“Got it,” I tell Lauren, and promise I’ll make popcorn.
Ten minutes later, my mother and I are glued to the screen where a fat baby cuckoo grows obscenely large inside a nest of reed warblers less than half its size. The reed warbler parents haven’t figured out that the cuckoo isn’t their own.
Out of nowhere my mother says, “Bring me a dollar.”
I’ve got a bowl of popcorn in my lap, a handful by my chin. The cuckoo ruffles its feathers, nearly toppling the tiny reed warbler babies, who settle unsteadily around it.
“I think they’re going to fall,” I say.
“A dollar, please!”
“I know what you’re doing, and I don’t want it,” I say, still staring at the reed warblers.
“Kira, I’m not going to argue.”
“I know you’re not. It’s me. I’m arguing.”
“There’s no winning this one.”
“Can’t we just watch TV?”
She gives me a look. It’s been a bad day for her. Tired. No appetite. I sigh and heave myself from the sofa. I go to the kitchen, dig a dollar from my school bag, and bring it back, slapping it on the coffee table.
“This is totally unnecessary,” I say.
On TV, the cuckoo baby is now pushing the reed warbler chicks out of the nest. They drop, one, then the other, tumbling through reeds and into the water below. My mother clucks her tongue. “Until now, I didn’t think it was possible to hate a baby bird,” she says, tucking the dollar into her hand. “Now bring me that pad of paper, would you?”
The birds on the TV remind me of what Rik told me back in Stockholm, that falcons create brush fires to flush out their prey. I know it’s senseless to miss Rik, but I do. I miss all of them. I keep imagining that Helmi and Carlos and Rik are all still there at the Grand Hôtel, dining in the beautiful rooms or walking the magical cobblestone streets of Gamla Stan. Doing all the things we did during the SFOF conference, but without me. Of course, they’ve gone their separate ways.
My mother scribbles across a page of notepaper. “Here, sign this.”
She has written out a bill of sale for the car, which is exactly what I knew she was going to do. The dollar makes it a legal contract. It’s part of the preparation in case she suddenly dies.
“I don’t want it,” I say.
“I didn’t ask if you wanted it.”
She returns her attention to the show, her eyes fixed on the enormous cuckoo chick. “The little murderer,” she says.
She wants to pretend that selling the car to me is of no great importance, that it means nothing. But arguing about it is like arguing about her disease itself, and she’s not up for that.
“We may need another loan,” she says, nodding at the corner of the room where a brown stain is growing on the ceiling. It’s been there awhile, worsening with every rain.
“I don’t care if the roof falls in; we’re not taking money from that guy,” I say.
My mother sniffs. “I can’t see the bank giving us a dime.”
“Try another credit card?” I suggest, but I know this won’t work either. After a pause, I say, “I’ll take some extra shifts at the store.” It’s a part-time job wrapping gifts at Stanford Mall. I’ve been working double shifts during the Christmas season, and I might be able to extend that into January.
“No, you won’t.” Her voice is stern. “Because that’s how it starts.”
“How what starts?”
“The Great Downhill. The Great Downhill starts because you don’t have money, so you take a job and work it around school. You forget a few assignments, drop some grades, and now school isn’t going so well. And guess what? You still have no money. So you take more hours. They up your wage fifty cents. You think you’re doing okay. Maybe you finish school, maybe you don’t. College? You can put it off, can’t you? One year, then two, then you think you’re a little old for college. You don’t want to be in with all those young kids. Anyway, you’ve gotten a tiny promotion, just enough to scrape by. You might make assistant manager, even. Then you meet a man. The slope gets steeper. You’re going down fast. But you don’t know that. You’re in love. First with him, then with the baby. Now you’re working part-time and looking after a family. Another baby comes along—”
“Stop!” I say. “I’m not doing that!”
“Then go to college.”
“It’s not the same as it used to be,” I say. “People who are good at sciences don’t need school. . . .”
