Olive: Don’t you think that maybe you could have delivered that feedback in a nicer way?

Adam: Why?

Olive: Because if you had maybe he wouldn’t be upset now?

Adam: I still don’t see why.

Olive: Seriously?

Adam: It’s not my job to manage your friend’s emotions. He’s in a Ph.D. program, not grade school. He’ll be inundated by feedback he doesn’t like for the rest of his life if he pursues academia. How he chooses to deal with it is his own business.

Olive: Still, maybe you could try not to look like you enjoy delaying his graduation.

Adam: This is irrational. The reason his proposal needs to be modified is that in its current state it’s setting him up for failure. Me and the rest of the committee are giving him feedback that will allow him to produce useful knowledge. He is a scientist in training: he should value guidance, not be upset by it.

Olive gritted her teeth as she typed her responses.

Olive: You must know that you fail more people than anyone else. And your criticism is needlessly harsh. As in, immediately-drop-out-of-grad-school-and-never-look-back harsh. You must know how grads perceive you.

Adam: I don’t.

Olive: Antagonistic. And unapproachable.

And that was sugarcoating it. You’re a dick, Olive meant. Except that I know you can not be, and I can’t figure out why you’re so different with me. I’m absolutely nothing to you, so it doesn’t make any sense that you’d have a personality transplant every time you’re in my presence.

The three dots at the bottom of the screen bounced for ten seconds, twenty, thirty. A whole minute. Olive reread her last text and wondered if this was it—if she’d finally gone too far. Maybe he was going to remind her that being insulted over text at 9:00 p.m. on a Friday night was not part of their fake-dating agreement.

Then a blue bubble appeared, filling up her entire screen.

Adam: I’m doing my job, Olive. Which is not to deliver feedback in a pleasant way or to make the department grads feel good about themselves. My job is to form rigorous researchers who won’t publish useless or harmful crap that will set back our field. Academia is cluttered with terrible science and mediocre scientists. I couldn’t care less about how your friends perceive me, as long as their work is up to standard. If they want to drop out when told that it’s not, then so be it. Not everyone has what it takes to be a scientist, and those who don’t should be weeded out.

She stared at her phone, hating how unfeeling and callous he sounded. The problem was—Olive understood exactly where Greg was coming from, because she’d been in similar situations. Perhaps not with Adam, but her overall experience in STEM academia had been punctuated by self-doubt, anxiety, and a sense of inferiority. She’d barely slept the two weeks before her qualifying exams, often wondered if her fear of public speaking was going to prevent her from having a career, and she was constantly terrified of being the stupidest person in the room. And yet, most of her time and energy was spent trying to be the best possible scientist, trying to carve a path for herself and amount to something. The idea of someone dismissing her work and her feelings this coldheartedly cut deep, which is why her response was so immature, it was almost fetal.

Olive: Well, fuck you, Adam.

She immediately regretted it, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to send an apology. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later that she realized that Adam wasn’t going to reply. A warning popped up on the upper part of her screen, informing her that her battery was at 5 percent.

With a deep sigh, Olive stood up from her bed and looked around the room in search of her charger.

—

“NOW GO RIGHT.”

“Got it.” Malcolm’s finger flicked the turn signal lever. A clicking sound filled the small car. “Going right.”

“No, don’t listen to Jeremy. Turn left.”

Jeremy leaned forward and swatted Anh’s arm. “Malcolm, trust me. Anh has never been to the farm. It’s on the right.”

“Google Maps says left.”

“Google Maps is wrong.”

“What do I do?” Malcolm made a face in the rearview mirror. “Left? Right? Ol, what do I do?”

In the back seat, Olive looked up from the car window and shrugged. “Try right; if it’s wrong, we’ll just turn around.” She shot Anh a quick, apologetic glance, but she and Jeremy were too busy mock-glaring at each other to notice.

Malcolm grimaced. “We’ll be late. God, I hate these stupid picnics.”

“We are, like”—Olive glanced at the car’s clock—“one hour late, already. I think we can add ten minutes to that.” I just hope there’s some food left. Her stomach had been growling for the past two hours, and there was no way everyone in the car hadn’t noticed.

After her argument with Adam three days ago, she’d been tempted to just skip the picnic. Hole herself up in the lab and continue with what she had been doing the whole weekend—ignore the fact that she had told him to fuck off, and with very little reason. She could use the time to work on Tom’s report, which was proving to be trickier and more time-consuming than she’d initially thought—probably because Olive couldn’t forget how much was at stake and kept rerunning analyses and agonizing over every single sentence. But she’d changed her mind last minute, telling herself that she’d promised Adam that they’d put on a show for the department chair. It would be unfair of her to back out after he’d done more than his share of the deal when it came to convincing Anh.

That was, of course, in the very unlikely case that he still wanted anything to do with Olive.

“Don’t worry, Malcolm,” Anh said. “We’ll get there eventually. If anyone asks, let’s just say that a mountain lion attacked us. God, why is it so hot? I brought sunblock, by the way. SPF thirty and fifty. No one is going anywhere before putting it on.”

In the back seat Olive and Jeremy exchanged a resigned look, well acquainted with Anh’s sunscreen obsession.

The picnic was in full swing when they finally arrived, as crowded as most academic events with free food. Olive made a beeline for the tables and waved at Dr. Aslan, who was sitting in the shade of a giant oak with other faculty members. Dr. Aslan waved back, no doubt pleased to note that her authority extended to commandeering her grads’ free time on top of the eighty hours a week they already spent in the lab. Olive smiled weakly in a valiant attempt not to look resentful, grabbed a cluster of white grapes, and popped one into her mouth while letting her gaze wander around the fields.

Anh was right. This September was uncommonly hot. There were people everywhere, sitting on the lawn chairs, lying down in the grass, walking in and out of the barns—all enjoying the weather. A few were eating from plastic plates on folding tables close to the main house, and there were at least three games going on—a version of volleyball with the players standing in a circle, a soccer match, and something that involved a Frisbee and over a dozen half-dressed dudes.

“What are they even playing?” Olive asked Anh. She spotted Dr. Rodrigues tackle someone from immunology and looked back to the almost empty tables, cringing. Slim pickings was all that was left. Olive wanted a sandwich. A bag of chips. Anything.

“Ultimate Frisbee, I think? I don’t know. Did you put on sunblock? You’re wearing a tank top and shorts, so you really should.”

Olive bit into another grape. “You Americans and your fake sports.”

“I’m pretty sure there are Canadian tournaments of Ultimate Frisbee, too. You know what’s not fake?”

“What?”

“Melanoma. Put on some sunscreen.”

“I will, Mom.” Olive smiled. “Can I eat first?”

“Eat what? There’s nothing left. Oh, there’s some corn bread over there.”