Chemistry Lessons

by Meredith Goldstein

  “You just pulled me into bed with you and kissed me because you were sad about Andrea Berger, the girl you dumped me for. Who does that?”

  Somehow I felt like I was being dumped for a second time, like somehow he had blindsided me all over again.

  “Now that I’m hearing it, I know this is terrible. I get that, Maya. But when I saw you at Bryan’s show with your dad and Yael, you looked so happy. I thought maybe we could move past all of this and be friends. I was going to wait to reach out to you until after you started school, so you’d be busy with your new life, and hearing from me wouldn’t mean so much. But you started responding to my emails, and then things got so crazy with Andrea. I’m alone with this—​all this change. You have Bryan and Kyle and Yael . . .”

  “You have all your fancy college friends,” I said, thinking of the group I saw at the black-box theater, and all the new faces I’d seen when I visited Whit at school over the past year. “You wanted to be around people who were more like you, remember?”

  I grabbed a pillow from the edge of the bed and attempted to hurl it toward his face, but it was a pillow, so it moved slowly. He caught it before it landed, and pulled it into his lap.

  “It wasn’t all or nothing, Maya. Yes, I wanted to break up and date someone else, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t missed you.”

  “What is it that you miss, Whit? Because I understand that you miss our friendship, but it also seems like you miss the kissing. You didn’t pull me into bed to talk.”

  “I didn’t expect to want to do that. I was confused—​or maybe it was just habit. It’s not like I suddenly stopped being attracted to you when we broke up. That never went away, Maya. I broke up with you because I was also attracted to someone else, and I really wanted to be with her. I was spending so much time with her . . . it was inevitable.

  “God, Maya, I’m sorry I screwed up so horribly tonight. I just wanted you back in my life. I swear, I had no intention of kissing you. I just wanted to hang out.”

  “That makes sense,” I mumbled as I admitted, at least to myself, that this could be my fault too. Maybe he had meant for this to be a platonic night, and it was the serum that inspired him to take it a step too far.

  I’d had all these fantasies of how this reconciliation would play out, and every one of them involved Whit having some epiphany about what he left behind. Maybe that was happening now, but it didn’t seem to erase his need for someone new, and it certainly didn’t seem to be bringing us back together. He just looked confused.

  Frustrated with both of us, I grabbed my shoes, which I had tossed by his bedroom door.

  “Hey—​you don’t have to go,” he said, tossing the pillow off his lap and getting up.

  “I do, actually. The buses are going to stop running soon.”

  I found my bag on the floor and checked to make sure I had my cell phone and keys.

  “Please stay. Call your dad and tell him you’re staying over. You shouldn’t be on a bus alone this late.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I can’t be here with you anymore.”

  He stopped in the center of the room and nodded, his eyes still red around the rims.

  “I can’t be the person who comforts you right now,” I said. “I can’t believe you ever thought I could.”

  “I know,” Whit said, sounding defeated. “I want you to feel good about me again. I don’t want you to feel bad about us.”

  “You can’t force people to feel things!” I yelled.

  The irony of the statement wasn’t lost on me.

  Angrier at myself than at him, I about-faced and slammed the door behind me, then ran down the five flights of stairs, barely breathing until I was out on the street.

  23

  I’d never been so desperate to put distance between myself and another human being. In the last fifteen minutes, I’d gone from thinking that my experiment had worked and that all I’d lost had been returned, to finding out that Whit was as sad about Andrea Berger as I was about him.

  I found myself sprinting to catch the bus on Mass. Ave., dodging people on the street like I was in a video game. I just wanted to get back to my side of the river, back to my room and my bedspread and my computer.

  I was winded when I got to the bus stop. No one was there, which was a bad sign. I found my cell phone in my bag and saw that somehow an hour had passed. The last bus had come and gone.

  I began to walk down Mass. Ave., deciding I could use some air. There was a nice warm breeze, and it felt good to be outside after being in Whit’s stifling apartment.

  As I walked, I thought about how I would explain the night to Ann. Better yet, I wondered whether she could explain any of this to me.

  There had been so many variables, so much inconsistency and room for error in this project from start to finish.

  Kyle wasn’t the neutral subject we hoped for. Asher was attention-starved, insecure, and on the hunt for female validation. Whit was desperate and heartbroken and searching for familiarity. How could we have expected this project to yield legitimate results? The more I thought about it, the angrier I got with Ann, who was supposed to know more than I did. Why did she let me do any of this? What was the point?

  I decided that once I got home, I’d write her a final report—​with my real opinions. I’d tell her that we shouldn’t have messed with people like this. I’d tell her everything we did wrong, and that we should forget this ever happened.

  I’d be moving into my dorm in two weeks. I would start school and develop a whole new life. This summer would be erased. The air got cooler as I got closer to the water, and it felt cathartic, like it was getting me clean in some way, so I just kept walking. At Beacon Street, I passed a pack of guys in Red Sox shirts who were probably still celebrating after whatever had happened at Fenway Park hours ago.

  Not far from them, a couple sat on a bench, yelling at each other.