I realize all at once that I’m quoting the man with the red hair. I’ve thought of him a few times since getting home. His strange offer, the mention of a “facility,” his boss in Moscow. I’m spooked by the thought of what might have happened if I hadn’t gotten out of that coffeehouse.
“Everybody needs school,” my mother says.
In her life, my mother has sold tickets for Greyhound, dispatched for Yellow Cab, fried for KFC, managed call centers, worked on cafeteria lines. She is weary and God knows she’s sick. But she’s got wisdom, and not just what you learn in books.
“You work all those hours, and you’ll end up just where you are now,” she says. “You need to go to college. I know you can’t while we’re in this . . . bind.”
She means while she’s sick. She means she is the “bind.”
“But once I’m gone, sell the damned place. The house isn’t worth anything, but it’s the land, you see. It’s residential. We’ve got a lot of loans against the place, but there might be a little left over.”
I hate it when she talks like this.
“Mom—” I interrupt, but she shushes me.
“You’re special smart. Always have been. Promise me you’ll get yourself an education.”
I’m late with my answer, so she says, “I need to know that will happen.”
I know that life doesn’t make an even distribution of anything: not money or luck or looks or talent. Long ago, my mother told me that there are things that are meant for me, and things that are not. I just wish that working at Mellin could be for me.
But I don’t hear from them. Three days of rain and we’re swapping buckets to keep the floor dry. I’m doing the double shifts my mother doesn’t want me to do and we’re still broke.
But then, just before New Year’s, I’m driving home after finishing a shift at the store and see a shiny Mazda MX-5 outside the house. As I come up the porch steps, I hear voices, my mother’s and another. Then laughter. My mother is laughing?
I hear a man’s voice. Why would there be a man in the house?
My mother calls, “Kira, we’re in here!”
I drop my school bag in the hall and step into the kitchen. There’s a man seated at the kitchen table with his back toward me. By his left elbow is a cup of tea. Even before I clock the particulars—his tweed jacket, his brogues and blond hair, I know exactly who he is.
Will Drummond.
He rises from his chair now, turning toward me. He looks like he might actually try to greet me with a kiss on the cheek, but my expression makes him change his mind. He steps back, dropping his hands by his sides.
“Who’d have thought I’d open the door and find one of the prizewinners from your contest!” my mother says.
I direct my attention at Will. Everywhere else, I’m anxious, quiet. But at home I’m a different person. In my own home, I can stand my ground. “You didn’t come all the way over here to persuade me to give your brother my prize, did you?” I say boldly.
He frowns. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by, that’s all. Your mother kindly offered me a cup of tea.”
“In the neighborhood?” I say. “What happened, you get off at the wrong Tube stop?”
He raises his eyebrows in surprise. He’s not used to me talking back, and I have to admit it gives me a little thrill to see his expression.
“Tube stop, very good,” he says, nodding an acknowledgment. “Have you been to London?”
It’s not a real question. He knows I ha
ven’t.
My mother says, “I couldn’t let him leave before you got home! I mean, all the way from England! I was just telling Dr. Drummond—”
“Please, call me Will.”
“—I was just saying to Will that I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from England before.”
My mother gets up from the table and begins fussing with the microwave, putting something in and pressing a series of buttons until it starts. I realize she’s unfreezing store-bought cookie dough so that she can make some cookies for Will. How can I tell her that a person like Will would never appreciate the effort, and that he will make fun of her later when he’s with his real friends? I can just hear him: Store-bought cookie dough! And then she microwaved it!
And it isn’t just the cookies he’ll make fun of. He’s probably never been in a house as shabby as this one. I look around at the kitchen. The pine table has watermarks and scratches. There are cracks in the linoleum on the floor. The chipped countertops are cluttered with mail and papers, half-filled medicine bottles, and some old scratch tickets from the lottery that my mother enters and never wins. It’s a cramped, messy space, highly personal, and, to me, so very important. I don’t want Will here, assessing everything about our home.
