“Dr. Mendelson thinks she has something, doesn’t she?”
To keep from meeting his stare, I focus on the slow drip of coffee and run over the ratio of ground beans to water for the optimal caffeine extraction.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
It has been a while since the lab has been on high alert; the gossip mill churning while everyone looks for signs. It is still too early. Nothing definitive. If anything, it is even more questionable, since in the end, everything, all the tests, all the results, the data, will have to be documented and replicated and tested again and again. We are only beginning, yet even that fact holds power. Hope unchained is a beast.
The drip slows to a halt and I reach up into the cupboard to pull down two mugs. As soon as I set them on the counter and reach for the coffeepot, he pounces and catches my eyes.
Dad pumps one fist into the air. “Goddamn it. She is brilliant. I knew she was going to change that lab around. But in one year. Who would have even guessed? Goddamn it.”
“Dad, you can’t say anything. Absolutely nothing. Interns only get the gossip, not the real briefings. Nothing is for sure, okay? This meeting could just be about announcing some new clinical trial or something.”
“Gracie, come on. Give me some credit here. How long have I been in this business? Ten, twelve years? Besides, that’s why they have corporate in an entirely different building. So we don’t pressure you geek types.” Dad turns to his computer screen and his fingers fly over his keyboard.
“How about pizza tonight?” I ask.
Dad mutters, “This could be the link. This could be the opening for the next round of clinical trials. I can’t believe she did it in a year.”
Watching him work in such excitement reminds me of all the other times when he thought he was onto something. Back then, when I was younger, I could lean against him and he would reach out with one hand to pull me close while with his other hand he typed out a final sentence. Then he would hug me. Lift me up onto the counter and sit me in front of him to talk. Really talk. About the too many movies and TV shows I was watching and how come I had no friends. Sometimes after those conversations, he would rush around and sign me up for tennis or pottery or ukulele lessons. Only he would forget what day, what time, and I would end up either missing them, or worse, sitting there waiting, feeling abandoned because he forgot to pick me up again as the sympathetic or annoyed eyes of strangers gazed down at me. After a while, I stopped complaining and learned that reading at home was just as good as any friend.
Now I move away from his frenetic energy. This need that consumes every day of his life. All for love. For us. For me. The exhaustion creeps across my shoulders, drips down my spine.
Before heading out to the car, I yell back, “Don’t forget the pizza.”
Silence.
I resist the urge to yell again and simply pick up my backpack by the door and head out. If nothing else, we can have soup. There is always soup in the house. I have come to hate soup.
• • •
When I drive by the place I usually pick up Hannah, at the cross stop where the dirt road meets the paved one, and find it empty, I know she is still angry. She has never let me drive her home, so I don’t know where she lives. And I can’t call her because she doesn’t own a cell phone. Every time I tried to push my old one on her, she would get angry until she finally shouted that her family couldn’t afford those things. I stare down the dirt road and wish so badly to see her walking toward me. I want to cry the way Toad probably did when Frog left him. If Hannah would forgive me, I would eat all the soggy sandwiches in the world. At school I search the halls, but there is no sign of her. Dave Riley can’t be found either. In AP Chemistry, I overhear a girl named Gloria talking to her lab partner, Beth.
“Why didn’t I sign up to go on the Costa Rica trip?” Gloria complains.
“Because we have an AP exam in a month. And you know it’s a god squad trip.” Beth carefully titrates some hydrochloric acid into the sodium hydroxide base. “That was another milliliter.”
Gloria jots it down in her notebook. “I don’t know why we’re considered the smart ones when we’re stuck here while they’re in ninety-degree tropical heat and swimming with sea turtles.”
“Oh, stop whining. They’re doing missionary work. They aren’t on the beach lying around. They’re supposed to be building some damn church in the mountains. That’s why the trip is free.”
“You have a point,” Gloria says, and turns back to her notebook.
I calculate the millimeters for the acid-to-base ratio for the titration and wonder if Hannah has gone on that trip with Dave. He would have gone, since he is a part of that Methodist church group. Maybe Hannah signed up at the last minute to go with him? If only people were as predictable as chemical reactions.
My only comfort of the day comes when I drive into Genentium’s parking lot. Here I have a role. A function that is bigger than just breathing for living’s sake. Here there is a purpose for me. I enter the building ready to control my mind and focus on results. It’s going to be a big day for Genentium. For Dad. But what if Norah is right and all of it will just come to nothing?
At the end of the day shift, everyone whispers and rushes down the
