Page 15 of Love in the Lab
“Talk to Dad. And be nice.”
“I’m always nice,” I grumble.
She laughs. “You’re usually nice. Less so when you talk to Dad.” I hear a crash in the background. “Ugh, gotta go. Mia’s getting into something. Love you, Jonny!”
“Love you, Tams.”
The call ends just as I’m pulling into a parking spot at the lab. I switch off the engine and groan as I lay my head back against the headrest.
My parents have been divorced since I was twelve, and Dad’s been dating Sharon for two years now. She’s a nice lady. I don’t have anything against her, except that she’s the total opposite of my mother in almost every way. Mom has black hair and Sharon’s blonde. Mom is outgoing, the life of every party, and Sharon is quiet and reserved. Mom has strong opinions aboutmost things, and Sharon goes along with what everyone else wants.
It’s as if, by now choosing Sharon, Dad is admitting how wrong he was to choose my mother the first time around. It’s like he’s saying their marriage was a mistake; my mother was a mistake.
Tamara loves Sharon. Tamara’s husband, Mike, loves Sharon. The girls love Sharon. My dad, obviously, loves Sharon. And I guess he’s going to marry her.
Chapter five
Molly
I’m not sure if it’s the antihistamine cream or if I took too much Benadryl, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about pranks since Jonathan came to my apartment this morning.
Juvenile pranks. Stupid pranks.Funnypranks.
No. I need to redirect my brain. Think about work instead.
I hate missing work today. Before I had to step out with Jonathan for our little fieldwork adventure, I was working on a model that would collate all the data we’ve collected from our sample sites over the last two years and find patterns that could help us better predict harmful algal blooms.
Standard stuff, right?Exceptmy model also incorporates weather data, specifically hurricanes and other tropical storms.
Harmful algal blooms, more commonly called red tide, are absolutely devastating to beach tourism and the seafood industry on the Gulf coast. Red tide tends to get particularly bad during or following an active hurricane season. Though it’s widely believed that this is because of chemical runoff from pesticides and the like from the land as flood waters recede, I have a half-baked hypothesis that it may also be partly caused by how the water temperature and pH levels change during the storms themselves. I’m not sure yet how to test that, but my data model will at least set the foundation.
Did you know that in Hitchcock’sThe Birds, the birds’ crazed behavior was likely due to them ingesting toxins from fish poisoned by harmful algal blooms in Monterey Bay?
Ooh, maybe it would be a funny prank to have Jonathan unknowingly eat fish with toxins from algal bloom in it and then record his erratic behavior.
Wait, what?No, Molly, that would not be funny. It would be dangerous and potentially result in assault and battery charges.Calm down, Prank Sinatra.
The character Winston in the showNew Girlcalled himself Prank Sinatra even though all the pranks he came up with were either way too big, like releasing a badger into the air ducts at a friend’s wedding, or way too small, like putting a feather in someone’s shoe.
Ugh, my arms are itching again. Okay, mind over matter. I’ll help my brain stop focusing on the itching by instead brainstorming what prankswouldbe appropriate to play on Jonathan. Not that I’m actually going to. Just brainstorming here.
Let’s see. I could put a taxidermy seagull in his locker at the lab. It would scare him to death when he opened the door. Icould put tape over the sensor on the bottom of his computer mouse, so it doesn't work. I could cover his cubicle in sticky notes. I could switch out his shoes to much larger ones, so he has to flop around the lab. That’s dumb. When does he ever take his shoes off at the lab?
Wait. Instead of shoes, what if I switch out his lab coat? And instead of larger, I go smaller. It’s simple, easy to pull off, and effective. The perfect inaugural prank of the prank war. If I were participating in a prank war, which I’m absolutely not.
But I can’t get it out of my head. I’m fixated now on this idea for pranking Jonathan.
For the next week, whenever I see Jonathan take off his lab coat and hang it on the back of his desk chair, which he does often, my fingers twitch, begging for permission to grab it and make the switch.
Somehow, I end up with a medium-sized lab coat tucked into the bottom drawer of my desk. It was in the lost and found. Almost unintentionally, I took it home, washed it, and folded it neatly into the drawer.
I’m not sure what I’m doing. I hate pranks. I hate myself for even thinking about playing a prank, especially at work. But I can’t stop.
The day I hit my breaking point is an otherwise normal Tuesday at the lab. After coming out of the lab, Jonathan hangs his coat on the back of his desk chair, badge included, and then leaves to have lunch off-site. I watch him walk out the door. I spring to the window and watch for him to appear on the sidewalk downstairs. I watch him get in his truck. I watch him drive away.
I can’t fight the impulse anymore. It’s too strong. I slip the medium lab coat out of my desk drawer and slink toward Jonathan’s cubicle. I shift my eyes around the room. Mostpeople are at lunch or on the other side of the lab working with water samples. No one’s paying attention to me.
Quickly, I unclip Jonathan’s badge from his lab coat and reclip it in the exact same spot on the smaller coat. I take his coat off the chair and replace it with the prank coat. Then, I scurry back to my own cubicle and shove Jonathan’s coat into my desk drawer.
