Chapter Five Keely
Chapter Five
Keely
My dedication to uplifting women within the science community is my greatest passion. Between being president of Ash Mountain University’s Women in Science Society and co-founder of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Science Olympiad, my—
She backspaced.
I. . .
“I have nothing else to offer,” Keely muttered to the empty Friday-morning library the following week, then groaned. She was supposed to be working on her essay, but it was turning into a resumé, and she already had one of those.
She navigated to the bookmarked scholarship website again, then unstuck the enter key for the fifth time today.
She’d had to take a special trip into town to see if the tech store could save it after that rude guy at the career counselor dumped his smoothie on it, and the fan still made funny noises when she typed too fast. Not to mention it smelled like a rancid garbage can.
With her free hand, she flipped to the page in her planner she’d dedicated to the scholarship.
Keely was due to start her community services today. Services, plural, because she didn’t know how to do things by half measures. Of course, she needed three. What if the first two opportunities didn’t work out?
Each Friday afternoon, she’d be reading at a local elementary school. On Saturdays, she was set to grocery shop for an elderly woman named Matilda and sort her daily medicines. And Sunday, Keely had her first shift volunteering at a local animal shelter.
When she was going to work on her still-struggling thesis or help Zoey plan the charity auction for Women in Science, Keely didn’t know.
But she’d find time. Like now, when she had exactly an hour between Chem 547 and her once-weekly genetics lab.
Or tonight, when she was supposed to be sleeping.
Why was Q Coffee open until midnight if not to foster late-night studies, anyway?
She sighed and closed the lid to her laptop, knowing it would stick together when she tried to open it next time.
This essay wasn’t happening right now. She’d learned through years of perfecting her concentration: if she tried to force something when she wasn’t in the zone, she’d just have to redo it later.
She decided her time was better served fueling up before lab, so she packed up.
January in the Virginia mountains was crisp, cold, with snow clinging to the mountaintops and fluffy gray clouds dimming the blue skies overhead.
Keely much preferred it to the humid and sticky air of summer, when she couldn’t move without sweating, or the horrible allergies of fall and spring, when she couldn’t breathe without sneezing.
She ducked her chin further into her scarf as she headed to the Q.
Ash Mountain University was nestled within its namesake range, and if they didn’t have one of the best in-state biology programs, Keely may have chosen it for the views alone.
Campus itself was arranged in a circle, with the Q—officially, the Quad—at the center.
It was the hub of campus, a large glass-walled food court and coffee stall.
The walls sat on tracks, so on temperate days it became an open-air patio, seating impossible to come by unless you knew the right people.
Draw a straight line out from there to the edges of campus and you’d find dorms and upperclassmen apartments, named for their cardinal direction. Keely and Zoey lived in East Tower.
Everything else—Davidson Hall (the STEM building, named after a white man who probably didn’t do enough to earn the honor), Ed (the education building), Humanities (creatively called Humanities), and Libby (the Liberal Arts building, which housed what was left)—sat more or less in between.
They were connected with a mix of worn cobblestone and well-trod dirt paths students decades before Keely’s time had carved.
She’d already decided to come back one day, after making an Important Scientific Discovery, and rename Davidson after herself.
Thankfully, the line at the Q was short enough to grab coffee and have time to drink it before lab started. They weren’t allowed water bottles at their stations, much less a staining dark liquid. Keely loved the severity of it all.
She was pulling out her wallet to pay for her drink when someone else’s card appeared over her shoulder.
“Add a medium Americano, please.” Sam Mabry smiled at Keely’s bemused expression. “And two eggwiches.”
Keely grabbed his forearm. Between her gloves and his coat, it was mostly fabric. “Hey, you don’t have to—”
“Nah, I got it.” Sam grinned. “Told you I owed you. You saved my ass on that assignment last week.”
She wanted to argue, but she didn’t have time. With a playful eye roll, she relaxed, tucking her wallet back inside her bag. “You passed?” she said.
