Chemistry Lessons

by Meredith Goldstein

  Bryan’s eyes danced the way they did when he was about to tell me theater gossip that meant more to him than it did to me.

  “Sure.”

  He began typing something into his phone, his thumbs moving rapidly as he concentrated. “I found this last night,” he said. “I was waiting for the right moment.”

  He pulled me to his side then and placed the phone in front of us, so we could both see the video on its screen. Bryan pressed play.

  There, on YouTube, was Asher Forman, alone in a white room with his guitar, singing Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy.”

  “Oh, no. He did it,” I whispered.

  “Yes, he most certainly did.”

  We watched in silence then as Asher made constipated faces while singing the Beyoncé song in a strained falsetto.

  “I mean, it’s a good song. I made a good request,” I said, turning to Bryan.

  “I know,” Bryan said. “Looks like he posted it this morning, and there are already three hundred thousand views.”

  When Asher finished the last notes, he winked into the camera. The screen went dark.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said, heat creeping up my face.

  “Well,” Bryan said, slipping his phone into his pocket and grabbing my hands, “for now you have to say goodbye.”

  I wanted to run into the backyard with him and hide like we did when we were kids, before his parents gave up and allowed him to start sleeping over.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, squeezing his hands.

  He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. You’re going to pack up and go to college and make new nerd friends in your special science program. You’re going to get super smart and change the world.”

  “I meant for the next few days. Like, what am I going to do for the rest of the week without you?”

  “You could call him,” Bryan said, “like, as a friend.”

  “I don’t want to talk to Whit. It’s not even a tempting thought. He emailed yesterday—​I just don’t have anything to say.”

  “I was talking about Kyle,” Bryan said, giving me one of his side hugs.

  I teared up then, mostly because Bryan was the only person who could read my mind, and he was about to move hundreds of miles away.

  “Bryan, honey,” his mom said from the driveway.

  The walk had been too short. Bryan ignored her.

  “You know what I think?” he said, his hands dropping as his voice cracked.

  “What?” I said, letting go, my face already a wet mess.

  “I think you’ve been spending all summer trying to match yourself to all the wrong people, and it doesn’t matter, because you’re already my match—​without having to do anything. We fit together. No potions are necessary for you and me.”

  “Bryan . . .”

  “Not sexually, of course, because no thank you, but I mean that you’re my life match. Everybody else is just a bonus. You already have a soul mate.”

  I tipped my head into his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me.

  “Don’t replace me,” I said, looking up as he pushed his hair behind his ear. “Text me every day.”

  “Deal,” he said, blinking tears away. “Hey—​did you ever finish the playlist?”

  “There’s only one song left,” I confessed. “I’ve been avoiding it, I guess. You said that when I finished listening, I had to be over the breakup. I guess I didn’t want anything to be over.”

  “I think you are over it, though, don’t you?” he asked.

  I nodded. Then he squeezed my uninjured hand and walked to the car.

  “Let me know when you get there!” I yelled.

  “Yes, dear!” I heard him shout as he closed the door.

  26

  My room looked empty, partly because Bryan had taken all his stuff. I’d grown used to his mess—​the laundry bag he’d leave near my bed, or the homework he’d place in piles on the floor.

  Now the only clutter was the charts I’d made for Ann. I had printed and spread out all my notes on the bed that morning, thinking that I’d bring them upstairs to the attic. Maybe someday I’d ask Ann to return the binder.

  I doubted Ann expected to hear from me again, but the whole project felt unfinished because I hadn’t written the final report. I was restless thinking about it.

  If my mom were here, she’d ask, “What’s the one-line conclusion? What did you learn?” and then she’d ask me to write it all down because “writing out every last thought is how we’re able to see what’s missing.”

  What’s the one-line conclusion? I thought.

  The answer was nothing and everything.

  The answer was that the thing that was missing was my mother.

  There used to be a person in my life who had real answers—​the answers to every question, from what time we’d eat dinner, to whether I was allowed to stay out past curfew, to how to finish my homework, no matter what subject—​but she didn’t exist anymore.

  I understood this. I wasn’t the kind of person who could be in denial about what happened to my mom—​how a disease had taken over her body, and how it had ended her life—​but there was a part of me that hadn’t figured out what the loss of her meant.

  When someone is dead, it means they’ll never again have an opinion about curfews or answers to homework. It means that if there’s something you really need to tell them—​like the fact that you’ve pursued and made a mess of their research—​there’s no way they’ll ever know.

  I walked out of my bedroom, making my way up the attic stairs, and turned on the overhead light. It was the only place where I could find her, where there were answers that she hadn’t yet given me. The cardboard boxes were where I had left them, on the floor with flaps open and papers facing every which way. I was ashamed that I had left such a mess, now realizing that every single document was valuable. The papers were the only things about her that were new.

