Love on the Brain

MIGHT BE A bit late in the game to pull my mad-scientist origin story out of its holster, but I’m sitting in the dark, staring at a less-than-flattering reflection of my splotchy face in the balcony doors, the purple of my hair nearly brown—a trick of the light. Someone just ransacked my pockets and stole my most important belongings, and that someone is me. I’m feeling very Dr. Marie Skłodowska-Curie, circa 1911, and I guess it’s self-disclosure o’clock.

Originally, I wanted to be a poet. Like my mom. I’d write little sonnets about all sorts of stuff: the rain, pretty birds, the mess Reike made in the kitchen when she tried to bake a cherry pie, kittens playing with yarn—the works. Then we turned ten, and we moved for the fourth time in five years, this time to a mid-sized French town at the border with Germany, where my father’s eldest brother had a construction business. He was kind. His wife was kind, if strict. His kids, in their late teens, were kind. The town was kind. My sister’s best friend, Ines, was kind. There was lots of kindness going around.

A couple of weeks after moving, I wrote my first poem about loneliness.

Frankly, it was embarrassingly bad. Ten-year-old Bee was an emo princess of darkness. I’d quote the most dramatic verses here, but then I’d have to kill myself and everyone who read them. Still, at the time I fancied myself the next Emily Dickinson, and I showed the poem to one of my teachers (full-body cringe intensifies). She zeroed in on the first line, which would roughly translate from French to “Sometimes, when I’m alone, I feel my brain shrink,” and told me, “That’s what really happens. Did you know that?” I hadn’t. But in the early 2000s the internet was already a thing, and by the end of the day, when Reike came home from an afternoon at Ines’s place, I knew a lot about The Lonely Brain.

It doesn’t shrink, but it withers a little. Loneliness is not abstract and intangible—metaphors about desert islands and mismatched shoes, Edward Hopper’s characters staring at windows, Fiona Apple’s entire discography. Loneliness is here. It molds our souls, but also our bodies. Right inferior temporal gyri, posterior cingulates, temporoparietal junctions, retrosplenial cortices, dorsal raphe. Lonely people’s brains are shaped differently. And I just want mine to . . . not be. I want a healthy, plump, symmetrical cerebrum. I want it to work diligently, impeccably, like the extraordinary machine it’s supposed to be. I want it to do as it’s told.

Spoiler alert: my stupid brain doesn’t. It never did. Not when I was ten. Not when I was twenty. Not eight years later, even though I’ve tried my best to train it not to expect anything of me. If alone’s the baseline, it shouldn’t wither. If a cat never gets any treats, he won’t miss them. Right? I don’t know. Looking at my reflection in the window, I’m not so sure anymore. My brain might be dumber than a cat’s. It might be one of Reike’s blobfish, swimming aimlessly in the bowl of my skull. I have no idea.

It’s June. Almost summer. Sunset doesn’t come early anymore—if it’s dark outside, Levi must have left hours ago. I stand gingerly from the couch, feeling heavy and weightless. An old woman and a newborn calf. Wretched little me, still containing multitudes. But as much as I’d rather wallow in self-pity, this situation is a grave of my own digging. There are things I need to do. People I need to take care of.

First, Rocío. She’s not in her apartment and doesn’t pick up when I call—because she’s with Kaylee trying to forget today’s fustercluck, because she hates me, because she’s a Gen Z. Could be all three, but what I have to tell her is important, and I’ve already hurt her chances to get into the Ph.D. program of her dreams enough, so I email her.

Whatever happens with BLINK, get in touch with Trevor ASAP and ask him to let you stay on the project as the RA (I’d do it, but it’s best if it doesn’t come from me). Levi will support this. What happened today is my responsibility only and won’t reflect on you.

Okay. One down. I swallow, take a deep breath, and tap on the Twitter app. Shmac’s next: he needs to know what’s going on with STC. That if he continues to associate with Marie, things could go south very quickly. I still don’t know what the hell happened, but publicly disavowing me might be best for him.

