Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

            “Rocío is taking it, and I was helping her out. With”—I clear my throat—“mixed results. I believe we were about to shank each other over irrational numbers?”

            “Sounds about right,” Rocío mumbles.

            “Oh”—Kaylee waves her hand airily—“you shouldn’t be talking about irrational numbers. The thing about the GRE is, the less you know the better off you are.” I give Rocío my best told you so look. She kicks me again. “If you take a prep class, they teach you little tricks useful to pass the test—more so than actually knowing math.”

            “You’ve taken the GRE?” Rocío asks.

            “Yep. This manager thing is a temporary gig—I’m starting my Ph.D. in education in the fall. At Johns Hopkins.”

            Rocío frowns. “You’re . . . going to Johns Hopkins?”

            “Yes!” Kaylee nods happily. “My parents paid for a prep course, and I have tons of notes. Plus I remember most of it. Why don’t I help you?”

            Rocío turns to me with an aghast look that almost makes me laugh. Almost. Instead, I grab my smoothie and stand. “It’s so lovely of you to offer.” Rocío tries to kick me again, but I slither away. “I’m going to check out the gym at the Space Center. Rocío said that it might be free.”

            “It is. Levi had me change your status the other day.”

            “Whose status?”

            “Yours. And Rocío’s.” She winks. “I switched you to team members in the system, so you can get some of the perks.”

            “Oh, thank you. That was very—” Unexpected? Out of character? Something you must have made up on the spot because why would he do that? “—generous.”

            “Levi’s awesome. Best boss I ever had. He harassed NASA into giving me health insurance!” She smiles and turns to Rocío, who looks ready to drown herself in a Danish brook. Again. “Where did you want to start?”

            Rocío incinerates me with her eyes as I wave goodbye. Honestly, she’s in excellent hands. Doesn’t even deserve it. On the sidewalk, I take out my phone and quickly type up a tweet.


@WhatWouldMarieDo . . . if one of the major obstacles preventing access to higher education were the GRE, a test that is 1) expensive 2) poorly predictive of overall graduate school success, and 3) biased against individuals who are lower-income, BIPOC, and non-cis-males?



            I slip my phone into my pocket, and my thoughts go back to the gym. Levi probably just wants me to be able to use it so he doesn’t have to retrieve me from a different cemetery every week. Can’t blame him, honestly.

            Yeah. That must be it.





11





NUCLEUS ACCUMBENS: GAMBLING



“LEVI? COULD YOU send me the newest—”

            “Blueprints are on the server,” he mumbles around the miniature screwdriver he’s holding between his teeth. He doesn’t look up from the mound of wires and plates he’s working on.

            It’s past nine on a Friday. Everyone else has left. We’re alone in the engineering lab, like most nights this week, in what I’ve come to think of as our Hostile Companionable Silence™. It’s very similar to other types of silence, except that I know that Levi doesn’t like me, and Levi knows that I know he doesn’t like me and that I don’t like him in return. But he doesn’t bring it up, and I don’t really think about it. Because we have no reason to.

            So, yeah. Our Hostile Companionable Silence™ is basically a regular companionable silence. We sit facing each other at different workbenches. We dim the lights to see the shapes of the outside trees. We focus on our respective tasks. Every once in a while, we exchange comments, thoughts, doubts regarding BLINK. We could do the same from our respective offices, but looking up from my laptop and verbally asking a question beats writing it out in an email. Typing out, Hey, Levi and Best, Bee is such a pain.

            Plus, Levi packs snacks. He brings them to work for himself, but he’s lousy at gauging portions and always makes too much. So far I’ve had homemade trail mix, guac and saltines, rice cakes, popcorn, pita chips and bean dip, and about four kinds of energy balls.

            Yes, he’s a better cook than I’ll ever be.