A period of adjustment.

She passed a bench and sat down. All around, CalTech was buzzing. It buzzed with people, and ideas, and star power. If Princeton was a dusty professor deigning to bestow pearls of wisdom, CalTech was a chaotic wunderkind daring you to break the world wide open. Just so many opportunities and activities for grad students, a shocking proportion compulsory or, worse, ‘expected’. You couldn’t possibly do everything and yet ‘everything’ felt like the minimum.

A girl she knew a bit waved at her. 

Don’t come over, don’t come over, don’t come over . . .

‘Hey!’

‘Hi.’

The girl – Angie thought her name was Toby? – was pretty. Really, really nice smile.

‘You going to MPL?’

Monday Pizza Lunch. She’d done a seminar, a reading group, a Geolab and an advisor check-in already today, and now this. 

‘No.’ The girl looked shocked. ‘Or, yeah. Probably.’

They were joined by another girl. Angie couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if her hair was on fire. Rapidly, she formed a plan to go to MPL and sneak out as soon as she could, drive home and crawl into bed. Alice’s schedule had sounded pretty full for the day, so it should work out, and then . . .

A period of adjustment.

Shame curdled her stomach. Maybe she should just go to the library and fucking catch up.

The others started moving off towards Cahill. Angie followed.

***

‘. . . really a perfect offer: a home away from home for Hollywood at the best gay vineyard in Southern California. Okay, pretty much the only gay vineyard in Southern California, but that’s actually our anchor: the gay one is also the best one. So, location potential, writers’ retreats, bonus packages, sustainability, plant-based, low- and no-alcohol – all that, and a little frisson because you might just run across Renee Rapp or Greta Schiller or Catherine Opie or Lena Waite, who’ve all visited, by the way. And how we get there is we use the networks we already have to shape what we want to be. It’s next-level synergy, perfect, the whole shebang. “Shebang”? Is that Irish? Oh, Tee, there’s a bakery we have to visit right after we leave here. Artisanal soda bread. If Karolina likes it, we’ll do our own, but better.’