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━ NOVEMBER, 2022 ━
ISABELLE
✧
"WHAT'S THE OPTICAL density?" Katherine asks, chewing the bottom of her pastel blue pencil. Across the hall, Professor Jessica Taylor continues to type furiously on her keyboard, eyes glued to the computer screen. The Senior year project grades that she had to turn in by the end of the business day kept her from being able to help us with our work ─ resulting in the confused bunch of humans hovering over the bench top in white lab coats aka us.
"If I said three point something, are you going to kill me?" Ryan jokes, earning a death glare from Kat. We had been assigned lab partners ever since the beginning of our Freshman year and these two people had yet not managed to get along.
"You do realize we have to submit this in forty minutes, right?" I say in a warning voice to Ryan, who doesn't stop fiddling with the test tubes.
"Guys I think we have been calculating with the wrong concentration value ─ no I don't think, we have been ─ oh my God" Katherine exclaims, hurriedly snatching the loose sheets from Ryan's hand. He rolls his eyes, resting his chin on top of his gloved fist. I, on the other hand, try to focus on the graph paper lying on the table and fail miserably for the umpteenth time in the past one hour.
"Whatever it is, do it quick because I am not making any progress on the graph without the correct values" I groan, freeing my hair from the tight ponytail I had made before entering the lab.
Apart from the three of us and Professor Jessica Taylor, the only other people in here were a group of Freshmen who circled around the incubator, as Mrs. Finnegan ─ teaching assistant ─ explains it's functions. I crane my neck to look outside the glass panels and watch the snowflakes whirl in the breeze, gradually accumulating in the windowsill. It was the first snow of the season and despite it being unexpectedly early, none of us could deny the fact that it instantly cheered us up for the upcoming holidays ─ Thanksgiving and Christmas. It also reminded me of home, and the small town church in Wellesley; and my parents, whom I hadn't seen in six months sans the occasional FaceTime calls.
I hadn't realized I had drifted away in my thoughts until a familiar female voice puts an abrupt end to it, bringing me back to the present.
"Any progress guys?" Eleanor asks, sneaking up behind us. She was sporting her freshly cut curtain bangs, perfectly in symmetry to the sharp jawline she had inherited from her mother, who also happened to be ex-supermodel Eloise Laurier Johnson. In fact, some people often mistook her for Eloise ─ the similarities were that prominent.
