Human emotions are complicated. Complex working of hormones, mixed with the essence of senses in a bowl full of logic and the most important ingredient- hope! Cecily knew how important hope is. She had seen people soar high in the sky just because they never left hope. And she was afraid, what if one day she gets pulled into nothingness, a hopeless world in which she is just a hopeless being surviving somehow?
"Are you okay?", Ari asked unknowingly pulling Cecily out of the spiral she was about to jump in.
"Yeah! I am fine.", Cecily smiled.
"Why are you not eating then? We need to be back in the lab in 15 minutes.", Ari reminded her and went back to munching on her protein bar.
"Is that good?", Cecily asked.
"It is caramel flavour. And surprisingly this one is good. Usually, bars with high protein content are not very good. But then beauty is pain and there is beauty in everything.", Ari laughed.
"You mean health is everything!", Cecily smiled at her annoying yet cute friend. Her only friend.
"What are you eating?", Ari asked looking at Cecily's muffin.
"Oh! This is a blueberry muffin.", Cecily replied.
"Nuh-uh not healthy!", Ari said and went back to eating her protein bar.
They both sat silently for the next 15 minutes, staring out of the window, and admiring the beautiful lawn in front of the building. Cecily liked it, the comfort in silence. She was wired a little differently. Cecily liked her coffee with 2 sugar cubes, hated to talk while on a bus or train, was always hungry but could not even finish a packet of chips alone, and would always defend others but reprimanded herself for things she didn't even do. A totally insane being in this impossibly sane world.
"Let's go! I guess the professor is already there.", Ari exclaimed as she peeked through the huge glass window of the lab. Cecily nodded, took a large sip of water, and followed Ari inside the lab.
"You guys enjoyed lunch?", Professor joked as he saw tired faces entering the lab, groaning with annoyance.
"Yeah, we enjoyed it more than the lab.", Ari replied making everyone laugh.
Cecily could never get this confidence. She thought too much. With every reply in her head, there was this table of pros and cons. She virtually imagined all the possible things that could go wrong. What if she cannot explain the joke properly? What if no one gets the joke and looks at her as if she is some dumb human? What if she offends someone because of her joke? What if she lacks a sense of humour? So, Cecily always stayed quiet and answered with a smile or a nod.
"Mitch enjoyed the break the most!", Professor announced Mitch's entry into the lab.
"Yes, Ali! No one comes between Mitch and his coffee, not even time.", Mitch said while wearing his lab coat. Cecily was staring at him and Ari was looking at Cecily.
"Stop! You shameless being!", Ari laughed. Her friend was smitten.
"What? I did not do anything!", Cecily exclaimed horrified because she was caught.
"Yeah right!", Ari replied with a roll of her eye.
"Let's start with the second part of our lab work!", Professor Ali interrupted their 'caught while staring session'.
"I need to ask some questions from you guys.", Mitch came to them and said while holding a manual.
"Question?", Cecily was the one to ask, surprisingly.
"For lab proficiency. There are three questions after the day 1 task. Let's discuss those.", he said and pointed toward the manual.
For 15 minutes they discussed the questions and Mitch explained the stuff which was not very clear.
"So when we do negative selection we are talking about the toxin cassette. And for positive selection, we will use kanamycin. Did you get it now?", he explained.
Cecily could never hold eye contact with anyone and Mitch was no exception. She was looking at her manual the whole time but his voice was hitting all the right places. She could feel the confidence oozing out of his answer and the huge nerd he turned out to be made her more attracted to him.
"Cecily did you understand?", he asked her as she was staring at her manual.
"Y-yes I got it. Thank you!", she replied hastily.
"Ah! No worries. Good job girls!", he exclaimed with a smile and left.
Ari and Cecily were almost done for the day. It had been an exhausting first day, and they were already regretting taking this course, well Ari was. Cecily was motivated for some unknown reason. She was excited.
"Cecily, we are almost done. Do you want to stay back for a half hour and finish the lab book too?", Ari asked as they were cleaning up the bench.
"Yeah sure, let's do that.", Cecily agreed. She didn't wish to go home and do work again.
Once the bench was clean, Cecily was busy looking for the correct bin to dispose of the used pipette tips. Standing by the bins she was reading the instructions.
"Need any help?", a voice took her off guard.
"Yeah, just want to discard these.", she told Mitch and he looked at the pipette tip basket.
"They will go in the yellow one.", he said and before she could empty the basket, he took it from her hands.
"I will do it. You guys worked hard today in the lab.", he smiled and discarded the tips.
"Thank you!", she said and left awkwardly.
"What was he asking?", Ari asked as Cecily came back to her bench.
"Nothing, he was just helping me with the bins.", she didn't mention any more details.
"Okay! Let's just go and finish this lab work. I cannot wait to go home and have a nice dinner once we are done with this.", Ari said and dragged Cecily out of the lab.
Cecily was laughing at Ari while being dragged out when her eyes met Mitch's. He was smiling at them. Cecily's smile vanished as she saw him looking. He slowly smiled and did a brief nod. Cecily nodded in answer. It was a quiet gesture of saying bye or maybe it was a hidden and very loud message saying- 'I am glad I met you!'.