I DM him to ask if he has a minute, but he doesn’t immediately reply. Probably with the girl, I tell myself. After my disastrous conversation with Levi, the idea of someone brave enough to seize that kind of love, intense and eviscerating and gutting and joyful, fills me with an envy so overwhelming I have to push back against it with my entire self.

I click on Shmac’s profile, wondering when’s the last time he was online. He hasn’t tweeted much in the past week—mostly #FairGraduateAdmissions stuff, comments on the peer-review system, a joke about how he’d love to be writing, but with his cat sitting on his laptop he really can’t—

Wait.

What?

I click on the picture attached to the tweet. A black cat is snoozing on top of the keyboard. It’s short-haired and green-eyed and . . .

Not Schrödinger. It can’t be. All black cats look the same, after all. And this picture—I can barely make out the cat’s face. There’s no way to tell who—

The background, though. The background . . . I know that backsplash. The dark-blue tiles are just like the ones in Levi’s kitchen, the ones I stared at for half an hour last week after he bent me over the counter, and even without them I can see the edge of a carton of soy milk in the picture, which Levi finds “gross, Bee, just gross” but started buying when I told him it was my favorite, and . . .

No. No, no, no. Impossible. Shmac is . . . a five-eight nerd with a beer belly and male-pattern baldness. Not the most perfect Cute Sexy Handsome Guy™ in the world. “No,” I say. As if it’ll somehow make everything go away—the last few disastrous days, Shmac’s tweet, the possibility of . . . of this. But the picture is still there, with the tiles, the soy milk, and the—

“Shmac,” I whisper. Hands shaking, out of breath, I scroll back up our message history. The girl. The girl. We started talking about the girl when I—when did we first talk about her? I check the dates, vision blurry once again. The day I moved to Houston was the first time he mentioned her to me. Someone from his past. But, no—he told me she was married. He said her husband had lied to her. And I’m not, so—

But he thought I was. He thought Tim and I were together. For a long time. And Tim did lie to me.

“Levi.” I swallow, hard. “Levi.” This is impossible. Things like these—they don’t happen in real life. In my life. These coincidences, they’re for You’ve Got Mail and nineties rom-coms, not for— My eyes fall on the longest message he sent me.

I know the shape of her. I go to sleep thinking about it, and then I wake up, go to work, and she is there, and it’s impossible.

Oh my God.

I want to push her against a wall, and I want her to push back.

I did that, didn’t I? He pushed me against a wall, and I pushed back. And pushed. And pushed. And pushed. And now I’ve pushed him away for good, forever, even though . . . Oh, God. He has offered me everything, everything I’ve ever wanted. And I am such a cowardly, idiotic fool.

I wipe my cheek, and my eyes fall on the object Levi left on the table. It’s a flash drive, pretty, shaped like a cat’s paw. A calico’s. My laptop doesn’t have a USB port, so I frantically look for an adapter—which of course is at the bottom of the damn suitcase. There’s one single document on the drive. F.mp4. I plop down on the pile of unfolded clothes I just tossed around and immediately click on it.

I knew there were cameras everywhere in the Discovery Building, but not that Levi had access to them. And I don’t understand why he’d give me thirty minutes of night surveillance footage. I frown, wondering if he uploaded the wrong file, when something small and fair slinks in the corner of the monitor.

Félicette.

The date says April 14, only a few days before I moved to Houston. Félicette looks a little smaller than the last time I saw her. She trots across the hallway, glances around, then disappears around the corner. My body leans in to the screen to follow her, but the movie cuts to April 22. Félicette jumps on one of the couches in the lobby. She circles around, finds a good spot, and starts napping with her head on her paws. Wet laughter bubbles out of me, and the video changes again—the engineering lab is semi dark, but Félicette is sniffing tools I’ve seen Levi use. Licking water from the drip tray of the break room’s water dispenser. Running up and down the stairs. Giving herself a bath by the conference room windows.

