Chemistry Lessons

by Meredith Goldstein

  I felt heat creep up my neck.

  “Actually, there were three subjects. Kyle was the first. Whit will be the third.”

  Bryan was silent, his eyes closed as he processed the information.

  “Wait . . . who was Subject Number Two?”

  Again, I couldn’t think of a lie fast enough, and Bryan spoke first.

  “Jesus, Maya, is it me? Are you crazy?”

  “No! No. I would not do this to you; no way. I don’t think that could even work.”

  “Great. I’m so glad you have such respect for our friendship and such strong ‘ethics.’” The air quotes returned around the last word.

  “It was Asher. I did the experiment with Asher.”

  “Like, Asher Forman?” Bryan shouted.

  “He’s the only Asher we know.”

  “I know, but how? How is that even possible? How would you get his DNA? You’ve seen him, like, three times.”

  “I had his coat, remember?”

  “You stole that coat to . . . make a DNA potion? What kind of evil are you?”

  “No, no,” I cut him off. “I had the coat first and then decided to use it to make the potion. And stop calling it a potion! It’s a serum. This isn’t evil magic or anything. I just needed a subject who was a stranger—​someone who wasn’t attracted to me—​and Asher seemed like a good fit. I had his stupid coat, so it worked. And the experiment was a success. I mean, as you know, he participated.”

  “Maya,” Bryan said, his elbows on his knees, “isn’t it possible that Asher Forman would have ‘participated’ no matter what ‘serum’ you were taking? You were hanging out with him during the party. While consuming alcohol. Maybe he just wanted to sleep with you, unrelated to your weird science witchcraft.”

  “It’s possible, but I doubt it,” I said, leaning back against the top of the toilet. “He said he hadn’t thought about me like that before that night. Do you really think I’m the girl he would have chosen at that party? There were so many pretty actresses there. Kimberly Katz was there.”

  Bryan uncrossed his legs and stretched them out on the tiles in front of him.

  “Of course he might choose you. There are, like, a million guys who’d rather sleep with you than Kimberly Katz,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Just tell me this,” he continued. “What’s the plan for later? You seduce Whit with your special pheromones and he’s your boyfriend again? It’s that easy?”

  That was the plan, for the most part. I nodded.

  “You’ll just take this stuff for the rest of your life with him? Ann will keep making your Love Potion Number Nine and you’ll live happily ever after?”

  “No, I know that’s not possible. I guess my thought was that it’d be a reminder. Like Whit just needs a reminder of the chemistry. My mom was doing this to keep couples together; that’s what I’m trying to do here. Like, imagine all the breakups that wouldn’t happen if people could just have little boosts of chemistry when they needed it.

  “And,” I continued, grasping for his approval, “maybe I also just wanted to know if this would work. It turned out Mom had this big secret—​this big scientific secret that was her passion. It’s felt good, you know, to be close to her. It’s like I’m doing this with her. Maybe for her. At the very least, for Ann, who, as it turns out, is kind of cool. Or maybe not cool, but a lot like my mom when it comes to research. It’s just been nice to be around her.”

  I said all the stuff about my mom and Ann to guilt Bryan into endorsing the project, but as soon the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were true. I did feel close to my mom when I was working on the experiment. It was like every piece of recorded data was a note we were passing back and forth in secret. At the beginning of the project, I was thinking only of Whit, but in the past week, I was also worried about the void I’d feel when the experiment concluded.

  I looked up when I heard Bryan’s whimper. He had started to cry a little. He dabbed his eyes with his T-shirt, leaving water marks on the W and D in Wicked.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

  “I know,” he said. “I think I’m crying because I’m actually happy. It sort of makes me feel good that you miss your mom. Like, what you’re doing actually makes no sense to me, but you’re right: she’d be into this. And I miss her a lot, you know?”

  Bryan’s shirt became one big wet spot.

  “I know I don’t talk about her much, but I don’t even know how to think about her sometimes. Her being gone—​I think it’s too big. Like, if I start talking about what it means that she’s gone, I won’t be able to deal with it.”

  “I know,” Bryan said, “but sometimes you have to think about it.”

  I handed him some toilet paper so he could blow his nose.

  “You can’t tell anyone about this, Bryan.”

  “Who would I tell?”

  “Um, Whit, my dad, Asher . . .”

  “Give me some credit,” he said, wiping his eyes again and standing up. “I wouldn’t even know how to explain it. Just promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “That you’ll think about what you’re doing . . . and whether any of this is right . . .”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said with a nod.

  With no secrets to keep, I rose and faced the mirror and used the eyedropper to grab another dose of the serum to put under my tongue. Bryan watched with interest as I held the liquid in my mouth, waiting to swallow.

  “No. Scratch what I said. It’s not Proof. It’s Tristan and Isolde,” he announced like he’d had a revelation.

  I shook my head, not able to speak with the liquid under my tongue.

  “We read that one in class, Maya. It’s the story with the love potion and the black and white sails.”

  I shrugged.

  “Google it,” he said. “But just know that no one gets what they want in the end.”

