The Unstoppable Wasp

In fact, dopamine levels increase by up to 9 percent when we listen to music we like. Listening to music we love, just like eating food we love, releases dopamine and makes us all happier, instantly. Music is universal. It connects us all.

Is the pure joy of Carly Rae Jepsen universal, too? I think so. I have to think so.

Nadia was back at the lab, lying on her bed, VERA projecting a keyboard into the air over her. She’d found the quantum oscillator buried at the bottom of a kitchen drawer (why Jarvis had put it there she would never know). Nadia had been working on hooking VERA into the quantum realm since she got back to the lab an hour ago. She knew she should go to bed soon, but she was still too upset to relax. And getting VERA to liaise with the quantum realm had been more difficult than Nadia had originally anticipated.

“Is it possible for a song to be both happy and sad at the same time?” Nadia asked VERA, half-distracted by her work.

“Robyn, ‘Dancing on My Own,’” a voice from Nadia’s doorway answered. “Lorde’s ‘Supercut.’ Kacey Musgraves, ‘Happy and Sad.’ Eighty percent of ABBA Gold.”

“Margaret!” Nadia went to move off her bed, but Margaret waved at her to stay put.

“I heard you might need a friend,” Margaret said kindly, sitting on the edge of the bed. She had on her usual uniform—maroon hoodie, jeans, white tennis shoes. She smelled like cedar and cardamom.

“You heard…?” Nadia frowned.

“We linked our VERAs, remember?” Margaret smiled. “It’s like your project is already working as designed.”

Nadia flumped back down onto her pillows. “No. Nothing is working as designed.”

“That’s life for you.” Margaret patted Nadia’s leg sympathetically. “Want a refund?”

“Som

etimes,” Nadia admitted.

“Same. Mind if I…?” Margaret gestured to the pillows. Nadia wiggled over to make room on her bed and Margaret lay down, resting her hands behind her head. “Cute place.”

“A work in progress,” Nadia said to the ceiling. She sighed. She was frustrated with Bobbi, frustrated with Janet, she missed her friends, and she just wanted to get back to work, but her stupid emotions were getting in the way. Not even her room was making her happy, not in its current disheveled mid-move-in state. “It’s actually…the only place I’ve ever had that was just mine,” Nadia continued. “I mean, I share the lab with my friends, which I love, because I love having people around. But I grew up in a…” She paused. “Boarding school” is what she landed on. “And then I came back to Hank’s old house. Here, though…I can make this what I want. Just like G.I.R.L. But…”

“It’s taking a lot of time and energy and some compromise?” Margaret raised an eyebrow and looked sidelong at Nadia next to her on the pillows.

“Yes. Almost like you have some experience with this.” Nadia nudged her.

“You’re a big dreamer, Nadia,” Margaret said, rolling onto her side and propping her head up on one hand. “And what that means is sometimes people aren’t going to understand you. They’re going to doubt you. Look at me; Hank Pym didn’t even want to hire me. As if it were possible to be too passionate about making the world a better place.”

“Exactly!” Nadia pushed herself up on the bed, propping herself against her headboard. “Exactly. And I’m so close with VERA. If I can get this working, it could change so many lives. Not that Taina’s local bee pollinator isn’t also a great idea, or Ying’s sewage treatment, or…” Nadia leaned her head back against the board and closed her eyes. “I just have to see this through. I need to.”

“Well, then.” Margaret rolled off the bed and stood up, reaching out her hand to Nadia. “What’s stopping you?”

Nadia opened her eyes and looked at Margaret, standing over her bed here at Pym Labs, her arm outstretched. It was the last thing she would have expected back on her name day: her friends and her family refusing to believe in her work, a beautiful and brilliant new role model by her side instead.

In a way, Nadia figured she had Maria to thank for her new mentor; had it not been for her journal and her list, Nadia would never have been pushed to open the VERA. She would never have thought of a project for Like Minds, and she would never have met Margaret. It was like Maria was looking out for her daughter even from…wherever she was now. Nadia never knew quite what to think about that. But wherever she was, she’d dropped this in Nadia’s lap. It had to mean something.

Nadia grasped Margaret’s hand.

“Am I interrupting some sort of white-girl sleepover ritual here?” came a voice from the door. Taina walked in on her crutches, looking disdainfully at Margaret. Nadia dropped her hand quickly and slid off the bed.

Nadia decided she would try to play peacemaker, and fast. “Taina, this is—”

“I know who this is.” Taina leaned on one of her crutches and waved the other toward Margaret. “What’s she doing here?”

“Just leaving,” Margaret said coolly. “Nadia, you know how to find me.” Margaret stepped around Taina and out the door, leaving only the smell of cedarwood in her wake.

“That was rude,” Nadia said, once she’d heard the lab doors slide shut. “You didn’t have to be so mean to her face.”

“At least I’m honest.” Taina leaned against the doorframe. “I thought you told Bobbi you were letting all this go.”

“What is with all of you?” demanded Nadia, snatching up VERA off her desk and storming out of her room. Hadn’t she dealt with enough of this today? She had just been starting to feel better and ready to work again, and now this. It was too much to handle. She needed a nap. Several naps. Maybe just an entire sleep, at this point.