Cure for Insomnia

by Laina Villeneuve

  Valerie jabbed me.

  “Don’t. I know I’m an idiot.”

  Valerie pushed me harder. I opened my eyes to see Devon standing at the bar.

  “You do work in Dr. Vogelsang’s lab?”

  I hadn’t anticipated my lie snapping me in the ass so quickly. Devon stood there like an excited puppy. His dark hair and goatee were immaculately groomed, and beneath that pristine layer, he vibrated with energy waiting for direction. I had no time for puppies jumping for attention and following me nonstop. I was caught, though, and I knew it. I ground my teeth, knowing I had to come clean about everything. “That was my paper you were talking about.”

  “You’re Dr. Hernandez?” Now he looked like a kicked puppy. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  My gaze drifted toward the arcade. Why had I lied to Devon when I hadn’t even known that Remi was there? For the first time I could remember, I didn’t want to talk about my research. I wanted to talk to a beautiful woman about lilacs and summertime.

  When Remi reappeared in the doorway, I thought my imagination had conjured the image, but my imagination would have only gone as far as offering a lingering look. I wouldn’t have dared to go as far as seeing Remi walk back in my direction.

  “I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t you want to talk about your paper?” Devon asked.

  I had to answer Devon, but I was very distracted by Remi whose every step made my heart beat harder. “Like you said, the collaboration is in its early stages. It’s all confidential, and I can’t speak about it. Dr. Vogelsang has put us in lockdown for now.”

  “Come on. Your paper was in The Journal of Cell Science. That’s clearly not hush-hush. Can’t you talk about that?”

  Remi extended her hand. “I forgot to correct my number on your phone.”

  I typed in my code and handed the phone to Remi. She tapped in her number and handed it back, lingering for a moment. “I wish I could stay. I’d like to share my ideas about your sleep study.”

  “Sleep study?” Devon asked as I watched Remi slip back into the arcade. “I thought you were in diabetes.”

  I wondered if this could be my out for the evening. “I really can’t talk about it.”

  “Sleep or diabetes?”

  “Neither. Look, I promised my friend I wouldn’t talk about work.” Though Valerie looked confused, I leaned closer to Devon and whispered that Valerie had received news that she’d just had a paper rejected. “We were already scheduled to come out when she got the letter. I’m sure you understand that I don’t want to rub salt in her wound. Honestly? We want to drink and forget work.”

  “That is rough. I get it. Maybe next time.” He waved and walked away.

  “What did you say to get him to leave?”

  “That your paper was rejected and you want to drown your sorrow in beer.”

  “Wow, I’m a downer!”

  “I’m sorry! What was I supposed to say? All I want to do is go home. I wanted to talk to Remi, not some guy who will eventually ask me to set up an interview with Judy. I want a girlfriend, not a colleague.”

  “’S’okay, mate. You’ve got Remi’s number, and you saved us some earbashing. It’ll come good. But I was promised a shnockered night out and look what they’ve got on the telly!” She pointed to a flatscreen behind the bar. “The Wallabies are playing the NZ All Blacks! We’re not leaving until someone’s chanting Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!”

  “You’re the only person who ever does that.”

  “Well then, let’s get started!”

  Seeing that Emma’s plan had worked to find Remi, I couldn’t begrudge Valerie more time out. I kept my eye on the arcade, hoping to catch sight of Remi when she left.

  “Bloody hell, go on and call her now,” Valerie said when I failed to keep up with the conversation.

  “But what if she’s on a date?”

  “Then it’s with the wrong person. Seems to be going around.”

  “I’m sorry I’m not better company.”

  “I’m just razzing you. You could text.”

  “You think?”

  She shrugged. “Why not? I think she’s into you. Could be girl’s night out for her, too, but she doesn’t want any of her mates to see you and get any smart ideas.”

  I didn’t reach for my phone. “Tomorrow. Otherwise I look desperate.”

  “Might as well let her know what she’s signing up for.”

  “Some friend you are,” I said.

  “Love you too.” Valerie smiled devilishly as she tipped her pint back again.

  Chapter Seven

  Even though I knew my phone hadn’t rung while I changed into my workout clothes, I couldn’t help swiping the screen to confirm I hadn’t missed a call. I’d waited until mid-morning to call Remi and had left a message. Was that lame? Maybe I should have texted instead?

  I pushed myself into a vigorous walk to warm up my muscles on the way to meet Valerie. Between our buildings, there was a bronze statue of a man sitting on a bench reading a paper. It unnerved me enough that I’d programmed my brain to ignore the bench altogether. I’d nearly passed it when I realized an actual person sat next to the statue, and I had passed by entirely before recognizing the waterfall of thick, black hair. I stopped and turned to watch the young woman engrossed by her phone. I hadn’t seen Maricela in the lab since her apology and my awkward offer to help her, which had resulted in a surprisingly satisfying tutorial on the purpose of the spectrophotometer.

  Given the amount of time I spent in the lab, I had expected to see her again.

  If I stopped, I’d be late. If I continued, I worried that I wouldn’t see Maricela again. Curiosity got the best of me. “Maricela?”

