“You have to decide between us,” Mike says, punctuating his words with a sniff. “We need to know.”
Each pushes the other out of the way and pokes his face toward me as though urging me to choose him. Meanwhile, I’m pinned in line, blocked by the counter and dozens of people. I don’t think it can get any worse when suddenly a third one appears from the back. He, too, is wearing a sports uniform. I guess they stopped to get breakfast before a game. I’ve never had any classes with this particular boy, but I know who he is. He’s come to school drunk a few times and has been in trouble for fighting. He looks pretty sober right now, marching toward me as though at a ball he’s going to kick.
“You’re so hot,” he says, eyeing me up and down.
I am many things, but not hot. His statement only makes this fact more obvious.
I try to ignore them. I turn away, peering through the glass front door, watching for Lauren. But Lauren is nowhere to be seen.
I consider rushing for the front door. I’m wondering if I can make it to my car without them following.
I hear, “What’s the matter? You don’t like me?”
I spin around and say, “Stop it!” as menacingly as I can. This sends them into peals of laughter.
Then, “Ah, don’t be mad. Let me buy your coffee!”
“No, let me! I’ll buy your coffee!” says another.
“She don’t want coffee. She wants me!”
I turn my back toward them again, pushing my vision up to the menu behind the countertop, trying to settle the rising panic within me. Something hits my shoulder, then falls to the floor with a ping. I look down and see a coin rolling across the tiles. I feel another thump on my back, and a second coin drops at my feet. The coins come faster now, first one, then another. It’s my turn at the cashier, and I try to order coffee and ignore them, but it’s impossible. A quarter hits me on the side of the head and then bounces against the display.
The cashier shows no sign of noticing. “I think you’ve dropped some money,” he says innocently.
Meanwhile, the crowd is thinning by the exit. I can see through the door to the wide sunny street beyond. I’m itching to run.
The cashier asks for my order. Another coin hits me, this time in the back of the head. Anger roars inside me and I turn, not quite believing I’m doing so.
But then I freeze. It isn’t the sight of the three leering guys in sports uniforms that horrifies me; it’s the sudden appearance of Rik behind them. He’s walking quickly from the back of the shop, his eyes on mine. He must have seen all this—the fake tears, the sarcastic pleading. I pray he hasn’t seen the coins being lobbed, but just as I have that thought, I feel a jab on my chest and realize I’ve just been hit by a nickel directly on my right breast. And there is no way Rik hasn’t seen it.
“Bull’s-eye!” one of the boys cries.
It’s too much—the humiliation and Rik seeing it all. I look at the door again. I wish more than anything that I’d chosen to run. But it’s too late now.
“Kira! There you are!” Rik says brightly, pushing past the boys. He puts his arm around my shoulders as though I’m his girlfriend and he’s been expecting me. Then he wheels me around toward the cashier again. I look at his face, hoping to get a sense of what he’s really thinking behind the mask of good cheer. But he appears to be concentrating on the menu, leaning his cheek against the top of my head with ease, as though he does this all the time.
“What are you having?” he asks.
I feel the adrenaline coursing through me. A bead of sweat glides down my back. On top of everything else, I’m going to smell. “Latte,” I croak. “Medium.”
I hold my breath, waiting for the next nickel to fly. Are they going to lob coins at Rik, too? And what would he do if they did? I find him elegant and handsome, but he isn’t the tallest or broadest guy in the world. Meanwhile, Mike and his pals are big slabs of milk-colored meat and muscle.
“Well, well,” I hear from behind me. “I guess we have our answer.”
Another line of attack is imminent. I look desperately at Rik. He seems unbothered and gives my shoulders a squeeze.
And then I see a flash of blond hair and Lauren coming through the open door. She pauses briefly, stretching her vision down the length of the café, then at the line at the front where I stand with Rik. She smiles when she spots me, then her eyes go wide as she realizes Rik is there, his arm still looped around me as he pays for the coffee.
