Page 42 of Saint Céline
And all it had cost me was my real name.
11
Céline
The question about Miss Astoria finally clawed its way out of me. I hadn’t forgotten her. Forgetting would have been kinder. I avoided asking because I already knew the answer would hurt too much, and I had spent days pretending I could carry one more thing without it breaking me.
It hit on a Thursday afternoon right in the middle of molecular biology lab while Julian stood at the bench looking like he might actually pass out from panic. He had just contaminated two tissue samples and was staring at the ruined plates in panic.
“I swear I sterilized the pipette,” he said for the third time, his voice cracking a little as he ran a hand through his hair. “I did everything exactly like the protocol said.”
Dr. Patel stood beside him with her usual calm, arms crossed, watching the mess the way someone might watch aslow-moving storm. “You touched your hair halfway through the transfer.”
“I did not,” Julian insisted, cheeks going red. “I adjusted my glasses. That’s all.”
“With the same hand,” Dr. Patel replied, gentle but firm, the kind of tone that made you feel both corrected and somehow looked after.
Across the bench, Wendy covered her mouth to hide a laugh, her shoulders shaking. I should have been paying attention to the contamination protocols Dr. Patel was explaining for the second time that week. Instead, I stared blankly at the centrifuge spinning in front of me while a terrible thought settled heavily in my chest.
Miss Astoria would think I had abandoned her. The realization landed with humiliating force. I had not seen the cat once since Katherine’s death. Not once. Between the police questions, the Montgomery house turning into a quiet mausoleum of grief, the way Bellamont gossip spread like damp rot through the dorms, and Vincent Moreau slowly taking apart my life piece by piece, I had somehow never gone back for her.
My stomach twisted hard. Miss Astoria hated change more than anything. She hated strangers, hated closed doors, hated loud noises and thunderstorms and citrus scents and the vacuum cleaner and every veterinarian in the state of Maine. And now Katherine was gone. I kept staring at the centrifuge until the metal blur started to hurt my eyes. She would be confused and lonely and waiting by the wrong door, wondering why the one person who had always come back had disappeared along with everything else.
“Oh my God,” Wendy whispered suddenly.
Julian had dropped an entire rack of pipette tips onto the floor. They scattered across the tiles like tiny plastic confetti. Professor Moreau looked up from the incubators where hehad been reviewing data sheets with Christina, sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, speaking in that low, measured voice that somehow made everyone feel both reassured and quietly measured at the same time. The whole lab fell quiet the way it always did when he shifted his attention.
Julian looked one mistake away from actual tears. “I’m sorry.”
Vincent regarded the scattered tips for one long second, then took a slow sip of his coffee. “Congratulations,” he said, voice dry and even. “You’ve managed to destroy approximately four dollars’ worth of equipment instead of an expensive tissue culture. That’s what we call progress.”
A few nervous laughs moved through the room. Julian exhaled shakily, relief washing over his face.
Professor Moreau’s eyes shifted briefly toward me. “You seem distracted today, Miss Martin.”
I straightened immediately. “I’m listening.”
“No,” he said mildly, setting his mug down. “You’re dissociating. Different skill set entirely.”
Wendy choked on another laugh. Heat rose fast in my face.
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask whether you were fine,” he said. “I asked whether you were paying attention.”
I hated him in that moment with a sharpness that surprised me.
“I am.”
“Good.” He handed Christina her data sheet back.
“Then perhaps you can explain why sample integrity matters.”
I answered automatically because Katherine had drilled enough biology into my skull over the years to make survival instinctive. “Because cellular stress responses are highly sensitive to environmental variation. If contamination occurs,you can’t distinguish between legitimate adaptive behaviour and external interference.”
Professor Moreau watched me for a moment too long. “Excellent,” he said softly.
My throat tightened unexpectedly. For one terrible second, it sounded like approval, and my body still reacted to approval the way starving things reacted to food. I looked away first.
