Academic fundraising events never failed to make Erin a little nauseous. Really any academic get-together—conferences, faculty luncheons, dinners for guest speakers. They all just boiled down to chances for Erin to embarrass herself in front of her colleagues, be made to feel inferior when talking to esteemed speakers, or generally be reminded she had never managed to fit into this particular community. That pressure to make herself acceptable and anticipation of the inevitable awkwardness when she misstepped and failed in that goal always resulted in her stomach twisting with anxiety so that she couldn't truly enjoy the event.
This alumni reception at MIT was no different. Well, she supposed it should be different. For once, she was here with her best friends. The entire Ghostbusters team had actually been invited by the university due to half of its members having received their postgraduate degrees from there. So they had loaded up the Ecto-1 and schlepped down to Boston for the weekend to lead a seminar and demonstrate their inventions. Erin had fantasized about being invited as a guest speaker at her old alma mater one day, but now that it had come to pass, it didn't feel like she had hoped it would.
She loved her work, absolutely, and was genuinely proud of everything she and her friends had accomplished. But being back in these buildings, around her peers and faculty from those early days, brought her right back to that insecure grad student desperate to be taken seriously. Even now, as Abby talked shop with one of the other guest lecturers and Patty held court with the architecture majors, Erin found herself nursing a glass of wine, standing near a wall by herself.
"Oh, man." Holtzmann wove her way out of the crowd, slinging an arm over Erin's shoulder. "Hey, have you noticed how old everyone's getting?"
Of course Holtz would be having fun. Erin was pretty sure there wasn't a situation on Earth that could make Holtzmann feel out of place and awkward. "Well, you kind of have a bit of an unfair advantage over everyone," Erin said, sipping her wine. "Weren't you a teenager when you were here?"
"Nineteen, yeah. Sixteen to eighteen in undergrad, but I think part of that was 'cause they were in a hurry to get rid of me before I blew up something they couldn't afford to rebuild." Holtz grinned nostalgically.
Erin shook her head. "I still can't believe we just barely missed being here at the same time."
"I know, right!" Holtz slapped her back affectionately. "Shame I couldn't get here a bit sooner. We could have started collaborating so much earlier. How fun would that've been?"
Erin thought back to who she was in her graduate years, mired in insecurity, guilt-ridden from her recent split with Abby, generally a very unhappy young woman who buried herself in her work and tried to mold herself into a model physics student. "I'm not sure we would have gotten along back then. Besides, I was in the Physics department and you were in Engineering. We probably wouldn't have met even if we were here together."
"Engineering with a specialty in particle physics," Holtzmann corrected. "Spent plenty of time haunting the Physics halls. Just wound up more interested in teaching the particles how to dance instead of seeing what they do on their own. That's what we have you for," she added, squeezing Erin's shoulders.
Erin smiled slightly at that. "I can only imagine what you were getting up to while you were here."
"Remind me to tell you something and you won't have to imagine it. Hey." Holtz leaned in conspiratorially. "So, word is the catering table has mini-quiches." She snorted, laughing. "I love that word. 'Quiche'. I'm gonna go grab a bunch before the grad students get to 'em. I'll bring you some."
"That's okay, really," Erin protested, figuring eggs were a bad idea on a nervous stomach, but Holtzmann was already spinning away, shooting fingerguns back at her as she went. Erin sighed, but shook her head, bemused.
"Looks like some things never change."
Erin blinked, turning at the unfamiliar voice. A man stood beside her in a suit nice enough to suggest private sector rather than faculty. "I'm sorry?"
"Mark Richards, PhD Mechanical Engineering," he said, holding out his hand. I was a contemporary of Holtzmann's."
"Oh. Erin Gilbert, Particle Physics," she said, shaking his hand. It was funny now how ostentatious it sounded to throw around credentials at an event like this, specifically for alumni. "I'm one of her contemporary…contemporaries."
"I know. One of the famous Ghostbusters. I'm planning to attend your seminar tomorrow." He chuckled. "I've gotta admit, you're a lot braver than I am."
Erin gave a politely awkward chuckle, looking about for an exit. Something about the man's demeanor irritated her. "Well, you get used to it. Once you're dealing with ghosts every day it becomes kind of normal."
"Actually, I meant working with Looney Tunes there." He nodded the direction in which Holtz had left.
Erin's disinterested expression took on a stony underlayer, her body going slightly rigid. "Excuse me?"
"Holtzmann. You're braver than I am letting anything she built anywhere near your body, let alone wearing it as a backpack."
Erin's fingers started twitching at her side, but she kept her demeanor cool and professional. "You mean the brilliant inventions that took our entirely theoretical concepts and made them practical in a way that was never considered possible before?"
