“The entire gamut of human emotions?”

“That, too.” I look at him. Take in his self-deprecating smile when there isn’t a single self-deprecating bone in his body. “But here’s the thing: whenever the article comes up, what everyone asks is how I could do such a horrible thing. Why did I write it? Why did I submit? Why did I set out to humiliate theoretical physics?”

“As opposed to? What chianti vintage you celebrated your evil triumph with? The breed of the mandatory supervillain white cat you were stroking? The decibels at which you cackled?”

“As opposed to why it got accepted.”

I know exactly where he’s going with this. “It was a fluke.”

“Maybe,” he concedes. “But here’s the thing: if a theoretical geologist wrote a bullshit article saying that the inner core of the earth is made of nougat, and the foremost authority in the discipline, say, the New England Journal of Rocks, decided to publish and endorse the article, I wouldn’t be so quick to chalk it off as a fluke. Instead I’d investigate whether there is a systemic problem in the way theoretical geology papers are assessed. Whether the editor made a mistake.”

I swallow. It goes down like broken glass. “I am willing to acknowledge that the system is fallible, if you stop pretending that you acted out of concern for the injustice of the peer-review system and admit that you maliciously exploited its loopholes because you wanted to . . . You still haven’t answered, actually. Why did you do it?”

“Not for any reason you think, Elsie.”

I bite my lip to not bark at him to stop using my name. “Not to pull an epic prank and become famous among the lab bros?”

“No.” I wish he sounded defensive or offended or—anything at all. He’s just matter-of-fact, like he’s saying a simple truth.

“And not the same reason you want to hire an experimentalist over me?”

He draws back, looking surprised. Disturbed, even. “You think I don’t want to hire you because you’re a theorist?”

I almost snort and say, Yes, of course, but then I remember my first meeting with him, back in the summer. The way he looked at me a little too hard, hesitated a little too long before shaking my hand. “Well,” I concede with a small shrug, “I suppose you do come by your dislike of me honestly.”

He huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. “Again, with this supposed dislike.”

“I heard you talking to Greg about me.” I ignore the way his eyes widen, almost alarmed. “Asking him how quickly he planned to get rid of me.” I pull on the hem of my skirt again, and his eyes dart to my knees, lingering for a moment before ricocheting away. I should probably stop doing that. I need a new nervous habit. Nail biting. Fidget spinners. I’ve heard great things about crystal meth.

“I’ve never said—”

“Oh, it’s fine.” I wave my hand. “You have every right to your opinion of me. You think I’m not good enough for him. I don’t care.” Much.

He bites the inside of his mouth. His paw-like hand reaches out to play with something on his desk—a 3D-printed model of the Large Hadron Collider. “You make lots of assumptions about my thoughts,” he says, setting it down. “Negative assumptions.”

“Your thoughts are clearly negative.”

“It might be connected to the fact that you’ve been insincere with my brother for months.”

I sigh. “We can navel-gaze about how abominable a girlfriend I am till Betelgeuse explodes, but there are a few things you don’t know about me and Greg, and until—”

“There are many things I don’t know.” He drums his fingers on his desk, slow, methodical. I cannot look away. “I spent hours last night trying to home in on this, and I’m not any closer to sorting you out. For instance, why would you lie about your job? You’re an adjunct, not Jeff Bezos’s accountant. And the fact that not only are you a physicist, but you’re interviewing here . . . My first instinct would be to assume that it has something to do with me.”

“I—”

“But I saw your face last night. You had no idea who I was. So back to square one. Why the lie? And what else have you lied about? How have you kept it up for months without Greg realizing it? How will he react when he finds out? And above all, how will you react when he finds out?” He stares at me like I’m a hexagonal Rubik’s cube. I picture him lying in a bed too small for his frame, wondering all sorts of things about me, and nearly shiver. “Are you in love with my brother, Elsie?”

I swallow. “This is a very intrusive question.”

“Is it. Hmm.” He shrugs graciously.

“And anyway, Greg is thirty years old. He doesn’t need you to run his life.”

“Greg is thirty years old, and you are the first person he’s been in any kind of romantic relationship with.” His eyes harden. “Considering the lies you’ve been feeding him, it seems that he does need someone looking out for him.”

“If you just called him—”

“He won’t be back until Sunday.”

“Have you tried to get in touch with him?”

“No.” His eyes darken. “I’m not going to tell my brother that his girlfriend is secretly a liquid crystal theory superhero on the phone. I’ll do him the favor of breaking his heart in person.”

“So you can pat him on the back? Say ‘there, there’?”

“I’m serious, Elsie.”

I cock my head, picturing an empty auditorium. Greg dressed like the apostle Peter. A single person in the audience, clapping loudly after every song. My best friend. “You really care about Greg.”

“Yes,” he says like he’s talking to a child, “I care about my brother.”

“It’s not a given, you know.”

“Do you not care about your siblings? Or do your siblings not care about you?”

I shrug, remembering my phone calls with them this morning after they didn’t bother answering the phone last night. Lucas picked up half-asleep. Not only didn’t he recognize my voice, he also asked, Elsie who? “I don’t think they are fully aware that I exist in a corporeal form,” I murmur, almost thinking out loud. I regret it instantly, because Jack nods in a way that has me wondering if he’s filing away the information. Future ammo?

“I’m sorry your brothers are assholes.” He sounds surprisingly sincere. “But given your history with lies, you can’t blame me for being concerned about mine.”

“You didn’t know that I was lying when we first met.”

“No, I didn’t.” Jack’s expression sharpens. He straightens and leans forward, elbows on his desk. The entire room shifts and thickens with tension. “I did know, however, that there is something about you. That you tirelessly study people. Figure out who they are, what they want, and then mold yourself into whatever shape you think will fit them. I’ve seen you play half a dozen different roles for half a dozen different situations, switching personalities like you’re channel surfing, and I still have no idea who you are. So I think it’s within my right to be concerned for my brother. And I think it’s within my right to be curious about you.”

I freeze.

Did he just—

He didn’t. He doesn’t know me. I must have misheard. Misinterpreted. Misunderstood. Mis—fuck.

“I—” My hands tremble, and I slide them between my thighs and chair, like a child. I feel bare. Head spinning, I blurt out, “I don’t know what you—”

The phone rings. Jacks lifts one finger to signal me to wait and picks up. “Smith-Turner. Hi, Sasha. Yes. She’s here. She was just about to . . . Ah. I see. Yeah. No problem. I can take care of it.” I’m too shaken by what he just said—mold yourself into whatever shape you think will fit—to eavesdrop. Which makes it all the more stupefying when Jack says, “Volkov’s in the middle of something and cannot give you a tour of the department.” The faint, crooked smile reappears. “But don’t worry, Elsie. I’m happy to take over.”