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Ying’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you finally come up with a project?”
“I mean, it hasn’t been that long—”
“Oh, no, it definitely has,” said Ying. Shay nodded alongside her girlfriend. Traitor!
Nadia swept extra furiously for a moment, buying herself a second to think. She wanted to tell Shay and Ying about her plans for VERA. She really did. It was exciting. And the potential…the potential was almost too big to consider.
Which is why Nadia also didn’t want to tell them. She didn’t have all the answers yet. She wasn’t entirely clear on what or how she was going to make her new VERA system work. Or how she was going to make it fit the project guidelines more closely. Plus, Ying and Shay hadn’t been around much—they didn’t know about Maria’s list, or Margaret…They’d been very caught up in kissing in front of ’90s movies. Not that Nadia begrudged them that—she didn’t, at all.
It just seemed like a lot to cover in a short time. And, if she was being really, truly honest with herself, Nadia didn’t want to encounter the same kind of resistance she’d gotten from Taina. Shay and Ying weren’t Taina, of course; they reacted to things in their own way. Shay had invented a teleporter in her apartment, for goodness’ sake! And Ying was as much of a rule-breaker as Nadia. It was highly probable that they would rally behind her new idea.
But…maybe later. Nadia wanted to get back to work right now. She’d been faced with so many distractions, between A.I.M. and Janet and Maria’s list.…She could feel the pull of VERA calling her back to her lab at this very moment. She had so much work to get done and so little time if she wanted to get to bed at a reasonable hour (which VERA always reminded her to do). And she really felt like the only person she could trust with this project right now was Margaret.
“It’s a surprise,” said Nadia. It wasn’t not true. Right?
“Ooh.” Shay waggled her eyebrows. “Does it involve either Carly Rae Jepsen and/or a sword?”
“No,” said Nadia. “Who?”
“Oh my god.” Shay pulled out her phone, looking horrified. “I’m updating my Teach Nadia Pop Culture playlist right this second. I don’t even care about the surprise anymore. This is more important. You really haven’t lived until you’ve heard Emotion.”
While Shay was distracted by her music app, Ying took a step closer to Nadia. She grasped Nadia’s shoulder and looked her dead in the eye.
“‘Surprise’ as in ‘something fun I’m working on’?” she asked seriously. “Or ‘surprise’ as in ‘I haven’t slept in a week and I don’t want to tell anyone in case they get mad or because I haven’t realized it yet’?”
“It’s not that,” Nadia said. “I promise. I’m going to Dr. Sinclair every week, I’m regular with my pills, I’m working very hard on myself. Even if it is not always easy. Which it isn’t.” She frowned. Why was everyone so sure she wasn’t taking care of herself? “It’s really just something I haven’t figured out yet. It’s in my head, but behind a kosynka, like the old ladies in Novosibirsk wore. Obscured. You know?”
“Oh, I know,” Ying said. She released Nadia’s hand. She would never say it, but Nadia could tell that she was relieved. “In that case, I’m relieved.”
What?
“What?” Nadia stared at Ying in disbelief.
“I’m relieved,” Ying repeated. “I care about you. We all do.”
“I’m teaching her how to say feelings,” Shay interjected, head still buried in her phone a few feet away. “We’re getting there.”
“Okay, I’m going back to work.” Nadia shook her head. Ying, talking about her feelings? This was too much. “You two have fun with your alien invasions.”
“Up yours!” Ying said enthusiastically. Nadia blinked. “It’s a quote,” Ying added. “From the movie. Which you would know if you’d watch it with us.…”
“Go already!” Nadia waved a hand behind her as she walked back to her lab. VERA’s blinking red light greeted her, and she felt relief.
She loved her friends. But she loved to work, too.
“VERA,” Nadia asked, digging through yet another box, “are you sure you don’t know where—”
“I am so sorry, Nadia,” VERA replied. “But I was not yet active when your quantum oscillator was packed. Have you checked the second cupboard—”
“Yes!” She had. Twice. She had checked every room in the house, every box she could think of, but her oscillator was nowhere to be found. Which usually wouldn’t be a problem; it wasn’t exactly something she used every day. Very tricky physics-related issues only for the quantum oscillator.
It just so happened that the oscillator might actually solve Nadia’s most recent tricky physics-related issue. VERA, in fact, had suggested it as a way of increasing her connectivity speed to other VERA units over traditional internet, bypassing through the quantum realm to increase data-transfer rates. It was, really, quite genius.
So, of course, it was at that particular moment that Nadia had no hope at all of finding it.
“Nothing!” Nadia crossed her feet and dropped to the floor. She slid onto her back, the wood hard against her spine. There was almost no furniture in the house now, just boxes on boxes—half here, half at the lab, her life and a life that was never really hers at all spread between the past and her future. She felt everywhere and nowhere at once. Nadia was just grateful she had VERA to keep her grounded.
That morning, Dr. Sinclair had listened with interest as Nadia updated her on recent exploits with Margaret, VERA, and the Like Minds project. Maria’s list had dropped to the back of the queue of things demanding Nadia’s attention, and while Dr. Sinclair was happy that Nadia had removed something from her plate, even temporarily, she was concerned that the “something” in question was, at least on the face of it, one of the more self-care-focused items on her list.
