by Amy Ross
His breath is shallow and steady—he’s already fallen mostly back to sleep. Propped up on one hand, I take the opportunity to admire him in the moonlight streaming in through the window, his lips slightly parted, his lashes spread against his cheek. Jek huffs a sigh and settles down more firmly into his pillow. All I wanted tonight was a little conversation—this is so much more than I was expecting. What does it mean? It’s true that we used to do this all the time as kids, but we’re not kids anymore. Surely even Jek has to recognize that it feels different now.
Jek shifts again in his sleep and curls his body toward mine, as if his unconscious seeks something his waking mind won’t acknowledge. The very thought makes me light-headed and I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep like this, so close to him that I can feel the warmth of his body, his breath against my cheek. I set my head down on the adjacent pillow and force my eyes closed, willing myself to sleep, but I’m afraid I’ll spend the whole night struggling not to close the small distance between us. Somehow, though, the comforting rhythm of his heartbeat and his familiar burnt-chemical smell must work to soothe my nervous excitement, because at last I am lulled into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 7
I wake up the next morning warm and comfortable, still caught up in the threads of a dream. A watery sunlight streaks through the window, apparently having broken up last night’s mist. Without thinking, I roll over and snuggle closer to Jek’s side of the bed.
Luckily, I’m spared the embarrassment of him noticing this semiconscious move, because Jek has apparently slipped out without waking me. For a moment I just lie there in a twist of mixed emotions, remembering how nice it was to share space with him, but also thinking about how utterly uninterested he must be in me if he can share a bed all night and not even try anything.
A little part of me had hoped that we would wake up together and, in the soft quiet of morning, he would reach for me like I just did for him and...no. No point of thinking about that. He’s long gone without even stopping to wake me.
Camila was right: I need to get over this before my silly fantasies ruin a perfectly good friendship.
Shaking off my mood, I get up and head into the kitchen/lab. Even though I tried to clean up a bit last night, the gray daylight filtering in through the blinds reveals that the place is still mostly a mess—cups of water have been abandoned on every surface, the counters are piled with unwashed lab equipment and a box of hypodermic needles has been knocked off a shelf, strewing its contents all over the sink.
The boy himself, however, is nowhere to be found.
I consider just taking off, but if they’re expecting me in the main house, I should at least say hi to Puloma before I leave.
I do my best to wash up in Jek’s bathroom, though a bit of soap and a hairbrush can’t change the fact that I slept in my clothes. Taking a breath, I open the door to the staircase leading to the main house and am greeted with the smell of frying dosas—I haven’t smelled that in years, and it immediately takes me back and sets my stomach growling. I head up the stairs a little more enthusiastically and find Jek sitting on a stool at the counter, a cup of coffee in hand, while Puloma is busy at the stove. The kitchen is bright and airy, the appliances shiny and modern. One wall is dominated by a big window overlooking the backyard and the fields beyond as they slope up toward the London Chem buildings, just visible behind a wall of trees.
“Good morning,” I say as I slide onto the stool next to him. Puloma jumps slightly, fumbles her spatula and spatters a bit of grease on her thumb. She turns around, sucking it.
“Lulu,” she says. “This is a surprise.” She’s smiling but there’s something else in her expression—confusion? alarm?—and I notice her eyes dart over to Jek. I turn to him, as well.
“Seriously? You didn’t even tell your mom I was here?”
Jek shrugs as he pours me a cup of coffee from the pot cooling on the table. “Mom’s pretty bright. I knew she’d figure it out sooner or later.”
I look back at Puloma, an apology on my lips, but she stops me.
“No, no, Lulu. Stay, it’s fine. It’s more than fine. It’s...nice. Really nice. Jayesh never tells me anything about his life... He prefers his dramatic little scenes, right?”
“Hey, I’m not dramatic,” says Jek, but Puloma ignores him.
“He came to me this morning, out of the blue, and asked for masala dosas,” she tells me. “I guess that was supposed to be my hint. No time to make them from scratch, but luckily I had some mix in the pantry from the last time I got a package from my mom. I haven’t made them in ages—Tom’s boys won’t eat anything like that. It’s frozen waffles for them or nothing.”
“Where are the boys, then? Still sleeping, or...?”
“Oh, no,” says Puloma, turning back to the stove. “They’re long gone. Big junior soccer tournament this weekend. Jayesh only crawls out of his hole when he knows everyone’s out of the house. It’s like living with a mole person,” she teases. There’s something a little weird in her tone, though, like nervousness combined with barely disguised excitement. And she keeps glancing over her shoulder at me. It’s unnerving.
It’s only once I’ve had a few sips of coffee that it hits me. Oh, God. Of course. What would a mom think if her son shows up first thing in the morning with a girl who clearly spent the night? She’d be an idiot not to assume that we... Does Puloma really think I’d be so brazen as to have sex with her son and then sit down to breakfast with her? There’s no way I’d be able to look her in the eye if we had really done...that. Of course, now I can’t look her in the eye anyway, just knowing that she thinks it.
