Do you ever wonder how things fall apart? Perhaps it is here, like this, unsure of how to climb over barriers and walls and wondering, suddenly, if you should even try.

“To be honest,” Professor MacMillan says, “I was wondering when I’d hear from you. I heard the interview in Seattle with Kunakin, Incorporated didn’t—” her lips twist “—go well.”

Grace shrugs. She spent so many hours in this room, in this chair, going over the intricacies of the observable and unobservable world. Being here shouldn’t make her heart pound, her hands tremble, but it does.

“That’s one way to put it,” Grace says. “What did they tell you?”

Professor MacMillan tilts her head in thought. “You weren’t the right fit,” she says, and Grace feels a brief flare of spiteful satisfaction. “They also informed me this was in part because you walked out of the interview.” She crosses her arms and stares across her desk. “I told them that didn’t sound like you. What happened?”

Grace has always admired Professor MacMillan. She is one of the few women that make up this department and the astronomers that constitute the Northwest Coast. She showed Grace the stars as if she could pluck them from the sky and hold them in her hand and said, See? You could do this, too. It was never said that Grace would have to climb farther, higher, but Grace knew. Grace knows. Still, it hurts.

It hurts that Professor MacMillan thought she could get that job. It hurts that despite the anger that pushed her to leave the interview, she still wanted to get it, just to prove she could.

“I wasn’t the right fit,” Grace says. “They made that clear, so I left. I don’t—” She stops herself because despite her frustrations, this is her mentor, her advisor. This is a person who opened her professional network to Grace, even if some of them are rotten. “I don’t want to work with anyone that makes me feel small. I’m a good astronomer with good qualifications.”

Professor MacMillan frowns. “You are,” she agrees. “I know that. And you already know you have a place here in my lab.”

“I know,” Grace says, cutting her off. She slumps in the chair. “I appreciate that, really. I just need to take a step back and figure out where I want to go. Where I want to be. I need to be the best and doing the best.”

“Then take a step back,” her professor says. “When you knew you wanted to be an astronomer, what did you see that made you think this was the right choice for you?” Behind her are all the plaques she’s received for her work. Prestige hangs in each frame. This could be you one day, she told Grace once. You could do this, too.

“It’s hard to remember,” Grace says. She was young and rebelling against someone else’s dream for her. Medicine was for someone else. “I saw me here,” she says. “I saw me becoming you one day. My own version.”

“And what do you see now?” her professor asks.

Closed doors, Grace thinks. Another mountain, another fence, another endless staircase to climb. The desire to be the best and prove it to herself and Colonel and anyone who thinks she should be hindered by things she cannot and will not let them control.

“My first astronomy class,” she says instead, “do you remember what you told us?”

“No,” Professor MacMillan says immediately. “But I’m assuming it’s the same spiel I give every year I teach that intro class. Remind me.”

“You said you had romantic notions about this field,” Grace says abruptly, sitting up. “You said that the universe was old, and made up of many things. You said we were old, and that the universe made us up, too.” To her horror she feels her throat start to get tight. “If it is made up of me, and I am made up of it, I want my fair shot to see myself in it.” To stand beside its chaotic, hungry voids and fill them with her rage and her joy. Her fear and her hard-won courage. “I want the chance to be Dr. Porter, the right fit. The best fit.”

Grace takes a trembling breath and presses her lips together. She will not let her discouragement break her spirit in this office. She will keep her dignity and save that for home. Her fingers clench in her lap, and she struggles to look at Professor MacMillan with an even gaze. It’s not fair, she wants to say. I worked my ass off to be the best. I am the best you have.

“Okay,” Professor MacMillan says, like she is talking to something scared and rabid. “Okay. You’re frustrated, and I get that.” She leans in, voice gentling. “It can be a hard field to thrive in. More often than not I am the only woman working on a project. I am questioned and undermined despite my fair number of achievements. It can be hard, but it’s rewarding work. I wouldn’t put my weight behind you if I didn’t think you could do it.”

Grace feels her eyes sting, and she blinks furiously. She wants the validation of her mentor, someone who has passed down her knowledge and expertise and contacts. She also wants to scream because the struggles Professor MacMillan faces in this field decades into her career are compounded threefold for Grace before she even begins. She grits her teeth until they hurt.

She waits until she can say, “I know,” and the words came out as words should, and not as if they had to fight a battle to get there. “I know I can do it. I just need time to figure out how. Where exactly it is I want to be.”