  She looked up, surprised. Then guilt flashed across her face. “Hey.” She switched off her phone and tucked it into the front pocket of her gray hoodie.

  “Are you finished with your service-learning project?”

  Maricela looked away. “I’m dropping that class, so I stopped going.”

  “What?” I couldn’t mask the disappointment in my voice.

  Maricela shrugged. “It was too hard.”

  I looked at my watch. I couldn’t afford to linger. I barely knew Maricela. What did it matter if she dropped science? Still, I found myself feeling a little maternal toward the younger woman. The way she refused to look at me, I figured she wasn’t happy about her decision. “Did you drop already?”

  “I haven’t figured out how to yet.”

  “Have you talked to the professor?”

  Maricela’s “No” fired back so quickly, it gave me an idea. “Hang on.” I pulled out my phone and called Valerie. “Go on without me,” I said without preamble.

  “You’re skipping?” Valerie said, accepting the baton of disappointment that I’d picked up from Maricela and passed to her.

  “No. I’m walking. But I can’t do your pace today. I’ll explain later.”

  “I’m intrigued. If you don’t get good cardio, do that aerobics DVD I lent you.”

  “I hate that aerobics DVD.”

  Valerie dismissed the complaint with an exaggerated kiss and was gone.

  “If you’re not doing the service-learning project, why are you here?”

  “My mom’s diabetic. She’s a patient here and has an appointment.”

  “How long does that take?”

  Maricela shrugged. “Maybe forty minutes.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” Maricela asked, standing.

  “Being Latina, I have twice the chance of developing type two diabetes as a white person. You know that, right? I know what side of that percentage I want to be on, so I exercise. I promised my workout buddy that I would walk, so we’ll circle the campus while we talk.”

  “I don’t walk.”

  I bit back the you should that sat at the tip of my tongue. I started walking, stewing over Maricela’s stubbornness. I smiled when I felt her jogging to catch up with me. We walked in silence while I wei
ghed out all I wanted to say.

  “How many classes are you taking?”

  “Three. Biology, math and English.”

  “How are math and English going?”

  Maricela shrugged, and I wanted to shake the indifference out of her. I rephrased. “You said you’re not passing bio. Are you passing math and English?”

  “I think I’m passing English,” she answered. Already her breath was labored, and we had barely begun to walk through the beautifully groomed campus.

  “You think? If you shrug again, I won’t be able to help myself. I’ll have to pop you.”

  Maricela turned wary eyes my way.

  “I have two older siblings. I know what it takes to keep a punk in line.”

  Maricela acquiesced. “I’ve gotten C’s on most of my papers. I turn in my homework.”

  “The teacher must make your grade available.”

  “There’s this school website she says we can use.”

  “But you haven’t.”

  “No.”

  Though the young woman’s lack of student skills frustrated me, at least she hadn’t shrugged. “What are you hoping to get out of school?”

  “A degree?”

  What was it with young people delivering statements as questions? Did she have any idea why she was in school? “In what?” I pressed.

  “I haven’t picked a major yet.”

  “Knowing what you’re working toward helps with motivation.”

  No response.

  “Do you mind if I make a suggestion?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No. I’m going to tell you because you need to hear it from someone, and it might as well be me. Talk to your teachers. Ask them for help. Get this English teacher to show you how to check your grade so you know you’re passing. Then check your math grade. Make an appointment to talk to your biology teacher to see if you can salvage your grade. I’m sure the campus has tutoring. Go. Put some effort into it. Do you have a job?”

  “I have to bring my mom to her appointments.”

  “So the rest of your time you can dedicate to school. Do you know how many of your peers have to work and find time to study or go to tutoring?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why wouldn’t you try to figure out how to pass if you have the time to dedicate to it? That’s what I can’t figure out.”

  “I’m not stupid,” Maricela shot back.

  “I didn’t say you are.”

  “But you said go to tutoring. Stupid people go to tutoring.”

  Baffled, I stopped. “Smart people go to tutoring.”

  “Smart people don’t need tutoring.”

  “I failed organic chemistry.” I enjoyed the disbelief on Maricela’s face.

  “Isn’t that an important class?”

  “One of the required ones, yes. That’s why I’m asking if you talk to your teachers. I wouldn’t talk to my teacher the first time I took it. Like you said, I didn’t want to look stupid. All my friends were passing, and they didn’t go to tutoring.” Maricela looked away again, so I knew I’d hit on something. “I thought that I should be able to get it as long as I was doing the homework, but I was wrong. The next semester, I was in the teacher’s office every week, sometimes after every class. I went with a list of questions. I accepted that I needed help.”

  “And you passed?”

  “I passed. Barely. I’m no chemist, but I passed.”

  “I don’t want to waste the teacher’s time.”

  “You think that’s what the teacher thinks?”

  “They’re busy.”

  “They always have time to talk to someone who cares, and if they don’t, then you should drop the class and take it with a teacher who has the time. If you see it as wasting their time, it is. You control that. If you already decided to fail biology, then nobody can help you, not me, not your teacher. Only you can pass it.”

