Shannon groaned. She reached for his copy ofCatch-22, feeling lethargic and sweaty and strange. She wasn’t sure what she wanted Russell to say, but it was nice not to be alone.
Shannon was curled in a ball on Russell’s porch when her adviser called her. Shannon answered it with a shaking hand, sensing what was coming for her.
“Hello, Miss Peters,” her adviser, Mr. Clark, said. “I’m checking in about these recent grades. Not looking so good, are they?”
“It’s mostly High Passes,” she pointed out. “And I got an Honors, too.”
“But this Fail,” her adviser said. “It’s a reason to worry.”
“I really don’t think it’s, um, right,” Shannon said. “I mean, I experimented. It all turned out exactly the way I planned. It…”
“Oh?” Mr. Clark sounded surprised. “I don’t have anything on file for you. It seems that’s why your professor failed you. It says here that you didn’t turn in the lab report.”
Shannon’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding. I turned in a physical copy. I put it in his mailbox. I…”
“It seems that he didn’t receive it,” Mr. Clark said. “Do you have a copy?”
Shannon stuttered with fear. “He’ll take it? So late?”
“Miss Peters, we know about what happened in your family last month,” Mr. Clark said. “I’m sure we can work something out. Just turn in the report sooner rather than later, all right?”
“I really appreciate this.” Shannon got to her feet and paced back and forth on the little porch. She couldn’t understand how this had happened. Had the professor perhaps lost the report?
“I’m glad we could talk about it!” Mr. Clark said. “I wish you had come to me to talk to me about what’s going on. We could have worked something out.”
“I didn’t even know he didn’t have my report,” she said.
“Right. Of course.” Mr. Clark was clearly smiling. “In any case, I’ll be in touch next week, after your professor gets a grade back to us. Have a wonderful day.”
It occurred to her, as Mr. Clark hung up, that he didn’t believe that she’d turned it in. He thought she’d either forgotten to turn it in or her sorrow about her father hadn’t allowed her to finish it on time. Anger reverberated through her body.
“What’s going on?” Russell asked. He, too, was on his feet, looking at her intently.
“Apparently, he never got it,” she said of her professor.
“But I was there with you,” Russell reminded her. “I watched you put it into the slot!”
“I know.” Shannon rubbed her temples, then shot back through his living room, heaving for the door. “I need to turn it in right away.
“Yo!” Russell just barely caught up to her at the door. “You want to go out tonight?”
Shannon turned to look at him, almost surprised that he was still there. Her mind was elsewhere. “Oh, um. Yeah! Yeah, we should.” They made arrangements to hit up their favorite dive bar, where, Shannon guessed, she’d try and fail not to talk obsessively about this grade business. Never in her life had she failed anything.
It wasn’t till she got home and realized that she hadn’t backed up her lab report—and didn’t have a copy anywhere besides the physical copy she’d turned in—that she went into panic mode. At the bar, after a shower and a full-on panic attack, she told Russell what she’d done.
“I can’t believe I didn’t save it anywhere,” she said. “I didn’t even email it to myself!”
“You were going through a lot,” Russell reminded her. “You’re worried about your sisters and your mom and your dad, plus you’re going through a breakup, for goodness’ sake. WhenMimi broke up with me, I forgot to put on deodorant! I couldn’t sleep! I went insane!”
Shannon put her face in her hands. She knew Russell was doing his best to calm her down, and it was sweet, but it wasn’t helping in the least. She needed to wake up early and go immediately to the lab. She needed to redo the experiment—perfectly, the first time, this time. And then she could get her Honors or High Pass or whatever and move on.
She wouldn’t let this derail her life. She couldn’t.
10
Feeling guilty for planning to leave him again tonight, Arietta spent all day with Fred, talking to him, reading beside him, and wheeling him around so that he could feel the sun on his face and hear the ocean. When it was time to go, she returned him to bed, then hurried to change into a sundress and do her makeup. By the time the nurse arrived, she was itchy and adrenalized, nervous about meeting all of Stella Turnbilt’s “Salt Sister” friends.
She was already beginning to forget she had sent twenty grand to a stranger. She was already beginning to tell herself that it didn’t really happen.Let’s move on.