“Well,” I started, sounding a little shaky, “if you’ll excuse the impertinence, I can tell by who you’re hiring what you’re working on. It is also what I’m working on, except it seems that you’ve gotten further down the path. I can only make guesses what the steps you’ve taken are, but they’ve left me both intensely curious and also less interested in my own work.”

My cortisol response was kicking in hard—elevated heart rate, sweaty pits, sudden urge to pee, all of it. I know the secret to lying is telling the truth, and it was definitely helping, but it was still terrifying. These people were not to be messed with.

“Simply, it seems to me that you’re where the cutting edge is.”

Dr. Sealy picked up here: “You are, however, in the middle of your thesis project, correct?”

“Yes, I’d be putting that on hold. I’ve already discussed it with my advisor.” This was a lie.

“And how does he feel about that?” Tom asked.

I decided not to correct him. “Dr. Lundgren sees the excitement of the opportunity and understands. I know I’m taking a risk, but even if I’m not able to return to defend my thesis, it seems certain that this will be the better path for me.”

“You know we tried to recruit Constance,” Dr. Sealy said, using Professor Lundgren’s first name. “She’s a magnificent scientist, but she …” He paused.

Tom continued, more smoothly, “She turned us down.”

She hadn’t just turned them down. She told me that she’d told them to go fuck themselves. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I should have known better than to bring up Dr. Lundgren. I took control back with an argument I’d prepared. “I don’t know the details of what you’re up to, but you do. So the question I have is what you would suggest I do knowing what you know. Would you tell a young scientist to finish her PhD, or would you tell her to go work at Altus?”

“I’d tell her to go work at Altus,” Dr. Sealy replied.

The business guy spoke up again then: “Just to be absolutely clear, the work we are doing is very secret and very sensitive. Do you have any potential ulterior motives for working here?”

Was he outright asking me if I was signing up specifically for espionage? I was a terrible liar! What the hell was I doing?! I heard my own voice talking, and it sounded relaxed: “I just can’t not be there, I’m up all night thinking about it.” I had found a truth I could tell.

The rest of the interview was standard. We talked about how we solved interpersonal problems at the lab, about my experience being managed and working with undergrads, and about my research at Berkeley. They seemed impressed by me, and to be honest I was impressed by them. They were experts, they were well paid, and they seemed like good, effective communicators. Tom seemed like a bit of a tech bro, but Dr. Sealy was exactly the kind of guy I’d get along with in a work setting. He was considerate, thoughtful, and none of his jokes were at the expense of other people. They weren’t scary at all.

You always want to go into an interview with one or two questions for the people who are interviewing you. It’s a signal that you want to make sure they’re worth your time and talent, and it puts the power a little bit in your hands. Not too much, just enough for them to know that you’re not desperate.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what percentage chance would you guess your business has of not being around five or ten years from now?” I asked near the end of our allotted time.

They both laughed. “Zero,” the business guy said.

I waited for a reply from Dr. Sealy. “Not zero,” he said. “All probabilities are nonzero. But very, very small. This could be a lifelong job if you want it to be.”

“That’s very good to hear,” I said, smelling the hint of truth in my lie.

Interview over, I needed to have a conversation with Dr. Lundgren. If I was going to leave, I needed to know what we were going to do about my research. I messaged her to ask if she could come by my lab station when she was free to talk about something important. I wanted to have the conversation on my territory, not hers. A few hours later, I heard a knock on my counter. That’s how we kept from sneaking up on each other. She looked good.

“Everything OK, Miranda?”

I figured it would be easy to say it all at once, so I just straightened up, looked her in the eyes, and said, “I had a job interview today with Altus. They’re going to call you for a reference … probably. I want to talk about what you might say to them.”

“I’m going to tell them the truth.”

My eyes fell, a pit opened up in my stomach, and I slouched into it.

“I’ll tell them that you are a genius scientist and communicator. That you work extremely hard and are passionate and are always solving problems fast and well. I might leave out some facts, like, for example, that you hate them.”

I had never imagined that this conversation would go so well. She looked concerned, but also deeply supportive.

I let out a sigh as my back muscles unclenched, “Thank you, Dr. Lundgren. Oh god, thank you.”

“What are you doing, Miranda?”

“I have to go to Puerto Rico. I can’t not go.”

“Did I imagine talking with you in my office and both of us agreeing that these people are trash people?”

“No.”

“Do you still think they’re trash people?”

“I think that, if I’m not there, they’ll be even more trash.” I was getting defensive.

She was quiet for a second and then pulled up a stool and sat. “I can’t tell you what to do, and I’ll support it, but I need you to tell me why.”

“Whatever they’re doing, they’re going to do it with or without me. Maybe I can have them do it in a less garbage way. And if I can’t, or I find out something really bad, maybe I can tell people about it.”

She was quiet for a really long time.

“Miranda, that is a huge thing you are asking of yourself. I am not young anymore, but I remember being your age, and I am not going to tell you to put a lid on that ambition, but it’s going to be hard to pull against their culture as it pulls on you. It will be very hard not to fall into their version of the story. But what worries me more than that is what happens if they find you out.

“There is a lot of money on the line here, a lot. I don’t know what these people are really like. They could blackball you, you probably wouldn’t ever work in pharma again. Or they could dig up dirt on you, lie about you, maybe even worse things than that.”

I thought back to my job interview. They did not seem like henchmen who would ruin a person for sharing industrial secrets, but I also had never met a henchperson, so what did I know?

“Miranda?”

I must have been zoned out for a second.

“I don’t care.” I did care.

She smiled with a hint of mischief. “Good.”

“Am I getting the job?” I could barely believe that it was a possibility. They had lots of candidates, and they’d find out that I was April’s friend and disqualify me. But Dr. Lundgren was talking about it like it was going to happen.

“I think you are, and I think you’re going to leave. And I’ll keep your lab station open until you come back.”