How Not To Fall by Emily Foster Read Free Book Online Page A

from my mom)—over my leotard and tights and say, “Since I was three.” I shove my feet into my Chacos. “I kinda went the professional training route for a couple of years, but it wasn’t for me.” I pull the bandana off my hair and allow the sweaty, curling mop to make its own decisions about how to behave. I look at him and smile. “Okay, ready.”
    He’s looking at me with his mouth open. “I had no idea.”
    â€œIt’s not that related to school, I guess. That’s sort of why I changed direction.” With my backpack on one shoulder, I lead him out of the studio. I wave and call bye to students, parents, and other teachers as I go. Once we’re out, I turn to him and say, “Where to?”
    â€œDo they know?” he says.
    â€œDoes who know what?”
    â€œThe students. The other teachers. Know that you . . . ‘kind of went the professional training route’?”
    â€œSure. Where’re we going? I have a fuck ton of work and I’m starving.”
    â€œWhat made you quit?”
    â€œI didn’t quit,” I say, my index finger in his face. “I changed direction.”
    And he laughs. He laughs and starts walking down Grant Street. “Of course, what was I thinking? How about Laughing Planet?”
    â€œGreat.”
    It’s only a couple of blocks, but I walk as slowly as I can. Spring has finally come—late this year—and the air has that fresh, muddy smell from rain earlier today. I think the sun should never set before eight p.m. There should be a rule.
    â€œPetrichor,” Charles says, walking beside me, his hands in his pockets and his satchel over his shoulder.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œThe word for that smell you’ve been inhaling as if it’ll get you high. It’s called petrichor. The stones release oils when they get wet, and that’s what the smell is.”
    I look at him, astonished. “That,” I say, “is my favorite fact ever.”
    And then we eat burritos and work on our respective papers.
    I don’t want to bore you with the details of my research, but the ultra-short version is that I study arousal coherence in anger. There’re three levels at which we experience emotions: physiology (like heart rate), involuntary behavior (like facial expressions), and experience (what you pay attention to when someone asks you how you’re feeling). And sometimes they all line up (coherence), and sometimes they don’t (noncoherence), and my project looks at how they do or don’t line up when people experience anger.
    To do this, we induce anger in research participants and then measure their heart rate, reflexes, pupil dilation, facial expressions, and we ask them how they feel. Got it so far?
    And the thing Charles found in my data, which I failed to notice, is that there were some outliers that seemed to form a pattern of their own. And I’ve been spending all this time trying to figure out what the deal is with the outliers. My working hypothesis is that it has to do with our mood induction method. I think it might be producing inconsistent results.
    And if you don’t care about any of that, I won’t be offended. There are days when I don’t care either.
    So while we’re eating burritos and working, I’m running my hypothesis past Charles, and he nods eagerly. “I think you’re on to something. May I suggest another approach that could dovetail well with that one?”
    â€œDoes it involve a lot more work? Because the clock is seriously ticking, dude.”
    â€œA bit more—for the purposes of your thesis, it’s probably only necessary to be able to say you’ve considered it and it might prove a valuable avenue to explore in the future.”
    â€œOkay, what is it?”
    â€œTrauma,” he answers.
    â€œTrauma?”
    â€œYour outliers are all women. Women are disproportionately the targets of