AN ELECTRON IS HELD IN orbit around an atom's nucleus by electrostatic attraction.
Electrons are negatively charged and nuclei are positively charged, so they attract each other. The old adage opposites attract seemed to hold true for a lot of things in my life. From the famous model attracted to the quiet student, down to the very fabric holding together the universe.
I was an electron stuck in Quen's orbit, and I needed to get out. So what if he didn't return my feelings? That was life. I didn't want to hopelessly chase after him when rejection awaited. It was clear to me that being around him had thrown off my emotional balance, so I needed to step back and move everything back into place.
The only problem was that I didn't want to stop being his friend completely.
The electron needed to leave orbit, but not be flung too far away. Actually, that was a really bad analogy. Because the orbits and therefore the ionisation energies of electrons were quantised, it was either all or nothing—
"Why are you studying quantum mechanics?" Viv's voice rose up from behind me. "You don't take a quantum course."
The music blasting through my headphones had blocked out the sounds of Riley and Viv entering my bedroom. I slipped them from my ears and smiled over my shoulder. "I was just researching for my Python project," I explained.
"Python project? You don't take a programming course either," Viv deadpanned.
I rolled my eyes at her and saw a small smile push onto her face. She knew very well about my newfound hobby, but she took endless pleasure in teasing my every step away from ABG-dom. Pushing my chair further away from the desk, I invited my friends over to see my work.
I continued, "You can't really learn Python without giving context to your code, like stock market predictions or pandemic modelling. I chose quantum mechanics because it has the potential for some really cool graphs."
My coding skills were getting better week by week. Every time I had seen programmers in movies, I'd thought the trails of coloured text on a dark background looked impossibly cool. Turns out that was just an aesthetic preference.
Spyder, Jupyter, Azure—most other platforms—had light mode if you wanted.
I didn't have a lot of spare time between my multiple jobs and schoolwork, but whenever I did, I added a little more to the running notebook of code I had compiled. But I couldn't code about something that I didn't understand. Function-wise, it just wouldn't work, so I dedicated an equal portion to researching the areas of quantum mechanics I was interested in.
"You spend so much time cooped up in your room. We could have really used a third yoga buddy today," Viv sang, stretching her arms high above her head.
Both Riley and Viv were clad in skin-hugging athletic wear, and their cheeks were brightly flushed. Riley's hair frizzed with the sweat, while Viv's baby hairs clung to her forehead.
"Hm?" I murmured distractedly, finishing the sentence on magnetic quantum numbers I had been reading before they came in. Then her words registered, "Oh, yes! How was yoga, you guys?"
"Each time I go back, I convince myself it couldn't have been that painful the last time, but they prove me wrong," Riley pulled a pained, disgusted face. "So, so wrong. I'll never go again."
"Drama queen," Viv smirked. "Wait till I drag you out in two months' time. It was a great class! I feel so relaxed."
"I think I sprained my back. Those clicks I heard do not bode well," Riley moaned, rubbing her lumbar area tenderly. "I'm not made to be a human pretzel."
Viv's lips squeezed into an innocent pout, her eyes wide. "What clicks?"
"Don't give me that, you looked straight at me when you heard them."
"I don't know what you're talking about—"
"Ladies," I interrupted their squabble.
The outcome was obvious to me, after years of friendship. Viv couldn't live comfortably without doing yoga at least thrice a week, but she needed a friend to keep her motivation high, even if that friend was completely unmotivated herself.
I had been that friend till I got my new job at Topaz, so on days that Viv felt especially stagnant or determined to meditate through her chronic pain, Riley was roped into yoga buddy duty kicking and screaming. If Viv went to her Poetry Club clams, Riley had to give a little sugar in return. She'd swear off it until the next time Viv's endometriosis flared up, at which point no-one could deny her anything. We all felt for her.
I pushed my laptop closer to them, "Look at this model I coded. Isn't it cool?" They leaned in closer to inspect the image on the screen.
"Really cool," Riley said enthusiastically. "Um. But what is it?" She stared at the ellipsoid figures on the screen, coloured all shades of neon colours—which I had chosen for myself—with a quizzical expression.
