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Monica Salt, Ph.D.
A.M. Wentworth Professor of Physics
Department of Physics, Chair
MIT
My heart sparks with excitement.
I set my tea on the kitchen table and click Reply, to assure Monica Salt that yes, absolutely,of course: I will meet her whenever and wherever she wants, including the plains of Mordor at two fifteen a.m., because she holds the key to my future. But the second my hand closes around the mouse, excruciating pain stabs my palm and shoots up my arm.
I screech and jump out of my chair. “What the fu—?”
“Where are they?Where are they?” My roommate staggers into the kitchen, wearing onesie pajamas and a Noam Chomsky sleep mask pulled up to her forehead. Also: swinging a plastic baseball bat like a madwoman. “Leave now or I’ll call 911! This is trespassing!”
“Cece—”
“A misdemeanoranda felony! You will be arrested for battery! My cousin is taking the bar this year, and she will sue you formillionsof dollars—”
“Cece, no one’s in here.”
“Oh.” She windmills the bat a few more times, blinking owlishly. “Why are we screaming, then?”
“The fact that your porcupine decided to impersonate my mousemightbe related.”
“Hedgehog—you know she’s a hedgehog.”
“Do I.”
She yawns, tossing the bat back into her room. It misses, bouncing emptily across the chipped linoleum floor. “Smaller. Cuter. Quillier. Also, Hedgizabeth Bennet? Not a porcupine name.”
“Right. Sorry.” I cradle my hand to my chest. “The searing pain had me a tad out of sorts.”
“It’s okay. Hedgie’s a kind soul—she forgives you.” Cece picks her up. “Do you? Do you forgive Elsie for misspeciesing you, baby?”
I glare at Hedgie, who stares back with beady, triumphant eyes. That malignant sentient pincushion.I’m going to fry you up with scallions, I mouth.
I swear to God, her spines puff up a little.
“Where were you last night?” Cece asks, blessedly unaware of our interspecies war. I wonder what it says of me that my best friend’s best friend is a hedgehog. “Faux? That Greg guy?”
“Yup.”
“How’d it go?”
“Good.” I suddenly recallnotcrushing Jack Smith like an egg. “Well, fine. Yours?”
Cece and I got into fake dating during the financial and emotional dark ages of our lives: graduate school. I was down to two pairs of non-mismatched socks, living off computational cosmology theorems and instant ramen. In hindsight, I was perilously close to developing scurvy. Then, on a dark and stormy night, as I contemplated selling a heart valve, my former friend J.J. texted me a link to Faux’s recruitment page. The caption was a laughing emoji, the one with tears shooting out of the eyes, and a simpleCheck this out! It’s like that thing we did in college.
I frowned, like I often do when reminded of J.J.’s existence, and never replied. But I did notice that the hourly rates were high. And in between TA’ing Multivariable Calculus, forming an opinion on loop quantum gravity, and trying not to punch my all-male fellow grads for constantly assuming thatIshould be the one makingtheircoffee, I found myself making a profile. Then interviewing. Then being matched with my first client—a dorky twenty-year-old who gave me a pleading look and asked, “Can you pretend to be my age? And Canadian? We met in eighth grade at summer camp, and your name is Klarissa, with aK. Also, if anyone asks, I amnota virgin.”
“Are they likely to ask?”
He considered it. “If they don’t, could you casually bring it up?”
It turned out not to bethatbad, so I asked Cece if she wanted to try it, too. I swear I don’t secretly hate her. It was just the only thing I could think of upon realizing that we’d both made the stupidest of career choices (i.e., academia). We’re overeducated and too poor to survive—as evidenced by our crappy apartment, full of exposedwiring and scary spiders that look like the love children of murder hornets and coconut crabs. If we had a sitcom-like group of friends, we’d hold an asbestos-removal party. Sadly, it’s just us. And the barely avoided scurvy.