I turn to Lauren now, the heat roaring through my body, my cheeks so red I can feel them burning. Being bullied is bad; being bullied in front of Rik is beyond the worst humiliation. But here’s Lauren—who goes to a totally different school and who may never have seen this kind of stuff before. What if they start on her?
“Lauren, we have to go—!” I say urgently.
“What are you talking about? I just got here.” She smiles her dazzling smile at Rik. “I think I might have heard about you.”
“Really?” says Rik, amused.
“Really,” she says, again flashing her beautiful white teeth.
All I can think is that at any moment the guys from school are going to launch an attack on Lauren.
But I see a change come over them. Mike’s eyes become rounder. The tension in his forehead might even be fear. The one who’d started all the teasing over the prom in the first place looks down at his shoes, then over his shoulder as though searching for a safe place to hide. Even the last one, the enormous guy who’d started the coin tossing, looks sheepish, his height and size giving him a different appearance that is no longer menacing but instead awkward and ungainly.
I’m confused. Why is it that Lauren could never be a target? But of course, I know exactly why the guys from school slink back now, preparing to leave the café altogether. In her skinny jeans, platform sandals, and floaty off-the-shoulder top, Lauren embodies a particular kind of California gorgeous. It isn’t just her natural beauty that scares the boys, but the fact that it is combined with signs of wealth, of status, not to mention the confidence all that brings. Lauren’s hair is highlighted and lowlighted, falling down her back in lush, layered waves. Her bronzed skin, her big Italian sunglasses, her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag all tell a story, just as my messy curls, eyeglasses, and clothes from Target tell a very different story.
As for Lauren herself, she hasn’t even noticed them.
“Here you go,” Rik says, handing me my coffee. “What can I get you?” he asks Lauren.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll grab something in a minute,” she says, then goes in search of an empty table. “I’ll find us a spot,” she calls over her shoulder.
I look at Rik, feeling my face flushed with embarrassment. “Join us?” I say unsteadily.
“I wish I could.” I can’t tell if he means this.
I nod. I wonder if there is some chance, however slim, that he hasn’t seen what happened.
Then he says, “You shouldn’t let them stop you, you know. If you want to go, that is. It’s your prom.”
So, he heard it all. Everything. And this makes it even more real and unbearable.
“I don’t want to go,” I say. This is true. In fact, it never even occurred to me to go. The ticket price alone prevents it, and then there is all the crazy fanfare of prom: girls spending days shopping, getting their hair and makeup professionally done. Even in my school, where the families of most of the kids don’t have any money, limousines are rented, elaborate parties planned. The last thing I want is to get involved in all that. “I only said yes the first time because I thought I had to, but it turned out to be a prank—” I slam my palm over my mouth, realizing I’ve confessed more than I’d needed to.
Rik waits a beat, then says, “You’re too remarkable a person to put up with guys like that.”
I shake my head back and forth, unable to hear anything nice about myself right now.
“And not just because you can do math like Hypatia,” he adds.
Hypatia lived du
ring the fourth century and edited Euclid’s The Elements, the most important Greek mathematical text. As a result she was declared a vessel of Satan and murdered by Christian monks. I’m not sure if Rik knows this last part.
He waits for me to look up at him, then says, “I’ll see you soon, okay?”
I nod. He fishes his car keys out of his pocket and walks out the door and into the sunshine. I watch him for a few minutes, then head to the back of the café to find Lauren. She’s waiting at an empty table, elbows propped up, chin resting in her hands, a giant grin stretched across her face.
“So that was kind of amazing!” she says, her eyes wide with anticipation.
She’s talking about Rik, not the high school assholes.
“He looked very interested,” she continues.
There’s nothing between us, but I’m not sure Lauren will believe me if I say so. “He’s not going to date a high school girl,” I say.
“You won’t be a high school girl forever, and listen to me—” Lauren eyes me carefully, then says, very slowly, “He had his arm around you.”