I realised she didn't have any clue what they were, while Viv recognised but disliked the shapes, her lips thinning into a scowl. "They're electron orbitals. This row is sharp orbitals, principal here, then diffuse ones—"
"You're giving me flashbacks to Spectroscopy," Viv grimaced. "Let's ooh and ah and leave it at that. No exposition necessary."
"Fine, fine," I smiled. "I'll contain myself."
Riley dropped her gym bag onto the floor and shoved it under her bunk with her foot. Viv stayed close to me while she started stripping off her sweaty clothes, donning her linen bathrobe.
Viv asked, "Are you joining us for dinner today?"
"Yup."
"Great! We missed you the whole weekend," Viv pouted. "I'll come to knock after I have a shower."
I was as happy as my friends to finally have a meal with them.
It was Sunday evening. The last time we talked in depth was Thursday evening, when we'd applied face masks and ranted about men. When I was still reeling from the events of the Thursday tutorial. I worked a shift at Topaz on Friday evening, and Quen had thankfully not visited. I was resolved to pull myself out of his orbit, but seeing him so soon after swallowing rejection would have strained my willpower to no end.
On Saturday, I had my first modelling job in a while. Usually, I was flooded with them while I was in New York over the various college holidays. Mom encouraged me to keep my network fresh. Studying in Halston signalled the modelling quiet period since no agencies were headquartered out here, but a local clothing brand had booked me for a gig.
Earning two grand for posing in various combinations of high-end clothing was not a bad use of my time, even if the shoot lasted for eight hours. I'd come back to the dormitory after the dinner hours were over in the dining hall, so I had wolfed down a pack of instant ramen and immediately fallen asleep.
This morning, I had crunched out my regular piece for Natural Affairs, covering the gender differential in imposter syndrome rates in the population. Then I'd read up on my lecture material for the upcoming week, and now I was spending my me-time learning quantum mechanics.
I was really trying to have it all. But that meant my friends often got bumped to the lower end of my to-do list. As I'd told Quen the very first time we'd met, my two pieces of the Holy Uni Trinity were my sleep and my grades. Though lately, in keeping all my commitments afloat, sometimes I didn't even have sleep.
"I know, right. Feels like I haven't seen you guys in ages," I told my friends. Viv smiled her usual wry smile and made to leave, but I stopped her. "Oh, wait, before you go. Check this out. It spins!"
Riley and Viv crowded around my laptop again as I ran the code. Not only had I been working on plotting three-dimensional figures, but I had also learnt how to create short, repeating loops. In the context of electron orbits, that just meant rotating the X-Y plane once every five seconds.
Not too difficult, but no single coding skill was difficult. It was putting it all together that was hard. Coding was made of hundreds of small steps I had to learn. The distance to the top—to complete mastery—was immense, but the distance to each next step was encouragingly small. Just try.
"Ooh. Ah. Brings tears to my eyes," Viv said sarcastically. Then she clicked her tongue and picked up her gym bag, heading to the door. "See you girls in thirty."
Riley and I chortled as Viv shuddered on her way out—that Spectroscopy paper had been the bane of her life.
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Twenty minutes later, Riley wandered back into our room wrapped in her bathrobe and with steam-ruddied cheeks. After she changed into a baggy t-shirt and sweatpants, she came over and leaned a hip against my desk.
"How are your secondary applications going?"
"They're going," I told her, closing my coding programme. "I've gotten my letters of recommendations from those two internships I did, plus my WISA mentor, and my Anatomy professor from last year. Still need to chase up one more, but I'm sure she'll come through in the end."
Riley offered, "Do you need me to edit any of your essays?"
I glanced at her in surprise, before a relieved smile broke out on my face. "Would you? That would be so helpful, but I didn't want to ask in case you have a lot of studying to do for midterms."
"I feel like I've passed the hardest part of college. All the work I put in over the years have paid off, so now I get to specialise in the areas that actually come easy to me, and that I'm passionate about," she explained. "Feel free to send anything my way."
My chest inflated with pride hearing Riley say that. She had struggled especially in freshman year, when she'd pour her heart out onto the page and receive lashings of red ink in return. I thought there was an inherent clash with trying to teach the arts in a college setting. How could anyone create a marking rubric for effective literature?