  I dropped to my knees and used my better hand to sift through every document, looking for my mother’s handwriting. I just wanted something—​some trace of her voice, some report that might help me figure out what she’d think of my warped, weird, manipulative, unreliable chemistry lesson, a bastardization of her work. Ann had mentioned that there were other projects they intended to pursue in the future. Were they outlined in these documents? What else had she hoped to do? The first page I found was an equipment order sheet for Tish. The second seemed to be a note from Dr. Araghi about a grant. Frustrated, I fanned the papers out on the floor. I began laying them out in vertical rows like solitaire cards, trying to make sense of each sheet.

  “Honey, what are you doing?”

  My head snapped up at my dad, who stood at the top of the attic stairs. His wide eyes suggested I looked feral.

  “I wanted to look through Mom’s notes.” I gestured to the papers, which I’d started to arrange in categories—​personal, lesson plans, possible research, to-do lists, grants, and miscellaneous.

  “You need to do this right now?” Dad asked, scratching his head. “Bryan just left, and you’re barely even packed for school. Why don’t you work on that?”

  “Because we should have done this a year ago,” I said, my voice trembling. “We just threw everything up here like it was trash, when it’s actually the undiscovered research of a massively important scientist who happens to be your wife and my mother.”

  My dad made the bewildered face of someone whose teenage daughter had become volatile for no good reason, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “Don’t you think it’s worth spending some time to look through this box before I go to college? Or did you just plan on letting it get old and moldy up here like it’s garbage?”

  My dad moved quickly then, and was on his knees next to me, putting his arm around me before I could come up with a reason to stay angry.

  I let my head fall to his chest and closed my eyes.

  “Help me with this one, Maya. Is this
because Bryan just left or because you miss your mother or because you’re having some weird reaction to the Percocet?”

  I snorted through laughter. “All of the above?”

  I imagined the look my mom would give this scene—​the two of us helpless and surrounded by her paperwork.

  “It’s a lot of change right now,” Dad said, letting go so I could get myself together. I grabbed the corner of my T-shirt and wiped it along my face. “I know the breakup’s been hard for you, and then Bryan’s off to Syracuse, and you’re leaving the house.”

  He paused for a deep breath. “If it helps, it’s hard for me, too. Don’t think I’m not freaking out about living alone in a week.”

  “You’re freaking out?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you’re not the one in the attic screaming about Mom’s research.”

  “No,” he said, grinning. “You’ve got me beat on that. What are you looking for, anyway? Do we really need to go through Mom’s work when it’s eighty-five degrees outside and the heat is rising to the attic? Can’t we do this when you’re home for fall break?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry, Dad. I just had this weird revelation that these boxes are all we have of Mom. The only new stuff, at least. Like, there won’t be any new memories, only the research up here that I haven’t read.”

  “Maya,” Dad said, looking up, “your mother is more than these boxes. That’s the second thing I learned from my short stint in the bereavement group—​that the dead follow us. Not literally, like a ghost or anything, but you keep thinking about the person you lost and learning things. Did you know, for instance, that your mother was reading romance novels in the hospital?”

  I shook my head. “She liked sci-fi.”

  “Well, she also liked romance novels. The historical kind, with naked men on the covers.”

  I shook my head at my dad as I remembered my mom making fun of all the novels I read when I was in middle school—​she called them my imaginary-boy books. “How about something literary for your brain?” she’d say. “How about Madeleine L’Engle?”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Dad said. “Not her style, right? But last week, I couldn’t find my tablet, so I dug out hers, which I’d stashed in the closet after we got back from the hospital last year. As soon as the thing was powered up, up comes the book she was reading at the time, which was some novel called My Tempting Highlander.”

  “Gross,” I whispered.

  “You have no idea. The worst part is that I stayed up until three a.m. reading it. I just wanted to know why she liked it so much. I remember that during those weeks before she died, when she was exhausted and sedentary from all that chemo, she just sat in bed and ate those mini pretzels and read books on her tablet. I had no idea that it was all romance stuff, and now she’s not even here for me to tease her.”

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  “No, my point is, it’s great. She’s still surprising me, right? That’ll happen to you, too; I’m sure of it. I’ve now read Highlander numbers one, two, and three.”

  “Oh.”

  “Come on,” Dad said, wrapping his arm around my waist to help me up. “You have a job to do. That room isn’t going to pack itself, and you’ll have to do it one-handed.”

  I followed him downstairs, but when I got to my room, I decided to focus on a more pressing unfinished project.

  I went to the bed and pulled the computer onto my lap and opened the file called “Experiment,” which is where I’d kept my notes.

  I started from the top, rewriting and making painstaking edits to the research report I planned to give to Ann, my pace slow, as I had to be careful not to harm my injured fingers.

  Ann and I had been intentionally vague with our notes, using ambiguous language just in case the research was found by the wrong person, but now I got specific.

  I started with an introduction that detailed my hope to test my mother’s research on three subjects—​one friend, one stranger, and one ex—​to determine whether the infamous T-shirt study could be the basis for successful pheromone manipulation.

  Then I moved on to materials and methods, leaving space where Ann could write in the formula for the serum, if she was willing.