  “Why do you care? You don’t know me. If I’m not in the lab, I’m not screwing up your stuff.”

  “I care because I’d like to see you in my lab. There are at least more women in science these days, but I’d love to see more Latina women. You have a science brain.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’ve got the natural curiosity any scientist needs. When you were measuring your protein concentrations, you could have walked away after I helped you calculate the answer, but you didn’t. You wanted to figure out how it worked. That kind of focus and interest could take you somewhere. You could transfer…”

  “And do what? More college?” she interrupted.

  I ached for what I heard in Maricela’s voice, the belief that she didn’t belong in academia, not community college and certainly not a university. I knew it because my family had met me with the same kinds of questions. Why did I want to go to college? How did I expect to pay for it?

  “Why wouldn’t you go to college? Money?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “There are scholarships, especially for women in science. Does your college have a STEM center?”

  “I think my teacher talks about it.”

  “Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. All areas that minorities are encouraged to pursue. And they are encouraged with money.”

  “Those are all the hard degrees.”

  “If you think it’s hard, you’ve already sunk yourself. Why not think about it as a challenge? You think anyone here is doing anything easy? What if doctors thought it was too hard to figure out how to cure cancer? What if my PI thought it was too hard to figure out how to preserve sight for people who struggle with diabetes? But I see what you mean. It’s all too hard. Let’s play games on our phones instead.”

  Having worked myself into a state, I turned on my heel and began walking again.

  “Wait up,” Maricela said.

  I was mad enough to be mean and picked up the pace. Make her work for it if she wanted to talk to me. I was tired of being nice.

  “Wait!” Maricela was jogging now and came up on my shoulder. “You think I could get a science degree?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” I said, pumping my arms, pushing my body until my calves ached.

  Maricela fell back again. I wanted to scream at her that what mattered was whether she believed in herself. She had to change the way she looked at her education. She had to want to succeed. Had she not heard a word I’d said the whole walk? And then I thought about myself in community college. It was easy to guess that Maricela’s family questioned her in the same way mine had. What I would have given to have someone in my life to say, “Ignore them. Trust yourself.” I felt a wave of compassion for Maricela and turned to see her retracing the steps we’d taken.

  “Come here!” I called. Maricela kept walking, but I easily made up the difference. I grasped Maricela by the forearm. “You’re going the long way. We’re making a circle. If we go this way, we’re almost back to your bench with the creepy guy.”

  Maricela laughed. “My mom gets confused. That’s the one spot she can find when she’s finished.”

  “What did she say when you told her you stopped going to the lab here?”

  Maricela didn’t answer.

  “Oh. She thinks that you come together, so you can go do your service-learning while she’s at her appointment.” Maricela’s continued silence confirmed my thoughts. “Why haven’t you told her?”

  “She thinks I can be a scientist and cure diabetes.”

  “Now I’m really confused. I would have loved to have a family who believed in me. You do, and you still don’t think you can do it?”

  “They don’t know that I’m not passing. They’ll be disappointed.”

  “Then you pass.”

  We walked together, and I didn’t say anything more. I’d already given her a lot to think about. “Do you know about handicaps in horse racing?” I laughed at Maricela’s expression, understanding how far off from our conversation horse racing was. “My brother is super lucky. Sometimes he go
es to the track. One of the things he talks about is the handicap they put on a horse. They want an exciting race, so they put extra weight on the faster horses. That’s the handicap. You put a handicap on yourself letting your test scores go down, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed. Sometimes, the horse with the biggest handicap still wins, and the good news is that in college, you don’t even have to be the student with the highest score. All you have to do is pass. But you do have to race. If you stop, you lose.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re in the race?”

  “I’ll stay in the race.”

  “The next time I see you, I’m going to ask what your teacher said.”

  “What if he says I’ve already failed?”

  “Then you ask him if you can stay in the class to learn what you can to make repeating it easier. If he says there’s still a chance, then you run toward the finish line for all you’re worth. You promise yourself you will give it your all.”

  “What if I need help?”

  “Bring your homework to the lab. I’ll see if I can help.” Almost at our starting point, I glanced at my watch and saw that I still had some time to do stairs if I jogged over to the hospital. “I’m cutting out here, but don’t you dare stop at the bench. You have time to check in with Bautista about your project to see what he expects you to do.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m checking up on you,” I said, jogging backward.

  “Okay.”

  Would a thank-you have killed her? I shook my head and broke into a jog. I was pretty sure that I could at least get in one trip to the top floor of the hospital, and wherever I caught Valerie coming down, I could convince her to do a few more stairs. The high I felt from the conversation spurred me to a faster pace than I usually took the first two floors. When I hit the landing of the second floor, I was already as out of breath as she would be at the last if I was following Valerie’s steady pace.

  My phone rang. I was expecting Valerie, so when the number I’d been waiting to see lit up my screen, a thrill of adrenaline hit my system. I filled my lungs deeply three times. I didn’t want to answer the phone sounding like I was about to collapse, even though I truly felt like I might, but I wasn’t about to miss the call.