Dragonfly Girl Read online

  I haven’t. But they’ve already sent me the airline ticket.

  “Don’t freak!” I say. “I’m going to fix it . . . I’m figuring it out.”

  Lauren looks around the room as though searching for an escape. “How do you ‘fix’ plagiarizing a scientific essay that wins an international prize? Kira, I think you’re brilliant. But there are some things that even you can’t figure out.”

  Now it’s my turn to be shocked. “You think I plagiarized the paper?”

  “Or made up the findings, right? I mean, maybe not for the entire paper, but—”

  “No! Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know, people do!”

  “Not me!”

  “Then what’s the lie? Tell me before I dig out the shoes for this freaking dress that I don’t even know if you’ll get to wear now!”

  I reach under my bed and draw out a group of stapled papers. It’s a photocopy of the Science for Our Future application, an application I’ve read dozens—no, hundreds—of times now. I hand it to Lauren, saying, “Read the part about qualifications of entry. It says you have to have received your doctorate. You know, a PhD.”

  Lauren’s eyes grow wide. “Your PhD?”

  “It says you can’t have received a PhD more than a year ago,” I say, quoting from the rules. “But I entered anyway because . . . well . . . the big money in science contests always goes to graduate students and postdocs.” And right now we could use some big money.

  She begins reading through the application, her brow furrowed, her finger tracing the words in their tiny script across the printed page. “Did you actually tell them you have a PhD?” she asks.

  “No, but I didn’t tell them I’m in high school either. I just left that part blank. It must have slipped past them.”

  A smile creeps across her face. “Then what are you worried about? They may not even notice!”

  I shake my head. “But what if they do? I’ve broken the rules—”

  “Don’t say anything and it will be fine! You want this prize, don’t you?”

  I’m desperate for the prize. We need the money so badly. And of course I’d love to visit a foreign city, to participate in the conference, to feel good about something I’ve done for once in my life.

  Lauren is saying, “If you get cornered, say you wrote the essay without the benefit of a PhD and that you’d like your prize, thank you very much. . . .”

  “I can’t—” I begin.

  “But Kira, you left the PhD part blank. You’ve done nothing wrong! It’s their problem if they didn’t notice.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” She stands, pushes the dragonfly dress toward me, and says, “I want to see if this thing is long enough.”

  “It still feels like cheating,” I say.

  “Not cheating. Put on the damned dress. Wait, let me get the zip.”

  I slip out of my jeans and hoodie, then into the dragonfly dress. It’s a bit loose in the bust and the sleeves are an inch too short, but it is a dazzling dress in a sheer fabric, like something a movie star might wear. I love how the material moves, the beaded dragonflies, the floating hem.

  “I feel like Cinderella,” I say. For a moment, I imagine being in the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm, standing among a group of people in an airy lobby in this dress.

  Lauren flashes a smile. “Good! And remember, Cinderella got a prince! By which I mean, not just a handsome royal, but substantial real estate in the form of a castle, footmen, gowns, plus a fabulous scepter.”

  “I just don’t know if I can pull this off,” I say.

  “But you’ve already pulled it off. Nobody is going to ask about the PhD. We’ll figure out a plan if they do, but for right now I want you to see this!”

  She reaches above the chest of drawers and unfastens the mirror that hangs on the wall there, angling it in front of me.

  “Look at you,” she says, and whistles softly.

  I glimpse the mirror and see, indeed, that the dress is stunning. The romantic neckline softens my angular shoulders, and the bodice is cut so I look more shapely. The color is good with my dark hair; its shades of blue tone down the patches of acne that sometimes flare around my chin.

  “I look . . . not bad,” I say.

  “Not bad?” Lauren sighs. “You look amazing.”

  3

  I’VE NEVER FLOWN on a plane, visited a foreign country, or even stayed in a hotel. When I finally arrive in Stockholm—groggy, wrinkled, ecstatic—I feel like a visitor to my own life. I’m fascinated by the sounds of foreign voices, the signs I can’t read, the brand names I don’t recognize. Stockholm is an archipelago, a city of islands; lamplight glows on the famous bridges. Christmas lights outline storefronts and windows, the branches of trees, and the sides of red market stalls, above which hang garlands of pine.