“We were just talking about college,” my mother says. “I told Will you hadn’t applied for next year’s admission, and he thinks that’s a mistake.”
Will nods. “That’s right, I do,” he says, clearing his throat. “And I know a little about these things.”
He’s here with an agenda. I don’t know what it is, but I’m certain he didn’t stop by the house to talk about my education.
My mother says, “Will thinks he can help get waivers for the application fees and that you still have time to apply for a few colleges that have—what did you call them, Will?”
“Rolling admissions.”
“That’s right. Rolling admissions. You can apply any time of year. It’s not too late.”
I’m annoyed at my mother. She keeps pretending I have a choice about going to college when, clearly, I don’t. Maybe she’s just making a show of it to be polite to Will with his great “offer.” To him, I say, “Since when do you care about my future?”
“Kira!” My mother’s voice.
“Why don’t you tell us why you’re really here?” I say.
My mother interrupts. “Will, please excuse my daughter. She’s very tired. She works too much.”
I stare at Will and we size each other up like two animals in a cage.
Meanwhile, my mother puts the cookies in the oven to bake and boils water for tea. She tries to encourage me to show an interest in the courses Will is recommending as I sit stonily in a chair, saying nothing. The atmosphere doesn’t improve despite the smell of freshly baked cookies. At last, my mother grows weary enough to excuse herself to go lie down.
“I really ought to be going as well,” says Will, though I notice he makes zero effort in that direction.
“You stay,” insists my mother. “I just need to rest a bit and I’ll be fine.”
As soon as my mother has left the room, Will unleashes his real personality. He leans toward me, speaking in a harsh whisper.
“I wanted to talk to you about Munn’s enterprise,” he says.
I try not to look surprised. “You mean the Mellin Institute?” I say. And then, hoping to hell I’m wrong, I add, “Let me guess, you work there.”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “How did you know that?”
I had no idea. But I remember what Rik had said about how the winners at SFOF were often recruited shortly after the awards. As the grand prize winner, Will had undoubtedly received many offers, including one from Mellin. And he’s here, after all.
“I’m not intending to have you there with me,” he adds.
Now I am genuinely confused. “I haven’t heard anything from them,” I say.
“Well, you will. You’re in,” he says glumly. He leans toward me again. “But I wouldn’t suggest you take the position. Mellin is a strange laboratory. They’ve got these kids running the place—”
“You’re there,” I say, interrupting.
“I’m young, but twenty-three is not a high school student.” He gives me an I’m-being-reasonable expression, then continues. “Look, I know we didn’t get on very well at the Science for Our Future conference. But really, that’s not why I object to this . . . position you’re being offered at Mellin. To be honest, it’s just that I’ve come an awful long way to take this job, and I didn’t expect to be having to teach a child—”
“I’m not a child.”
“But you’re not trained to work in a laboratory. You need an education first. I’ll write you a recommendation for whatever college you like,” he says. “I’ll even ask some people I know, friends of my parents. These are very respected scientists, Kira. Your mother mentioned the difficulty of tuition, but there are scholarships—”
He keeps talking, but I’m not listening. I’m thinking about what it will be like to work in a laboratory. “I’m not going to college right now,” I say when he’s finished.
“Then you’re a fool,” he says, exasperated.
I’m hardly going to tell him the truth. I’d do anything to go to college—work any hours, take any loan. I’d be the first to admit that someone like me has no business at Mellin, but I can’t pay the bills and I can’t abandon my mother. Plus, I want the job. Of course I do. Someone like Will has never worked in a kitchen or done double shifts on his feet. He doesn’t know what it’s like. I say, “I think working under Munn will be quite an education in itself.”
“You’ll barely see Munn,” he hisses. “You want to know who you will be working under? Me. I’m supposed to teach you, and I don’t think that’s my job, frankly.”
