Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
My mentor once told me science was about making peace with being the most clueless person in the room. At the time, I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.
I learned that the hard way during my undergrad, when I spent an entire seminar on marine chemical ecology trying to Google terms under the table without looking suspicious. Spoiler: I looked suspicious. Also, Google doesn’t know what to do with allelopathy in benthic invertebrates.
I’ve since accepted that confusion is part of the job description. If you’re not regularly overwhelmed, you’re probably doing it wrong.
That same mindset—that science rewards curiosity, tolerates uncertainty, and occasionally requires emotional triage—is what gets me through the first week of lectures and orientation.
That, and the constant, lovingly judgmental curation of Maya’s playlist in my name, which now includes a song for every time I said something remotely nerdy or accidentally wore my shirt inside out. (Twice. So far.)
I’ve acclimated about as well as a bag of goldfish undergoing their ceremonial float-in-the-new-tank ritual. Which is to say: not dead. Marginally confused. But adapting.
And now, finally, the part of this entire academic pilgrimage I’ve been most excited for is about to begin.
Because yes, I am here for myself. To learn, to grow, to evolve into one of those sharp, formidable women in STEM who make biotech bros deeply uncomfortable.
But I am also here for BIOL 403. The Field Problems course.
The one that haunted my dreams during undergrad and has been on my vision board since I learned what a vision board was.
Mostly because it’s taught by her.
Dr. Kymbert. A legend. A one-woman institution. She wears pantsuits and her research on coral microbiome manipulation—engineering symbiotic communities within coral polyps to make reefs more resilient to stressors—is basically marine wizardry.
I’ve read every paper she’s ever published. Twice. Some of them three times, but only because I got too distracted by the footnotes the first time through. If I ever manage to exude even 12% of her intellectual authority, I will consider my life a success. Anything more and I’m running for office.
And so I take my seat in the small lecture hall—beige walls, noise-canceling panels in varying shades of turquoise, with chairs to match. It’s compact, maybe forty seats total, which suits me just fine. Less space between me and the woman I’ve been idolizing since sophomore year.
Students trickle in, some buzzing with the same barely-contained anticipation currently speeding up my heart rate, others radiating the energy of people who deeply resent being awake on a Monday. The room hums with shifting backpacks, tired conversation, and the faint scraping of laptops opening.
The anticipation breaks five minutes later when Dr. Kymbert walks in through the double doors at the back, descending the steps like gravity bends slightly in her favor, with nothing in hand but a dry erase marker.
Her gaze sweeps the room as she makes her way to the front, where she stops, looks at us for a beat, and says, “I always love seeing what kind of degenerates end up in this class.”
The silence stretches. A few confused glances.
“In here, we study everything that can go wrong during fieldwork. Which is, for the record, everything. And since this course isn’t required for any of you, I can only assume you signed up voluntarily. So yes, you’re weirdos. The best kind. My kind.”
A few scattered laughs. She turns and writes her name on the board—half-legible, but unmistakable. I’ve seen it too many times in journal articles not to recognize the sharp slope of her K.
“I’ve never worked on a project that went according to plan. I wish I had. But that would make me a liar—and I assume you get enough of those out there.”
She gestures vaguely toward the door. This time, the laughter is real.
“In this class, you’ll learn how to think on your feet. How to salvage good data from bad situations. How to keep going when your experiment collapses, your dive gear stops working, or your pH meter decides to mutiny.”
There’s a pause, then a smile that feels like an invitation and a challenge all at once.
“Welcome to Field Problems.”
What follows is a brief, unscripted version of her CV—select highlights spoken in fluent scientific brilliance.
Coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.
A broken desalination pump in the Maldives.
Getting heatstroke during a conference in Marseille and still presenting her work on algal symbiosis to a standing ovation.
The room reacts accordingly. Oohs, and aahs and a few impressed murmurs.
I just sit there, quiet and entirely still, with a grin that’s starting to hurt my face, because somehow, impossibly, she’s better than I imagined. Fierce and brilliant, utterly herself.
This is the kind of woman who rewrites the field. The kind who explains complex systems without once oversimplifying them. The kind who assumes we’re capable of keeping up.
