While I'm Falling Part 2

"It doesn't really matter who you were sitting by," she a.s.sured me. "He just meant it as a statistic."

Gretchen sometimes didn't understand when I was joking. But on the whole, she was freakishly smart. If life were fair, if hard work and discipline really could trump pure apt.i.tude, I would have easily been the one to succeed out of almost any group of three in that auditorium. Gretchen, on the other hand, went out a lot. She had three different fake IDs. Soph.o.m.ore year, we had inorganic lab together at seven in the morning, and Gretchen would show up with mascara tracks down her cheeks, her blond hair tangled and reeking of smoke. But she never seemed particularly pained after she put on her lab coat and goggles. She worked through the most complicated t.i.trations and equations as if she were just stumbling around the dining hall, getting herself coffee and cereal-nothing a girl with a little hangover couldn't manage. She usually finished early.

I did okay that year. I put in the time. I memorized the formulas, the periodic table, the thermodynamic laws. I stayed in and studied when Gretchen went out. And though it seemed a little unfair that I should have to work so much harder than she did, I was happy I could at least keep up. The future seemed bright and certain. My father started saying, "What's up, Doc?" when he left messages on my phone.

This year, however, was different. First semester was almost over, and I was already sinking. Organic chemistry was everything I had struggled with and barely understood in inorganic the year before-only now all the diagrams had gone 3-D. For the first time, it didn't matter how much I studied. As early as September, I went into my TA's office hours for extra help. But when I tried to explain what I didn't understand, he used the word "obviously" a lot, squinting at me as if I were playing some joke on him, as if I were a small child pretending to be a chemistry student-no actual twenty-year-old could possibly be so dense.

"You just have to get past organic," Gretchen said. "It's a hurdle, that's all. Don't let it psych you out."

I slid my box of Chicken Satay across the table, offering her a piece. We were studying in the ninth-floor lobby, the door to the women's wing propped open so Gretchen could see the door to her room. She was the ninth-floor RA, and she had told a freshman from Malaysia that she would be available until ten o'clock that night to help her study for her first driving exam. Gretchen was nice like that. She wasn't even on duty tonight; I was the one saddled with the walkie-talkie. It lay on the table beside me, and every time it made a clicking sound, I closed my eyes and wished it back to silence. So far, this tactic seemed to be working.

"Seriously," Gretchen said. "None of this c.r.a.p we're studying now has anything to do with being a doctor." She waved off the chicken and took another gulp of coffee. It was nine o'clock on a Wednesday night, but she was on her second cup from the vending machine downstairs. Her favorite bar had Ladies' Night on Wednesdays-after we finished, she would go out. "You can forget all of this after the MCAT," she said. "Just go bulimic, you know? Stuff your brain. Take the test. Purge. Repeat."

I tried to look rea.s.sured so she would quit talking. I appreciated her studying with me, since it was charity, really; she was already a chapter ahead of me in the book. But I couldn't read and listen to her at the same time. The R/S system also has no fixed relation to the D/L system. For example, the side-chain one of serine contains a hydroxy group, -OH. The R/S system also has no fixed relation to the D/L system. For example, the side-chain one of serine contains a hydroxy group, -OH. I turned to the glossary in the back of the book. This was English. This was my native language. There was no reason I couldn't understand. I was a little warm. I took off my sweater. I looked back at the book. Gretchen wrote something in her notebook. She turned another page. I turned to the glossary in the back of the book. This was English. This was my native language. There was no reason I couldn't understand. I was a little warm. I took off my sweater. I looked back at the book. Gretchen wrote something in her notebook. She turned another page.

"Can we go over this again?" I leaned toward her. "I don't even really understand what chiral molecules are."

She nodded and drank more coffee. "Chirals aren't a big deal," she said. "The book makes it confusing. They're just, like, mirror opposites." She put her coffee down and pressed her hands against each other, extending both pinkies. "You just have to be able to, you know, picture what the molecule looks like and flip it around. Like imagine what it would look like in a mirror." She smiled and wiggled her fingers. Her fingernails were painted a pale and sparkly pink.

That was it, I thought. That was what I couldn't do. I couldn't flip molecules around in my head. The atoms drifted apart on the first rotation, and I lost track of what and where they were. I looked back at my book so she wouldn't see my face. I didn't want her to feel sorry for me.

"So what are you doing this weekend?"

"This," I said. I didn't look up.

"Oh. Well." She made an attempt to sound pleasantly surprised. "Since you'll be in anyway...cover for me Sat.u.r.day? I'll trade you any weekday you have."

"I can't," I said.

I could feel her looking at me, waiting. I always covered for her when she asked.

"I'm house-sitting."

"Oh. Cool. For a professor or something?"

I shook my head. She waited again.