  21

  I felt light as I walked to the lab the next morning. Confessing the experiment to Bryan had filled me with deep relief, almost like I had permission to keep going. It’s not as though he’d been enthusiastic about my project or even hinted that he might approve, but he hadn’t locked me in the bathroom. He hadn’t ripped the serum from my hand.

  I had fallen asleep without grinding my teeth for the first time in weeks. Now that I could be honest with the most important person in my life, everything was right again.

  I arrived at my desk with a smile on my face, which fell the moment I noticed the note on my desk from Dr. Araghi.

  Maya, it said in his familiar scribble, please report to me as soon as you arrive.

  There was a line under the word soon. I stared at it as I felt a sheen of sweat cover my forehead. My jaw was tight.

  I had allowed myself to believe that there was no way we could get caught at this point. I was already on Day Five of the third serum, and everything at the lab seemed back to normal.

  Yael hadn’t asked any more questions, and Ann and I had been careful not to be seen together in her office during this third phase of the project.

  “He doesn’t know,” I whispered aloud to comfort myself as I wiped my forehead with my arm. “He can’t know.”

  “Maya, honey?”

  I whipped around to see Tish in the doorway. “You saw Dr. Araghi’s note? He wants to see you.”

  I tried to read her face. Her expression was calm, but didn’t she usually address me with a warmer voice and a smile?

  “I’ll head over there right now,” I chirped, sounding guilty.

  She held papers in her hand. “Will you bring these to Dr. Araghi and tell him he has to sign them before the end of the week? I’ve asked him twice now.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m sick of chasing that man for paperwork. Your mother was so good about record keeping.”

  That must be why she sounded cold. Tish was simply annoyed that she was working as an office manager for someone who ref
used to acknowledge that he worked in an office.

  I took the papers and marched down the hall toward Dr. Araghi’s office, trying to imagine what I would do if he summoned me to tell me we’d be caught. Would I blame Ann? Would I tell him it was all me? I shuddered, suddenly imagining the emptiness and purposelessness of my life if I was kicked out of MIT before I had even started. What if other schools wouldn’t let me in? What if this experiment prevented me from pursuing the thing I was born to do?

  I’d been so quick to tell Ann to continue the project when we knew we were close to getting caught. I cursed my priorities.

  My mom often said that the best discoveries came from the purest, most altruistic questions. Even in her secret research with Ann, my mom’s desire was to help good couples stay together. Maybe she wanted to help her own marriage, but she also wanted to save other partners.

  My work, however, had been all about me. My selfish question for science was “How can I get him back?” It had led me to where I was now, taking a scientific walk of shame to Dr. Araghi’s office, hoping that he wouldn’t bust me for theft and misconduct.

  His office door was open. The walls were a freshly painted mint green. I recognized a few framed prints on the wall from my mom’s old office.

  “Ms. Leschinsky, please take a seat,” he said after noticing me hovering in the doorway.

  It was probably only the fourth or fifth time I had seen him since I’d started my work in the lab. Dr. Araghi usually left his tapes in the drawer at my bench after I’d left for the day. I had spent months with his voice—​sometimes dreaming of it after hours of transcription—​but there hadn’t been much cause to speak to him during my internship.

  “So,” he said as I sat down. His owl eyes were fixed on mine, which did nothing to slow my heart rate. “You’re almost done with your summer work.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, regretting the “sir” as soon as it was out of my mouth.

  “I thought we might have a talk about your work . . . and what you’ve been up to this summer.”

  A string of expletives ran through my mind.

  “Sure. Of course,” I responded, my tone cheery.

  He waited, as if I should speak first. He leaned forward, his hands clasped together on top of his desk. Part of me wanted to blurt out a confession and an apology, and to begin begging him not to tell MIT admissions that I had stolen, lied, and pursued an unethical experiment off the books, but I bit my tongue, literally, as I tried to figure out how many of those details he actually might know.

  Before I uttered a word, he spoke.

  “You’ve done a wonderful job this summer, Maya. You’ve really become a member of the team.”

  “Okay,” I said, waiting for more, because his tone didn’t match his sentiment. His eyes were concerned. Questioning. Or maybe I was projecting.

  “And I must thank you for your attention to detail,” he continued. “All your little symbols and footnotes—​they’ve been quite helpful. There’s really an art to this transcription. I’m going to have a difficult time finding someone else to be as thoughtful about the work.”

  “I’ve enjoyed listening,” I said, feeling hopeful that this might not end terribly. “I hope all those asterisks weren’t distracting. Your notes are complicated, so I tried to come up with a system for them.”

  “On the contrary. Those little symbols are my new shorthand. I’ve never had a great system for organizing my thoughts. Your mother was always better at that. Now I’ll have something to tell the next grad student who transcribes my tapes.”

  “Glad I could help,” I said.

  Dr. Araghi removed a small rectangular gift box from his desk drawer. He smiled, which made his long, gray eyebrows wiggle.

  “I want to talk about something more serious now.”

  I nodded and swallowed.