  “It was like I was invisible!” the woman shouted, pointing at the man.

  “I was right there,” he responded.

  “You didn’t talk to me all night!” she said.

  The sound of their argument faded as I bounded forward toward the bridge.

  Once I was on the walking path that would take me across the Charles River, the wind picked up and whipped my ponytail toward my face.

  The scenery was appropriate, I thought as I paused to take in the view. Whit and I had walked across this bridge on our first date. At the time, I wasn’t even sure it was a date. I remembered our awkward hug goodbye, and how he texted twenty minutes later, asking to hang out again, and I felt like I could float away.

  Now he was gone, and Kyle wanted nothing to do with me. Yael didn’t trust me. Bryan would leave for Syracuse in just over a week. The longest I’d ever gone without seeing Bryan was three weeks, when I got really bad pneumonia. Now I’d have to live without him until Thanksgiving.

  I pulled my phone and earbuds from my bag and decided to treat myself to a song from his playlist, keeping the volume low so I could hear the traffic around me. I was dangerously close to getting to the last song, which was Bryan’s deadline for me to get over Whit.

  The next track was new to me, a breakup song that made me long for something, although I didn’t know what anymore.

  It was about going back to a better time—taking back words and love.

  But the point of the song was that you couldn’t go back. It was weirdly upbeat, despite the lyrics, which told a story I knew too well.

  By the time the track was over and I’d made it to the other side of the bridge, I was furious. I hadn’t done this on my own.

  I found the number of the one person who I believed would have answers—​because she always acted like she did.

  “Are you all right?” Ann said, bypassing hellos. She sounded like a nervous parent, which made me angrier. “I thought you’d check in hours ago.”

  “I’m not all right,” I said, my tone serious.

  “It’s after midnigh
t. Where are you? I hear cars. Are you outside?”

  The fact that she was asking responsible questions pushed me over the edge. Because Ann was no grownup. No adult would have helped me make this mess.

  “Ann,” I said, my voice as low as it could go, “do you really think my mom would have let me do this experiment? Do you really think she would have wanted me to?”

  I dodged a pack of girls in sorority T-shirts who ran past me toward the bridge.

  “What?”

  “This project—​it was bad for me. It was a risk for you, too, but it was terrible for me. You should have kicked me out of your office that day. You should have stopped me.”

  Ann sighed into the phone. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “He doesn’t want me,” I said, forcing back tears. “He wants Andrea Berger. Even if he had wanted me tonight, all of it would have been fake.”

  I could hear her movement through the phone. It sounded like she was getting out of bed and stumbling around, maybe thinking she’d come find me. That wouldn’t happen—​I didn’t want to see her.

  “Why did you let me do this?” I demanded.

  “You begged me to do it!” she almost shouted.

  We both tried to speak then, cutting each other off, our words mingling to make a high-pitched sound.

  I stopped myself, giving her a turn.

  “I don’t know why I did it, Maya,” she said, her voice tired. “I think . . . it’s just that I don’t have this anymore. I don’t have anything I care about. I don’t have your mother. Ever since she died, I’ve been trying to finish a degree that no longer excites me. I miss being a part of something . . . different. I always liked what I studied, but she made me love what I do. She showed me possibilities, and all of a sudden, they were gone. Then you came into my office that day, and I felt that excitement again for a few minutes. I wanted that back.”

  She paused, and then her voice was soft.

  “Listen, Maya, I do feel responsible for this. I should know better. I did know better after our second experiment. And I underestimated your hopes, clearly. With your mother, there was one subject, and it was so simple. We were just doing some preliminary trials so we could be more confident about pitching it as a project for real study. There wasn’t all of this deception and lying. Our work was secret, but it’s not as though she was trying to manipulate men in her life like you did. The whole thing felt more appropriate.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I screamed. “She manipulated my dad!”

  I sank to the ground by a tree, now with a view of MIT’s dome.

  “That’s the thing we haven’t said out loud, right?” I continued, my voice weak now. “Because we’re not supposed to say anything bad about my mom, because she was a genius and probably curing disease with all her work, right? But honestly, Ann, how would my dad feel if he knew she had been messing with him like that? I thought my mom was this pillar of scientific integrity. She was always talking about the ethics of the work. But she was experimenting on her own husband. And then I went and messed with everybody, just like her. Worse than her.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Maya? Your dad loved this project.”

  “What?”

  “Wait . . .” Ann said. “Did you think he didn’t know? Didn’t you see his notes in the back of the binder?”

  “I gave you the binder,” I said, my voice cracking as I processed what she was telling me.

  “But you read it first.”

  Ann sounded annoyed now, and more like my mom than she ever had.

  “I focused on the data and the numbers, but where it got narrative at the end . . . I didn’t want to read about my parents’ sex life. I didn’t think . . . I mean, you never mentioned that he knew.”

  “You never asked! I assumed you knew. Come on, Maya. Of course your dad knew about the experiment. He gave us his own notes every week. They’re in the back of the binder. That’s why I was so excited to try this with you. Your dad was a great sport, but we had to take his knowledge of the experiment into consideration. His knowing about the serum meant that he wasn’t an objective subject. Your take on this research presented the opportunity to eliminate that bias.”

