Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
PRESTON
It’s been an hour since Sawyer walked me back to the office I share with the other grad students in my program. He kept going on and on about how nice Fitz is and isn’t it great that I’ll have help with my research now.
No, it’s not great. I don’t want help. I certainly don’t want help from Fitz.
God, he was so annoying. All that smiling. All that laughing. Throwing himself at Sawyer like that. What does he think he’ll accomplish by sucking up to my best friend?
Look at me, boo hoo, moving to New York all by myself. Look at me, I’m so smart, I can explain how artificial neural networks work. Look at me, I’m a smart jock, I’ll see you at the gym later.
Well, fuck Fitz. Sawyer’s a smart jock too.
Just because he doesn’t study neuroscience doesn’t mean he’s not smart.
He got into Westbourne on an athletic scholarship and he was the captain of the rugby team.
He also kept a 3.9 GPA the whole time. The only reason he hasn’t gotten his bachelor’s degree yet is because he’s working so much at the gym.
I’m still fuming silently at my computer screen when a loud buzz makes me jump.
My phone is vibrating with an incoming call from my mom and I’m sorely tempted to ignore it.
Nothing good ever comes from a call from my mom.
She always wants me to do something I don’t want to do or go somewhere I don’t want to go.
But even as I’m staring at my phone, a message pops up from Madison.
Madison
Your mom’s calling you. Answer the phone.
Ugh. I can ignore Mom, but I can’t ignore Madison. She won’t hesitate to hunt me down and berate me into compliance.
I pick up my phone and tap on the accept button. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, Preston. How is school?”
I spin around in my chair, leaning back so I can stare up at the ceiling. “It’s fine, Mom.”
“That’s lovely. Listen, The Art Society is holding a fundraising dinner, and your father and I bought out a table. We expect you to be there.”
I stifle a groan. I hate it when they summon me like this. It makes me feel like I’m some sort of thoroughbred they’re trotting out for their friends to inspect. “I’m really busy. I have a lot of work to do.”
Mom sighs as if she’s the one being put upon. “Your name is already on the guest list, and it’s for a good cause—”
Everything my parents do is “for a good cause,” but is it really?
These high society events are full of snobby, rich people bragging to each other about how much money they’ve donated.
Do they actually care about “the cause”?
Most of the time, they don’t even know what the cause is.
All they’re concerned with is maintaining the right image for their supposed friends.
What I’ve never been able to understand is why my parents want me at these things.
I don’t know how to make small talk or butter people up and lavish them with false praise.
I don’t know how to work the room or network or any of that.
In fact, I’m more of a liability than anything else.
I can never be trusted not to stuff my foot in my mouth.
“—you don’t have to do anything—”
Which is a blatant lie. If I didn’t have to do anything, then why do I need to be there?
They want me to smile and shake hands with people I don’t know.
They want me to pretend I’m the son they’ve always wished I was, the one who will take the company over from Dad someday and be some powerful pharma CEO.
“—Madison will collect you on the day of, make sure you’re dressed appropriately, and accompany you to the dinner—”
Chaperone me is more like it.
“—all you need to do is be there and smile—”
I don’t smile. Not the way they want me to.
“—the flight is already scheduled—”
“Flight?” I cut in. “The dinner is in Boston?”
“Of course, it’s in Boston.” Mom scoffs and I try to remember if she mentioned that already. I don’t think she has. “Where else would it be?”
“I don’t know,” I respond in resignation. Annoyed, I push my foot against the floor and my chair goes flying down the narrow space between the rows of desks. It crashes into the wall before I manage to stop it and my phone slips out of my hand. When I pick it up again, Mom’s still talking.
“—Madison and Sawyer and they’ve both confirmed that you don’t have anything else scheduled for that evening—”
I want to counter with something like, “They’re not the bosses of me.” But the truth is, they are. They know my schedule better than I do. If they say I’m free, then I am.
“—we don’t ask much of you, Preston. Your father has already pushed back his own plans by years to let you complete your studies. The least you can do is show your face every once in a while.”
It’s not as simple as that, and she knows it. She and Dad talk about my academic career as if they’ve been so lenient with me. Like this is some wild, youthful adventure they’ve allowed me to go on and eventually I’ll need to settle down and grow up.
They don’t understand that this is who I am. I’m a neuroscientist. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I want to do with my life. What’s so wrong with scientific inquiry? How is it reckless to want to understand the human brain?
“—don’t want you to give Madison a hard time. She’s being very kind to escort you here and back.”
Madison’s always been the model child. My parents probably wish she was their kid instead of me.
It’s why they pushed us to be together for so long.
Madison went along with it until we graduated from high school because her parents loved the idea as much as my parents did.
But then she decided she didn’t want to be saddled with me for the rest of her life. I don’t blame her.
“I’m not going to give—”
“It’s settled then. I’ve got to go. Goodbye.”
The dial tone rings in my ear before I can finish my sentence. “Bye,” I say to the empty room.
I spin my chair around in a circle as I pull up the text message thread with Madison.
Preston
I don’t want to go to the fundraiser.
Madison
Neither do I.
So why do we have to go?
Because mommy and daddy pay for everything, so when they say jump, we say how high.
I shuffle my chair back to my desk and toss my phone on top.
My parents do pay for everything, but not because I’ve asked them to.
I have a trust fund my grandparents left me.
My parents don’t control it and there’s more than enough in it to live off of.
I don’t need their money. But they insist, and as with almost everything else in my life, I don’t really push back.
Madison
It won’t be so bad. Just one evening. There and back in no time.
