I wrote down my name, waiting.
‘This is so much better for Summer,’ he said. ‘This is what I have to do. It’s not worth putting her through…all the…I was so…’
This is what I have to do. Maybe he knew I was listening. Maybe he was saying this-that he was making a sacrifice-because he knew I was on the other side of the door.
It felt as though there were ping-pong balls jumping inside my stomach. When I went back to my bedroom, I climbed under my desk. The computer above me hummed. I could smell the remains of the apple I had eaten for lunch. In the darkness, it probably seemed like I wasn’t even there. Hide and seek. Now, all someone had to do was come and find me.
There was a vase of flowers on the table in the little waiting room outside Dr Hughes’s office at NYU. Out the window, I watched as a girl in a red dress ran down University Place. Her mother followed, yelling at her to slow down.
The door opened, and Dr Hughes stuck her head out. ‘Hi, Summer.’
I stood up. ‘Hi.’
Her calico dress had pockets meant for spatulas and wooden spoons. ‘Do you have something for me?’ she asked.
I looked down at my bag. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Not sure?’
‘I have something, but I’m not sure if you want it.’
She leaned against the door. There was a sign taped up in the hall talking about guidelines on locking up at night. There have been many theft’s, it said in sloppy handwriting. There was an unnecessary apostrophe. ‘I was cutting you some slack for a while,’ Dr Hughes said. ‘But I don’t know. Maybe you don’t want me to.’
She held out her hand. I ran my fingers over the edges of my leather bag. This morning, I typed out my journal. Some of it wasn’t even complete sentences, just lists of drugs and symptoms. I even included the scribble from when my father was talking into the tape recorder. I found another flyer for Acting For Beginners and put it in there, too. The date printed on the flyer was today’s date; the class was starting in less than an hour from now. I stapled all those things together and wrote, at the end, If this can happen to a person, and if this is genetic, I want to be able to fix it. Except I can’t. I can’t take this fellowship. I’m sorry.
But I also typed out a perfectly normal essay. One that talked about my love of genetics, how I’d like to find the cause of the things that went wrong inside of us, because I was certain that so many of them began at the smallest level, at a mistake in our gene sequences. I wrote about my father, saying that he had an influence on me when I was very young, encouraging me to excel in science even though I was a girl and people expected girls to do better in things like English and art.
My hands curled around the normal essay. I pulled it out, leaving the crazy one in my bag. I passed it to her, wincing.
‘I should go,’ I said, as soon as the papers transferred hands.
‘Wait.’ She caught my arm. ‘I’ll read it right now.’
‘Don’t. Please. Just…read it later.’
Dr Hughes’s phone rang. She glanced toward her office, disappointed. ‘I want to talk to you, at least. Can I talk to you?’
I paused. The phone rang again.
‘I should take that.’ Dr Hughes gestured to the waitingroom chair. ‘Sit. Don’t move.’
But as soon as she turned her back, I crashed through the front door and down the stairwell. The exit sign burned into my retinas. Out on University, I looped around people and bus kiosks and phone booths. A cab was parked at the curb outside the deli. The door was open, and the driver was just sitting at the wheel, his eyes closed. I wobbled on the sidewalk, and then threw myself into the back seat. The cab driver opened his eyes and glared at me. He was a large black man in a blue work jacket. He had a beard but no hair on his head; there was a small roll of skin at the back of his skull, leading into his neck. ‘I’m not on duty,’ he said gruffly.
I didn’t answer.
He shifted in his seat, making the leather crinkle. ‘Are you going uptown, at least?’
People briskly passed. NYU students, with book-filled backpacks. Dr Hughes was probably reading my essay right now.
‘Well?’ the driver demanded.
‘Yes,’ I heard myself saying. ‘The Mayflower Hotel. Central Park West and Sixty-first.’