a benzene molecule in my book. “I just care that I’m going to get out of here for a weekend. It’s like a prison furlough.”
Gretchen laughed, and then stopped. “You hate it here that much?”
“Yes.” I took a bite of chicken. “I hate it that much.” I couldn’t believe she didn’t hate it. She was an upperclassman, too. In the last week, we’d had three fire drills, all of them pranks, the alarms going off between four and six in the morning. And on just my floor, two weekends in a row, someone had thrown up in the lobby.
“Is Tim going to stay with you?”
I shook my head. This weekend was his grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. He was driving up to Chicago on Friday, and he wouldn’t get home until Sunday night. I was actually relieved about this. I would need to study all weekend, nonstop, no breaks. The test on Tuesday would be weighed heavily for our semester grade: If I did well on it, I could still do okay in the class, and be on track for medical school. If I didn’t do well on it…there would be no point in even taking the final.
“What a waste,” Gretchen said. “You know. The Jacuzzi.” She leaned back and smiled. “I like Tim. He’s nice.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I think so, too.”
“He graduates next year, right? A master’s? Engineering?”
I nodded.
She bobbed her eyebrows and whistled low. “He’s going to make a lot of money.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just saying…Why is that a bad thing? Why are you getting mad?”
I looked down at my book and shook my head. I didn’t know why I was mad. I only knew I wasn’t ready for the test.
“Well,” Gretchen said, “since the boyfriend who may or may not be rich someday won’t be around, it might be fun to have a few people over…not a party, just, you know…”
I shook my head. “I have to study. That’s all I’m doing.”
“Okay.” She sighed and turned a page. “I admire your dedication.”
I barely smiled. My dedication, if that was even what it was, didn’t seem like anything she should admire. I was just scared all the time. I had already told everyone—my parents, Elise, Tim—that I was trying for medical school. They would be understanding if I quit, of course; but they would be understanding that I was weak, or not as smart as they were, or that I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want their understanding. I was the one I couldn’t let down. I didn’t want to have to go through life knowing that I didn’t do something I wanted to do, just because it was difficult. Even relentlessly difficult.
I’d felt this way for a while. My sophomore year, when I was having a hard time in calculus, I found a talking Barbie at Goodwill, and I instantly recognized her as the Barbie who said “Math is hard! Let’s go shopping!” She had come out when I was young, and she had been in the news—people were angry about the implied message, and the toy company finally changed her computer chip to make her say something else. But the Barbie from Goodwill was the original version. I propped her up on my desk. Whenever I was sick of calculus, struggling with derivatives or integrals, I would press the Barbie’s button, and stare into her stupid eyes until I was motivated to get back to work.
Tim said he wanted to help Barbie—he made her wire-rimmed glasses from a paperclip; he drew a pocket protector directly onto one of her big Barbie breasts. Gretchen thought it was funny, too. Elise wanted one for herself. Only my mother, when she saw my Barbie, didn’t laugh at all.
“Honey. Why are you doing this?” She held the mangled Barbie up, and then turned her worried gaze to me. It was always strange when she was in my dorm room. Even if she just stopped in for a few minutes, I felt invaded, taken over. The room was just too small.
“It’s a joke,” I said. “It’s just a joke.”
She frowned. “I didn’t even let you play with these when you were little.” She set the Barbie back on my desk. The doll tipped over, and my mother bent her at the waist so she could properly sit up. She looked back at me. “Veronica. You’re a kind and thoughtful young woman. If calculus is hard, then calculus is hard. It doesn’t mean you’re a doll.”