Ugh. I push against the floor again, sending my chair back-first down the row toward the door of the office. There’s plenty of room, but I’m stopped by something—no, someone—sooner than I should have.
I look up to find Fitz looking down at me with an awkwardly nervous expression. He’s holding the back of my chair.
“Hey, am I interrupting?”
I jump up and spin around, putting some space between us. What the hell is he doing here? Doesn’t he have class? Isn’t he supposed to go find Sawyer at the gym?
“What do you want?”
Fitz flinches like I’d physically slapped him. “I wanted to ask you about the orientation Professor Graves mentioned. Do you have time in the next few days?”
I tighten the grip on the phone in my hand. I want to spit out, “No, I don’t have time,” but I manage to swallow it down.
I can put him off and tell him to come back some other time. I’m busy and I haven’t gotten any work done today. I glance at the dark screen of my computer. But am I going to get any work done? Not if Fitz and Mom keep circling around me, asking me for things I don’t want to give.
“Let’s just do it now.” I stomp back to my desk, grabbing my chair from Fitz along the way.
“Now?” Fitz glances at his phone. “How long do you think it’ll take? I wanted to get to the gym.”
The gym. He means Sawyer’s gym. My hackles rise at the reminder and I throw my phone into my bag a little too forcefully.
“It won’t take long,” I say, except it will. It’ll take as long as I can possibly drag it out for. Without waiting for an answer, I shoulder my way past him. “Lab’s this way.”
Fitz manages to catch up and fall into step with me with barely a huff. “I really am interested in your research, you know.”
I try to hurry my steps, but Fitz doesn’t seem to have any trouble keeping up.
“I’m excited to help you with it. I’m sure I’ll learn tons.”
I’m not always very adept at reading people.
I tend to miss subtle shifts in tone, the micro changes in facial muscles, and the way the same words can mean multiple things.
But Fitz seems genuine in his enthusiasm—he certainly gave that impression when he was gushing all about my research during lunch with Sawyer.
“But, uh, I don’t want to step on any toes or anything, if you know what I mean.” He doesn’t elaborate, which makes me think he might be saying more than I’m hearing.
“Okay.”
“You can tell me to back off, I won’t be offended or anything.”
Can I? I’d love to. But Professor Graves wouldn’t be too happy about it. “Okay.”
There’s a pause before Fitz speaks again. “Anyway, the sentiment stands. You know, for whenever.”
What the hell is he talking about? If I can foist him off on some other grad student, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. But Professor Graves was clear this morning—I’m stuck with him. “Just follow instructions and don’t do anything stupid.”
Fitz flicks his eyes sideways toward me in surprise, but he wisely shuts his mouth and nods. “Got it.”
We walk the rest of the way to the lab in silence, thank god. I reach for my ID badge and—wait, where is it? I pat my pockets and only find crumpled napkins and pieces of scrap paper. I dig through my bag—phone, notebooks, textbooks, journal articles… where the hell is my badge?
“Here, I’ve got mine.” Fitz holds up his own school ID. The colors on it are clear and bright, and his picture shows him smiling with that annoying dimple on his face. It’s newly printed, crisp and fresh, unlike the faded, scratched-up, peeling card I can’t find.
He holds it against the black rectangle next to the laboratory door. It beeps once, the little light turns green, and the door unlocks.
“Thanks,” I mutter under my breath as he lets me enter first.
The neuroscience lab is a series of rooms in the basement of the science building.
A couple rooms are for testing, where subjects come in and put on a brain scanning cap so we can capture their brain activity.
The rest of the rooms are filled with diagnostic equipment that enables us to process and analyze the data we’ve collected.
Fitz lets out excited exclamations at every piece of equipment I point to, asking dozens of questions, one after another.
It’s annoying the first few times he interrupts, but then his enthusiasm starts rubbing off on me.
I’ve been working in this lab for years now, and even though I love my research, the novelty of seeing state-of-the-art equipment like this has worn off.
It’s all still shiny and new to Fitz, though, who can’t seem to stop himself from touching everything. He examines the caps and puts one on his own head. I boot up some programs and show him the different types of scans we perform.
He asks to see the latest data I’m working with and despite myself, I do.
“Wow. That is so cool!” he exclaims, not for the first time since we set foot in the lab. “How did you get Static Diffusion to do that? I thought it didn’t have that capability yet.” He points to the newest tweak I’ve made to the model.
So I explain, falling deeper and deeper into my research with every question he asks. He’s got an endless supply of them and most of them are good. I almost forget who he is and why I don’t like him when he sits up abruptly and grabs his phone.
“Oh, shit. I told Sawyer I’d meet him at Mars in half an hour.” He looks sheepishly at me. “Can we pick this up later? This is really cool stuff and I want to see the rest of it.”
The happy, giddy feeling I get when I’m engrossed in my research crashes and burns around me. He’s meeting Sawyer. At the gym. So they can do jock things together.
“I’m so sorry.” Fitz pulls the cap off his head and stands, pulling his bag over his shoulder. “I’m super excited to work with you, though. Thanks so much, Preston!”
He rushes out of the lab, leaving me sitting there at a computer terminal all alone—fluorescent lights bouncing off the white walls, the hum of the computer the only sound breaking the silence.
I shove to my feet, the wheeled office chair shooting out behind me, and clench my hands into fists. Something tight and twisted and uncomfortable lodges itself in the middle of my chest. It grows and expands until it feels like it’s eating me from the inside out.
What was I thinking, letting my guard down around Fitz? He’s not my friend. I’m not supposed to like him or get along with him. I have to work with him and that’s it. I need to remember that the next time he tries to worm his way in. I need to remember he’s the enemy.