The scientists said it was a freak instance of continental plate movement. Off-the-charts magnitude, a catastrophe. Hundreds killed in fires, thousands homeless from collapsed apartments, Buckingham Palace nearly destroyed. The world mourned for London, and Hortense started a relief fund for the capital's reconstruction.
I walked campus with dead eyes, stones on my shoulders. My guilt weighed me down, and the only way to alleviate it was to study, study, study until I bled amino acid groups and whispered the steps of poly-ubiquitination in my sleep. Memorizing notes was my punishment, slaving over the potter's wheel my penance.
I realized what a masochist I was the morning of my genetics final as I stared into my bedroom mirror, my hair a rat's nest, bruises under my eyes. I touched the mercury's reflection and traced my weary face.
