CHAPTER 27
HACKING
“ARE WE DOING THIS OR what?” Nic jumped up and down and threw a few jabs. “Get pumped, Mei!”
“I am, I am,” I said in my best tough-chick voice. I wasn’t used to being up in the middle of the night, and Nic was right—I needed to circulate some adrenaline. Rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet, I returned a few punches.
“More! Not because we’re going to have fun, but because it’ll be really fucking cold and we need to get our blood pumping.”
I burst into laughter.
“That’ll work too, I guess.” She grabbed my chin. “Good, your cheeks are flushed.” She circled a finger in the air like a lasso. “Let’s move out!”
Nic and I were dressed like cat burglars—matching black turtlenecks, spandex leggings, and beanies. Our outfits weren’t all that visible beneath our coats, scarves, and mittens, but we knew what was underneath.
We swept through the empty hallways quickly, communicating with only hand gestures and looks.
It’s a roommate thing, I thought excitedly.
We snuck past the lone security guard whistling down the corridor, then crept through Barker Library, up the endless staircase, and past the locked door Nic picked with ease. Once we were on the roof, I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. It fogged immediately as the wind cut through my down coat, numbing my body.
Nicolette leaned a ladder against the little dome’s platform and motioned for me to go first. No six-foot-something companion to help me up this time. As I climbed, my shivers threatened to topple us. If it weren’t for Nic beneath me, pushing me on (sometimes literally head-butting my pìgu), I might have turned back.
On top of the little dome, I tried to take a moment to reminisce about Darren and my first kiss, but thinking about him poked at the remorseful bubble that had been floating around inside me since the night of the wedding. At least it motivated me to push through the cold. Grand gestures weren’t normally my thing, but turns out, trying to find the right words to express yourself was really freaking hard.
I turned on my flashlight with shivering fingers.
“Okay, quickly now,” Nic shouted over the wind. “Work fast so we can get the fuck outta here.”
I gritted my chattering teeth and we moved swiftly and in sync, just as we had practiced in our room. Because of the wintry weather, we had opted for a simple design, just a few sheets of cardboard that were easy to carry and required minimal assembly.
The final piece. We were almost there. Just had to tie down one last corner . . . and . . . oops. I lost my footing.
The wind whistled past my ears as I careened down the side of the dome. I clutched the rope in my hands. My lifeline. My feet smacked against the limestone repeatedly. I gripped the rope until my hands hurt. A burst of pain exploded in my leg. Finally, the line went taut and I was jolted to a stop. My arms burned at the resulting tug, but it was nothing compared to what I felt in my thigh.
I bit my lip to keep from screaming—I knew it would be a five-hundred-dollar fine if we were caught up here. Nic tied off the last bit of rope, finishing our hack, then helped me inside.
As we huddled for warmth, she shined the flashlight onto my leg. My pants were torn, my Hello Kitty underwear on full display, and a trickle of bright red blood dribbled from my inner thigh down to my knee. The sight flipped my stomach upside down.
“Shit,” Nic said between chattering teeth. “You must’ve caught a jagged edge of limestone on your way down.”
I used my hand to shield the blood from view. “If you make a joke about my underwear, I swear to God I’ll find a way to grow real claws.”
Nic forced a smile. No laugh. Crap. It must be pretty bad.
“Let’s get you downstairs before the numbness from the cold wears off,” she said in a tight voice.
“Great, so we’ll just leave my DNA all over the crime scene.”
“We didn’t commit any crimes. . . . Well, not really. And it’s supposed to snow later anyway.”
I looped an arm around her shoulder. Her wavy hair was frozen with wayward icicles, and they snapped at my biceps like Medusa’s snakes.
“Mei, I think you need stitches. I’ll call Student Health. EMS can give us a ride.”
“No! They’re the worst! They’re going to do more harm than good!”
Nic rolled her eyes. “They can’t be so incompetent they don’t know how to give you stitches.”
“Oh yes they can! Trust me.”
“Well, where else are we supposed to go? You don’t want to just bleed all over our room all night, do you?”
Annoyingly, she had a point. I wanted to ask her if she would come with me, but her tight grip around my waist answered my question. I reluctantly agreed.
Ten minutes later, at the entrance of the Infinite, flashing lights appeared. The student EMT exploded from the back of the ambulance like a firefighter. I shrank down in embarrassment. No burning building or children to save—just sad little ol’ me with a scratch on my thigh. I grabbed the flap of my torn pants to cover Hello Kitty.
When the EMT was close enough for me to make out his features, my jaw dropped. “You?”
“At least you have underwear on this time?” He forced a laugh. “Glad your rash cleared up.”
I wanted to disappear.
Nic stared at me with wide eyes. “What haven’t you told me?”
“Oh my God, it’s not what you think. He walked in on me in the bathroom once.”
He leaned down toward my crotch. “Let me take a look.”
I inched backward, and a sharp pain shot down my leg. I winced. The numbness was wearing off.
He looked at me warily. “I’ve already seen you naked. And I’m a medical professional.”
I sighed and gave in, dropping the flap and flashing Hello Kitty.
He pushed the fabric aside and blotted with gauze. “So how did this happen?”
“Dancing,” I said at the same time Nic said, “Rock climbing.”
He raised an eyebrow at us. “It could be medically relevant. What were you doing?”
“She was trying to dance while on the rock wall, okay? You got to peek at her goods again, you perv, so congratulations. Now can you get her to the real medical professional?”
