9
Emory did not stop.
Instead, over the next several weeks, he created the illusion that he had stopped.
Despite drafting a new proposal for dissertation research and getting it approved by a broadly smiling Dr. Kemp who clearly thought she had reformed a wayward researcher, Emory continued his invisibility project on the side.
Doing double duty in the lab wreaked havoc on his sleep schedule and did nothing to help his plummeting GPA, but it kept his scholarship secure, and that was really all he cared about.
During the day, he worked on the inane drivel he sold to Dr. Kemp, and at night, when the students were asleep and the campus buildings were locked, Emory—clad in all black—used the skeleton key he got from his campus job to sneak inside.
By no means was he beating the “mad scientist” allegations.
One afternoon, sometime in March of the same semester, Marvel came into the lab full-on whistling, and not even whistling well.
He slid over to Emory’s workstation. Tiredness twisted the muscles around Emory’s temples, and Marvel’s presence only strengthened the knots that nearly blurred his vision with their intensity.
“You’re throwing me a birthday party this Friday,” Marvel said.
“To my recollection, I am not.”
“Right, duh, yeah, but it’s happening at our apartment, and I’m not going to go around telling people it was my idea, so I’m telling them that you’re throwing me a birthday party on Friday. Does that make sense?”
“No,” Emory said, realizing too late that his answer would only elongate an interaction that he sincerely had no time for.
What did he care if Marvel was having a birthday party at their apartment?
As long as nobody went into his room, it was of no consequence to him.
There was a 115 percent chance he would be in this lab anyway.
Marvel went over his plan again, slower this time, using his TA voice.
“Tell them whatever you want. I’m busy right now,” Emory said.
“Word on the street is that you’re working on something new,” Marvel said. This was always his way, preferring to jabber over actually getting anything done.
Emory shook out his cramping hand. “I am.”
“That’s good to hear. We’re getting you back on the right path.
None of those wild theories of yours anymore.
Pretty late in the game to switch, though, huh?
” Marvel asked, though he seemed to already not be listening.
Emory suppressed his groan. This was the last topic he wanted to be discussing, and Marvel was the last person he wanted to be discussing it with. “You stressed?”
“How could you tell?” Emory deadpanned.
“You throwing me this party is coming at the perfect time.” Had Marvel believed his own lie?
Certainly he couldn’t have been under the impression Emory would ever volunteer to throw a party, let alone a birthday party for him, a man who never wiped the seat after he took a piss.
“You’ll blow off a little steam, and we’ll find you a girl and get you laid. You never have anybody over.”
At his assumed heterosexuality, Emory froze. What, did Marvel want to listen in on him having sex next door? Emory shuddered but forced a smile onto his face. “Can we talk about this later? I really need to keep working.”
Marvel nodded, backing toward his own workstation. “You got it.”
Emory mistakenly assumed “later” would never come.
Late on Thursday night, just as he was sneaking out of his apartment to get back to the lab, he ran directly into Marvel, coming as he was going.
“Whoa, there,” Marvel said, smelling of alcohol and some woman’s floral perfume. Clearly, he’d started celebrating his birthday early. “Where you off to in such a hurry?”
Emory came up with a quick lie. “The gas station down the road. My stomach hurts. I think I might have a bug. I need ginger ale and some crackers.” Through his windbreaker, he pressed a hand to his belly, trying to sell it.
He shifted his barely zipped backpack behind his legs before Marvel got a look at it.
“Shiiiiiiit,” Marvel said. “Better not be an airborne thing. I don’t want my party canceled because you’re blowing chunks.”
“It’ll be fine. It’s probably just something I ate,” Emory said, though he honestly couldn’t remember the last time he sat down and had a meal. He existed entirely on protein bars and energy chews, which did strange things to his digestive system that one day he’d have to study.
Marvel let out a sigh of relief. Emory recoiled from his rancid-smelling breath.
“That’s good. I don’t want my party canceled.
Oh yeah, about the party. My dad is taking me golfing tomorrow and then we’re meeting my mom and brother for late lunch at the club.
” Marvel always referred to the country club his family belonged to as “the club,” as if it were an on-campus affinity group anyone could join and not some pretentious fortress for North Carolina’s über-rich.
He never failed to make Emory feel like some sad street urchin.
“I’m going to be out all day. I need you to pick up my cake from the bakery in the afternoon. I can leave you the keys to my truck.”
Marvel had not one but two cars on campus.
Clearly, though, he’d forgotten one crucial detail.
“I don’t have a license.” Emory’s foster parents hadn’t helped him get a permit, and by the time he was eighteen, he barely thought about driving.
All he cared about was going to college and starting over.
“It’s not a far walk,” Marvel said, leaning on the doorframe, which barely contained him.
With all the friends Marvel had, Emory didn’t understand why he was asking this of him, of all people.
But there was something pitiable and even sweet about drunk Marcus Marvel, and Emory really needed to get to the lab at that point, so despite his better judgment, he agreed.
“I’ll text you the bakery’s address tomorrow.”
Emory tried to get around him, but they were suddenly back at square one. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
Uninterested in lying again, when Marvel was obviously just going to forget, he said, “Out,” and left, too excited by that night’s agenda.
