The pill was starting to dissolve in Lena’s mouth. She took her water bottle and went to the break room. Lena turned on the sink faucet and put her mouth to it. She let the water run on her cheek, opened her mouth wide. The water, like most water in Lakewood, had a tang to it. The partially dissolved pill dropped out of her mouth into the sink. The water’s force pushed it down into the drain.
When she came back with a full water bottle, Lena said to Judy, “My mouth feels like it’s wearing a raincoat.”
“My tongue tastes like metals.” Judy took the bottle from Lena’s hands. Squeezed some into her mouth. It dropped onto her chin, down onto her blouse.
Ian was going through his desk drawers over and over as if he was looking for something. Charlie was flipping between a spreadsheet and what looked like his research for Fantasy Football. Mariah was singing the phrase “In the attic, you can smell the seeds” over and over in a flat tone while watching a video of someone meditating.
Lena sat down. She took all the pens out of the cup on her desk. Arranged them to look like a square, a house, an “L.”
The woman Lena called Angry Eyebrows tapped her on the shoulder. “Dr. Lisa would like to see you.”
The two of them walked up the stairs. Lena’s sandals slapping, and asking for attention with each step. Dr. Lisa was adjusting her air-conditioning unit. “I can’t get it to stop blowing directly on my face.”
“Crank it to the left,” said Angry Eyebrows.
“No, right,” Lena said.
There were piles of folders and notebooks strewn across the doctor’s desk. A photo of Dr. Lisa with kids peeked out of one. A little boy was holding a soccer ball. He was smiling and missing a front tooth. He looked so much happier here, not as if he was about to clutch the ball closer and start whispering, “I hate you, Dad.”
Dr. Lisa sat down. “I used to teach kindergarten.” She touched her hair as if checking to see if anything was out of place.
Lena made eye contact. “What was your favorite part of that?”
“So, I gave you some things to memorize.”
“Sinking, froideur, pink slip. One of my best friends is going to be a teacher. What made you choose kindergarten over middle school?”
Dr. Lisa checked a box. Wrote a note. “And the other set?”
“Headache. Wrapping paper. Swamp.”
“Do you have a headache?”
“Nope.”
Dr. Lisa handed Lena a form. On a scale of 0 to 10—with 0 being complete apathy and 10 being intense focus—how much effort have you put into memorizing the words? Lena wrote 5. She peeked at Dr. Lisa. The other woman was staring into the distance, chewing on the end of her pen. Which word did you find easiest to memorize? What did you have for breakfast? Were you experiencing mouth pain? How easy was it to focus? The doctor was looking at Angry Eyebrows. What did you have for breakfast?
“Are you okay?” Lena asked while writing down the word “toast.” She crossed it out and wrote cereal.
“What?”
“Never mind.” Lena wrote on the form Of course, I showered.
“Sometimes I wonder if this is all a box inside a box,” Dr. Lisa said.
“Nesting-doll style.”
The doctor had a birthmark in her left eye. A dark asteroid orbiting the light iris. She was looking up at the ceiling. Lena followed her gaze.
“I feel the same way,” Lena said. “A lot lately. I think it’s why this has been so hard.” She set the pen down on the table.
“You know, you really remind me so much of my best friend from college. She was tough like you. Hard to connect with. But if she loved you, like, really, really loved you, she would climb a mountain for you.”
Lena smiled.
“Lately.” Dr. Lisa stopped. She looked at Angry Eyebrows, the ceiling, her door.
A knock at the door. Smith poked his head in. “Is everything okay in here?”
The doctor’s eyes watered. “Look over the phrases. And make sure to let me know immediately if you have a headache.”
Smith lingered in the doorway, his hand near the light switch.
“We’re fine,” Dr. Lisa said. She pulled out a pillbox and explained that this is a slightly higher dosage. Everyone would be given different dosages from what they were given this morning. She had Lena say, “pink slip, froideur. The eyes tell the brain what to devour. In the attic, you can smell the seeds.” The doctor handed Lena a small paper cup with two pills in it. “This round of pills is chewable,” she said.
Lena covered the small cup with her hand. She tried to figure out how to slide one into her hand. Didn’t think she could get away with palming one.
“You can’t leave until we watch you take them.”
She put the first pill up to her lips. It smelled like vitamins. When she chewed, it tasted terrible, as if someone had sprayed lemon-scented cleaning spray directly into her mouth. Both pills left a layer on Lena’s tongue. Smith’s eyes and the doctor’s were on her mouth. Lena chewed with her mouth open, hoped it looked disgusting.
“This tastes like shampoo in my mouth.”
Lena was taken downstairs. She sat at her desk, read an email from Judy about how to keep the microwave clean. Tried to think of the words they had told her to remember. The only one she could remember was froideur. There was a slimy feeling, radiating down from her brain to her sinuses to her esophagus. Lena gagged. Took a drink of water. She turned to Judy. “Why did you send that email?”
“You said that three minutes ago.”
“Stop messing with me.”
“I’m not,” Judy said. She scrunched her face up as if she was smelling something disgusting.
“When did I go see Dr. Lisa?”
“That was over an hour ago.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Lena blinked. She touched her hair and it felt like another hour passed as her fingers felt the strands, traced over the “S” and “Z” shapes her curls fell in. Judy was talking, but Lena couldn’t understand the words she was saying. What did her scalp look like underneath all her hair? What if she cut it all off? Dark, thick clumps on a shiny white floor. Would it look like blood?
Judy turned back to her computer.
Lena typed an email. She browsed online, looked at her tabs. She had opened the same article about an abandoned amusement park taken over by feral cats seven times. She had replied twice to Judy’s email about the microwave with a GIF of a champagne tower. Dr. Lisa said it was boxes inside of boxes. And what if that meant that she, too, was in an experiment? But what did that mean for everyone? She clicked a link to an interesting article about an amusement park.
“Did you know that Charlie has been eating my yogurt?” Judy held an empty container in front of Lena’s face.
“No, I’ve been eating your yogurt.”
“You don’t like key lime.” Judy smiled. It faltered. “Lena, honey. I think your dosage is too high.”
“I feel like they gave me the gas. And I want to lean my head on everything.” Lena laughed. It came out high and silly. She couldn’t stop laughing.
She stood up. Sat down. Tried to stand again, but her legs gave out. She hit her back on the chair’s seat. She tried to pull herself up, but her legs flopped and kicked. She moved her arms breaststroke style. People were yelling. Lena tried to tell them that they needed to ask her to smile, to say something complicated, to write something. People didn’t just fall. Her mouth refused to do what her brain said. It spoke only in gurgles and moans.