Friday, March 8 – 5:00PM
Maria
My phone rings and interrupts my thoughts for the third time in as many minutes. I don’t care who it is—I’m busy! If I didn’t answer the first two times, I’m not going to answer the third time either!
“Okay, now that you’ve got the slide stained and prepared,” I tell the wide-eyed freshman as she scrambles to take notes, “grab some fluorescent pictures and let me know what you see, alright?”
“Wait... how do I do that?” she squeaks nervously, twirling a strand of her blond hair around her fingers as she writes feverishly. Her lab coat is so big on her that the sleeves keep falling down over her hands.
“The fluorescent microscope is in the darkroom behind you.”
She stares at it as if she’s never seen a microscope before, and I sigh and try not to get frustrated with her. Was I this mind-bogglingly stupid when I was eighteen?
“Okay, I’ll show you how to use the microscope,” I tell her, and I wave for her to follow me. This is what I get for finishing my senior research project so early—I get to teach freshmen for the rest of the year.
My phone rings again from inside my jeans pocket beneath my lab-coat. This is getting ridiculous.
A faint, unearthly blue glow illuminates the room as I turn on the microscope and start calibrating the camera. My juvenile assistant hovers nervously until I’ve finally had enough of her and tell her to go get her slides.
“Put the slide on the stand, and now add one drop of oil,” I quietly instruct her. I'm almost certain I knew how to use a microscope when I was a freshman.
Her hands shake as she works, and she nearly jumps as my phone rings yet again. I reach under my coat to see who keeps calling me, and in the two seconds I’m not looking, the girl manages to break everything.
My head snaps up at the sound of crunching glass, and my idiotic freshman trainee is gaping at the microscope in abject horror with her hands over her mouth. Her slide is broken into dozens of pieces.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to,” eeps out the tiny girl. She looks like she’s about to cry.
I sigh and point to the waste-bin. I’ve had enough.
“That’s it for the night,” I groan. “Clean up your mess, make a new slide, and we’ll do more on Monday, alright?”
“I’m sorry!” she stammers again. “I was just trying to focus in and I hit the macro and not the...”
“It’s okay,” I interrupt. “Just... don’t touch anything next time, alright?”
I excuse myself and head out into the hall to check my phone again. It’s Owen.
My heart skips a beat and a smile spreads across my face. Never in my life did I expect that someday I’d grow up to be a romantic, but I’m happy that I was wrong.
I immediately race out into the hall to call him back, and phone rings and rings and rings as I wait impatiently.
“Oh come on,” I mutter. “You called me five times, and now you don’t answer?”
The phone clicks as he finally picks up, and I suddenly don’t know what to say.
“Hi there!” says Owen across the line. His voice is perky and happy today, and I feel warm just from hearing it. “What’s up?”
“Um... well, just returning your call,” I stammer. Where did all my words go? Why do I always lose them when I’m talking to him? It’s just not fair. I have so many things I’ve love to tell him, and I can never get them out!
“Oh, right!” he says. “I wanted to see if you’re up for going out tonight. The grad-student union is open late on Fridays, and they’ve got something pretty neat going on this week.”
“Sure! I’d love to!” I answer excitedly, my heart doing a joyful somersault inside me. “What’s going on over there?”
“It’s swing dance night!”
My heart trips over itself and falls flat on its face.
“I... I can’t dance,” I stammer.
“Neither can I,” answers Owen. “They do lessons for free, though. If it makes you more comfortable, you could invite Tina and Craig.”
I can’t bring myself to say anything. I’m nervously imagining myself standing out on the floor in front of everyone. They’re all watching me as I stumble around with Owen. I know he said he can’t dance either, but in my mind, he’s a graceful, professional dancer and I’m a clumsy klutz.
“Please?” begs Owen after a long silence, and I feel my resistance crumble.
I can’t say no to him—not when he asks me like that—and I think that maybe, deep down inside, I really want to say yes. I’m nervous and scared, but I’d be with him! We’d be dancing together, and even if I’m terrible at it, the idea sounds wonderful.
“He went snowboarding with you even though he was bad at it,” my brain pipes up to remind me, and that settles it. If he can be brave, so can I.
“Alright, I’ll go,” I finally answer. I hope I don’t regret it later tonight.
“Great! I’ll meet you there at eight?”
“Works for me!” I say, and then I hang up and go to check on my incompetent freshman underling once more before I head home. I haven’t heard anything break in at least five minutes, so she must be getting into trouble.
––––––––
“Hey Tina! Are you home?” I call out as I open the front door. The apartment smells like buttered popcorn.
“Sssh! We’re watching a movie!” hisses Dinah from the couch. She and Lacey are sitting with an enormous bowl of popcorn, a tub of ice cream and a box of tissues. I groan as Leonardo DiCaprio’s pointy-chinned face fills the screen. They’re watching Titanic for probably the tenth time this year.
“You know he’s almost forty, right?” I ask as I take off my shoes and coat.
“That’s what the tissues are for!” answers Lacey, and she sticks out her tongue at me. I burst out laughing, and then I run upstairs to Tina’s room as Dinah shushes me again.
“Hey Tina? You in there?” I ask, peeping in around the half-open door.
“Well hello there, lady-face!” she answers, tossing down her textbook and hopping off the bed. It should be illegal for any bedroom to be as pink as hers is.
“Owen invited me out to swing dance at the grad union tonight. Do you want to come along?”
Her face lights up at my question, and she hops up and down excitedly.
“Can I bring Craig?”
“No,” I answer, rolling my eyes. “You have to sit in the corner and be miserable the whole night. Of course he can come!”
“Then I’m totally in!” she answers with a wide, excited grin. “I can’t believe it! You’re going out dancing!”
She practically leaps around the room in unadulterated glee before suddenly zipping back to me from across the bedroom with a serious look on her face.
“Okay Maria – what are you wearing?”
I groan and shake my head. Not this again.
“I’m not wearing a...”
“Yes you are, Maria,” she hisses, and I shut up instantly at the intensity of her retort. She looks ready to strangle me.
“Dates are one thing,” she tells me, her voice low and determined, “but dancing has rules. This is swing dance, and you have to wear a dress!”
“Then I won’t go,” I answer flatly.
“Maria!”
“I don’t want to go back to that! I don’t want people looking at me like I’m... like I’m a piece of meat,” I stammer. She stares at me as if I’m insane.
“Tina,” I whisper, “the last time I wore a skirt, my brother’s best friend raped me. I still have just a little bit of baggage around the whole thing. You know that.”
“You don’t want anyone to think you’re pretty?” asks Tina calmly.
I shake my head.
“Not even Owen?”
I... well, shit. I do want that. Now what? I look silently down at my socks, not sure what to say next.
“Come on, Maria,” pushes Tina. “You’re going to show up in jeans and a sweatshirt, and Owen’s going to be dressed up all nice and look really handsome. How will he feel then? He’ll feel like you didn’t care about him.”
“That’s really mean, Tina,” I scold her. I hate it when people play guilt games. They always work on me and I don’t know how to defend myself against them.
“It’s true, though!”
“I don’t even own a dress,” I counter. That should get her to shut up.
“Then get your coat on, because we’re going shopping,” exclaims Tina triumphantly, and she runs to the closet and starts hunting for her boots.
“Alright... I’ll wear a dress,” I surrender. “I’m holding you responsible if I have a panic attack, though.”
“I’ll take that risk if you will,” says Tina seriously, and then she shoots me a wide, manic smile and races downstairs to grab her keys.