Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            “Overrode my booking of the tokamak. Can you believe it? Third time this month, what the fuck? I had it for next week, then bam, kicked from the calendar. All that bullshit about how the reactor is available to all MIT personnel? They clearly don’t mean grad students. How am I supposed to fuse the plasma—in my fucking pressure cooker?”

            “Michi.” Jack sounds unfazed.

            “If they want me to superheat gases in my bathtub and blow up my roommate’s Pomeranian, I will fucking do it, but the entire point of being employed by MIT was not having to coalesce my own antimatter! This is the worst goddamn place in the universe, and I’m going to quit this program. I should have stayed at Caltech. I should have gotten into Grandma’s squirrel feeders business—”

            “Michi,” Jack interrupts, his voice just a touch firmer. “This is Dr. Elsie Hannaway, one of the candidates for the open faculty position. Dr. Hannaway, Michi is one of my grads.”

            Michi had not realized someone else was in the room. The way she turns beet purple is a dead giveaway, and so is her appalled, wide-eyed expression.

            I run a quick APE: Michi’s smart, motivated, overworked. She likes and trusts Jack (so maybe not that smart?). She’s mortified her rant was overheard. Judging from her quivering lower lip, she’s about to burst into tears.

            Uh-oh.

            “That sucks,” I say quickly. The Elsie she needs commiserates. “I hate it when labs double-book.” I’ve never booked a lab in my entire life. But. “How hard is it to set up a functioning Google calendar?” Very, I assume. But Michi’s lip un-quivers. She un-purples.

            “Right?”

            “It’s not just MIT. Every place is like that. I was a grad until a year ago, and we were always the last to get access to equipment.” If by equipment you mean colored chalk. “It gets better after you graduate.”

            The lip re-quivers. “It does?”

            “I promise.” I smile reassuringly. My weakness is women in STEM. I want to protect them from the structurally unequal hellfire of academia. “In the meantime, I’m sure Jack will be happy to intercede.”

            Jack’s scowl broadcasts his unfamiliarity with the concept of happiness. “I’ll make sure you have access, Michi.” He says Michi, but he’s looking at me. Glaring, to be precise. And when Michi scurries away with a nod, he pushes from the door and walks right up to me, a vertical line between his brows.

            It’s almost a physical shock, redirecting from Michi—open-book, see-through Michi—to Jack. He’s the usual blank brick wall of question marks, and I want to tear out my hair. His hair. All hair. Why does he have to be so frustrating? Why does he have to be the most unreadable—

            “The real girl who wished to be a puppet,” he murmurs, low and rumbly.

            “What?”

            “I can actually watch you do it.”

            “Do what?”

            “Analyze people. Turn yourself on and off.”

            I take a terrified step back. A combative step forward. I can’t read him for shit, and he’s in my head? “You know, Jack, we all interact differently with different people. It’s called code-switching, a totally normal social skill—”

            “Code-switching has nothing to do with erasing who you are and twisting what’s left of you. Have you ever even booked a lab? What equipment were you denied?”

            “Listen, it worked. Michi was about to cry. I anticipated her needs, and there were no tears.”

            “You lie, Elsie. Every single one of your interactions is a lie.” He crosses his arms and looms. We’re supposed to be on a tour of the department. I feel like he’s taking a tour of me. “Is this what you do with Greg, too? You code-switch a conjured, nonexistent persona he fell in love with?”

            “No.” Jesus. Greg needs to get his ass back from yoga camp as stat as possible.

            “Are you doing it with me, too?” His scowl deepens.

            “What? No!” I can’t even read you!