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She walks in, all of eighteen years of age, and it shows. Messy blonde curls hastily tied up, round glasses perched on the edge of her nose, well-worn overalls and t-shirt and combat boots, fingers itching to fiddle, not rest, striding purposefully across her office and throwing herself into the chair across the table, legs spread, more than a touch of false bravado and brittle confidence.
So young, she starts to thinks, silently examining her, but something catches. There’s something more in her eyes. Not as guileless as most of the students she encounters. A backstory there, she concludes. It’s always pain that tempers youth.
The girl, (yes, girl, she decides), gives a two-finger salute, a cocky wide grin. “Wassup, Dr. Gorin. Real glad you accepted my proposal and agreed to be my PhD advisor. I’m a big fan; read all your papers.”
This girl, she thinks, will be the death of me someday.
--
Jillian does a variety of things, including:
-Blasting music in the lab on her seemingly old stereo (“I fixed it up myself!” Jillian had crowed to her gleefully, “It works even better than the latest equipment.”) even when they’re both working there at the same time.
-Blatantly ignoring their once a month scheduled thesis discussion meetings to drop by her office or catching her at the lab any time she liked; once a week, then a couple of times a week, until she was seeing her every day, even if it was just a “Wassup, Dr. Gorin” as they passed in the hallways. The frequency of which she would never have tolerated from any of her previous students, but for Jillian offering something more: unprecedented stimulation and a singular point of interest.
-Eating in the lab while she’s working and leaving leftovers all over the place; offering her pizza when it’s late.
-Spending all manners of hours in the department offices or in the lab alone, falling asleep in the offices or the lab at all hours.
-Dancing to the music she was blasting in the lab, regardless of whether she was alone or not.
-Dropping by her office occasionally in the evenings with takeout; after the first dozen times they don’t even pretend to talk about her thesis. They do talk nuclear engineering, and physics, and everything else science, and then everything. Except themselves. They do not talk about themselves.
-Starting fires and small explosions in the lab in her enthusiasm. One medium-sized explosion, she suspects, was really to show her that she could, in the way that she did. She was not unimpressed. She suspects Jillian caught the way her lips twisted, and she suspects Jillian knows that she was not unimpressed. Far from it. She supposes she should rebuke her for the sake of propriety. She knows certainly it is her responsibility, the standard procedure, to deliver minimally a warning. She looks over at Jillian, her messy blonde curls falling out everywhere, a smudge of soot on her right cheekbone, an empty fire extinguisher hanging lazily off the crook of her left arm, failing at pretending to look contrite, mischief and pride alight in her bright blue eyes, blazing behind the curls falling into her eyes. She remembers being twenty-five, in another era, so different from the present, and yet so much déjà vu, so much lethargy in the lack of progress in the meanwhile. Guys telling her you can’t do this, this is not for girls, leave it to the men to handle it, people telling her you’re too young, there’s no way you came up with that yourself, you must have copied it from somewhere else. She thinks about the chaffing, raging against it, the rage rage rage, until she showed them all, until she proved them all wrong, until she shut up them up, not before she was bloodied and torn, always fighting.
She raises an eyebrow at Jillian, and merely says. “If you burn down the lab, you’re going to be out of a place to work in. The area damage is impressive, but in the success of the experiment precision is as worthy a target.” Then she turns around and walks away, and it is her turn to pretend not to see the way Jillian’s whole face lights up, every emotion, every expression written like a neon sign.
--
She knows and maybe Jillian doesn’t know she knows, maybe Jillian knows she knows and they both pretend she doesn’t know that Jillian spends every Thanksgiving and Christmas and spring break on campus because she has neither a home nor a family to eagerly anticipate her return and she has no friends to invite her to their homes or to travel with and Jillian survives on sponsorships and scholarships and writing essays and doing projects for fellow students for cash, peers who look upon her with a mixture of jealous admiration, mild disdain, slight apprehension and befuddlement and a lot of wariness and most of the other professors were praying Jillian didn’t seek them out for PhD supervision because from her undergrad years she was notorious among the faculty for having no qualms in interrupting their lectures to point out their mistakes and correct their work and submitting brilliant, unstable and dangerous projects no lecturer wanted to get too close to while grading and that Jillian doesn’t look at guys, doesn’t see guys; they hold no attraction for her, they don’t set her blood on fire or make her heart feel like it is bursting out of her chest and she pretends she doesn’t know that everything Jillian does in the lab, everything, is towards the all-consuming goal that she would, after critically appraising and scrutinising every piece of work in detail, slowly nod at Jillian, offer a ‘not bad’, add in some pointed guidance, or in very, very rare moments, even a smile, a line of praise if well-deserved.