While this is true, it’s not what Lauren thinks. “He was just pretending,” I say.
“He was just pretending he had his arm around you?”
I shake my head. “Never mind.”
She reaches over and takes my latte. “Sip?” she says. As though suddenly remembering something, she digs into her bag and pulls out a small robin’s-egg-blue box. She slides it across the coffee table as though it’s a hockey puck.
“Surprise!” she says.
I’ve never been to Tiffany. I can’t even recall a time when I’ve seen a Tiffany gift box. But somehow I know that particular shade of blue, that logo, and I know that anything inside such a box is precious and unaffordable.
“What is this?” I say.
Lauren looks at the box as though it is a tiresome pest, then sighs. “Tiffany does something like sixty-five women’s watches, right? But my ridiculous parents—two people who never even speak to each other—gave me the same damned watch for graduation.”
“They gave you a watch? I think that’s nice.”
“Not a watch,” she says, “but two copies of the same watch. Graduation was, like, really tense. My parents sat on different sides of the theater. But then they gave me these watches. I didn’t realize until later that they were the damned same!”
I point at the box. “And this is one of them?”
“Open it.”
I take the box in my hands and carefully remove the lid. Inside is a beautiful watch with a powder-pink face and diamonds to pick out the hours. “It looks like a sculpture you’d keep in a glass cabinet,” I say.
“And here it is again!” she announces. She pushes back the sleeve of her top and shows me her wrist, around which is an identical watch. “I would return one of them, but I can’t. If I return my father’s watch, he’ll think I prefer my mother. If I return my mother’s watch, she’ll say he always gets his way. It will become a living nightmare. So, I’m keeping both watches. That way, my parents are both happy.”
“And you have two very nice watches,” I say, laughing.
“One,” says Lauren, holding up a finger. “One very nice watch. I think you should have the other.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Why not you?”
It never occurred to me that the gift box had been meant for me. I don’t know what to say.
“I just can’t,” I begin. “I mean, it’s beautiful and I am very grateful, but—” I pause, staring at the watch. It’s so exquisite, glittering in the spotlights of the restaurant. “But it’s just not mine.”
“It wasn’t mine before my mom and dad—I don’t know which one—gave it to me. I’m giving it to you. What’s the difference?”
I look at Lauren—lovely, gorgeous, smart Lauren. “But it is different,” I say. “Your parents. Your watch.”
Lauren rolls her eyes. “What if it were a puppy that needed a home?”
“But it’s not a puppy. It’s money strapped to your wrist.”
“It will sit in a drawer for years doing nothing. Anyway, I like the idea of us having the same watch.”
“I can’t—”
“Also, I’m leaving soon and I don’t have any other parting gift for you, so you’re stuck.”
She’s got an internship that starts any day now. And then there’s college. She’s going to Cornell, about as far away as she can get from her parents.
“You’re my best friend,” Lauren says with a pained expression. She isn’t the sort of girl who cries, but I can see the emotion on her face. “Why don’t you let me give you something nice?”
“You give me nice things all the time. For most of my life you’ve been my only friend,” I say. It’s a startling revelation. “And that’s a gift.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because high school kids are infantile,” she says. “I’m glad you’re at Mellin. At least there are some people there who see what they’ve got in you. And that Rik is charming. Seriously. But be smart and take the watch. You can always sell it if you get into a tough corner.”
But that’s just it. I’m always in a tough corner. I’m thinking about the recent repair to the roof. My mother got the money from Biba, and he’ll be back for it soon enough, along with a hefty rate of interest.
I smile, but I push the box in her direction. “I can’t,” I say, and we look at each other for a long moment.
At last, she picks up the Tiffany box and drops it into her bag like it’s a tin of throat lozenges. Then she stands, pushing away the chair with the backs of her knees. She loops her bag over her shoulder and says, “Okay, you win round one. But this is not over. Now let’s get out of here. I’m bored of this place.”