"For Jimmy Liff," I said.

Gretchen's surprised expression contained so many circles, her round blue eyes, her O-shaped mouth, the doll-like splotches of pink on her cheeks.

"How do you even know him?"

"He works here. He's a security monitor."

"I know that." She raised her eyebrows. "You two just don't seem like you would be friends."

I played dumb, but I knew what she meant. Jimmy Liff was a sixth-year sociology student who took his position in dorm security a little too seriously. His dedication to enforcing rules was a little surprising because of the way he looked: His head was shaved. He wore tight white T-shirts, even in the winter. Both his well-muscled arms were tattooed-a snapping crocodile on the left, a series of Chinese characters on the right. His nose was pierced with a silver, bolt-shaped object that looked both heavy and painful. But Jimmy Liff was no anarchist, no rebel. He wrote people up for music turned ever so slightly too loud. He was ruthless with early morning runners who forgot to bring along their IDs. And around Halloween, during a fire drill, he'd keyed open a room and found a small marijuana plant on someone's windowsill. As soon as the alarms stopped blaring, he'd called the police. There was some rebellion. Someone fearless had painted "FASCIST p.r.i.c.k" on the door of Jimmy's orange MINI Cooper as it sat in the employee section of the dorm parking lot.

"He creeps me out." Gretchen wrinkled her nose. "Why are you doing it? Why does he need a house-sitter?"

"He's leaving town for the weekend. I guess he has high-maintenance plants."

Gretchen lowered her chin, suspicious.

"Orchids," I said. "He said orchids and ferns."

"Jimmy Liff raises orchids?"

"That's what he said." I looked back down at the book. "I just have to mist them every day and check the humidity. He also needs a ride to the airport." I lifted my head and smiled. "I'm going to drive him in, and then I get the car for the weekend." I leaned back in my chair and waved my hands above my head. I was that excited.

"Wow. The one that says 'FASCIST p.r.i.c.k'?"

I frowned. I wasn't going to let her bring me down. She had a car. She didn't understand. "He got most of that off," I said. "You can barely see it now. He's giving me fifty dollars. And I heard his place is really nice. I think he has a Jacuzzi."

"Yeah, I heard that, too." She looked over my shoulder to check the door to her room. She looked over her own shoulder, too. "You know why it's nice, in my opinion?"

I shook my head.

"Drogas," she whispered. Gretchen was taking Spanish, too. "He's selling drogas. drogas."

I frowned again. This was information I did not want.

"You actually know this?"

She looked at me as if I were stupid, not just about chiral molecules, but about the world in general. "How many college students do you know who live in a luxury town house by the country club? And that car?"

"Circ.u.mstantial evidence," I said. It was what my father would have said, what Elise would have said. I could think like them sometimes. I just couldn't mimic the intimidating way they said things, sounding bored and ready to fight at the same time. I just sounded anxious. "Maybe he has rich parents."

"Then why does he have a job that pays minimum wage?" She fastened the lid on the chicken. "Please. It's for contacts. He's supplying the dorm, I bet. Maybe all of them."

I paused to consider what she was saying. It was a weakness of mine, this need to slow down and take information in, to always wonder if I was, in fact, in the wrong. Neither Elise nor my father ever seemed to do this. When I got quiet with either of them, they considered me stumped and, if we were arguing, conquered. But Gretchen was waiting patiently, her chin resting in her hand.

"It doesn't make sense," I said. "If it's true, then why did he call the police on the marijuana?"

"Because he's mean." She shrugged. "I heard he mostly sells pills."

I drummed my fingernails on the table. My fingernails were not painted sparkly pink. They were chewed to the quick, awful-looking. "You heard this from a lot of people? People who would know?"

She shook her head. "Just a couple of people."

"So basically you're telling me a rumor?"

She put her palms up and nodded.

I nodded, too. Fine then. So it probably wasn't true. And even if it was, really it didn't matter. I wasn't going to be Jimmy Liff 's friend. I was just going to stay at his nice house, and drive his nice car. Also, I had already told him I would do it. He was counting on me.

Gretchen squinted. "No offense, but I wonder why he asked you. You in particular, I mean."

I shrugged as if I didn't know. In truth, the answer to this question was embarra.s.sing. Jimmy Liff had actually looked me in the eye and explained that I was simply the most boring person he knew. "I don't mean that as a bad thing," he'd added quickly. "I don't mean you're like, boring to talk to. I mean you seem boring in a good way. In a way that would be good for my plants and my car. You don't even smoke, do you?"