Mark, to his credit, caught her change in tone, holding up his hands placatingly. "Don't get me wrong, she's absolutely a genius. She's just a Tesla kind of genius. You know, the type who'll invent an honest-to-god earthquake machine, and you just hope they're not crazy enough to actually use it." He leaned over, lowering his voice. "Did you know she put someone in a coma once?"
An icy fury was boiling up Erin's back by then, but before she could retort, she felt someone catch her wrist and pile something greasy into her free hand.
"The quiche were already goners, so I brought you some spring rolls." Holtzmann looked up at the man Erin was glaring at, munching on one of the hors d'oeuvres herself. "Hey! Max, right?"
"Mark," he corrected, shooting Erin a patronizingly amused look. "Blow anyone up lately, Holtzmann?"
"Only those already dead," Holtz grinned, raising her eyebrows as she held the spring roll in her mouth like a cigar.
"Well, heading the right direction, I guess," Mark said. "I'll let you get back to mingling. Dr. Gilbert." He excused himself with a nod, either unaware or unconcerned with Erin's undisguised fuming.
"He looked better with hair," Holtz commented as he left. She glanced over at Erin. "You okay?"
"Fine." Erin huffed, breathing out the pointless anger.
"Did he say something mean to you?"
"No. Not to me," Erin confessed. She took a calming swallow of her wine. Since Holtz was still looking at her with expectant concern, she continued. "He was saying stupid stuff…about you."
"Ohhhh." Holtzmann relaxed, shrugging. "Yeah, he's like that. I think it bugged him I already had three patents by the time I started grad school." She snorted, leaning into Erin. "Egos, right? Hey, come on, those are gonna get cold." She gestured at the spring rolls in Erin's hand and started sauntering toward their table.
Erin stared after her, watching Holtz flop into a chair, kicking her feet up on an empty one across from her.
"How do you do it?" Erin asked, standing beside the table.
Holtz looked up, head cocked. "Well, it helps if you're wearing pants rather than a skirt—"
"Not that." Erin slid down into the chair next to her, setting down her glass and piling the spring rolls onto a bread plate. "How do you just…let it roll off when people are jerks like that?"
Holtzmann sat up slightly, giving Erin her genuine attention. "That honestly bothered you?"
Erin sighed, wiping the grease off her hand with a napkin. "I know it shouldn't. I'm proud of our work. I'm not worried about whether anybody takes us seriously or not. I know we've saved the world and changed the course of physics. It's just…the negativity gets to me sometimes, even when it's not specifically directed at me."
Holtz watched her, probing her tongue against the inside of her cheek as Erin slumped in her chair and prodded at the hors d'oeuvres listlessly. Then Holtz sat up abruptly, swatting Erin's arm as she leaned forward. "C'mere."
Curious, Erin watched as Holtzmann picked up two of the programs off the table, big folders listing the donors, speakers, and alumni in attendance, and began opening them and standing them on their ends. She aligned them so the vertical folders stood, open ninety degrees, to form a little wall around their place settings, like the kind of arrangements teachers had elementary school kids make to prevent cheating.
"Come on," Holtz prodded again, leaning down so her head was within the makeshift walls.
Erin hesitated briefly, casting a habitual glance around, then leaned down beside where Holtz was resting her arms on the table. It was a close space, their faces just within Erin's normal bubble of personal space.
"You wanted to know how I keep haters like that from bothering me."
"Yeah." Erin felt a little thrill of curiosity at the secretive situation.
"This is it," Holtz proclaimed.
Erin blinked, baffled. "What is?"
"This." Holtz gestured to the folders.
Erin stared at the cardboard enclosure. "Your secret is to build a fort?"
"Not usually a literal one, though never underestimate the value of a good pillow fort. You kind of make one in your mind. Make a space for yourself, put all the good things in there with you…" She circled her hand within the space. "Let all the bad stuff bounce off the outside. No more stress."
Erin frowned. "That's the big secret?"
Holtzmann shrugged, picking up one of the spring rolls to snack on.
Erin looked around. She had to admit it was peaceful in the walled-off space. The noise of the party seemed more distant and hushed, the bustle and crowd seeming unreal, mere disembodied presences unseen outside their secluded spot.
"It does have an appeal."
Holtz grinned, mouth full of vegetables and pastry.
Erin breathed in the increasingly warm air around them, closing her eyes and letting her blood pressure start to quiet down. It was calm and familiar, like the ease of the firehouse. Yet she found a niggling part of her mind was still hyperaware she was hiding behind folders at a professional event filled with her peers. She kept wanting to peek over the folders, wondering about the activity going on around them.
