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Well, Alec didn't need Post-its to feel special, and he never used them.

He'd taken the gift—her rather pointed present, she'd thought—as a token of the respect he expected.

The jerk.

At least he wouldn't have an excuse to leave her a note about the mugs today. Thanks to that guy—what was his name? Blandly handsome, seemingly agreeable, flashing her a smile when he needed something, as if the smile made up for all his demands. He hadn't fled the first time she snapped at him. He even seemed to care, his unlined forehead wrinkling in confusion as she talked at him, unlike the million other expensively but casually dressed West Coast dudes like him, with their tousled hair and their grins, and their lean surf and ski bodies. They abounded on this campus, and only paid attention to her when they were trying to pick her up.

Well, the Handsome sure hadn't tried to pick her up. Maybe that was the difference.

He was probably intent on bothering that Dr. Hisanaga.

She frowned. In fact, Handsome... Davy—was that it? A ridiculously boyish name—'had' helped her clean the mug flock, her mug gaggle— what was a good collective noun?—her 'bane' of mugs. So at least he wasn't a completely useless handsome. Then again, he'd only washed some dishes. That shouldn't earn her undying gratitude, or even some sort of mild, hardly there attraction from her.

'The bar was low.'

She biked home in the light spring rain, willing the liquid to wash away her tension. When she got back to the garden-floor apartment that she rented in Kitsilano, near the beach she never got to walk on, she found her roommate at the open door flapping a dishcloth while the smoke detector screamed.

Zoey grabbed the towel on her way in and fastened it around her ears—not that it helped—and stood on a kitchen stool to take out the batteries.

Her roommate, Li-leng, was even shorter than she.

"If our ears go out in the next five years, it's because of this oversensitive detector," Li-leng said.

Zoey's roommate pushed at the sash of the kitchen window to open it wider but it was open as far as it would go. She fanned the air glumly.

"So, did you get to talk to Smerek? What did he say about your research so far?"

"He was in a rush. He was mentally pretty checked out of it."

But he was not so distracted that he hadn't sighed about what a disappointment her experiments had been—what a disappointment 'she'd' proved—thus far. The MD/PhD program was for top-level people, he kept reminding her as if she wasn't told that every single day by every single top- level person in the program.

"He essentially blew off your meeting. Again."

Zoey tried to look unbothered. "It's not a big deal. I just need a little more guidance about what he wants."

She'd never needed her hand held before. 'So independent', her teachers always said. Little Zoey cutting out snowflakes with the sharp scissors, winning science fairs, getting into top-level programs with top-level people.

Li-leng glared at her perfectly roasted chicken. She was probably imagining it was Smerek. Or maybe her own supervisor. She shoved another pan in the oven and shut it defiantly.

Zoey took the tea towel off her head—not that it had helped—and got out some plates. "I'll try him again in a few weeks. When he's not preparing for a conference."

He was 'always' traveling, though.

Li-leng started cutting up the chicken. They'd met in the dorms in first year and had been roommates ever since. She was technically in graduate school, too, although she'd seemed to put her dissertation on fan culture on hold to wait tables, procrastibake, and educate herself on theories of hair care.

Zoey shrugged. They sat down side by side at the small breakfast bar. "You don't have to stay in school, you know. You have skills." "Setting off smoke detectors."

"Disarming them."

"Collecting and herding mugs." "Going thirty days without shampoo."

"Hey, my hair has never looked better."