And then, of course, in my office. Scratching her claws on my chair’s armrests. Eating the treats I left out for her. Dozing on the little bed I set up in the corner. I’m laughing again, I’m crying again, because—I knew it. I knew it. And Levi knew it, too—this is not something he put together quickly last night. This is hours and hours of combing through footage. He must have known Félicette existed for a while, and—I want to strangle him. I want to kiss him. I want everything.

I guess this is it—being in love. Truly in love. Lots and lots of horrible, wondrous, violent emotions. It doesn’t suit me. Maybe it’s for the best that I sent Levi away. I could never live with this—it’d raze me to the ground in less than a week, and—

I want to push her against a wall, and I want her to push back.

Oh, Levi. Levi. I can be fearless. I can be as fearless and honest as you are. If you will teach me.

I sit back, let the tears flow, watch some more. She really did like my desk, Félicette. More than Rocío’s. As the date changes, she nestles around my computer more often. Steps where I found her little paw prints. Delicately sniffs the rim of my cup. Chews on my computer’s power cable. Scurries away when the door opens, and—

Wait.

I stop the video and lean forward. It’s clear from the shift of the lights that someone is coming inside, but the video immediately cuts to new footage. Who would open the door of my office at—2:37 a.m.? Cleaners always came by late afternoons. Rocío is committed to BLINK, but not two-thirty-a.m. committed. Hell, I’m not two-thirty-a.m. committed.

I wipe my tears, press the space bar, and let the video run, hoping for an explanation. It doesn’t come, but something else does. A segment dated two days ago, again in my office. Just a handful of seconds of Félicette sleeping at my desk. My monitor is on.

I don’t leave my computer unlocked. Not ever.

I stop the video and zoom in as much as I can, feeling like a tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorist. The video is just high-def enough that I can make out . . .

“Is that my Twitter?” I ask no one.

Impossible. I’d never log into WWMD on a work computer. For obvious reasons, chief among them that Rocío has a perfect visual of it. But it’s right there, unless I’m hallucinating, and—it might be keychain access? But still . . .

“Félicette?” I whisper. “Do you turn on my computer in the wee hours of the night? Do you log in with my NASA password? Do you use Twitter to catfish underage kittens?” She doesn’t. She would never. But it sure looks like someone is, and that doesn’t make any sense at all. Or maybe it does. Maybe it totally does, given the weird activity from my Twitter account. Shit.

I paw at the table for my phone and text Levi. My fingers shake when I read his last texts, but I force myself to power through.

BEE: How do I get access to the complete security footage of the Discovery Building?

A minute passes. Three. Seven. I call him—no answer. I look at the clock—fifteen minutes past eleven. Does he hate me? No more than I hate myself. Is that why he’s not answering? Is he asleep? Maybe he’s not checking his phone.

Shit. I’ll email him.

How do I get access to the complete security footage of the Discovery Building? Please let me know ASAP. Something weird’s going on.

Then I have an idea, and don’t bother waiting for his reply. I slip my shoes on, grab my NASA badge with a silent prayer to Dr. Curie that it still works, and run out to the Space Center.

Something very weird’s going on. I’m 99.9 percent sure that I am right—and 43 percent sure that I am wrong.

•   •   •

I STUB MY toe on the edge of the elevator, stumbling into the second floor’s hallway with a loud, “Ow!”

Very suave, Bee. Perhaps I shouldn’t have worn sandals. Perhaps I should have stayed at home. Perhaps I’m going insane.

Whatever. I’ll go to my office, check my computer for anything weird, return home with my tail between my legs. What else do I have to do? My scientific career is over, my good name is soon to be besmirched, and I’m at once too emotionally unavailable to be with the man I love and too in love with him to deal with my own choices. I can spare twenty minutes to sleuth before I go back to browsing the Teen Drama hidden code on Netflix and wishing vegan Chunky Monkey existed.

My (former?) office looks like it always does—homey, cluttered. No sign of Félicette. I sit at my desk, log in. Sure enough, if I navigate to the Twitter page, my password seems to be saved. My heart thuds. My stomach lurches. I look around, but the building is deserted. Okay. Okay, so someone could have conceivably accessed WWMD from this computer.

