How Not To Fall Read Free Page B

bed.
    Occasionally I don’t even make it home but just fall asleep in the lab, and Charles or whoever will find me there in the morning, passed out on the couch in the ducklings’ office, my face pillowed on an open book. A few times Margaret and I manage to hang out—as my roommate and fellow duckling, she would usually hang out with me every day, but she’s not writing a thesis. She has a job lined up at a pharmaceutical company in Indianapolis starting in May, and until then she’s basically coasting. She’s enjoying her last couple of months in school, socializing, doing all the things we love doing, one last time before we go.
    Not me. I’m the thesis-writing, doesn’t-understand-her-data zombie who wanders in at night, stares at the TV for ten minutes, and drops into bed without even taking off her clothes. And then I’m out of the apartment in the morning before Margaret wakes up.
    So a month passes.
    On one of the last go-back-to-the-lab nights, I’m sitting on the ducklings’ couch, reading a psychophysiology paper. I’ve been here for about ten hours, and everyone has come and gone for the day. There’s no one else in the lab—probably no one else in the building, since it’s Friday night. So when the door opens, I startle and gasp.
    It’s only Charles.
    â€œHey,” I say.
    â€œHey,” he says. “What are you working on?”
    â€œNoncoherence in anger,” I answer, taking off my glasses. I put the paper down and wipe my hands over my eyes. “Anger as an approach motivation, sure, but at which levels of analysis? Basically just anger. From a theoretical point of view, anger is a complete mystery to me.” I put my glasses back on. “Still.”
    And he says,

    â€œRage is the shortest passion of our souls,
Like narrow brooks that rise with sudden showers,
It swells in haste, and falls again as soon.”

    I look at him. “Huh?”
    â€œNicholas Rowe,” he says. And then in a soft, high voice, he adds,

    â€œI swear I could not see the dear betrayer
Kneel at my feet, and sigh to be forgiven,
But my relenting heart would pardon all,
And quite forget ’twas he that had undone me.”

    And before I can react, he pulls a white paper bag from his satchel and says, “I brought food. Take a break?”
    â€œOh! You didn’t have to do that—that’s so nice!” He hands me a bottle of water and a warm, foil-wrapped sandwich that smells like a cheeseburger. I take it with a smile but don’t unwrap it.
    He sits at the far end of the couch, puts another foil-wrapped sandwich on the empty cushion next to him, and then starts rummaging through his bag as he says, “Annie,” and then clears his throat. After a pause he continues, “I wanted to say how impressed I’ve been with you these last few weeks. At first I was impressed at how well you took my criticism. You didn’t argue; you just looked at the data and saw the truth.” He pulls a bag of miniature Snickers out of his satchel. “But I’ve been even more impressed since then because your original analysis wasn’t wrong, it was only incomplete. You could have kept it as it was, and only you and I would have known the difference. But you weren’t satisfied with that; you’re committed to understanding your results more thoroughly.”
    â€œThank you,” I say. I roll and unroll the corner of the foil between my fingers.
    â€œAnd I want to tell you that I think the world is going to be a much better place because you are in it and doing good work,” he says. He rips open the bag of candy and drops it on my side of the empty cushion. Then and only then does he address his own burger. “But I’d like to present you with another criticism, and I hope you’ll take it as well as you took the last one, even though I don’t have any data to back it