“I’ll tell NIH about what’s happening,” I say without stopping or turning back. “I can’t risk my superiors thinking that the project failed because of me. I’m sorry if that puts you in a bad position, and I’m sorry if that means delaying BLINK.”
“That’s okay. But please, wait—”
No. I don’t want to wait, or to listen to even one more word. I keep on walking in my pretty daisy sandals until I can’t hear him anymore, until I can’t see through the blur of my tears. I walk out of the Space Center and fantasize that I’m leaving Houston, Texas, the United States. I fantasize about getting on a plane and flying to Portugal to get a hug from Reike.
I fantasize all the way home, and it doesn’t make me feel any better.
•••
I’M STARING AT my phone—just that: brooding and staring at my phone—when a Twitter notification pops up on my screen.
@SabriRocks95 Second year geology Ph.D. student going through a rough patch, here. @WhatWouldMarieDo if she felt like the universe is trying to tell her to give up?
Ouch. This one hits a little too close. My sense of helplessness reached critical mass earlier today, halfway through Alanis Morissette’s discography and well past my second tub of orange sherbet. I feel like I was run through a paper shredder. Like a used Q-tip. A flushable wipe. Not fit to give advice to the moth that’s been fluttering against my window, let alone an intelligent young woman with career trouble. I retweet, hoping that the WWMD community will take care of @SabriRocks95.
“Maybe I should quit academia,” I muse, leaning back in my chair, staring across the open-plan kitchen to Dr. Curie’s magnet. “Should I quit my job?”
Marie doesn’t reply. Silent approval? There are things I could do. Brush up on the German accusative and meet Reike in Greece, where olive oil tycoons would hire us to instruct their teenaged heirs. Shop that sitcom idea I once had: a Bayesian statistician and a frequentist become reluctant roommates. Write my mermaid YA series. Move under a bridge and ask riddles in exchange for safe passage.
Maybe I shouldn’t quit. At least one Königswasser twin needs a stable job, to post bail when the other gets arrested for indecent exposure. Knowing Reike, that’s any day now.
Then again, I’m fairly sure that without BLINK, Trevor won’t renew my contract anyway.
My career is the ultimate unrequited love story, littered with well-reviewed grants that never got funded for political reasons, a shitty boss instead of the rock star I was promised, and now NIH and NASA petty-fighting like cousins at Thanksgiving. When your supposed big break turns into a losing game, that’s when you cut your losses, right?
But what would be left of me without neuroscience? Who would I even be without my burning need to correct people who say that humans use only 10 percent of their brain? (They even made a movie about this. For fuck’s sake, does no one fact-check Hollywood scripts?) Did you know that conservatives tend to have larger amygdalae than liberals? That taxi drivers’ hippocampi grow bigger as they memorize how to navigate London? That brain differences predict variations in personality? We are our nervous systems, the complex combination of billions of neurons firing in distinctive patterns. What’s more exciting than spending my life figuring out what a little chunk of these neurons can accomplish?
I avoid my reflection as I brush my teeth. Maybe I love what I do too much. I should go back to school for something boring. Auctioneering. Naval architecture. Sports broadcasting. I should also stop crying. Or maybe not. Maybe I should feel all my feelings now, so I can be solution-oriented later. All wept-out for tomorrow, when I explain this mess to Trevor. When I tell Rocío to pack her bags.
The second my head touches my pillow I know I’ll explode if I don’t do something. Anything. On impulse, I message Shmac.
MARIE: Do you ever think of leaving research?
His reply is immediate.
SHMAC: Sure am today
MARIE: You hate your life, too? What are the chances.
SHMAC: Maybe we’re the same astrological sign.
MARIE: lol
SHMAC: What’s going on?
MARIE: My project’s a shitshow. And I’m working with this total camel dick who’s the worst. I bet he’s one of those assholes who doesn’t switch to airplane mode during takeoff, Shmac. He probably bites into popsicles. I’m positive he sneezes in his palm and then shakes people’s hands.
SHMAC: Eerily specific.
MARIE: But true!
SHMAC: I don’t doubt it.
MARIE: How’s the girl?
SHMAC: Still married. Plus, she probably thinks I’m a camel dick.
MARIE: She could never. You two having a torrid affair yet?