By the next evening, Emory had forgotten all about the drunken exchange with Marvel in the doorway. Calendars and conversations were discarded in his brain, replaced with solutions and calculations as he feverishly sought out an innovation before anyone discovered what he was up to.
It was 8 PM on Friday, and Emory was still in the lab, growing frustrated that his fatigued hands refused to move as fast as his mind was firing. Physiology was the study of the human body; he knew all about how it functioned, and yet it constantly worked against him. Still, he pressed on.
Prepared, he had a viable serum and a lab-bred albino mouse to use as a test case. All he needed now was to summon the willpower to pick up the needle. He had done his due diligence. There was very little chance of toxicity. In his gloved hands, the mouse seemed calm.
“Here goes nothing,” he said to the mouse before performing the subcutaneous injection in the loose skin at the back of its neck.
He then returned the mouse to its cage and sat there waiting.
And waiting …
And waiting …
Hours ticked by, and nothing happened. The mouse moved about and drank water like usual. Emory’s eyes grew dry as disappointment swept through his body. Hoping some big mistake stuck out to him, he checked his notes.
The serum was supposed to lower the organism’s refractive index, so that light passed right through tissue.
But there the mouse scurried, as opaque as he was the day Emory plucked him from the bunch.
“Sorry, little buddy. We tried.” The mouse, none the wiser to Emory’s scientific failing, happily ate a handful of sunflower seeds sprinkled onto the bed of his cage.
Upset, Emory let out a very loud, creative curse in the empty lab.
Exhaustion crept up his back and caught him in a stifling chokehold that nearly put him to sleep right on the spot.
In this state, he was of no use to anybody, so he cleaned up, stowed his lab mouse in a safe, inconspicuous place, and went home.
As soon as he opened the door to the apartment, he was slapped in the face by a vapid pop song.
Crowded dance floors, world tours,
Bass so good it shakes the floors
What was this terrible music, and who were all these people?
Bouquets of birthday balloons were scattered around the dimly lit room where everyone was dancing and talking, holding red Solo cups. Annoyed, he pushed inside with his bag and fought his way toward his room, the door to which was wide open. The light was on and spilling out into the hall.
A bunch of his stuff had been moved around. Bed shifted. Hamper turned over. Closet flung open. He was having a hard time making sense of what he was seeing. By his desk, Marvel stood over the wastebasket, reading through previously balled-up pieces of paper.
“What are you doing in my room?” Emory asked, barely above the din of the party.
“What are these?” Marvel asked, turning around and holding up written evidence of Emory’s duplicity.
They were discarded notes on his invisibility serum, unmistakably in his handwriting and foolishly dated as recently as the day before.
How had he left a paper trail this bad? His knees buckled with fatigue as if in answer.
Emory reached out to grab the papers in what felt like slow motion. “Give those back.”
Marvel held the papers high up over Emory’s head, reminding him of a former foster brother who frequently stole his beloved chemistry set and played keep-away with it to get a rise out of Emory, for the fun of seeing Emory cry.
The memory of that cruel laughter at his tears echoed in his weary head.
“Where is my cake?” Marvel asked.
Emory could do complex math equations with the snap of a finger but could not decode this seemingly random question. “Your what?”
“My cake, man. You told me you would pick it up from the bakery for me today while I was out,” he said. The previous night’s interaction looped back on him. He did recall saying something to that effect, but his mind was too clouded. “I texted you the bakery address this afternoon.”
Emory prickled at this. “You know I don’t have a phone!”
“Still? What kind of adult doesn’t have a phone?”
What kind of adult?! A poor one. One who actually has to work to get the things he wants. Emory didn’t say either of those things, though, aware of the mounting number of eyes on him. He wished his serum had been a success so he could vanish from sight.
“Why didn’t you say anything when I said I would text you? I could’ve written it down for you.” His speech possessed an alcohol-induced lisp.
“You could’ve asked someone else,” Emory shot back.
Not speaking for a second or two, Marvel repeatedly shook his head. “Whatever, man, I asked you, but you were too busy off in your own little world where you think people can turn invisible. Like, the fuck? You know this is a school for medical professionals, not magicians, right?”
Laughter from the crowd at the door kicked Emory in the back. Embarrassed enough, he refused to turn and count the spectators. Tears clung for dear life to the corners of his eyes.
“Just give me back my papers,” Emory tersely whispered. Everything he had worked so hard for was falling apart.
Marvel squawked at that. “I don’t think so. I think I’m going to show these to Pawpaw Steve. I think he’s going to want to know what you’re wasting my family’s fucking money on.”
Marvel strode from the room without sparing a second glance at Emory.
Finding one last shred of strength, Emory slammed the door behind him, right in the faces of his snickering classmates. Their expressions haunted him even after he couldn’t see them anymore.
Heart racing and head spinning, Emory paced around the room as if he were a wild animal desperate for escape. There had to be a way to fix this. There had to be.
Yet, as the party ticked back up to full volume on the other side of the wall, Emory came to the sad and sudden realization that he didn’t belong there anymore, and that maybe he never had.
After more than a decade in the broken foster system, in houses that were cold despite what the thermostat said, he assumed higher education would be his salvation, an oasis where he would meet like-minded individuals who understood his pursuits and understood him.
Ridiculous, how he could study his whole life and still be foolish enough to believe the hypothesis that there was a place in this world for him and people who would want him, when he had no data to base that conclusion on.