  My teeth chattered in the cold. I covered my face with my hand in shame. “So I’m the unethical one. Just me. Of course she got permission.”

  Ann sighed and then let out a harsh laugh.

  “You know, there was some part of me that really believed she would have wanted us to do this, that when you showed up in my office that day with the binder in your hand, it felt like destiny, like maybe she knew you’d eventually seek me out. But now that we’ve been through this, I think she just would have wanted me to protect you. I should have sent you out of my office that day. I just don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. You’re eighteen.”

  “Seventeen,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “I don’t turn eighteen for another month. And you know, you might act like you know everything, like you’re the expert, but you’re Yael’s age. You’re not even close to finishing your PhD.”

  She was silent.

  “The thing that bothers me most,” I said, my voice dark, “is that the science here wasn’t even good. There were so many variables. We have no idea whether any of this actually worked.”

  “These types of studies take years, Maya,” Ann said. “Had your mother and I become more confident about our work, we would have suggested starting a long-term project on the books, and the research would have been much more specific. I just thought, when you and I decided to continue this, that maybe I’d get some ideas for carrying it forward without her. I wanted to see if we could get any short-term results, but I knew they wouldn’t be conclusive.”

  “Well, I wish I had known,” I said.

  I needed to be done with the conversation. I felt lost.

  “I have to go, Ann. Let’s just forget about all of this. Keep the binder. I don’t want it.”

  “Let me come get you, Maya,” she said. “It’s late.”

  “No, just—​just stay away from me!”

  The last comment came out before I could filter it; it sounded harsh—​and final, but I was furious at both of us.

  “Maya, that’s not the answer here,” Ann started.

  I hung up before she could say anything else.

  I felt terrible for a second, imagining her alone in her apartment, overcome by guilt for turning me into this mess, but that’s why it was best for both of us if things went back to the way they were, with me giving her a quick nod if I saw her on campus or ignoring her altogether. We were two grieving people who made bad decisions. I needed to stay away from her.

  My chest felt tight, but I exhaled through it and stood up to start walking again, too close to home to consider calling a car. I could feel blisters forming between my toes, though—​my shoes weren’t meant for this kind of walk—​but I was only blocks away, now on the stretch of Mass. Ave. with the bars and clubs.

  I passed one nightclub with a line down the street, then stopped in front of the skewer restaurant to give my feet a break. That’s when I thought about where I was—​so close to the smell. I was steps away from Cambridge Foods, and in that moment, it called out to me like a holy place—​like the smell of chocolate in front of that building could bring me back to where I was before I created this mess. All I wanted was to be standing in front of it, feeling like I used to feel with Kyle and Yael. Warm and happy.

  * * *

  It looked open, which made sense. If Cambridge Foods made chocolate nougat and mint filling for the entire East Coast, it was probably a twenty-four-hour business.

  I had never done a whiff walk so late. The smell was stronger at this hour than it was during our trips after work. The wave of chocolate and mint was overwhelming and made me feel even lonelier without Kyle and Yael by my side.

  I sat on the curb across the street and took out my cell phone, first googling Andrea Berger’s so
cial media accounts, wondering if they’d look different.

  Her last post was two hours old, just a selfie of her with a friend in front of a big cake with glowing candles. Amy’s birthday! the caption said. Somehow, despite wishing for months that Andrea Berger would make herself disappear, I was furious that she had. Whit had left me so that he could pursue her, yet she had dropped him so easily, leaving him home alone in a hot, dirty apartment. She was out for Amy’s birthday, like she didn’t care.

  I closed the page and wondered where Kyle might be. I imagined him sitting in front of his laptop at home watching whatever strange web series he was into at the moment, while occasionally messaging his brother, who was studying abroad in Australia.

  I stared at my phone as if I could will Kyle to text me. I wanted to tell him about my night. I wanted to tell him about everything.

  A glare bounced off the screen of my phone, bringing my attention back to the building. “Oh, my god,” I said, jumping to my feet.

  A light had popped on in a room at the far end of the Cambridge Foods building, closer to the end of the block. I could see a shadow moving along the wall inside. Someone was in there.

  “Wonka,” I whispered.

  I walked toward the moving light and placed my hands on the white bricks in front of me. The window was about eight feet from street level. If I could stand on something, just to give myself a boost, I could probably see in.

  I could take a picture and send it to Kyle, finally disproving—​or proving—​the existence of Willy Wonka in Cambridge.

  Really, it was an excuse to say anything to him—​to send him a message he couldn’t ignore.

  I looked around to see what I could grab to use as a makeshift ladder. There were no benches here. Nothing to climb. My only real option was one of the giant trash cans in the parking lot of the U-Haul place down the street. I darted down the road and wheeled one over so that it sat beneath the glowing window.

  The wheels on the bottom of the can made it easy to transport but difficult to keep steady. I placed my palms on top of the lid and pressed down, testing its strength.