“Not only did I pass. I got an A.”
She beamed at him, holding up a hand for a high five, which was cringey for half a second before Sam returned it and grinned wider.
They moved to the side to wait for their coffee, and her stomach twisted. Keely really hoped one of those eggwiches was for her. “How are things otherwise?”
Sam shuddered. “My parents are on my case about figuring out post-grad. I’ve applied at a few different jobs, but nowhere has called me back yet, and a lot of the science gigs want a master’s degree.
I’d need to work for a while to afford it, and they say the longer you’re out, the harder it is to go back in. ”
Her stomach grumbled, louder this time, and Sam glanced over, mouth quirked. Her neck warmed beneath her scarf.
“I’m right there with you,” she said. It wasn’t the whole truth; unlike Sam, Keely knew exactly what she wanted and how she was going to get it, but the part about parental pressures?
She knew that all too well. “There are special scholarships for gap years,” she murmured, watching the barista slide two eggwiches into paper sleeves.
Then she fought a flinch as she realized what she’d said.
As much as she liked Sam, she really didn’t need more competition.
Sam was nonplussed. “Like Pursue Your Passions? Yeah, I heard about that.”
Shoot. If he’d heard about it, other people likely had, too. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, but I’m not applying. I heard one of the jocks has an eye on it, and I don’t know. Seemed like a waste of time going up against that.” Sam shrugged, and when the barista called his name, he stepped up to grab his haul.
One of the jocks. “A football guy?” Keely pressed, shifting her weight. She’d take crumbs at this point—literal or figurative.
“Football player,” Sam corrected, handing over a coffee and, to her utmost joy, a sandwich. “But no. One of the track stars. Apparently, he’s heading for the Olympics.”
“The Olympics were last year.” She took a sip of her blonde latte. It was scalding, a little too heavy on the steamed milk and a little too light on the espresso, but it would do. She cleared her throat. “Weren’t they?” she asked when she realized she didn’t know for sure.
Sam snorted around a bite of his sandwich. “They don’t just train for three months, Keel. It’s an ongoing thing. Like how you practice chemical reactions for fun, even in the summer.”
“I don’t do that,” she lied, and she could tell she was getting a little hangry. She slid the eggwich from its sleeve. The first bite cleared her mind enough to realize Sam was teasing. “Are you heading to Davidson?”
“Home,” Sam said. “I’m gonna make lunch.”
Keely eyed his half-gone sandwich. “Of course you are.”
He grinned and bumped her shoulder with his. Was he flirting with her? She checked her stomach for butterflies, her pulse for racing, her cheeks for blushing, but there was nothing.
It wasn’t that Sam wasn’t cute—he had chin-length brown hair, sparkling green eyes, a nice smile. But hard as she tried, she’d never been able to care about dating or sex more than she cared about the unchecked boxes on her to-do list. Sam, as much as she valued his friendship, was no exception.
Keely pushed open the door.
The wind ripped it out of her hand, hard enough for her teeth to slam together and her sandwich to fall from her grasp, landing on the doormat. The one that thousands of students walked across and wiped their feet on daily.
She stared down at the dismantled sandwich and pretended she was teary eyed from the chilly breeze.
“Bummer,” Sam said. “I’ll grab you another one.”
Her phone dinged with a reminder: ten minutes until lab. “No time, but it’s fine.” She scooped up the sandwich and threw it in the garbage. It landed right next to her hopes of eating while the sun was still up.
“Here, take mine.” Sam held out his sandwich, maybe four bites left in total, but sniffled in the same breath, and she eyed it warily. Keely Sinclair did not, under any circumstances, share food.
She waved Sam’s concern away and said her goodbyes.
She was halfway to Davidson when her stomach gurgled again. Her one bite did more to tease her than anything.
Lab was only two hours. She could grab something quick from a drive-thru on the way to the elementary school. And, after that, she’d be one step closer to winning the scholarship out from under the mysterious track star.
He probably wasn’t even that fast.