Chapter 9
After a long run around Yale campus one afternoon, Shannon returned to her apartment and realized her grades for the previous semester were online.
Grad school at Yale used a very different grading scale, from Honors to High Pass to Pass to Fail.
Shannon had always received either an Honors or a High Pass grade, which was necessary to remain in good standing at the university.
This time, however, her professor had taken into account her most recent laboratory experiment—the one she’d struggled over immediately after her father’s stroke—and failed her.
Shannon sat in the shadow of her living room in a state of shock, gaping at the grade.
It didn’t make a lick of sense to her. Although she’d struggled with the experiment, and although it had taken her several tries, she’d eventually nailed it and written a killer lab report to boot.
She’d assumed she’d get at the very least a High Pass, if not Honors.
Now, with a Fail on her record, Shannon knew that her standing at Yale was up for discussion. She knew that she could be kicked out, if not this summer, then next semester.
Something about it did not sit right with her. Was it possible that she’d really lost her mind so completely? Was it possible that she’d lost track of her own intellect?
Shannon got to her feet and left her apartment without bothering to shower or change out of her running clothes.
Before she knew what she was doing, she realized that she was walking directly toward Cole’s apartment.
She stopped short and laughed at herself.
This had been her habit for years. When something went wrong, she went to Cole.
But she couldn’t go to Cole anymore because Cole had a new girlfriend.
Cole hadn’t even been in contact to see how she was after her father’s stroke.
Shannon rerouted to Russell’s place, as Russell lived two blocks from Cole and was usually home during the day. She knocked on the door without a second thought, then entered when Russell hollered, “Come in!”
She found Russell on the back porch, reading Catch-22. Sunlight made his dark, long hair glow. He wore exercise shorts with holes in them and an old band shirt. He smiled at her till he realized she couldn’t bring herself to smile back. “What’s up?” he asked, setting his book to the side.
Shannon sat on the floor of his porch, pulling her knees to her chin. She told him about the bad grade and how confused she was about it. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“Maybe you should contest the grade,” Russell suggested.
Shannon groaned. “Won’t that make it worse? I mean, if the grade is deserved? It’ll be so embarrassing if they look into it and I’m wrong.”
Russell was quiet for a moment. “But you really think you deserve better.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then what do you have to lose?” Russell asked.
Shannon groaned. She reached for his copy of Catch-22, feeling lethargic and sweaty and strange. She wasn’t sure what she wanted Russell to say, but it was nice not to be alone.
Shannon was curled in a ball on Russell’s porch when her adviser called her. Shannon answered it with a shaking hand, sensing what was coming for her.
“Hello, Miss Peters,” her adviser, Mr. Clark, said. “I’m checking in about these recent grades. Not looking so good, are they?”
“It’s mostly High Passes,” she pointed out. “And I got an Honors, too.”
“But this Fail,” her adviser said. “It’s a reason to worry.”
“I really don’t think it’s, um, right,” Shannon said. “I mean, I experimented. It all turned out exactly the way I planned. It…”
“Oh?” Mr. Clark sounded surprised. “I don’t have anything on file for you. It seems that’s why your professor failed you. It says here that you didn’t turn in the lab report.”
Shannon’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding. I turned in a physical copy. I put it in his mailbox. I…”
“It seems that he didn’t receive it,” Mr. Clark said. “Do you have a copy?”
Shannon stuttered with fear. “He’ll take it? So late?”
“Miss Peters, we know about what happened in your family last month,” Mr. Clark said. “I’m sure we can work something out. Just turn in the report sooner rather than later, all right?”
“I really appreciate this.” Shannon got to her feet and paced back and forth on the little porch. She couldn’t understand how this had happened. Had the professor perhaps lost the report?
“I’m glad we could talk about it!” Mr. Clark said. “I wish you had come to me to talk to me about what’s going on. We could have worked something out.”
“I didn’t even know he didn’t have my report,” she said.
“Right. Of course.” Mr. Clark was clearly smiling. “In any case, I’ll be in touch next week, after your professor gets a grade back to us. Have a wonderful day.”
It occurred to her, as Mr. Clark hung up, that he didn’t believe that she’d turned it in. He thought she’d either forgotten to turn it in or her sorrow about her father hadn’t allowed her to finish it on time. Anger reverberated through her body.
“What’s going on?” Russell asked. He, too, was on his feet, looking at her intently.
“Apparently, he never got it,” she said of her professor.
“But I was there with you,” Russell reminded her. “I watched you put it into the slot!”
“I know.” Shannon rubbed her temples, then shot back through his living room, heaving for the door. “I need to turn it in right away.
“Yo!” Russell just barely caught up to her at the door. “You want to go out tonight?”
Shannon turned to look at him, almost surprised that he was still there.
Her mind was elsewhere. “Oh, um. Yeah! Yeah, we should.” They made arrangements to hit up their favorite dive bar, where, Shannon guessed, she’d try and fail not to talk obsessively about this grade business.
Never in her life had she failed anything.
It wasn’t till she got home and realized that she hadn’t backed up her lab report—and didn’t have a copy anywhere besides the physical copy she’d turned in—that she went into panic mode. At the bar, after a shower and a full-on panic attack, she told Russell what she’d done.
“I can’t believe I didn’t save it anywhere,” she said. “I didn’t even email it to myself!”
“You were going through a lot,” Russell reminded her. “You’re worried about your sisters and your mom and your dad, plus you’re going through a breakup, for goodness’ sake. When Mimi broke up with me, I forgot to put on deodorant! I couldn’t sleep! I went insane!”
Shannon put her face in her hands. She knew Russell was doing his best to calm her down, and it was sweet, but it wasn’t helping in the least. She needed to wake up early and go immediately to the lab.
She needed to redo the experiment—perfectly, the first time, this time.
And then she could get her Honors or High Pass or whatever and move on.
She wouldn’t let this derail her life. She couldn’t.