Chapter Seven

HYPOTHESIS: There will be a significant positive correlation between the amount of sunscreen poured in my hands and the intensity of my desire to murder Anh.

Tom’s report was about a third done and sitting tight at thirty-four pages single-spaced, Arial (11 point), no justification. It was 11:00 a.m., and Olive had been working in the lab since about five—analyzing peptide samples, writing down protocol notes, taking covert naps while the PCR machine ran

—when Greg barged in, looking absolutely furious.

It was unusual, but not too unusual. Greg was a bit of a hothead to begin with, and grad school came with a lot of angry outbursts in semipublic places, usually for reasons that, Olive was fully aware, would appear ridiculous to someone who’d never stepped foot in academia. They’re making me TA Intro to Bio for the fourth time in a row; the paper I need is behind a paywall; I had a meeting with my supervisor and accidentally called her “Mom.”

Greg and Olive shared an adviser, Dr. Aslan, and while they’d always gotten along fine, they had never been particularly close. Olive had hoped, by picking a female adviser, to avoid some of the nastiness that was so often directed at women in STEM. Unfortunately she had still found herself in an all-male lab, which was . . . a less-than-ideal environment. That was why when Greg came in, slammed the door, and then threw a folder on his bench, Olive was not sure what to do. She watched him sit down and begin to sulk.

Chase, another lab mate, followed him inside a moment later with an uneasy expression and started gingerly patting his back.

Olive looked longingly at her RNA samples. Then she stepped closer to Greg’s bench and asked, “What’s wrong?”

She had expected the answer to be The production of my reagent has been discontinued, or My p-value is .06, or Grad school was a mistake, but now it’s too late to back out of it because my self-worth is unbreakably tied to my

academic performance, and what would even be left of me if I decided to dropout?

Instead what she got was: “Your stupid boyfriend is what’s wrong.”

By now the fake dating had been going on for over two weeks: Olive didn’t startle anymore when someone referred to Adam as her boyfriend.

Still, Greg’s words were so unexpected and full of venom that she couldn’t help but answer, “Who?”

“Carlsen.” He spat the name out like a curse.

“Oh.”

“He’s on Greg’s dissertation committee,” Chase explained in a significantly milder tone, not quite meeting Olive’s eyes.

“Oh. Right.” This could be bad. Very bad. “What happened?”

“He failed my proposal.”

“Shit.” Olive bit into her lower lip. “I’m sorry, Greg.”

“This is going to set me back a lot. It’ll take me months to revise it, all because Carlsen had to go and nitpick. I didn’t even want him on my committee; Dr. Aslan forced me to add him because she’s so obsessed with his stupid computational stuff.”

Olive chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to come up with something meaningful to say and failing miserably. “I’m really sorry.”

“Olive, do you guys talk about this stuff?” Chase asked out of the blue, eyeing her suspiciously. “Did he tell you he wasn’t going to pass Greg?”

“What? No. No, I . . .” I talk to him for exactly fifteen minutes a week.

And, okay, I’ve kissed him. Twice. And I sat on his lap. Once. But it’s justthat, and Adam—he speaks very little. I actually wish he spoke more, since Iknow nothing about him, and I’d like to know at least something. “No, he doesn’t. I think it would be against regulations if he did.”

“God.” Greg slammed his palm against the edge of the bench, making her jump. “He’s such a dick. What a sadistic piece of shit.”

Olive opened her mouth to—to do what, precisely? To defend Adam? He was a dick. She had seen him be a dick. In full action. Maybe not recently, and maybe not to her, but if she’d wanted to count on her fingers the number

of acquaintances who’d ended up in tears because of him, well . . . She would need both her hands, and then her toes. Maybe borrow some of Chase’s, too.

“Did he say why, at least? What you have to change?”

“Everything. He wants me to change my control condition and add another one, which is going to make the project ten times more timeconsuming. And the way he said it, his air of superiority—he is so arrogant.”

Well. It was no news, really. Olive scratched her temple, trying not to sigh.

“It sucks. I’m sorry,” she repeated once more, at a loss for anything better and genuinely feeling for Greg.

“Yeah, well.” He stood and walked around his bench, coming to a stop in front of Olive. “You should be.”

She froze. Surely she must have misheard. “Excuse me?”

“You’re his girlfriend.”

“I . . .” Really am not. But. Even if she had been. “Greg, I’m only dating him. I am not him. How would I have anything to do with—”

“You’re fine with all of this. With him acting like that—like an asshole on a power trip. You don’t give a shit about the way he treats everyone in the program, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to stomach being with him.” At his tone, she took a step back.

Chase lifted his hands in a peacekeeping gesture, coming to stand between them. “Hey, now. Let’s not—”

“I’m not the one who failed you, Greg.”

“Maybe. But you don’t care that half of the department lives in terror of your boyfriend, either.”

Olive felt anger bubbling up. “That is not true. I am able to separate my professional relationships and my personal feelings for him—”

“Because you don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself.”

“That is unfair. What am I supposed to do?”

“Get him to stop failing people.”

“Get him—” Olive sputtered. “Greg, how is this a rational response for you to have about Adam’s failing you—”

“Ah. Adam, is it?”

She gritted her teeth. “Yes. Adam. What should I call my boyfriend to better please you? Professor Carlsen?”

“If you were a half-decent ally to any of the grads in the department, you would just dump your fucking boyfriend.”

“How— Do you even realize how little sense you are . . .”

No reason to finish her sentence, since Greg was storming out of the lab and slamming the door behind him, clearly uninterested in anything Olive might have wanted to add. She ran a hand down her face, unsettled by what had just happened.