  I take a wrong turn and end up in the old town, Gamla Stan. All around are people dressed in parkas and scarves, carrying umbrellas in case the snow grows heavier. But the snow is as soft as confetti, gathering gently along the edges of the cobbled streets. The smell of hot food drifts through the air, the scent of caramelized sugar floats from pastry shops in clouds I feel I could stick out my tongue and lick. Entering a patch of green that makes up a city park, I wander unnoticed in a wooden corral among statues of Santa’s reindeer, lit with thousands of tiny bulbs.

  I may be the happiest I’ve ever been.

  And, of course, the minute I have this thought, I wish my mother could be here with me, that I hadn’t had to leave her behind. Lauren is going to check in on her so she won’t be entirely alone. Even so, I want tell her everything I see. But it’s dawn in California and she won’t be awake. However, I know someone who will be.

  In the early hours, you can often find Lauren at Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge. I’ve been with her many times, huddling in the brush, waiting to see something interesting, the endangered Ridgway’s Rail, for example, a bird that has proven more difficult to photograph than it ought to, given it’s the size of a chicken and can’t really fly.

  I get out my phone, pull off my glove, then type:

  Myth: people who live in warm climates have thinner blood.

  A minute later I see two blue tick marks that mean the text has been delivered. A message back from Lauren reads:

  Fact: everyone wishes they lived in California.

  I’m not so sure. Crossing a bridge that my map tells me connects the old town to Blasieholmen, my destination, I peer out over inky water reflecting the sky and a small sea of ships strung with lights like hundreds of floating Christmas trees. I can’t imagine anywhere more beautiful.

  A few seconds later my phone rings. I hear Lauren’s voice a continent away.

  “Is it amazing?” she says.

  “Incredible. But also negative four degrees. Sorry, I mean 24.8 Fahrenheit.”

  “Did you just convert that in your head? Never mind. How fabulous do you look in my mother’s Moncler parka?”

  “Pretty good if I keep the hood up.”

  I hear Lauren’s groan. “I bet you look great. Have you been to the banquet yet?”

  “I’m still looking for my hotel.”

  “You haven’t even found the hotel? But you left here yesterday afternoon!”

  “The flight takes fifteen hours, and anyway, it was delayed. It gets dark here at, like, two o’clock. Seriously, I can see the moon.”

  “Well, buy some chocolate. They make the best chocolate.”

  “You’re thinking of the Swiss again.”

  “Well, what do the Swedes make?”

  “Clogs, I think?”

  “Aren’t clogs Dutch?”

  “Oh. Then maybe nothing.”

  I turn a corner, still chatting. Then I stop. There, facing the water over which I’ve just come, is the Grand Hôtel. It’s huge, with a majesty difficult to achieve outside the nineteenth century, when it was built—the same century in which the Houses of Parliament, the Eiffel Tower, and the Paris O
pera were imagined. Suddenly, I don’t want to take another step. I want to turn around, seek out a small room above one of the cozy restaurants in the old town, or go back to the little park of reindeer. The hotel is too imposing, too splendid; I can’t imagine visiting it, let alone staying here for days, eating and drinking and talking with scientists from all over the world.

  “Lauren, I found my hotel,” I say in a whisper.

  “And?”

  “And it’s . . . I better go.”

  I hang up and stand there in the cold, feeling the winter’s chill even through my fleece cap. Somehow, I have to enter this hotel and convince everyone inside that I’m a person I’m not. A scholar, a PhD. What felt possible back in California feels foolish and naive now that I’m here.

  But I have no choice.

