“Did the metric system finally get to you?” I asked, a weak joke, an attempt at lightening the mood for someone who’d been tutoring metric since her freshman year. I was sorry Rachel was having such a hard time with her key project.

We shuffled past the tennis courts, where the asphalt seemed to be sending up plumes of steam. A few yards later, Rachel stopped in front of the campus coffee shop. Ordinarily the smell of Huey’s dark roast would draw us in, but I could tell Rachel needed more than an iced cuppa.

“I mean it this time,” she said.

“He’s been that bad?”

Anyone in the Henley academic family who was listening would have known we were referring to Dr. Keith Appleton. He was Rachel’s thesis adviser and the chemistry teacher known not fondly as Apep, after the Egyptian god of darkness and chaos, the destroyer of dreams.

Rachel’s big dream was to do this extra year of study and research at Henley and then enter med school in Boston. She needed Apep’s help and recommendation to make it all come true.

“He told me my data is crappy.”

“He used that word?”

“No, he’d never use that word, but that’s what he meant. He said everything I’ve done so far is worthless.” Rachel bent over double and blew out her breath, as if she’d just finished running the Boston marathon and couldn’t take another step.

I reached down and rubbed Rachel’s narrow shoulders, helping set her upright at the same time. I thought how young she seemed sometimes, young enough to be my daughter, if I’d taken that path. On hot days like this she tied her long many-shades-of-blond hair into a ponytail, taking another four or five years off her age.

“He can’t mean it,” I said. “You’ve been working day and night on those-what are they again?”

“Proteins,” Rachel said, coming back to life at the mention of her passion. “I’m purifying proteins. It’s just a matter of separating the different types of proteins that exist in a mixture, so-”