Chapter 2: Root of the Problem

My advisor was off on a business trip, leaving me with strict orders—and five hundred bucks via Venmo—to care for his precious mulberry sapling. That’s Ivy League-level trust. For two days, I played overzealous plant mom: watering, checking soil, even humming Taylor Swift. But two days of effort can’t undo a lifetime of black-thumb disasters.

With him gone, I convinced myself: as long as you’re bold enough, your advisor’s business trip is basically your vacation. Who’d check up on me? The department secretary? Unless I burned the lab down, I was safe.

Experiments? Tomorrow. Laptop? Tomorrow. Thesis? Definitely not today. Report? Please.

I tossed sunglasses in my battered duffel, hit play on my freedom playlist, and caught the first Greyhound out of town. Freedom tasted like gas station coffee and stale Cheez-Its. Mulberry tree? Advisor? Whatever.

Halfway through the trip, somewhere past a Dairy Queen sign flashing by—I stared out the window at a Dairy Queen sign flashing by—small town America, where even the cows looked bored. That’s when I remembered: I was supposed to water the mulberry tree every day. A week had already passed.

Guilt and caffeine hit at once. I rushed back to the lab.

The sapling was a graveyard: brittle trunk, leaves like confetti on the floor, soil dry as a desert. My breath caught. I poked the trunk—crack. It felt like snapping a promise in half.

I’d once seen my advisor go nuclear over a misplaced pipette. This? This was career-ending.

My advisor pinched pennies like a pro, but he’d Venmoed me five hundred bucks for this tree. That’s Ivy League-level trust. Now I’d broken it.

I paced, picturing his face turning stop-sign red, veins bulging as he unleashed one of his legendary rants. The countdown to disaster had started: three days until he returned.

Maybe I could Amazon a replacement. But before I could even search, a group chat pinged: my advisor finished early—he’d be back tomorrow. Meeting tomorrow night. Game over.

He even tagged me: "Casey, the fruit on my mulberry tree must be ripe by now, right? And your report is finished too, right? 😁😁"

Me: "……"

I wanted to crawl into the Wi-Fi and pull the plug. Please, universe, give me a break.