  I graphed out my doses and temperatures through the summer. I used data analysis software that my mom had bought me when I started advanced-placement classes to log every number and time. I listed every side effect.

  I felt my eyes closing, and my fingers hurt—​I had skipped a dose of Percocet, fearing that the medication would put me to sleep—​but I continued on.

  I typed my results as I understood them, noting that maybe the serum worked, but maybe it didn’t.

  I can see how one could use pheromone modification to improve a relationship where there is already love and commitment, I wrote, but the chemicals, on their own, can’t bring two people together. I also don’t think they can serve as an antidote for a relationship that has failed. I wrote that last part maybe more for myself than for Ann.

  Maybe it wasn’t all relevant, but I spared no detail. I typed up everything I noticed about Asher’s weird neck obsession, and how my own libido was highest with Kyle, maybe because he kissed me like there was nowhere else in the world he wanted to be.

  I wrote about how having a final night with Whit didn’t bring our relationship back to where it had started. No matter how much we still loved each other, the breakup had been the end of us. He only wanted part of me. The minute I realized that, it was really over.

  By the time I finished my report, my word count was over three thousand and it was past midnight. Without giving it another look, I emailed the document to Ann, then put my head down, prepared to pass out next to the laptop.

  Right before I closed my eyes, though, I attached my earbuds to my phone and prepared to listen to the last track on Bryan’s mix. I had some guesses about what it could be, maybe a big heartache anthem or something upbeat about going it alone.

  But the last song was ours, the one we always put on repeat because Bryan sounded so good singing it, the one we considered our anthem, the one that would make me think of him forever. It was a song about having someone’s back and loving them no matter what.

  As I relaxed into my pillow, I turned up the volume and smiled.

  * * *

  I wound up waking up too early—​sometime after four a.m.—​thirsty and in pain. Downstairs, my dad was asleep in pajama pants and a T-shirt on the couch in front of the television, a Nova episode on pause. I grabbed a glass of water in the kitchen, washed down a painkiller, and then went back upstairs.

  I spotted the laptop on the edge of my bed. It was as if I had written the report all in a dream.

  I got under the covers and pulled the computer over to me, clicking on the file, curious to see what I had come up with and sent to Ann.

  It was all there—​every observation and conclusion—​with so many details. I put a hand over one eye, embarrassed by some of my confessions, especially the stuff about Asher.

  But what made my chest tighten with shame, or maybe confusion or excitement—​something I couldn’t quite name—​was the stuff I had written about Kyle. There was a full paragraph in the report that read like a love letter.

  It’s like we were already magnets, I wrote, not-so-scientifically. If the serum did anything, it just made the attraction stronger.

  Another paragraph concluded that Kyle was never an appropriate subject.

  Kyle could never be the platonic case in this experiment, not just because he liked me, but because I probably liked him, too.

  It was all the stuff I wished he knew. It was all the stuff I wished I had known before I ruined what we had.

  Sometimes it takes an impulsive decision to undo another one. At four in the morning, all I wanted to do was confess everything—​because there was nothing to lose. I opened a new email and attached the same report I sent to Ann. I didn’t include a note, just a subject line that sa
id An explanation and apology.

  With shaking hands, I typed Kyle’s name, hit SEND, and closed my eyes.

  27

  My mom would have had a very specific plan for moving day. She would have borrowed a colleague’s truck and brought everything to the dorm in one trip, and she would have known there was no reason to haul over all my winter clothes this early in the year.

  But my dad was in charge of the move, so we made three trips with heavy sweaters packed into old suitcases and garbage bags, and it wasn’t until I was inside the dorm that I realized I had no immediate need for my calf-length winter coat, which I shoved under the wooden twin-bed frame.

  It felt silly getting emotional when my dad said his goodbyes—​our house was only a half-hour walk from my dorm—​but for the first time, we wouldn’t end our nights in the same place.

  “Don’t stay up all night reading Mom’s sexy novels,” I said, mid-hug.

  “I’m not promising anything,” he said, pulling back and kissing me on the forehead. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay for a while and unpack?”

  “Please, no.”

  “Am I embarrassing you? I didn’t wear my toe shoes.”

  “No, Dad. I just have to come up with my own system for organizing this mess. I think I’m also supposed to go outside and make friends.”

  “Okay,” he said, his voice raspy. “Well, call me tomorrow.”

  He paused in the doorway, looking puzzled.

  “Are college kids supposed to call their parents every day?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It probably depends on the kid.”

  “Well, you don’t have to. Unless you want to. Just text me when you figure out where you want to eat for your birthday. I’ll make a reservation.”

  “Okay, Dad,” I said.

  “Oh, wait,” he said, stopping before he left the room. “I put some mail from MIT in the front pocket of your backpack. I think it’s your last paycheck from Dr. Araghi.”

  “Thanks.”

  He leaned in to give me another quick hug, waved awkwardly, and then left in a rush, dodging other parents and wandering freshmen as he headed toward the stairwell that would lead him out of the building.