It didn't hurt my feelings. I understood what he meant. Jimmy and I had landed in the same Shakespeare cla.s.s the previous spring, and though I had been a little afraid of him at the beginning, we had been paired by the teacher to work on a presentation for Measure for Measure Measure for Measure together. I went to work right away. I made handouts; I memorized one of Isabella's soliloquies; I found video recordings of several different productions. Perhaps I went a little overboard, but it was a good thing I did, as all Jimmy did was show up the day of the presentation. But group work was group work, and we'd both gotten A's. He'd acted chummy with me ever since. together. I went to work right away. I made handouts; I memorized one of Isabella's soliloquies; I found video recordings of several different productions. Perhaps I went a little overboard, but it was a good thing I did, as all Jimmy did was show up the day of the presentation. But group work was group work, and we'd both gotten A's. He'd acted chummy with me ever since.

"I don't care why he asked me." I reopened the Chicken Satay. A drop of sauce fell on a diagram of a benzene molecule in my book. "I just care that I'm going to get out of here for a weekend. It's like a prison furlough."

Gretchen laughed, and then stopped. "You hate it here that much?"

"Yes." I took a bite of chicken. "I hate it that much." I couldn't believe she didn't hate it. She was an uppercla.s.sman, too. In the last week, we'd had three fire drills, all of them pranks, the alarms going off between four and six in the morning. And on just my floor, two weekends in a row, someone had thrown up in the lobby.

"Is Tim going to stay with you?"

I shook my head. This weekend was his grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. He was driving up to Chicago on Friday, and he wouldn't get home until Sunday night. I was actually relieved about this. I would need to study all weekend, nonstop, no breaks. The test on Tuesday would be weighed heavily for our semester grade: If I did well on it, I could still do okay in the cla.s.s, and be on track for medical school. If I didn't do well on it...there would be no point in even taking the final.

"What a waste," Gretchen said. "You know. The Jacuzzi." She leaned back and smiled. "I like Tim. He's nice."

"Thank you," I said. "I think so, too."

"He graduates next year, right? A master's? Engineering?"

I nodded.

She bobbed her eyebrows and whistled low. "He's going to make a lot of money."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I'm just saying...Why is that a bad thing? Why are you getting mad?"

I looked down at my book and shook my head. I didn't know why I was mad. I only knew I wasn't ready for the test.

"Well," Gretchen said, "since the boyfriend who may or may not be rich someday won't be around, it might be fun to have a few people over...not a party, just, you know..."

I shook my head. "I have to study. That's all I'm doing."

"Okay." She sighed and turned a page. "I admire your dedication."

I barely smiled. My dedication, if that was even what it was, didn't seem like anything she should admire. I was just scared all the time. I had already told everyone-my parents, Elise, Tim-that I was trying for medical school. They would be understanding if I quit, of course; but they would be understanding that I was weak, or not as smart as they were, or that I just couldn't do it. I didn't want their understanding. I was the one I couldn't let down. I didn't want to have to go through life knowing that I didn't do something I wanted to do, just because it was difficult. Even relentlessly difficult.

I'd felt this way for a while. My soph.o.m.ore year, when I was having a hard time in calculus, I found a talking Barbie at Goodwill, and I instantly recognized her as the Barbie who said "Math is hard! Let's go shopping!" She had come out when I was young, and she had been in the news-people were angry about the implied message, and the toy company finally changed her computer chip to make her say something else. But the Barbie from Goodwill was the original version. I propped her up on my desk. Whenever I was sick of calculus, struggling with derivatives or integrals, I would press the Barbie's b.u.t.ton, and stare into her stupid eyes until I was motivated to get back to work.

Tim said he wanted to help Barbie-he made her wire-rimmed gla.s.ses from a paperclip; he drew a pocket protector directly onto one of her big Barbie b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Gretchen thought it was funny, too. Elise wanted one for herself. Only my mother, when she saw my Barbie, didn't laugh at all.

"Honey. Why are you doing this?" She held the mangled Barbie up, and then turned her worried gaze to me. It was always strange when she was in my dorm room. Even if she just stopped in for a few minutes, I felt invaded, taken over. The room was just too small.

"It's a joke," I said. "It's just a joke."

She frowned. "I didn't even let you play with these when you were little." She set the Barbie back on my desk. The doll tipped over, and my mother bent her at the waist so she could properly sit up. She looked back at me. "Veronica. You're a kind and thoughtful young woman. If calculus is hard, then calculus is hard. It doesn't mean you're a doll."

"It's a joke," I said again.

She did not appear convinced. "This doll has nothing to do with you." She stared down at Barbie with wary eyes. "Honey. She doesn't even look like us."

At ten o'clock exactly, Gretchen closed her chemistry book. "That's it for me tonight," she said. "You want to take a break? Help me figure out what to wear?"