I’m looking forward to another day with Dmitry. But when I get to the lab there’s no chess game set up, no mugs on the marble coffee bar or any of the usual signs that Dmitry is expecting me. In fact, there’s no sign of Dmitry at all. I look around for him, first at his usual place behind the glass walls of his lab and then in the dining room, just in case he’s rummaging through the kitchen looking for food.
But the dining room is tidy and polished with no signs of crumbs from toast. I do find some leftover vanilla cake, however. Perfect for the ratties. Then I wind my way back downstairs to the dormitory and knock gingerly on the door.
I hear Dmitry’s voice, hoarse and strained. Pushing open the door, I find him lying in bed, his pajamas buttoned high on his chest, a wad of tissues balanced on his belly. “Stay back,” he says. “I’m contagious.”
The air in the room is stale and unmoving and I can practically feel the heat coming off him from six feet away. “How long have you been like this?” I ask.
“Since last night. Can I have water?”
I see it’s a struggle for him to talk. “Water coming up,” I say. “I’ll get you tea, too. It’ll help your throat.”
At the coffee bar I make him a cup of his favorite Red Rose, bringing it back to him along with a big tumbler of cold water and a piece of fruit from my bag. But he’s already asleep, lying on his back, the perspiration slick on his brow. A box of tissues on his chest rises and falls gently with his breathing. I remove a book about chess from his night table to make room for the water, marking his place with a wooden swab stick he uses as a bookmark. Then I leave him to sleep.
I make myself a cup of coffee, then spend the afternoon reading up on neural regeneration, or “raising the dead,” as Will sarcastically calls it. I read paper after paper, researching neural recovery patterns, neural progenitor cells, bone marrow stromal cells, anything that might help heal dying cells in the brain. When I check the time again I see it’s evening.
Back at the dormitory, I find Dmitry still asleep in bed. The air around him is dense and heavy. A smell of menthol and fever permeates the air.
“Dmitry?” I whisper. When he doesn’t move, I reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. He’s warm to the touch, his fever
raging. “Dmitry, wake up.”
He turns slowly, his eyes closed. His forehead glistens with sweat. “What time is it?” he asks.
“Time for you to drink something.”
Even in the shadowy light I can see his eyes are sunken, his skin ashy. He takes a sip of water.
“Thank you,” he says, then, “I think I need aspirin. Tylenol. Pretty much anything would do—”
“I’m going right now,” I promise, fishing out my car keys from my back pocket. Then I remember where I am. This is a science laboratory, where people work long hours in windowless rooms with the constant hum of forced air around them. I don’t need to drive anywhere. There is probably aspirin in every drawer here. “I’ll be right back,” I say.
Ten minutes later I return with a huge beaker of opened drug packages: Advil, Excedrin, Aleve, Bayer. It looks like I’ve gone trick-or-treating for medicine in a neighborhood full of doctors.
“Thank you,” Dmitry says. “Alternating doses of ibuprofen with acetaminophen acts as a stronger antipyretic than using only one of the drugs. Let me explain why—”
I interrupt him. “Dmitry, please. You don’t need to teach me when you’re sick.”
He nods weakly, then plucks a couple of pills from a foil pack and swallows them with water. “Wake me in four hours,” he says, then he’s out.
I clear the night table of Kleenex, tidy his collection of pens as well as some scraps of notepaper on which he’d been writing. I’m about to leave the papers on the small desk by his bed when I notice a flowchart he’s made. It’s full of arrows and boxes and a whole range of symbols used in biological sciences, including the most famous one, the cross that means death. I take the paper into the light and study it more carefully. It would look like gibberish to anyone else, but I’ve worked with Dmitry long enough to understand the thinking behind the symbols he’s drawn.
I get out my own notebook.
I’ve been jotting down some ideas today while studying. It seems they aren’t so far-fetched. In fact, if I take out some of Dmitry’s mistakes—or what I believe are mistakes—and substitute my own work, I can answer some of the questions he’s posed with double question marks along the margins.
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