He blushed as red as my old rash (and maybe I did too).
We loaded into the ambulance and tore away, sirens screaming. I felt like they were announcing to the world, Here’s the biggest baby! She can’t handle a little blood!
At MIT Medical, we settled into the waiting room. One student beside me held a bag of frozen peas against his ankle while another held a carton of Ben and Jerry’s to his temple.
My gaze met theirs and the ice-cream man said, “Chair surfing.”
Nicolette nodded in approval.
“We’ve been here for three hours,” Pea Boy added.
Nic looked right, then left, and seeing no employees, she darted down the Urgent Care corridor. I yelled after her, but she either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Probably the latter.
Twenty minutes later she returned with a wheelchair and carted me off to an examination room, where Dr. Chang was waiting.
With a sour look on her face, Dr. Chang took a deliberate step to distance herself from Nicolette.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” Nic said with an eye roll. As she walked away, I heard her mumble, “Jesus, and she knows I don’t fucking have chlamydia anymore.”
Thank. God.
Dr. Chang prepared the anesthetic for the stitches that she had determined were needed. Trying to distract myself from the twenty-two gauge that would be in my leg soon, I asked her, “Fish anything out of the toilet lately?”
To my surprise, she laughed, which shocked me so much I didn’t even feel the pinch.
Around ten the next morning, I fought my exhaustion and dragged myself to 77 Mass Ave. Nic’s friend had to hack—traditional definition—to get Darren’s schedule, and this was the only time he’d be crossing in front of the little dome.
The ground was dusted with a white layer that crunched beneath my UGG knockoffs. Luckily, there wasn’t enough snow to cover our hack, but there was enough to cover my DNA on the roof, as Nic had promised.
The passersby pointed at what Nic and I had added atop the dome’s apex, but I barely registered their reactions. Instead, I was scanning for that spiky hair that made my heart beat faster.
I stamped my feet to stay warm. Then, finally, the jagged outline. The class-to-class traffic thinned, leaving just the two of us amid a couple stragglers. When the recognition dawned on his face, he stopped in his tracks, staring with so much intensity he didn’t notice me sidling up.
“Think there’s whipped cream in there?” I asked.
He tore his eyes away from the three-dimensional hot chocolate cup strapped to the dome. The words “thinking of you” were scrawled across in red script. I had considered writing it in Japanese, but Darren wouldn’t have understood and according to Google Translate, it was twice as long. Beside the words was a picture of two nuts—I think they were almonds? Pecans? Whatever. I had printed the first non-X-rated image I’d found online.
He gaped at me with his mouth slightly open. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“It cost me a chunk of leg, too.” I gestured to my right thigh, thick with bandages beneath my sweatpants.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded, then took one of his hands in mine. “I’m sorry about what I said after the wedding. The thought of you having to jump through hoops for me was just . . . I care about you too much. But being apart made me realize it didn’t make sense to throw away what we have because of other people and beliefs I don’t agree with.” I’m ready to fight for you, I thought but couldn’t say aloud. I hoped the hack said it for me.
He took a step closer. “Is this your way of asking me to be your boyfriend?”
“Um, sure.”
He stuck his lower lip out. (I wanted to kiss it so bad.) “Not too emphatic there. That’s it? No speech?”
“All right, fine, but no laughs because it’s too cheesy or whatever.” I closed the gap between us. “I like you, Darren, Lord Pecan, Sir Almond, and I want to date you, and just you. Like normal MIT students. I want to awkwardly hold your hand, share bowls of liquid nitrogen ice cream, and drop metallic sodium in the Charles.”
His face was inches from mine, and when he spoke, I felt his warm breath on my cheek. “I like you too. And I think there’s plenty more hot chocolate in our future.”
His lips fell on mine hungrily, the sudden heat made more intense by its contrast to the cold.
Gone was the lost, lonely girl who had looked at her pale, blond classmates and wished she weren’t so different. Who had recited “just is frog” instead of “justice for all” to a flag for three years because she didn’t know the Pledge of Allegiance and was too scared to ask.
For once, I was at peace.
I swirled across the linoleum floor in a series of turns, leaps, and waltzes, my shadow dancing on the wall with me, brought to life by the myriad of burning candles lining the perimeter. My gash was still tender, but nothing could keep me from Mr. Porter. A Chinese jazz piece sang from my phone—dízi, pípa, and stringed instruments mixing into a lovely, smooth blend. At the crescendo, I flitted across the floor in a chain of tour en l’airs—airborne spins—timed to each flute trill.
I didn’t hear Darren come in, but I sensed his presence when I landed, coming out of my turns into a sweeping pose. His shadow was tall and still, as if he were enraptured by my movement. I pushed away the underlying awkwardness and told myself I wasn’t showing off; I was letting him in.
I reentered the music and lost myself in my favorite across-the-floor combination: tombé-pas de bourrée-glissade-changement. As I glided across the room, my arms and legs brushing and kicking, I finally snuck a peek at him. His face glowed in the candlelight, illuminating the wonderment and understanding in his eyes.
Yes, he spoke dance.
I bourréed to him on my tiptoes, arms outstretched. He took my hands, hesitantly, clearly more used to watching than dancing. I shepherded him to the center of the room, then gently guided his upper body into proper ballroom frame. Without speaking, I showed him a basic step-ball-change. After a few missteps, he caught on, and I led him around the room.
When the music lulled, I dragged him to a stop, spinning into his arms and landing with my lips on his.
No words needed.