Chapter 16
Ren
My sanctuary in the fossil lab is haunted.
And not by the ghosts of dinosaurs past, or an unseen infestation that threatens the preservation of all the specimens we keep in here.
By someone very, very living, even though I’m not entirely convinced he actually has a soul.
I recognize the distinct sound of his loafers against the floor. The slow, measured, purposeful—self-important—strides over to my lab bench.
“What do you want, Scott?” I don’t look away from the coelacanth, focusing on the drips of Paraloid B-72 from the pipette into the small cracks along its vertebral column.
His polished shoes edge into my vision, and even though I don’t see it, I can imagine him frowning when he puts his hands in the pockets of his slacks, asking, “Why’d you rotate this one out?”
“Consolidants age, Scott,” I mutter, pinching the end of the pipette before flicking my spare hand towards him. “As does your presence in this lab.”
“Pithy,” he starts. “Contrary to whatever it is you believe about me, Ren, I’m not here to double-check your work. Graham wants to see you in his office.”
I snort, tempted to turn around and chuck the pipette at him.
But I roll my shoulders back, setting it down gently beside the coelacanth, and turn in my chair to face him.
He looks down at me, an unfazed brow arched, and I blink up at him through a tight smile.
“I’m sorry—we aren’t back in school. You aren’t my TA.
You don’t get to summon me on his behalf.
” Pointing a singular finger to his ID badge that contains his name, his credentials, and his job title, hanging from a lanyard with a stupid tyrannosaurus on it, I continue, “I studied the job description pretty thoroughly, and I don’t remember that being a part of it. ”
His brows dip from unfazed to displeased.
“I was in his office, and we were working through some budgeting items pertaining to the new collection.” Scott points towards my lanyard, draped over the back of my lab chair.
The one with my name, my lesser credentials, and my role beneath him.
“The same ones you and I will have to work through together, too.”
My shoulders start to slump at the sight of his extended finger, pointing down at me while he stands tall. I think of all the ways he made me feel stupid—the ways I let him make me feel stupid—and I try to straighten my shoulders again.
I think they might roll into the curve of Miller’s smile.
The one he made at trivia each time I got excited over a question or an answer.
The one that made me feel anything but stupid.
“Is it urgent? I’m a little busy.” I gesture back to the fish, frozen in time and waiting to be fixed.
His eyes flick to the coelacanth, and I know he’s not checking to see how much work I have left; he’s checking for corrections. It’s a piece of him—of us and our relationship, really—I only started to see after I left.
Nothing was ever about him wanting to help me or see me succeed. Nothing was from the kindness of his heart or his desperate desire to prop me up so I could reach something all on my own.
It was about keeping me in debt and reminding me who was, and forever would be, on top. Because I needed him, he didn’t need me. He chose me, and how lucky was I?
Scott’s eyes find mine and he gives a slow shake of his head, but his mouth turns downward. “He didn’t say. But I would like to discuss the budget for next quarter with you, if you feel so inclined.”
My eyes roll skyward. “Scott, I’m not the one who sees fit to dip their toes out of the professionalism pool. If you need to speak to me about the budget, I’ll come find you after I’m done with Graham.”
Scott barks a laugh, and the edge of cruelty cuts across my skin.
“I’m not sure you’re one to talk about who does or doesn’t see fit to dip their toes out of the professionalism pool, as you so eloquently put it.
” He angles his head, all sharp lines, and in a room filled with fossils of some of the most dangerous predators that ever roamed the planet, he’s somehow still the worst one.
“Did you enjoy the game last week? Quite a series for him.”
Exhaling through my mouth, my fingers clench into fists, and I feel my brow furrow, an attempt to prevent the tears, but my shoulders are still in that familiar line.
Smiling blandly, I blink up at Scott. “I did enjoy the game, and it was quite a series for him. It’s almost as if he’s excellent at his job.
” I wave a hand over the fossil still in need of desperate attention on the lab bench.
“Like I am. Like I’m trying to be right now, so if you’ll excuse me, I have a flaking vertebral column to attend to. ”
Scott scoffs, disapproval tugging tight on the lines of his neck as he shakes his head. But he lifts a brow, turns on his heel, and calls over his shoulder, “My office after Graham’s to discuss the collection and the next quarter, then, so you can keep being so good at your job.”
“Glad you got to throw your weight around,” I mutter, stretching out my fingers before I pick up the pipette and look back down at the coelacanth.
They stare back up at me, frozen in time, 240 million years ago.
“We’re not so different, you and me,” I whisper.
“Both stuck for so long that we needed help to be able to stand up straight. Lucky for you, I won’t trap you with a narcissist for the better part of a decade while you figure it out. ”
Settling back against my chair, my shoulders still set in that same curve I first saw on Miller Colson-Burke’s mouth, I get back to work.
“You wanted to see me?” I knock gently on the wood frame of the door.
“Hm?” Graham makes an absentminded noise, eyes narrowing behind his glasses as he studies his computer screen before they cut to me in his doorway. “Oh. Ren. Yes. Please come in, sit.”
He waves a hand towards the leather chair opposite him, but his eyes go back to the screen, and he keeps scrolling.
My heels clicking across the tile floor, resounding through his perfectly kept office, doesn’t distract him. Not even the scrape of the chair when I pull it out from the desk, or the creak of the leather when I fold myself down into it.