I shook my head, my finger marking my place in the chapter. The D/L labeling is unrelated to ( The D/L labeling is unrelated to (+)/(-). It does not indicate which enantiomer is dextrorotatory and which is levorotatory. "No, thanks," I said. "Have fun." "No, thanks," I said. "Have fun."

She was just standing up when the elevator doors opened, and Third Floor Clyde emerged. She smiled and sat back down.

I didn't know Third Floor Clyde. I only knew his name because everyone did. He was a dorm celebrity, famous for being attractive in a s.h.a.ggy-haired, dark-eyed way that made him seem like he should be out starring in pirate movies, not living among us in a dorm in Kansas. Back in August, on move-in day, the lobby was so hot and crowded that a lot of guys, and even one of the dads, took their shirts off as they carried rolled carpets and gaming chairs in from cars and trucks; but when Third Floor Clyde, waiting for an elevator with a large potted fig tree at his feet, took his shirt off, some smirking mother had elbowed her daughter and whispered, "Check out Adonis over there." Only a week later, his real name was common knowledge, along with his floor number. Two weeks later, when I was brushing my teeth, I overheard one showerer tell another that Third Floor Clyde was not only beautiful, but an art major, and also a brave environmental activist. "He chained himself to a tree," she shouted over the curtain, her voice full of reverence. "So he's, like, beautiful, and he's also, like, deep."

His voice was certainly deep. "Hi," he said now, the elevator doors closing behind him. His T-shirt read "5K Run Against Cancer," and it fit snugly over his lean, lithe frame. He glanced at Gretchen, but he smiled at me. Sometime in September, much to my confusion, Third Floor Clyde had started looking at me with a friendly familiarity, his eyes lingering on mine for so long that I started to worry we did know each other, maybe from back home. But I surely would have remembered a face like his, even if he'd been two years younger.

"Hi," I said, my voice as dazed and pleasant as I felt. I was just saying h.e.l.lo. Tim said h.e.l.lo to other girls, certainly. And some people just happened to be very attractive. That didn't mean you couldn't say h.e.l.lo to them. He continued to smile, so I did, too. Nothing wrong with that. Here was a person trying to be friendly. I should be friendly back. His forearms, somehow still tan, were flecked with white paint, as were his jeans and T-shirt. Both Gretchen and I watched him walk to the door of the men's wing. When the door closed behind him, she turned to me.

"What was that?"

I was still smiling. "What was what?"

She didn't say anything. She was annoyed.

"I don't know." I shook my head. "I don't even know that guy."

"Everyone knows who that guy is." She looked back at the door to the men's wing. "And he was giving you a look a look."

"I don't think so." I laughed and shook my head. But it was flattering to think so, especially because I'd been sitting next to Gretchen, who was blond and, at the moment, wearing a scooped-neck shirt with a pair of smiling lips on the front. But he had looked at me. Not that it mattered. I had a boyfriend. I was in love with my boyfriend.

I looked back down at my book. A molecule is achiral if, and only if, it has an axis of improper rotation; that is, an n-fold rotation followed by a reflection in the plane perpendicular to this axis that maps the molecule onto itself. A molecule is achiral if, and only if, it has an axis of improper rotation; that is, an n-fold rotation followed by a reflection in the plane perpendicular to this axis that maps the molecule onto itself. Whatever jolt I'd gotten from Clyde's smile was already draining away. Whatever jolt I'd gotten from Clyde's smile was already draining away.

Gretchen poked my arm. "So what are you going to do? Are you going to try to talk to him?"

I was confused for only a second. "Clyde?" I looked back at the door to the men's wing. "No," I said. "I have a boyfriend."

She gave me a pitying glance. "You're not married. Yet."

"But I'm happy." I smiled and poked her back. It was the truth and, for me, an adequate response. But I imagined she wouldn't see it that way. When I was in high school, I only had a steady boyfriend for a total of two months. I always felt a little sorry for, and even a little superior to, the girls who started holding some guy's hand in eighth grade, and were still holding the same one when we graduated. It all seemed a little claustrophobic, meeting the love of your life at fourteen. And maybe this wasn't fair, but I sort of a.s.sumed that these girls who ate lunch with their boyfriends every day, who huddled against a boyfriend's arm in the courtyard while everyone else milled about, were the girls who probably weren't going to college. Their horizons already seemed limited. If that was what they wanted, fine. But I was a different kind of girl.

I even thought that way my freshman year of college, when I was just dating around. But then I met Tim, and all of a sudden I understood why some of those girls in high school had not been able to just let go of their boyfriends' hands. Tim was simply my favorite person to talk to, my favorite person to be around, my favorite person to look at. If I had known Tim in high school, I would have been a girlfriend myself. It was my first inkling of how foolish it was to judge harshly and to discount fate, and to truly believe I was one kind of girl, and not another, just because of some decision I thought I'd made.