Drunk Physics
Six of us crammed into the booth. Trinity and I were the only girls—I do remember that.
We weren’t exactly friends, but if Trinity wanted a drink with the guys, she always asked me to come along.
I was her wingman, a warning to the guys that none of them would be escorting Trinity home, however noble their intentions.
I’m a good drinker. Well, not “good” in the sense I can hold my liquor.
I absolutely cannot. I just become someone different, someone fun and funny and vastly more entertaining than sober Hannah.
Being drunk doesn’t just lower my inhibitions—it atomically annihilates them while never destroying my common sense.
All the clever and cool retorts I’d normally think but never say?
They actually come out of my mouth. Plenty of silly nonsense, too, but never anything cruel.
Then Rory says, “You should totally do that. Put it on YouTube.”
“Be my guest,” I say.
“No, you, Hannah.” Liu waves an unsteady finger in my face. “You and Trin. Together. You’d rack up the views. You’re hilarious, and Trin’s… Well, Trin’s Trin.”
Trinity is gorgeous. That’s what he means.
She looks like Hollywood’s idea of a physics doctoral student, the sort who makes actual physics majors roll their eyes because, come on, we don’t look like that.
Except Trinity does. Long curly black hair, huge amber eyes, a slender but curvy body.
I’m embarrassed to admit that the first time I saw her in class, I almost offered to help her find her room because she was clearly in the wrong place.
“So, Drunk Physics, huh?” Trinity says. “How would that work?”
“You guys drink,” Liu says. “A lot. You get wasted, and then you try to explain a physics concept and post the result on a YouTube channel.”
“It would be hilarious,” Rory says. “You should do it, Hannah.”
The other guys take up a chant of “Do it! Do it!” banging the scarred table. I roll my eyes. Trinity shrugs and says, “Sure, why not.”
I look at her. “Seriously?”
A soft smile. “Seriously. It’d be fun.”
And so Drunk Physics was born.
Six months later
I wake on the couch, groaning and reaching for my water bottle, which I’ve learned to put on the table before we start filming.
As I chug lukewarm water, Trinity’s figure sways in front of me. She’s seated at the desk, and she isn’t actually swaying—that’s just me.
Trinity’s gaze is fixed on a massive computer screen where my drunken image gestures wildly.
Thankfully, the sound is off. It’s last night’s Drunk Girl Physics episode.
Yes, we had a name change. Apparently, Drunk Physics wasn’t as original as I thought.
We decided to play on the element that made our show unique.
Drunk Girl Physics. DGP to its fans, and to my everlasting shock, we actually have those. A lot.
Six months ago, Trinity and I started with a laptop and a cheap microphone.
Now we have this ginormous computer monitor, connected to a top-of-the-line laptop, professional-grade cameras and microphones, all courtesy of , a startup channel for web series.
We began on YouTube, but that was an exercise in humility.
Oh, we got traffic—thanks to incredibly kind shout-outs from a few stars in the science-web-series biz—but we also got the kind of attention no one wants.
For Trinity, that was endless chatter asking her to show some body part or another. For me, it was the opposite.
Don’t undress, please, Hannah.
Well, it’s a good thing she’s funny, ’cause no one would be watching her otherwise.
Despite a rocketing viewership—and actual income—we’d been ready to quit, deciding no amount of money was worth the humiliation.
Then Webizode came along, offering us a home with awesome comment moderation.
They gave us the equipment, too, plus promotion, exposure, and enough income for Trinity and me to leave grad-school housing.
We found this gorgeous old house to rent, and yes, Trinity swears she gets spooky vibes from it, but honestly, I think she’d say that about any house more than twenty years old.
While we loved having our own house, it was Webizode’s moderation we appreciated most. Still, the morning after our latest upload, Trinity is scrolling through comments, ready to hit our personal report button if anything slipped through.
“All good?” I croak as I rise from the couch, the floor tilting underfoot.
She doesn’t turn. “That was a really shitty thing to do, Hannah.”
“Wh-what?” I blink and stagger to the desk as my head and stomach spin…in opposite directions, of course.
God, I need to drink less for these videos. Except that’s the point, as Webizode pointed out when I tried subbing water for half my vodka shots. Our fans noticed and were not impressed, and neither was Webizode.
In six months, I’ve exhausted every hangover remedy on the planet. The only thing that helps is having a full stomach pretaping and then drinking enough water afterward that I might as well sleep in the bathroom. I may have actually done that once or twice.