  “I know how difficult this job must be for you—​working in the lab that your mother called home. Tish was worried that it might be painful for you to sit so close to your mother’s office, to be so close to her work. I hope it’s been more inspiring than . . . distracting or upsetting for you.”

  I froze, not knowing how to answer. Instead of getting caught, I was getting sympathy.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “It’s been more inspiring than anything else.”

  Dr. Araghi smiled.

  “Well, then. I know there’s only another week or two before freshmen begin moving into their dorms for the semester. You’re welcome to stop your work now or whenever you’re ready. Just make sure Tish knows the rest of your schedule.”

  “Okay.”

  I knew the internship would be over at the end of the summer, but August had come too soon. I had grown so used to seeing Yael and Kyle every day; I didn’t like the idea of being on campus without having them as part of my routine.

  Not that I had them as much anymore. Kyle was still distant. Yael had forgiven me, it seemed, but I didn’t feel like she trusted me.

  “Of course, if you’ve changed your mind and you’d like to continue the work in the fall at some point, we’d be happy to have the extra help,” Dr. Araghi started.

  “No—​I mean, maybe. Can I see how I feel after I get a sense of my classes? I think I’d like to do more work, and the money would be great, but I should figure out how much homework I have and just get used to the schedule, you know?”

  “Of course,” Dr. Araghi said, and pushed the rectangular box on the desk toward me.

  I picked it up and opened the lid. Inside was a shiny silver pen. It said Massachusetts Institute of Technology in black script on the side. My mom had about fourteen pens just like it.

  “I know your generation isn’t much for writing things down, but every scientist should have a good pen. You never know when inspiration will hit. Always make notes.”

  Dr. Araghi ’s eyebrows danced as he spoke.

  “Thanks,” I said, thinking that my mom probably used one of these pens to make all those notes in the One Direction binder.

  “Oh—​and before I forget,” I added, “Tish says you have to sign these papers before the end of the week.” I pulled them from my bag and placed them on his desk.

  He tightened his lips like an angry child and nodded.

  “Thanks again, Dr. Araghi.”

  “Of course,” he said, now scowling at his homework.

  * * *

  I was still clutching the pen, feeling a strange mix of sadness about the end of the job and relief over not getting caught, when I arrived back at the lab. I could hear Yael’s excited shouts from the hallway.

  “Of course they took you back! If they were going to kick you out of school, they would have just done it. They wouldn’t have had you working in the lab. You would have been gone last semester.”

  Yael and Kyle were leaning over Tish’s desk, their backs facing me. I stood in the door frame, not sure whether I belonged.

  “Yeah, I think it’s all good. Except I’ll be a full year behind,” Kyle said. “I’ll start junior year over again.”

  I let out an accidental cough, and they turned around.

  “Did he take the papers?” Tish asked me.

  “Reluctantly, but yes.”

  Kyle looked down, and Yael’s eyes darted between us.

  “Kyle’s been accepted back into his program. He met with his adviser this morning. He’ll be a junior again in September.” Yael squeezed his arm.

  “That’s so great, Kyle,” I said, trying to sound casual.

  “Yeah, I’m psyched,” he said, walking us back into the lab. “I owe Ann Markley bigtime. My adviser said she wrote some massive letter of recommendation saying I was the best lab tech she’s ever worked with, and that I was a huge help to PhD students like her. I didn’t even think she knew who I was. I guess I can’t make fun of her anymore. Long live her facial piercings.”

  “Wow,” I whispered. “That was . . . thoughtful of her.”

  “Yeah. Anyway,” Kyle continued, “I’m going to t
ake next week off to figure out my new schedule, maybe pick up some books and stuff before I move into my place for next year. I’ll wrap up here Friday.”

  He sounded a little sad about it.

  “We should have a cake,” Tish said. “Something for you and Maya. Maya, have you decided on your last day?”

  I cleared my throat, my eyes fixed on Kyle’s. “I’ll work through early next week. Tuesday, I think.”

  “Tuesday,” Tish mumbled, writing the information on the legal pad in front of her.

  “I can’t believe you guys are abandoning me,” Yael whined. “Can we go to dinner Friday? Chicken skewers or something, before you both get back into your undergraduate drama and I never see you again?”

  “I have plans that night. Dinner with someone,” Kyle said, looking away. He might as well have shouted that he had a date.

  Then I remembered that I also had somewhere to be. That night was my outing—​the outing—​with Whit. We’d emailed a few times, arranging the details. Bryan was sleeping over tonight to help me prepare. He made it clear again that he didn’t support the plan but was curious to find out what would happen. Also, if I was going to attempt an evening of seduction, he wanted to choose my outfit.

  “Dinner next week would work for me,” I said, looking up, but Kyle already had his headphones on.

  22

  Whit texted about the restaurant three times before I arrived.

  Are you sure sushi is okay? Because there’s also a falafel place right near my apartment, he said.

  I could tell he wanted me to be as comfortable as possible. This was our first time alone since the breakup, and it’s not as though our run-in at Bryan’s performance had gone smoothly.

  I was nervous about the venue too, for different reasons. I wanted to make sure I’d be able to make good observations—​that it was the kind of place where we could stay awhile.