“Yeah, someone’s sitting there,” I lied. I wasn’t going to let an attractive girl distract me from my plan. “They’re, uh, in the bathroom.”

She scanned the packed bus and pointed at the bathroom, smirking.

“Do they know they left the door open?”

Ugh. I never get away with anything. I pushed my backpack to the ground, and the girl took a seat without missing a beat.

She turned her head and looked up at me with those eyes. They had this intense nonchalance that I couldn’t bear to look at, so I lowered my gaze, which meant staring at the arch formed by the small of her back, which was her ass. I shot my attention back upward. Eye contact with her chin would have to do.

“I’m Fiora,” she said. The words flowed from her mouth like waves, rhythmic and decisive. “Did you really think you’d get away with that imaginary friend stunt?”

My mouth dropped. I couldn’t find any words.

“I don’t blame you,” Fiora said. “You’d think it would be emptier on a Monday morning. Who travels to DC on a Monday?”

Still no words, but I furrowed my brows this time, because, well . . .

“Right. Us. Normally I leave Philly on Sundays. But last night was my mom’s birthday, and it’s been . . . Oh. You’re a complete stranger.”

“That’s correct,” I finally said.

“And I’m talking your ear off.”

“Yes.”

Confident as she was, there was something desperate about Fiora’s expression. Her lips quivered like the words were scratching to escape. Maybe she had wild stories from the weekend. Maybe it was family drama. Whatever her situation, I had my own story to figure out, so I decided to stage an exit.

“It’s nice to meet you, Fiora. I’m really tired and . . . Well, I’m going to take a nap, if that’s all right.”

She chuckled. “Your choice, pal.”

Fate had placed a beautiful and friendly girl in the seat next to me, but grit demanded that I stay focused on the task at hand. I put in earbuds and shut my eyes. In a matter of hours, I would be standing face-to-face with the leading expert on this subject I had become so obsessed with.

When I first heard about Professor Cecily Mallard, I thought she was full of shit—another motivational speaker-thinker-quack my dad thought could save my potential or whatever. Grit sounded like a self-help guide for parents with kids like me.

On Monday when my parents left for Iran, I started my internship, which was actually full of shit. Approximately 98 percent of my job involved collecting feces from lab rats and preparing them for various tests. It stank. It reeked—even more than all of those poop puns. I recognize that fecal research is tied to natural pathogens and pulmonary symptoms and other virtuous science-y things. But it’s still poop. I was squinting at it for eight hours a day and taking notes on its density and hue in a lab notebook. Most of the time I wanted to stab my head with a micropipette.