I look down at Trinity, my lurching brain struggling to remember why I’m here.
Oh, right.
“What’d I do?” I say.
She turns on the volume and hits Play on the frozen video. I’m saying, “The prevailing theory of time is that it moves in a straight line, like this.” I demonstrate with an empty shot glass, which does not move in any actual semblance of “straight.”
“Which means that to travel through time, you’d need to…” I did something on-screen with the two empty glasses.
I groan. “Time travel? Really?”
On-screen, I continue drunkenly explaining concepts that I don’t even understand sober.
“But that presumes that time is orderly, when it could actually be,” my drunken self says, and then launches into a Doctor Who quote about time being like a ball of “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”
“What?” on-screen Trinity says.
I continue to quote the show with, “Things don’t always happen in the right order.”
Trinity hits Stop and glares at me. I sink into a chair and blink at the screen. Then I blink at her.
“I made a fool of myself,” I say. “Situation normal. But I’m not seeing what…”
She jabs a finger at a section of the comments.
trekgal98:
Twenty points to Hannah for the Doctor Who refs!
larrybarry:
And they both zoomed right over Trinity’s head.
trekgal98:
Are you surprised?
larrybarry:
LOL
It seems like an innocuous exchange. It is innocuous—all comments pass through Webizode’s moderation.
Profanity is removed. Insults and innuendo are blocked.
Trinity, though, cannot help scraping away those layers of idle comments to find the insult hidden within, and she’s found it here as she always does when I make a geek-culture reference that she doesn’t get.
“You promised to stop doing that,” she says.
I throw up my hands. “I’m drunk, and I’m blathering nonsense.”
“You do it on purpose. You know our audience, and you play to them, and you make me look like an idiot.”
“Not watching a TV show hardly makes you an idiot, Trin. In fact, it makes you smart. Unlike me, you don’t waste your study hours watching Netflix.”
“Because I need to study. You don’t. You’re a freaking genius.”
And that’s what it comes down to. What it always comes down to. Trinity has decided that I’m smarter than her and that our Webizode audience prefers me. She’s…not wrong.
Damn it. I hate saying that. I’ve gotten to know Trinity much better in the last six months, and I consider her a friend.
Yet the more I get to know her, the less I envy her.
Yes, she’s gorgeous. Smart, too, or she wouldn’t be in our doctoral program.
But she has an insecure core that desperately needs to be more than a pretty face.
She is accustomed to being the center of attention, and when the spotlight slides my way, she deflates, her anxieties twisting into anger that homes in on me, as if I’ve stolen that spotlight from her.
“I didn’t mean it, Trin,” I say evenly. “You know that. I’m making a fool of myself.” I wave at the screen. “Time travel? I don’t even know what I’m saying there. Lunatic fringe.”
“They love it,” she says. “Check the stats.”
I peer at the counter and frown. The episode has been up for fewer than eight hours, and it’s already gotten more views than last week’s.
“That can’t be about me babbling incoherent sci-fi references,” I say. “There must be something else.”
I zoom through the comments. I don’t get far before I find what I’m looking for, and I groan anew.
Then I fast-forward the video. About halfway through our segment, a dim light appears over Trinity’s shoulder.
It gradually becomes brighter until there is very clearly a translucent amorphous blob hovering there.
“Ghost,” I say.
“What?”
I point at the shape. “This is a ghostly orb. At least, it is according to our viewers.”
Trinity reads the comments and then squints at the screen. “That thing?”
“Hey, you’re the one who said this place was haunted. There’s your proof.”
She gives me a hard look. “I said this house gave me a weird feeling, and you’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
I tap the screen. “Looks like a ghost to me.”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s light glare. Even I know that.”
“Well, more clicks will make Webizode happy.” I shut off the monitor. “I’ll make you a deal. I won’t bug you about ghosts again, and you won’t bug me about time travel.”
“Fair enough. You want the shower first?”
“I want coffee first. And after.” I purse my lips. “Think I can rig the brewer up to the nozzle and shower in it?”
She rolls her eyes and heads for the bathroom.
The orb is back. It’s right where it was in the last segment, hovering over Trinity’s shoulder.
I’d set my alarm to get up before Trinity could check our latest episode. I wasn’t looking for the orb. I’d forgotten all about it. I just wanted to comment-skim, make sure I hadn’t said anything else to upset her.