front of an audience. I’ve never done it before. And my paper, once orderly in my mind, now seems a disarray of facts and numbers. I force myself to review my notes, then stand in front of a mirror and practice. At least Lauren’s clothes are right for the occasion, but my wild hair is especially uncooperative and my skin sports a new constellation of acne brought on from lack of sleep.