What she is sure Jillian doesn’t know the full extent of, and what she is careful to ensure Jillian doesn’t know at this point, is how brilliant her thesis is.
Some work needed, some parts are still too raw, but she knows it has the capability to be astounding.
So she pokes, and critiques, and pushes, and builds her up, and keeps her poker face on for most of it.
--
Perhaps it is because she spends so much time observing Jillian, and trying to obscure the fact she spends quite so much time observing Jillian, that she might have missed much how Jillian watches her in return.
Or how they end up here, in her office, too late at night, too quiet, too alone, Jillian making her best clumsy, fumbled attempt to crowd her against her table, too nervous to be a joke or a tease, in what Jillian must’ve decided was a beguiling purr in her ear, the hand on her arm not quite practiced seduction but plenty of projected brashness, giving too much away through her eyes.
Trying to proposition her. Emphasis on trying. Too much sweetness; a kid far too damaged for her age than life should’ve dealt her. And despite that still the spark remains in her eyes. Far too unfair.
Oh Jillian, she thinks, her heart sinking into the heart of darkness.
--
The problem is, staring down into those blue eyes, eyes that speak of jadedness and naivety at the exact same time, and she.
It would be an utter lie to say she hasn’t noticed the perfect slant of her nose, the sculpt of her cheekbones, the pale of her skin against the blonde of her hair, the perfect dimpling of her cheeks.
She has never, ever considered what Jillian’s messy curls would look like, unbound, freed from their restrains, spilled extravagantly all over her pristine crisp white pillowcase, in the light of the morning after, while Jillian sleeps next to her, sound.
What she would give, to be able to say that the above is true.
--
The bigger problem is at the initial detection of a budding problem on her end, perhaps suppression and denial were not the best first responders to the raging fire. Perhaps what she should have done was transfer Jillian to another professor. Taken another student. Done a swop.
But the problem was wholly hers and purely one-sided, she had thought. This should have been her problem, not Jillian’s and as such as Jillian didn’t know and Jillian didn’t have to know. It would raise more questions all round to initiate such a controversial decision. It didn’t have to affect Jillian. She could keep it buried.
And even more than that, she could not hand Jillian off to anyone, even if they wanted her. They didn’t know how to handle her. They would break her. They would drive her to break herself. It would be like handling the most rare, precious, unfortunately delicate gem to amateurs with no experience or awareness of what they had, or how to work with it. And even if the gem proved hardier than initially assumed, over time and prolonged period of tediousness and wearing down, the gem would be dulled. It would be diminished, perhaps to the point of no recovery. It would never reach the heights she knew it was capable of, the potential she knew was in it, just waiting to be brought to the surface, by the right handling, with sufficient time and polishing.
She just needed a bit more time.
They would break her if she handed her over. They would make her suffer with their ineptitude, their lack of understanding.
She could never let that happen to Jillian.
(It was entirely just that, and she would insist it was not because of how fond she had grown of that girl, how dastardly fond; it was a terrible word, fond. So unscientific. So irrational. So pointless.
So dangerous.)
--
It would’ve been so easy, she reflects back in her home later on, to take her innocence, so willingly, happily offered to her. On a platter. And that would’ve been what it was – taking her innocence. It would be like having her very own Lolita.
She could’ve – groomed her. Moulded her to be what she wanted, shaped her to her liking, in her own image. Kept her on a leash. And Jillian would have gone along happily, willingly, wholeheartedly believing this to be what she wanted. She had come to her of her own accord. She hadn’t coerced her. Jillian would take whatever she gave her. Jillian would be whatever she wanted her to be. So much she could’ve taught her. So much she could’ve shown her. Be her first in all the ways that matter. She had all the power in her palm.
She pulled all the strings- A good grade. Recommendations. Influence over her academic career.
More importantly and more powerfully- Acceptance. Belonging. Validation.
Love.