  I walk with trepidation toward the giant, lit facade, feeling all the while like a beggar approaching the palace gates. Through the glass windows I can see people in fancy clothes, a lady in a plumed hat, a man sneezing into a pocket handkerchief. Two children race around their father’s legs as he swats at them like flies. It is like peeking into a different world. I’m an intruder who should never gain entry. I’m Cinderella, arriving at the ball with the damning voices of her stepsisters in her ear. At any moment the powers that be will identify me as an impostor and turn me away. I’m sure of it. I’m waiting for that moment of humiliation, and yet nothing happens. Or nothing bad anyway. The doormen, wearing overcoats and top hats, hold open the enormous doors. One of them, in practiced English, offers to carry my bag.

  I’m given room keys, a welcome pack, and a chance to “freshen up” before tonight’s dinner. None of this feels real but within a few short hours I’m sitting in a dining room with chandeliers that sparkle against a painted ceiling, surrounded by scientists and scholars from all over the world. The four winners have our own table as well as our names listed on the evening’s program. Dr. Kira Adams. It looks strange with the others, and not just because I don’t have a PhD.

  Lauren’s “little black dress” is just right, but Lauren isn’t here to explain the formality of the dinner table. I’m baffled by all these glasses and side plates. I get out my phone and sneak a photograph, sending it to Lauren with the message, Heeelp, plz! Meanwhile, I copy what people around me do, bumbling my way through.

  I’m relieved when Carlos Ruiz, a prizewinner from Texas who is seated to my left, reveals he’s overwhelmed by the place settings too.

  “This is a lot of forks!” he says with good humor. I’m not even sure which plates and glasses are mine, let alone what to do with the forks. There’s a large spoon at the top of my plate that’s also a mystery. At last, Lauren messages back the photo of the place setting. She’s marked it up in lime green writing, identifying every item on the table, including which glasses I should drink from.

  Phew.

  Carlos tells everyone he’s glad his PhD research won a prize, because his master’s research nearly killed him. “It was like murder by microbes,” he says. He laughs, his dark curls shaking on his head.

  Apparently, a handful of bacteria from a dangerous gastrointestinal illness mysteriously wafted into the laboratory’s ventilation system. Several people, including him, had ended up flat on their backs under the care of a tropical disease specialist.

  He explains that it turned out to be a good thing. The illness persuaded him to move from disease ecology to his current field, which deals with dead tissue but not with disease. “If I hadn’t changed fields, I’d never have stumbled onto my current research or won this prize,” he says. “So I’m grateful for faulty lab procedures and escaped bacteria. Hey, what’s this whipped-up stuff in here?”

  “Butter,” says the tiny woman next to him. Her square-framed eyeglasses remind me of my biology teacher. She wears an olive dress and her name tag, bearing the name Helmi Korhonen, pulls at its delicate fabric. “I know all about faulty lab procedures,” she continues. “People throwing risk group two cells straight into the trash along with sweet wrappers.”

  “If the biohazards don’t get you, the lack of sleep does,” says Will Drummond, the final member of our group. Will is from England. Cambridge University, in fact. And he isn’t merely a category winner like the rest of us. He won his own category, of course, but he’s also the winner of the grand prize, along with its hefty cash award. He’s the sort of person who is perfectly at ease in the timeless elegance of a hotel like this and has no trouble with the place settings. “It’s amazing how many mistakes one can make in the middle of the night,” he says.

  “Are we still talking about lab science here?” Carlos laughs.

  I want to join in but can’t think of anything to say. Also, I’m wary of Will. He singled me out earlier, cornering me at the hotel bar where we all convened for a cocktail before dinner. “Ah, it’s the dragonfly girl,” he said, referring to my paper. I was standing there, teetering on Lauren’s high heels and trying to fit in. He asked what I wanted to drink. “A glass of something?” he offered.

  The problem is I’m not eighteen yet, which is the legal drinking age in Sweden, but of course I’m supposed to be carrying off the illusion that I’m a real adult. I tried spluttering out an excuse, but Will reached for one of the fluted glasses set out on a table and placed it in my hand. I’d never had champagne before and I didn’t know how to drink it. I sipped too deeply and the champagne filled my nose.

