Below Zero (The STEMinist Novellas #3) by Ali Hazelwood

            Marie: Shmac.

            Shmac: FYI, I’m sighing deeply.

            Marie: I bet. Tell me!

            Shmac: It’s a girl.

            Marie: Ooooh! Tell me EVERYTHING!!!!!!!11!!1!!!!!

            Shmac: There isn’t much to tell.

            Marie: Did you just meet her?

            Shmac: No. She’s someone I’ve known for a long time, and now she’s back.

            Shmac: And she is married.

            Marie: To you?

            Shmac: Depressingly, no.

            Shmac: Sorry—we’re restructuring the lab. Gotta go before someone destroys a 5 mil piece of equipment. Talk later.

            Marie: Sure, but I’ll want to know everything about your affair with a married woman

            Shmac: I wish.

            It’s nice to know that Shmac is always a click away, especially now that I’m flying into the Wardass’s frosty, unwelcoming lap.

            I switch to my email app to check if Levi has finally answered the email I sent three days ago. It was just a couple of lines—Hey, long time no see, I look forward to working together again, would you like to meet to discuss BLINK this weekend?—but he must have been too busy to reply. Or too full of contempt. Or both.

            Ugh.

            I lean back against the headrest and close my eyes, wondering how Dr. Curie would deal with Levi Ward. She’d probably hide some radioactive isotopes in his pockets, grab popcorn, and watch nuclear decay work its magic.

            Yep, sounds about right.

            After a few minutes, I fall asleep. I dream that Levi is part armadillo: his skin glows a faint, sallow green, and he’s digging a tomato out of his boot with an expensive piece of equipment. Even with all of that, the weirdest thing about him is that he’s finally being nice to me.



* * *



            • • •

            We’re put up in small furnished apartments in a lodging facility just outside the Johnson Space Center, only a couple of minutes from the Sullivan Discovery Building, where we’ll be working. I can’t believe how short my commute is going to be.

            “Bet you’ll still manage to be late all the time,” Rocío tells me, and I glare at her while unlocking my door. It’s not my fault if I’ve spent a sizable chunk of my formative years in Italy, where time is but a polite suggestion.

            The place is considerably nicer than the apartment I rent—maybe because of the raccoon incident, probably because I buy 90 percent of my furniture from the as-is bargain corner at Ikea. It has a balcony, a dishwasher, and—huge improvement on my quality of life—a toilet that flushes 100 percent of the times I push the lever. Truly paradigm shifting. I excitedly open and close every single cupboard (they’re all empty; I’m not sure what I expected), take pictures to send Reike and my coworkers, stick my favorite Marie Curie magnet to the fridge (a picture of her holding a beaker that says “I’m pretty rad”), hang my hummingbird feeder on the balcony, and then . . .

            It’s still only two-thirty p.m. Ugh.

            Not that I’m one of those people who hates having free time. I could easily spend five solid hours napping, rewatching an entire season of The Office while eating Twizzlers, or moving to step 2 of the couch-to-5K plan I’m still very . . . okay, sort of committed to. But I am here! In Houston! Near the Space Center! About to start the coolest project of my life!

            It’s Friday, and I’m not due to check in until Monday, but I’m brimming with nervous energy. So I text Rocío to ask whether she wants to check out the Space Center with me (No.) or to grab dinner together (I only eat animal carcasses.).

            She’s so mean. I love her.

            My first impression of Houston is: big. Closely followed by: humid, and then by: humidly big. In Maryland, remnants of snow still cling to the ground, but the Space Center is already lush and green, a mix of open spaces and large buildings and old NASA aircraft on display. There are families visiting, which reminds me a little of an amusement park. I can’t believe I’m going to be seeing rockets on my way to work for the next three months. It sure beats the perv crossing guard who works on the NIH campus.