He’s lost in thought at whatever he’s reading—probably some fascinating article about the tyrannosaur being a precursor for why science and academia should remain forever male-dominated, sent to him by his wildly professional assistant curator of vertebrate paleontology.
He doesn’t look up until I prompt him.
“Graham?” I force a smile. “Scott asked to chat budget before the end of the day. Do you want me to come back?”
I’m not usually this direct, not with anyone, and certainly not with him, and certainly not since I lost out on the job. But there’s something about having sat through an entire conversation with Scott where I didn’t crumble. It’s buoyant, almost.
Graham blinks at his screen before shaking his head like he’s ridding himself of an errant thought. “Apologies. No, no. We can chat now.”
He says it like he didn’t try to summon me, and I’m the interloper on his afternoon. My brows pinch together, but I cross my legs, resting my hands against my thigh, smiling as I wait.
Clearing his throat, he frowns down at the papers and journals scattered over the surface of his desk, before asking, “How are things going? I recognize you’ve been put in a unique position, what with the role going to Scott, given your personal history.
And professional history, I suppose. You two studied together, didn’t you? ”
“We did. Throughout undergrad and our master’s programs,” I answer, automatic and regurgitated words, but my heart dips and I clarify, “My first program, obviously. He was doing his PhD when I completed my second in museum studies.”
“Hm,” Graham muses, another absent noise of consideration I don’t really have the energy—or the desire—to try and decode right now. “And I expect you’re both keeping things that way? Professional, I mean?”
I bite down on my cheek, because there are these other words, automatic, not regurgitated, that pop up. That, maybe, he should be checking in with his bright young mind in paleontology, who sees fit to haunt the lab and my fossils like some kind of ghost of exes’ past.
But my cheeks burn when my smile stretches faker and further. “Of course.” I swallow, frowning, when trepidation settles on that straight line of my shoulders I was so proud of. “That’s not . . . you’re not . . . you don’t have any concerns about my job performance now that he’s here, right?”
It would almost be funny, for Scott to come take the job I wanted and then somehow be responsible for taking the one I have, too.
“What?” Graham mutters, mouth tilted down as he rifles through the refuse on his desk until he produces a manilla folder. He blinks at me from behind his wire-rimmed glasses, and strands of flaxen hair drop down across his forehead. “Oh, no. Not at all. You do excellent work, as always.”
I wish it didn’t, but the compliment rolls up my spine, and I find myself sitting up straighter.
But then he keeps talking, and he reminds me, a bit like his new assistant curator loved to remind me, that my work might be excellent, but it’s just like me—not quite good enough.
“There was just no comparison, really. His qualifications to yours. No matter your years of experience here. Unfortunate, he applied, in the end.” Graham holds up the folder. “I wanted to speak to you about this, actually.”
He sets it back down, pushing it with three fingers over the mess of his desk like we’re trading nuclear codes.
My fingers wobble when they grip the folder. Maybe Scott was right about everything, Imani was wrong, and I was so very wrong, and it’s printouts of the photos circling of Miller and me. At the grocery store. At the game. Wherever.
But I flip it open, and it’s nothing to do with my fake fraternization at all.
“This is a posting for an assistant curator at the Museum of . . .” I trail off, my finger dragging over the paper before I arch a brow. “I didn’t think they had a large vertebrate collection at the Maritime Museum of Natural History in Halifax.”
“They don’t.” Graham shakes his head. “But they do have a small permanent collection of fossils from the surrounding area. Some unique pieces from the Bay of Fundy, and of course, they have rotating exhibits. We’ve lent to them before.”
“I know,” I say tightly. “I’m the one who decides what we lend out.”
He nods along, but confusion digs lines around his eyes when he frowns. He looks at me like he was expecting me to be jumping out of my seat or prostrating myself at his feet. “An old colleague of mine is the director there, and she reached out to me asking if I knew of any possible candidates.”
I blink. “I’m sure it’s a lovely museum but—”
“You want to be a curator, no?” He angles his head, and with the wide, confused eyes, the glasses, and the hair, he reminds me a bit of one of the taxidermized owls in the Birds of Canada exhibit.
“I do,” I start, fingers tightening on the folder.
I’m not sure how to explain to him that I do want that.
It was what I wanted and reached for. But I wanted it here.
This place where I was trying to carve out dreams of my own.
Where I thought I might be worthy of standing amongst one of the biggest collections in the country.
It was about proving what I could do. Not settling for something that—no offence to the small collection at the Maritime Museum of Natural History—is below me.
The paper slices against my fingertips as I stare at Graham, considering my next words, and I wince, pulling my hands away like it burns me.
It does, I think. Just not in a way anyone can see.
It’s a flame from a lighter held by another man underneath the petals of me contained in this small planter because someone put me there. Because I let someone put me there. Even though I had roots that desperately wanted to stretch and grow. That flame wants some of those petals to furl inward.
Blood wells, tiny red rivulets, and his next words slice tiny cuts into gaping wounds.
“It could be a good opportunity. Your experience would far outweigh the educational requirements at a museum with a small collection. A foot in the door, so to speak, seeing as you’re still without your doctorate after all these years. ”
Graham doesn’t notice the blood, and he turns back to his computer. “Think about it. I’d put in a good word for you.”
I don’t think he notices the way my shoulders slump, the tears biting at my eyes when I thank him and push to stand.
He certainly doesn’t hear the echo of his words reverberating around the room. How loud they get when they join the echoes of people who came before him that follow me all the way down the hallway.
Without, without, without.
Small, small, small.