I feel desperate to correct her assumption, but how? She hasn’t said anything that would need correcting. I glance over at Jek who, as usual, looks totally oblivious. Because, of course, to him I’m not a potential girlfriend at all. I’m still little Lulu who sleeps over on the weekends. Whatever his mom is assuming, Jek doesn’t think in those terms.
“So,” Puloma says at last as she puts down plates full of food for us all. “How was the party last night?”
“Good,” I say, grateful for even a slight shift in attention. “I think everyone had a lot of fun.” I hardly get the sentence out before I receive a kick under the table. I shoot a glare at Jek, who is too-innocently scooping up chutney. As if I need the reminder that Jek doesn’t discuss his experiments with his mom anymore.
“How about you, Jayesh?” she says. “Did you have a good time?”
Jek rolls his eyes. “Mom. I don’t want to talk to you about my parties.”
Puloma huffs an exasperated sigh and throws her hands in the air, while I feel almost as awkward as before. Back in the old days, there wasn’t so much tension between Jek and his mom—they always got along great. Clearly, I’m not the only one frustrated with Jek’s recent secretiveness.
“Fine,” she says, sitting down across from us. “How about you make some conversation, then.”
They stare at each other for a long moment before Jek breaks.
“How’s work, Mom?” he says grudgingly, but there’s a hint of a smile. He’s teasing her a bit, and she smiles back a tentative truce.
“It’s fine,” she says, then laughs at herself. “Now I sound like a teenager. Work is...” She sighs out the rest of her answer. “You know. The usual frustrations.”
“What about that thing we were talking about last week...the Alzheimer’s trial? Any progress there?” Instantly, Jek has dropped his sullen adolescent pose. There’s nothing like shoptalk to get him out of his shell.
Puloma shakes her head. “Hard to make scientific progress when there’s all this bureaucracy and red tape to dig through first. Sometimes I envy you, Jayesh—getting to throw together whatever you want without anyone looking over your shoulder. Once you grow up and go to work, science turns into one long waiting game.”
Jek snorts and Puloma waves her hand airily. “Sure,” she says. “The regulations are well-meaning, for the most part. But these days, they tend to be written by politicians and bureaucrats, not scientists. The work we do here at London Chem is so complex...what could some senator possibly hope to understand about it? And their policies are all so reactionary. Mistakes have been made in the past by a few scientists who got carried away, but when it gets out, the public panics and winds up listening to paranoid idiots like those protesters outside my lab.” She nods in the direction of London Chem. “The restrictions they put in are based in fear, not logic. They gum up the works unnecessarily and slow down our progress.
“It would all be much more efficient if they let the scientists self-regulate. Scientists are the ones who work with this stuff every day. They know far better than lawyers and politicians and busybody nonprofits what safety measures should be in place for a given drug. Which ones are more radically experimental, which ones are only a tweak on something already working well.” Puloma lets out a self-conscious laugh. “Sorry,” she says. “I let myself get carried away there. Jayesh has heard this rant a million times...guess I was just excited to have a fresh audience.” She glances at her phone. “Oh, the morning’s half gone! I should go do my run now or the whole day will be wasted.”
And with that, she finishes her coffee and heads off to change. Jek waits until he’s sure she’s out of earshot before nudging me.
“So,” he says. “Now that my oversight committee has taken off, does my favorite lab partner have a preliminary report on last night’s experiment? I think it went pretty well, but it’s important to have an objective perspective on—”
“Relax, Jek,” I reassure him with a grin. “It went great. From what people were describing, the new drug sounds incredible.”
He heaves a sigh of relief, and I’m reminded that these little events of his are more than just parties. He really does care about the success of his experiments.
“Thanks, Lu. It meant a lot to me to have you there. There’s no one else I’d trust with this kind of data. Speaking of which...” He looks at me meaningfully.
“Ah, right,” I say. “The data.” I pull up the database on my phone and go over my observations with him, describing the things people said and did the best I can remember.
Jek nods through it all and makes a few notes of his own. “Anything else?” he asks when I’m through.
“Yeah, actually,” I tell him. “There was one thing. At first I thought it must just be a trick of the light, but I kept noticing it, even under the bright lab light. It seemed like...like people’s eyes had changed color.” I shake my head, feeling a little embarrassed. “I know that’s impossible, but... I noticed it on Jenny first. Doesn’t she normally have brown eyes? But they were flecked with green. I wondered if she was wearing contacts or something, but I kept noticing it on other people too... Liam, and Bryce... Maybe I was remembering everyone’s eye color wrong, but I looked at Lane, and I know his eyes are gray. I made him stand under the bathroom light and everything, and they looked...dark brown.”
Jek taps the table thoughtfully. “Hmm,” he murmurs, half to himself. “There must have been some cross-contamination. But I wouldn’t have thought, at such a low dose...”
“You mean you’ve heard of this kind of thing?” I say dubiously. “A drug that can change people’s eye color? That would be pretty huge, wouldn’t it? Changing someone’s gene expression with just a pill. Are you saying you’ve seen this effect before?”
“What?” he says, distracted from his own chain of thoughts. “Oh...well, there’s never been any documentation of it.” He stands up and starts piling plates to carry to the sink. “Von Hoyrich proposed a mechanism in a paper last year, but that was purely hypothetical. I showed it to Mom and she declared it totally impossible.”