She thinks of the girl who was 8 and didn’t understand why the other kids were so mean to her, why she wasn’t like the other kids. Who was 10 and wondered why other kids had families and she was so alone, always alone, a string of institutionalised care and foster families and still she was alone. Who was 12 and had resigned herself to doing everything by herself, to nobody ever understanding her, to always being stared at with fear just for being who she was. Who was 14 and realised she didn’t like boys, in that way, at all, and what a terrible thing that was in society’s view, and how she had to keep it hidden if she wanted to survive. Who was 16 and realised that she could choose between being true to herself and face isolation, society, her peers’ scorn and judgement and backlash, or twist herself into pieces to fit society’s strict and demanding one-track conformity and lose herself at the end of it, and those were the only rock-hard-place choices she had. Who was 18, still a kid in an adult’s body, a kid deeply buried in an adult guise, so desperately craving so many things she couldn’t get, even as she made not wanting unobtainable things an artform, and at times even bought her own gospel; the easiest way to live.
Who now still had more heart and more pluck and more spirit and more spark and more enthusiasm and more joy than anyone she’d met, than she ought to have.
Jillian didn’t know what she was offering, didn’t know what she was asking for.
She wasn’t going to allow anyone to break Jillian, not even herself.
--
Jillian is still grinning at her.
“If you ever suggest anything like that to me ever again, even the slightest implication, I will transfer you at once to any of the other professors. Or even transfer you to another Ivy League. No, I am not joking, Jillian. I am perfectly serious. And I think we both know very well by now that I always carry through on my promises. This is a promise.”
--
She doesn’t see any trace or sign, not the faintest, of Jillian for three months. It is like she never existed, never strode into her office that day, promising trouble, promising everything.
What irony it would be, she laughs at herself bitterly, if despite everything she did to ensure Jillian wouldn’t be broken, she ends up breaking her herself.
--
“These are the terms, Jillian. I will be your advisor for the duration of the programme. We will maintain the objectivity required. After you graduate, which I have no doubt you will with the highest honours, I promise I will write you all the glowing recommendations you need and be your reference whenever you need. I will assist you in whatever ways you required in your academic passion, in your career, in your future intellectual endeavours. I will be your mentor for as long as you desire.”
“But not in what I need from you the most.”
“It is not what you need. It is not even what you want. It is only what you think you might want, and in that you are mistaken.”
“But you want me too. I know. I can tell.”
She steels everything against the onslaught of a distraught Jillian, staring up at her with those eyes, those eyes. Those eyes that would undo everything in her, that already have.
“I would advise you not to jump to conclusions or be so presumptuous. In that you are completely wrong as well.”
--
Things that are unsaid and will die a million deaths on her tongue and what is unsaid, does not exist and is untrue.
What I want, in the perfect ideal daughter I never had and never will, is you.
What I want to make time skip so we meet in any way but this.
What I want is to make sure nobody will break you.
What I want is for you to become the gem I know you are.
What I want is just you.
--
For the remaining year, she thinks: Mentor. Advisor. Teacher.
She thinks: Young enough to be my daughter.
She lectures herself: Everyone’s had a crack at breaking her so far in her life, but you are the only one who might have truly broken her. Because she would’ve let you.
And it is enough.
--
On graduation day she tells her, “Jillian, this is what you need to know, and must believe, because nothing is truer. You are enough. You are more than enough. Never apologise for you. Be confident, when you know it is deserved. You have proven, from your own work and efforts that you are brilliant and you will kick the world on its ass and you are beyond enough, you are spectacular.”
Jillian stares at her for long moments, then throws her arms around her and buries her face in her robe.
--
“…And this is the rooftop. That’s all of the firestation. It’s magnificent and gorgeous, isn’t it? I love it here so much. Much better than the last two places I was working out of!”
“It is, Jillian. I’m very glad things have worked out for you. And – I am very proud of what you have done, of you.”
They fall silent, staring out at the bright lights on the dark buildings, spelling out their gratitude, appreciation, love. She sees hearts, beamed out into the night.
Then Jillian says, hesitantly, awkwardly, finger scratching at the edge of the wall, eyes trained on her finger. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Gorin.”
She waves her away. “No apologies needed, ever.” After a beat, “I do hope she makes you happy.”
Jillian nods at once, a dreamy thoughtful look in her eyes. Smiles, and it is the sun against the night sky. “Not just her; they all do, albeit differently. They’re my family now.” Jillian finally lifts her eyes. “But you’ll always be my mentor.”
She says, “Then that’s all there is to it.”
Jillian turns to her, turns the full focus of her look, that smile, onto her. “Thanks for everything, Dr. Gorin.”
She thinks, now the world can have her, now nothing will break her. They still don’t deserve her, but they have been rewarded with her in all her glory, her full potential unleashed and the least they can do is appreciate her. Be grateful. And they are helpless to do anything but love her, bound in her spell.
And she is the proudest mentor.