And messaged the STC guy? Yikes.

But who? Rocío? No. Not my little goth. Levi? Nah. He was in bed with me every night in the past weeks, and most of the time we weren’t even sleeping. Who else, then? And why would they contact STC posing as me? To make me look bad. But why? These kinds of machinations require a degree of committed hatred that someone like me could never inspire. I’m too boring.

I drum my fingers, wondering if I’m a lunatic, when something else occurs to me. Something much, much bigger: if someone logged into my computer, they wouldn’t just have access to my stupid social media, but to BLINK’s server, too.

“Holy shit.”

I navigate to the server repository. “No way.” I click on the folder where the documents pertaining to today’s demonstration are. “Impossible. I’m crazy. No one would—” How the hell did Levi access the logs? God, I hate engineers. They always type so quickly. “Was it—here? Where the hell did he click? Ah, yes—” I open the log for the file used for Guy’s brain stimulation. The one I finalized three days ago. The one that should be locked to anyone except for me.

It was modified last night. At 1:24 a.m. By me.

Except that last night I was tossing and turning in bed.

Okay. So it was modified by someone on this computer. “Who the fuck—”

“Are you okay?”

I startle so hard, I yelp and throw my mouse across the room. It misses Guy by a few inches.

“Oh my God.” I press my hand against my mouth. “I’m sorry—you scared me and I—” I laugh into my palm, high on relief, low-key thankful I didn’t shit my pants. It was touch and go for a second. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t trying to kill you for the second time in one day!”

He smiles, leaning against the doorframe. “Third time’s the charm.”

“Oh, God.” I press a hand against my forehead. My heart’s calming down, and I remember the last time I saw Guy. He didn’t look good. Because I gave him a seizure. “How are you?”

He gestures at himself with a self-deprecating smile. “Back to my hunky self. You don’t look too good, though.”

“I’m having an . . . interesting day. Guy, I want to apologize for what happened today. I take full responsibility for—”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I should.” I lift my hand. “I absolutely should. It looks like something weird is happening—I’ll show you. But that doesn’t matter. With your safety at stake I should have been more careful. I take full responsibility, and—”

“You shouldn’t,” he repeats, his tone a touch firmer. Something about it rubs me wrong. His eyes are usually a warm golden-brown, but tonight there’s an odd coldness about them.

I realize that I have no idea why he’s here. Well past eleven. In my office. After a day spent at the hospital, shouldn’t he be resting? I’m pretty sure he should be resting.

“Are you . . . did you forget something?” I stand to obstruct his view of my monitor, not quite knowing why. “It’s late.”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. I’m acutely conscious that he’s blocking the only exit. I’m also acutely conscious that I’m a raving lunatic. This is Guy. My friend. Levi’s friend. An astronaut. I just gave him a seizure, for fuck’s sake. Of course he looks weird.

“Are you . . . I was heading home. I’m done with . . . what I came for.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Want to leave together?”

He doesn’t move. “You said there was something weird you wanted to show me?” Why is he not smiling?

“No, I . . .” I wipe my palm against the side of my thigh. It’s gross, clammy. My grandmother’s ring catches on the seam. “I misspoke.”

“I don’t think you did.”

My heart skips several beats. Then it gallops, twenty times faster. “It doesn’t matter.” I need my stupid voice to shake less. “I gotta go. It’s late, and I’m technically off BLINK. I shouldn’t even be here—Boris will have me arrested.” I lean back. Turn off my computer, keeping my eyes on Guy the entire time. Then I make my way to the door. “Well, have a good night. Could you let me through? I can’t quite—”

“Bee.” He doesn’t move. His tone is slightly reproachful. “You’re making things complicated for me.”

I swallow. Audibly. “Why?”

“Because.”

“Because . . . what? Is it the seizure? I really didn’t mean to—”

“I think it would be hypocritical of me to get testy about that.” He sighs, and I’m instantly aware of how much larger than me he is. He’s nothing like Levi, but I’m as big as five bananas in a trench coat, which might be a . . . a problem?

