“It’s not, and I understand if you couldn’t take it for that reason, but I wanted to offer it to you anyway. If you’re concerned about scheduling, we can work that out. I can always take on a second research assistant if you can’t be around for some of the experiments. You’re one of my top students, though, and it would be great to have you assisting me. Think about it and let me know.”
I thank her and step out into the hallway. Jade isn’t here yet, so I lean against a wall to wait for her.
Being a research assistant is a great opportunity, but is it the right one?
My first year of middle school was tough. I’d just hit a growth spurt and needed new clothes, but since my dad had just lost his job for taking too much sick time, money was tight. Mom hadn’t picked up her second job yet, and we were just scraping by. I’d been getting teased on the bus for weeks, but one day I wore a shirt with a big hole in the armpit that stretched down the side that I didn’t know was there until the girls pointed it out, laughing at me. When everyone else got off the bus, I stayed on and asked the driver, tears streaming down my face, to please take me back home. She didn’t. Instead, she marched me right into the guidance counselor’s office. Miss Julie, the guidance counselor, sat me down in a big comfy chair and let me cry until I didn’t have any more tears. She let me hang out in her office all day and read and didn’t make me go to class. She even brought me lunch from the school cafeteria and told me I could come back as often as I needed to. At the end of the day, she asked my mom to come get me instead of making me take the bus again.
I spent a lot of time on Miss Julie’s big blue couch in middle school reading and telling her about my life. When it came time for me to go to high school, Miss Julie introduced me to the high school guidance counselor, Mr. Green, who was just as nice as Miss Julie and helped me through a lot of really hard times.
When I was thinking of what I wanted to do after graduation, I asked Mr. Green what he went to college for. He said both he and Miss Julie were psychology majors, that they’d known each other in college. They’d both gone to Middle Penn, and so that’s where I applied too. I knew I didn’t want to be a school counselor, but I would like to work with kids in a therapeutic setting, and I knew that the first day I left Miss Julie’s office nearly a decade ago.
But to become a therapist I need to attend grad school, and in order to attend grad school I’ll need an assistantship, for which my options are teaching or research. Since teaching holds no appeal to me, Professor Campbell’s offer might just be what I didn’t know I needed.
* * *
“What’sthat look on your face?” Jade asks as she approaches me, hands outstretched with coffee and a pastry.
I take them from her and stop myself before I can ask how much I owe her.
Jade’s love language is gifts. That, and her college experience doesn’t come from her pockets but her father’s. According to Jade, his pockets are deep, and so is his guilt. He left her mom when she was young, and when Jade reconnected with him as a teenager he was nothing but apologies for leaving her life. They don’t have a terrible relationship now, but it’s hard to say how much Jade would talk to her dad without the money.
“My professor asked me to be a research assistant.”
“Not interested?” Jade scrunches her face.
“Just not sure if I want to add one more thing to my schedule.” I shrug and dig into my croissant before she even has a chance to respond, buttery, flaky bits spilling down the front of my top.
We walk toward the elevators, and I brush the flakes off my chest. I’m eager to tell Jade about Sexy Shakespeare. I need her reassurance he was actually into me despite his lack of contact today, and that it’s totally fine and he will text and—
“It’s a psychology thing, right?” Jade asks, interrupting my thoughts.
I nod, mouth full of croissant.
“Mac wasn’t asked to be a research assistant, was he?”
“I hope not. He’s already in two of my classes this semester.”
“The woes of sharing a major at a small college. Hasn’t he been in at least one of your classes every semester?”
I nod.
“You should consider breaking into the dean’s office and fucking with the files so he’s not in your classes anymore.”
“I don’t hate that idea.”
We step in through the elevator doors as they open, then I press the ground floor button. A semester without competing with Mac sounds blissful.
“Shall we ring in the weekend by ruining Mac’s life?”
“Cheers to that.” I hold out my coffee cup.
She clinks her cup against mine and gives me her most devilish grin. This is why I love Jade. She’s my ride-or-die. She’s the most supportive presence in my life, and even if sometimes her support looks like tough love or aggressive and illegal suggestions, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“By the way, I’m mad at you,” Jade says.
“What’d I do this time?” I take the first sip of my coffee, closing my eyes to savor the warm, bittersweet beverage. Jade knows I like my coffee tan-colored with two sugar packets. That’s my love language: details.
“For not texting me a play-by-play of what happened with the yummy dude in the king costume,” she says as the elevator door dings open.