Riley had eventually toughened herself and widened her repertoire and challenged herself to new styles of writing. Now she was working on her first manuscript and shopping around for publishing houses and still, she managed to lend her time to me.
"You're a lifesaver!" I told her truthfully. "Just warning you now, I'll probably write heaps of practise essays because I've been sent secondary applications from fourteen of the twenty programmes I applied for, and some of them look for totally different qualities in their candidates."
"Holy shit, Kris. Congratulations! I mean, you told us about the first six—was it?—and I remember thinking you've totally got this. I didn't know you received such positive feedback."
"A lot of them just trickled in over time. Plus, I realised I sounded, kind of, boastful announcing each time I got a secondary application," I shrugged. "Especially since Viv has always kept her progress so private, I don't really know where she's at. Pre-Med students are all very defensive."
Riley rolled her eyes. "Viv is Viv. WISA Treasurer, youth mentor, activist, straight-A student. I'm one hundred percent sure she won't fall short, even if she doesn't talk about it. Both of you could stand to talk about your successes more, not less."
"I guess I don't want to talk big and then disappoint everyone with bad news in the future."
"Is that something you're worried about? Disappointing your loved ones?"
I took a moment to think, and then decided to just tell Riley everything that had been playing on my mind since this academic year began.
"Immensely. My mom loves me no matter what, and she only pushes because she loves me, but sometimes I feel like her support is conditional," I tried to put my tense feelings into words. "Obviously, the bedrock love she has for me won't change, I know that, but her surface attitude towards me is very easily swayed. It all depends on if I'm doing things that she approves of."
"Oh. That sounds like a lot of pressure," she sympathised, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. "My mom is so carefree about what I end up doing. My life path is so unimportant to her that she often forgets the things I've told her about my interests and goals. She only asks that I'm happy and safe, so I can't really complain about it."
"Do you think it's because she's your step-mom?" I wondered. "She probably doesn't want to be too overbearing."
"It probably is. I want to tell her that she's entitled to all of the Mom-like behaviour, not just the nice ones. She doesn't need to shy away from nagging and poking and fussing over me," she shared. "But then again, I don't want to tell her because it'll make a thing of it, you know? When it's really not that serious to me. I just think about it sometimes."
"Same," I agreed, half-truthfully. Mine was a big deal to me, and I thought about it constantly. "But if I didn't get into a med school, I feel like she'd be more heartbroken than me."
Riley snorted amusedly. "I doubt it. Oh. Well, actually, I agree only because I can't imagine you heartbroken over anything."
"Huh?"
"You're tough as nails, mentally. Whenever you got bad grades, rejected from an internship programme, or even fell for Quen, you just picked yourself up and found a way through. You just tuck it away and keep moving forward. I wish I was like that."
I cast my eyes down to my keyboard.
I wanted to say that I wasn't like that. I just didn't see a point fretting over things that I couldn't control, like rejections or bad grades. Why bother with something you would never excel at? I could only work for better grades in the future and direct my effort to more productive pathways, which is what I did.
I also wanted to say that Riley was more like that than I thought, but then I thought of her bedridden after breaking up with Phoenix and crying after her first failing grade. She had been irrefutably heartbroken before.
It wasn't that I thought she was weak. In fact, I thought that Riley was the stronger person for being able to come back from her lows—rather than not having any significant lows in the first place, like me. I'd never had to test my strength before; she had.
"I'm not—" I began.
Three sharp knocks came at the door. We knew it was Viv immediately, and excited smiles bloomed on our faces. The online dining menu said that today's course was Indian cuisine, which was to be the highlight of all our weeks.
Riley and I were halfway to the door before Viv even had the time to say, "Dinnertime, bitches!"
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A / N :
Krista suffers from an affliction commonly known as High Achieving Kid Avoids Things They Are Not Naturally Good At Because They Grew Up Assigning Worth to Success.
(In case anyone was wondering why she's 'giving up' on Quen very quickly.)
If you weren't wondering, ah well. I just called myself out.
See you in the next chapter,
Aimee x