“What’s going on?” I whisper. “Guy?”

“What have you told Levi?” he asks, his expression a mix of calm and irritation. A parent cleaning up after a child spilled a glass of milk.

“. . . Told Levi?”

“About the security footage. Did you talk to him on the phone after you emailed him?”

I freeze. “How do you know I emailed him?”

“Answer me, please.”

“H-how do you know? About my email?” I retreat until the backs of my legs hit my desk.

“Bee.” He rolls his eyes. “I’ve been in and out of your email for a long time. Making sure Levi’s messages couldn’t reach you. Creating some . . . miscommunications. You know, there’s a reason websites tell you to use difficult passwords, MarieMonAmour123.”

“It was you.” I gasp, trying to step even farther away. There’s nowhere to go. “How did you get into my computer?”

“I set it up.” He gives me an incredulous look. “You’re not very good at technology, are you?”

I frown, pulled right out of shock and into furious outrage. “Hey! I can code in three programming languages!”

“Is one of them HTML?”

I flush. “HTML is valid, you stemlord. And I minored in computer science. And why the hell were you in my damn email?!”

“Because, Bee, you wouldn’t just mind your damn business.” He takes a step toward me, nostrils flaring. “Did you know that the Sullivan prototype should have been called Kowalsky-Sullivan? Of course, Peter had to get his head smashed—” He stops, pausing for a moment. “Okay, this came out wrong. I was sorry when it happened. But my work on BLINK was erased. By virtue of dying, Peter got all the credit, and—it would have been fine. But then Levi offered to lead BLINK out of some misplaced guilt, and they chose him over me. I had no control over something I spent years working on.” His voice rises. He comes closer and I flatten against the desk. “And for so long I was sure BLINK wouldn’t get done, that it’d be delayed, that Levi would move on to other things—he wasn’t even doing neuroimaging anymore, did you know that? If it hadn’t been for Peter, he’d still be at the Jet Propulsion Lab. But no. He had to poach my project.”

“What did you do?” I murmur.

“I did what I had to. This morning I took a few caffeine pills, just to be, you know . . . excitable. And I fudged the protocols. But you put me in this situation. You and Levi. Because, Bee—oh, Bee, he was obsessed with you. The second NIH nominated you, he had to make BLINK happen. And I tried to do what I could—make you guys fight a little. Little delays. Missing files. For a while you seemed stuck, and I hoped time would run out and you’d go back to NIH.” His eyes are a little crazed. “But you cracked it. And . . . I had to do it. Today had to happen. They won’t let Levi stay on the project.”

“On Twitter. What did you do on Twitter?”

He runs a hand down his face. “That was— I wasn’t going to involve you, believe it or not. But when I found out that you weren’t really married, that Levi lied to me, I was very upset. It didn’t take long to realize that . . . I cannot believe you’re fucking him, Bee. Your Twitter was on your computer, and I’d been following your online identity, so . . . I knew what to do.”

“Oh my God.”

“You were supposed to hate him! When NIH selected you, Levi told me you had issues in the past. And I thought—perfect!” He sighs like he’s deeply tired. “And then you fell in love. Who does that?”

“Are you crazy?”

“I’m angry. Because it would have worked out great if you hadn’t noticed the security footage. I guess I got a bit sloppy at editing myself out? Why were you looking at it, anyway?”

I shake my head. I’m not explaining Félicette to this asshole. “You are crazy.”

“Yeah.” He closes his eyes. “Maybe.”

I look around for— I’m not sure what. A siren? A baseball bat? One of those portable transporters from Star Trek? “Let me go,” I say.

“Bee.” He opens his eyes. “You don’t need to be an evil mastermind to acknowledge that I cannot let you go.”

“You sort of have to. You can’t do anything to me. There are cameras—”

“—whose footage we established I can doctor—thanks to your RA, by the way. I only got access to the surveillance circuit after catching her in flagrante.”

“You still used your badge to come in—”

“—I didn’t, actually. Pretty easy to clone an anonymous badge.”

My fingers shake when I grip my desk. “What’s your plan, then?”