She opened her eyes, frowning. "It's kind of…isolated, isn't it?"
"Depends who you let in it," Holtz said with a wink.
Erin nodded, but stretched her neck to look over the edge. "It's nice, but…you're not really part of things. Yes, nobody bothers you, but you're behind a wall all the time. It doesn't stop people from being horrible or change their minds. It's just…a form of denial."
"Never said it was the best way," Holtz shrugged. "You just asked how I did it." She widened her eyes, lowering her voice in a fake hushed tone. "You did ask for advice from a crazy person."
Erin snorted. "You're not as crazy as people think." She rubbed her forehead as Holtzmann blinked. "I guess I just wish that if you save the world and prove the existence of the afterlife it would be enough to make people have a little basic respect. Or at least human decency."
"You can't fix everyone, Er," Holtz said, voice serious. "This—the fort—is for taking care of yourself. 'Cause if I let them get me down and feel bad about myself, I can't build. When I build, I can make cool things and do good in the world and find people like you and Abby and Patty. And then what anybody else says doesn't matter so much."
On the other side of the programs, Abby's voice stood out above the overall bustle. "Mark! Thought that was you. Heard about your new patent. Number six now, right? Nice! Keep up this pace and you might match Holtz's post-doc numbers by the time you retire."
Holtz smirked, raising her eyebrows. "Of course, it helps having friends like Abby too."
Erin nodded, remembering how often Abby had inserted herself like a living shield between Erin's teenage self and bullies' jeering taunts. It helped indeed.
Suddenly, the programs fell over as the table jostled, startling both of them.
"My bad," Patty said, leaning past them to pick up the wine bottle from the middle of the table. "Sorry to disrupt your little hideout. Just needed a refill."
"Having fun in the land of the architects?" Holtz asked, leaning back again.
"Oh man. I've got a guy over there with two PhDs trying to tell me Gothicism was more influential on the Manhattan skyline than Art Deco. Like I ain't never read Pietrikov."
"Tear him apart, Patty," Holtz encouraged, raising a hand for a fist bump.
"Boy don't know what he's got coming," Patty laughed as she strode back into the crowd.
"She knows how to have a good time," Holtz commented.
"Mm." Erin picked up the fallen programs and started folding them back to their original closed shapes. "Don't take it the wrong way, but I don't think your method's for me."
"No problem," Holtzmann said easily. "But if stuff gets bad again, know you've got a standing invitation to hang out in Fort Holtzmann anytime you want."
Erin smiled, warmed. "Thanks, Holtz."
Holtzmann stood, stretching. "Now I don't know about you, but I think I need to see Patty tear apart a professor's body of work. You in?"
Erin took a breath, feeling ready to face the throng of people again. "Yeah, I'll come with."
"Nice." Holtz paused, head cocking as she looked at Erin, her expression quieter than before. "You were seriously gonna defend my honor back there?"
Erin sputtered. "Well, yeah! Of course!"
Holtzmann looked down, tongue tracing her teeth behind her cheek. When she looked up, she had a small smile. "Then I really wish we'd known each other in college."
Without another comment, Holtz started strolling into the crowd.
Erin found herself pausing, staring after Holtzmann. That was part of what fooled people, she mused. Holtz's good nature and cheerful ease wasn't naïve and it wasn't shallow. For all that she swirled through life and liked to dazzle with her brilliance and oddness, when the eddies around her did calm, you could catch a glimpse of the depths they concealed, darker and deeper than any casual observer would guess.
Erin had to admit she had presumed Holtzmann had always been like the woman she knew now, picturing a playful kid blowing things up, unafraid of any authority she might upset. But young Erin bore very little resemblance to the woman she had matured into. And the few peeks Holtz had allowed them into her past hinted at a colder, lonelier life than Erin tended to imagine. The Holtzmann who had originally attended MIT and been taunted by other students like Mark might have been almost unrecognizable to them now. The Holtzmann who had never had friends, just a prodigious gift for engineering and a reputation for being weird and dangerous.
Who knew? Perhaps if Erin and Holtzmann had met in grad school, they might have had more in common than she thought.
But that hardly mattered now. Today, they were honored guest speakers invited to showcase their groundbreaking work to their peers. And tonight, Patty was drawing a crowd as she deftly countered every argument a pompous professor tried to throw at her, Holtzmann and Abby cheering her on like hype men at a concert. As Erin joined them, Holtz turned and grinned at her, still leaning on Abby's shoulder but throwing an arm around Erin's neck too, giving her a quick recap of what she had missed.
And Erin knew that no matter what anyone else said or thought, these women were all the shielding and motivation she could need to keep the negativity of the world at bay.