“Well, I don’t know what that was,” I say, “but it looked like a pretty amazing high all the same. I think you’ve got a hit on your hands. Could be your greatest triumph yet,” I offer. Jek’s always been a sucker for having his genius flattered.
He smiles in acknowledgment of the compliment, but shakes his head. “No,” he says, “not my greatest.”
“Why, you’ve got something else in the works?”
He shrugs. “Too early to say, really.” He’s trying to play it cool, but I can see from his expression that he’s bursting with it, so I hold my tongue, and soon enough he elaborates a little. “It could be big,” he goes on, unable to repress his enthusiasm. “Like, seriously big. Once people hear about this...” He gives a low whistle. “It’s going to change everything. The practical applications are out of this world, but even just the pure science of it...it’s a thing of beauty. People will never forget my name.”
I have to admit, Jek looks positively smitten with his new creation, whatever it is. If only he ever talked about me that way. But all of his energy is directed at his work; there’s nothing left for mere humans.
“Sounds amazing,” I say, leaning forward. “Do you think it will be ready soon?”
A furrow appears in Jek’s forehead and he sits back down. “I don’t know,” he says. “There’ve been some...difficulties. It’s still at an unpredictable stage. Temperamental.”
“Why don’t you talk to your mom about it? I know she keeps her distance more these days, but she always used to be a big help to you.”
“This is different,” he says sharply. “I can’t talk to her. I tried to tell her about what I was working on back in the early days, but she made it very clear that she didn’t approve. She’s...she’s too set in her ways. Too accustomed to the standard methods.”
I frown. “Puloma? That doesn’t sound like her.”
“Mom’s a brilliant chemist, but she lacks vision. Ambition. She always has. That’s why she’s settled for a comfortable job here in London, where the company owns all her research and she’s a slave to their corporate needs instead of her own imagination. I can’t take the risk of her mentioning it to anyone at London Chem. This needs to be kept top secret for now... It’s much too sensitive to share. No one’s going to know anything until I have more data. Until I have all the possible kinks worked out.”
“Except Hyde.”
Jek raises his head sharply. “What?”
“Isn’t he working with you on this project? After I saw him coming out of your door the other day, your mom said he’d been helping you out with some experiment that requires him coming and going at all hours. It’s the same experiment, isn’t it?”
Jek doesn’t answer and I fix him with a look.
“So this project is so top secret that you can’t trust anyone with it—not me, not your mom—but Hyde, who you’ve known...how long? You’re working with him on it, trusting him to take care of it when you’re not around... I’ve never known you to do that before. Even giving him a key to your apartment? He must have done something pretty impressive to earn that kind of trust.”
“Lu, I told you—” Jek begins, but I’m not ready to let it go.
“Or is this even about trust? Jek, is something else going on? Hailee says Hyde’s mixed up in your business. And I know you’re giving him money. But no one else in town seems to trust him at all.”
“I thought we agreed to drop this, Lulu.” He looks a bit pale, but his eyes are flashing with anger. I hold up my hands in surrender.
“I’m not trying to... Look, all I’m saying is, if you’re in trouble, if this guy is threatening you in some way, or he knows something about you, whatever it is...you know you can talk to me, right? I’d always have your back, Jek, no matter what.”
He nods and looks down guiltily.
“I appreciate that, Lu. Really. But I can
handle this. And if it makes you feel any better, I’ll tell you one thing—the minute Hyde becomes a problem, I can get rid of him. And he’ll never bother me or anyone else again.”
“‘Get rid of him’?” I repeat. “What are you, a gangster?”
Jek huffs out a breath. “Not like that,” he says. “Just trust me, okay?”
“All right,” I say doubtfully. “As long as you’re sure...” I grab my coat and stand to leave. “I better be going. I still have that lab report to work on.” He nods and walks me to the front door. At the last moment, he stops me with a hand on my arm, and like an idiot, I can’t help the little shiver of pleasure his touch still produces in me.
“Lu,” he says softly, hesitantly. “If Hyde ever comes to you...like, for a favor...would you do it?”
I laugh, surprised. “What? No. I don’t even know the guy.”
“No, but... I’m asking you, actually. If he ever needs anything, and he comes to you, I want you to help him. It would mean a lot to me.”
I look at him, trying to read his expression. “Jek, I’m sorry. You do what you need to do, but to me, he seems like a creep. I’m not going to help him out.”
“Fine, just...” He squeezes my arm. “Hear him out, okay? That’s all I ask. If he ever needs something from you, or just wants to talk, and you can’t get in touch with me...remember that I’d want you to help him. Okay? Just treat any favor to him as if it were a favor to me.”
I give him a long, searching look. None of what he’s saying makes any sense. Why would Hyde ever need a favor from me? And why wouldn’t I be able to get in touch with Jek? I have no idea what he’s implying, but it scares me a little.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” I tell him at last. “I don’t like the guy, and until he gives me a reason to like him, I don’t see that changing. But I promise to keep what you said in mind. Will that be enough?”