  “Careful,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “The carbon dioxide in the bubbles speeds the flow of alcohol into the intestines.” When I appeared confused he looked at me more closely. Then he leaned in and whispered, “You’ll get drunk fast if you drink it like orange juice.”

  And it was like he knew—I swear he knew—that I was underage.

  He addresses the dinner table now, saying, “One time I was so exhausted I spilled cancer all over myself.” He positions his hand as though holding a petri dish, then pretends to knock into something and tip it, his face aghast as he stares down at his dress shirt. Everyone laughs at his skillful mime. “I had to ring my girlfriend in the middle of the night to bring me new clothes. She wasn’t entirely pleased.”

  “I once set my sleeve on fire with lit ethanol,” says Helmi. “I didn’t even notice until my arm started to burn.”

  I follow along, saying nothing. It would be all too easy for me to open my mouth and reveal that I have zero practical laboratory experience. Our school doesn’t have money for any kind of laboratory, let alone a professional one. I hope my silence on the topic goes unnoticed, but of course they all eventually look at me, expecting me to come up with a war story of my own.

  “What has been your experience?” Helmi says. She’s from Helsinki, her English charmingly accented.

  “My experience in labs?” Oh God. “Um . . . I find some things, like, really annoying,” I say. I roll my eyes as though it’s been a trial, these labs. “And what about paywalls?” I say, a genuine concern. My biggest problem is not being able to buy the research papers I want to read. Most of the time, when I click on a citation I hit a paywall. It takes time to find a way around it.

  “Doesn’t your university offer you access?” says Helmi, confused.

  “Oh yes, of course!” I say, feeling a tickle of panic. “I mean when I forget to log into our . . . um . . . thing.”

  “You’re quite young, aren’t you?” says Will, as though he’s just completed an assessment. He’s handsome and horrible at the same time. His blond hair shines softly in the candlelight but his eyes are fixed hard upon me. “I always worry about young people with great intellectual promise. They tend to get pushed too fast for their own good.”

  I stare at him, frozen. It’s as if he’s figured the whole thing out, and he knows I’m still in high school, that I don’t have a PhD or any diploma. Luckily, dessert arrives, interrupting our conversation. White mousse in a chocolate cup. But I’m too nervous to even enjoy chocolate.

  Carlos says, “Every kid starts out as a natural-born s
cientist. That’s a quote from Sagan.”

  Will begins a story, telling everyone at the table how as a boy he’d spent summers conducting experiments at his family’s farmhouse in Devon. He exploded goose eggs using hydrogen gas and kitchen matches, much to the annoyance of his father, a geologist.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual goose egg. And I can’t imagine Will as a child. He gives the impression of a man whose youth had been an unnecessary impediment he’d stepped over on his way to adulthood.

  “Were you aware that my brother was in line for the prize you won?” he says, turning to me again.

  I don’t know how to respond to that. “Your brother?” I say.

  “Aiden Drummond,” he says, as though I ought to know the name. “He’s the runner-up. Had he won the prize, the university would have given him matching grant money for his work. The fact you referenced some of his research in your own paper was a double blow.”

  “Oh,” I say, feeling my face redden.

  “He’s interested in unihemispheric sleep,” says Will.

  Unihemispheric sleep is when half the brain rests while the other half is awake. Flocks of birds migrating for the winter are often half asleep, so to speak, as they travel. But it’s hardly a new or specialized subject. Lots of people study it.

  “In any case, Aiden is arriving tomorrow to sit in on the conference,” continues Will. “I’ll introduce you.” Without taking his eyes off me he reaches for a carafe of water and fills my glass. “I just thought it was interesting that you quoted from his earlier research. And that for some reason, he didn’t win the prize.”

  I hear a note of bitterness in Will’s tone, as though I have no right to win if I’m referencing any of his brother’s data to make my own argument. It’s understandable that he feels that way, and I wish I could think of a response. But I’m distracted by Helmi, who announces excitedly, “Did you hear that last year one of the winners was disqualified? His data was incorrect. They had to give it to another.”