With that, he rises from his seat in a fury. But I’m a step ahead of him, running forward to swing open the front door. I want him to know just how ready I am for him to leave. He huffs out, stomping down the path that leads to the street. I slam the door, put my back against it, and try to regain my breath. I can be tough for a while, but he always gets to me. Gets to me in the end.
11
THE FIRST PERSON I meet at the Mellin Institute is April Chen, the animal tech and general organizer who keeps the place running smoothly. She greets me at Mellin’s impressive glass entrance. She has straight black hair cut with geometric precision and is wearing a hoodie with Frida Kahlo’s face on it billowing over her skinny black jeans. She looks more artsy than scientific, except for this one thing: a large white rat on her shoulder.
“Thanks for coming at this hour,” she says, holding the door for me. The rat stretches forward, sniffing the night air with a pale nose framed by whiskers. I must be staring, because April says, “Sorry, I was just cleaning cages. This is Cornelius. Please don’t be shocked. He’s just a rat. His tail is just a tail.”
I’d been nervous standing at the door, but when I see the rat, everything changes, my curiosity piqued. “Can I touch him?” I ask.
“Of course!” She scoops up the rat and plonks him on my shoulder, where he promptly hides beneath the dense curls of my hair. I laugh out loud.
April smiles. “Cornelius is my absolute favorite, and he never bites. To be honest, none of our rats do!”
I follow April into the foyer, feeling the rat sway a little, rebalancing itself by gripping my sweater with its tiny claws. We stop at an elevator and April stretches out her arm. The rat, as though by cue, climbs across to April’s shoulder.
“Working here, you have to think big,” she begins. “The bigger you think, the more you’ll get wrong, but Munn doesn’t mind that. You’ll always have new ideas.”
“How do you know I’ll always have new ideas?” I say.
“Because that’s the only type of person Munn hires for what he calls our ‘innovation ecosystem.’”
“Innovation ecosystem?”
“It just means we learn fr
om one another.”
The elevator opens onto a brightly lit hallway. Directly across from where we stand, above a set of glass doors, is a gold plaque. It reads, Science is about finding better ways of being wrong.
Apparently, this is the “upstairs lab,” and it is empty at this hour. I can hear the air purifiers with their HEPA filters humming away, various machines clicking on and off. It’s pristine, nothing out of place or left unpolished. In fact, it looks brand-new, like it’s never been used.
“We share space and equipment throughout the entire lab zone. That way, we share ideas. Oh, except Munn’s office. That’s off-limits.”
Through an open door I can see the corner of Munn’s desk, a big window behind it. His office backs onto the building’s courtyards, filled with flowering trees and manicured beds.
“Will Drummond needs some help with a project involving our organ tanks, so you’ll be working with him. As your mentor, he’ll show you everything you need to know. And guess what? His mentor is none other than Dr. Munn. So you’re in good shape!”
So she imagines. But I remember Will’s words as he stood in the kitchen glaring at me. I don’t want you there, he’d said.
April says, “What wrong? You have worked in a lab before, right?”
That’s the other thing.
I guess the look on my face says it all, because April seems a bit shocked, then recovers, saying, “Well, just don’t use other people’s media, okay? And remember to aliquot into a separate container.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I nod anyway, making a note to never, ever touch anyone else’s solutions. We finally stop at the door to the stairwell.
“It’s a beautiful laboratory,” I say.
April shrugs. “The auditors think it is great. It’s the only thing we let them see. But the rest of us don’t like it much.”
That seems incredible. “You don’t like it?”
“To be honest, we don’t do our real work here,” April says.
She pushes through a set of double doors that leads into a brightly lit stairwell with recessed colored lighting. From the ceiling hang large icicle-shaped sculptures that wind down into fantastic shapes much like the crystal formations that hang from the ceilings of caves. It reminds me of the metro in Stockholm, the underground art gallery Rik showed me. I feel the heat in my cheeks, remembering Rik.
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