He takes something out of his pocket. No. No.

No, no, no.

“Is that a gun?” I gasp out.

“Yeah.” He sounds almost apologetic. My entire world stops.

I’m used to being scared. I live my life in fear—fear of being abandoned, fear of failing, fear of losing everything. But this is different. Is it terror? Real, hindbrain terror? Is this how the lady feels in Scream and Scream 2, 3, and 4, when she realizes that the caller is in the house? Did they ever make 5? God, will I die before Scream 5 hits theaters?

“What— Where did you even— Is that real?”

“Yeah. Really easy to get one.” He holds the gun like he hates it almost as much as I do. “NRA’s crazy here.”

“I guess I’m having the full Texas experience,” I mumble, numb. This cannot be happening. I’m well-acquainted with stemlords’ disregard for women, but one wanting to kill me? A step too fucking far. “Do you even know how to use that?”

“They teach you. During astronaut training. Insert Space Force joke.” He laughs once, humorlessly. “But I won’t need to use it. Because we’re going up to the roof. Poor little Bee. In a few short days she lost everything. Couldn’t handle the stress. Decided to jump.”

“I will do no such—”

Guy points the gun at me.

Oh, shit. I’m going to die. In my stupid office. Killed by a stemlord. I’m going to die without having had a cat. I’m going to die without having admitted to Levi that I love him more than I thought possible. Without a chance to show him—to show myself—that I can be brave.

At least Marie had Pierre for a while. At least she took a chance. At least she tried not to act like the stupid coward I’ve been and oh God, maybe if I beg Guy he’ll let me text Levi and I’ll be able to tell him, I just want to tell him, it seems such a waste not to have told him, and—

A meowing sound. We both turn. Félicette is on the filing cabinet near the door, growling at Guy. He gives her a confused look. “What the hell is—”

Félicette pounces on him with a shriek, clutching his head and clawing at him. Guy thrashes around, leaving the door empty. I sprint out of the room, running as fast as I can—not nearly fast enough. I can hear steps right behind me.

“Stop! Bee, stop, or I’m fucking going to—”

I’m at the end of the hallway. My legs are giving out, my lungs on fire. He’s going to kill me. Oh my God, he’s going to kill me.

I turn the corner and dart to the landing. Guy yells something I cannot make out. I take my phone out to call 911, but there is a string of loud noises behind me. Shit, has he shot me? No, not a gunshot.

I turn around, expecting to see him come at me, but—

Levi.

Levi?

Levi.

He and Guy are tussling on the floor, grunting and struggling and rolling around in a vicious, violent embrace. I stare at them for several seconds, open-mouthed, paralyzed. Levi’s bigger, but Guy has a fucking gun, and when he adjusts his grip to aim at Levi I—

Levi!

I don’t even think about it—I run back to where the fight is happening and kick Guy in the ribs so forcefully, I feel a zing of pain travel from my toes up my spinal cord.

I blink, and by the time my eyes are open again Levi’s pinning Guy to the floor, holding his arms behind his back. The gun has skittered several feet away. It is, in fact, very close to me.

I look at it. Consider picking it up. Decide not to.

Levi.

“You okay, Bee?” He sounds winded.

I nod. “He . . . he . . .” Guy is struggling. Demanding to be let go. Swearing. Insulting Levi, me, the world. My legs feel like Jell-O—the off-brand one, which doesn’t bounce very well. I could use a puke bucket.

“Bee?” Levi says.

“. . . Yeah?”

“Can you do something for me, sweetheart?”

Unlikely. “Yeah?”

“I want you to take a step to your right. Another. Another.” My knee hits the edge of one of the lobby couches. Levi smiles, like he’s incredibly proud of me. “Perfect. Now sit down.”

I do it, confused. There’s something wet on my hand. I look down: Félicette is licking my fingers. “I . . . Why?”

“Because I’ll need to restrain Guy until security gets here. And I won’t be able to catch you when you pass out.”

“But I . . .” My eyelids flutter closed, and . . .

Well. You know the drill by now.