And I get to learn from her.
A student near the front raises his hand. Dr. Kymbert acknowledges him with a subtle lift of her chin—the kind of gesture that says, this better be good.
“How are we supposed to learn this kind of stuff in a lecture hall?” he asks. It comes out more combative than intended, though the bead of sweat forming at his temple suggests that it’s simply stress hijacking his social filters.
She doesn’t bristle. Instead, she smirks, leans casually against the podium, and uncaps her marker once, twice, three times.
“Excellent question,” she says, with a kind of relish that makes me suspect she’s been waiting for someone to ask it.
“You’re all here for your master’s. Working on theses.
Running your own experiments. Spending more hours than is medically advisable in our labs or knee-deep in fieldwork.
Statistically—and I say this with affection—something will go wrong. Probably several somethings.”
She lets the silence hang just long enough to make the room shift uncomfortably.
“And that’s where we come in.”
The word we hangs in the air like a low pressure system. I’m not the only one who tenses—the entire class seems to collectively freeze at her use of the plural.
She laughs. “As you’ve likely guessed, my research keeps me… occupied. And frankly, I’ve earned the right not to personally shepherd each and every one of you through your inevitable disasters.”
A pause.
“That’s what PhD candidates are for.”
Her smile deepens as her gaze lifts to somewhere behind the last row, prompting the entire class to twist around in mild confusion. I follow suit—reluctantly—and that’s when I see him.
There, leaning against the small desk by the entrance, stands what can only be described as an anomaly of the human genome. And I mean that in the most scientifically admiring, completely unhinged way possible.
He’s quiet. Still. Like he was placed there rather than arrived, posture relaxed but impossible to ignore.
One ankle crossed over the other, arms folded across a chest that I have no appropriate words for.
His sweater, dark and fitted, clings too tightly across his shoulders to be doing it voluntarily, and the sleeves are pushed to his elbows, revealing forearms that frankly belong in a textbook on musculature.
He scans the room, slow and clinical, his expression unreadable.
Not cold exactly, just… precise. Efficient.
A full-body assessment in a single glance.
And then, with no rush at all, he pushes off the desk and walks down the steps toward the front of the lecture hall—the same path Dr. Kymbert took earlier, but entirely different in effect.
When he stops beside her, she looks smaller by comparison. And I know for a fact she’s five-ten.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t fidget or nod or acknowledge any of us with so much as a twitch of the mouth.
Not once, I realize, has his face shown even a flicker of emotion. Not annoyance, not interest, not curiosity. Nothing. Like someone forgot to code that part of him in.
“This is Mr. Wilkes,” Dr. Kymbert says, eyes glinting like she knows exactly what effect he’s having on the room.
“And through no gracious offer of his own, he’ll be my TA this year.
” Her smile toward him is pointed, wry. “The joys of being a PhD candidate include having to put up with me… and you.” There’s a light ripple of laughter as she gestures loosely toward us.
It’s clear I’m not the only one mentally recalibrating.
He does not look like a PhD candidate. Mr. Wilkes looks nothing like the countless students I’ve met throughout my academic career.
Or the professors. Or any human person, really, who hasn’t been genetically engineered to make eye contact a high-stakes event.
Frankly, if this is what they used to advertise marine biology, enrollment would be up by 300%.
He steps forward, nodding at Dr. Kymbert with the kind of deference that somehow still looks vaguely annoyed.
“Holden is fine,” he says. “Hi.”
That’s it. Just hi.
Okay, so maybe he’s not exactly warm, but he’s not cold either—more like… temperature-neutral. Impossible to read. And yet, every part of my nervous system seems to be reading him just fine.
The only sound that follows is Dr. Kymbert’s low chuckle behind him.
He exhales, as if speaking to a group of eager graduate students is the sort of burden no one warned him about.
“My research focuses on ocean-atmosphere interactions and coastal storm systems. Probably overlaps with most of your interests. I’ve also had a generous number of things explode in the field, so that qualifies me to help you not do the same. ”
At that, one side of his mouth tugs upward—just barely, just enough to short-circuit a few people in the front row.
“I’ll cover lectures when Margaret’s unavailable—”
I choke.