Isadora Bentley is shopping for her final meal.
If I were a character in a novel, this is what the author would write.
Because it’s true. I am. Not a character in a novel, of course, but a soon-to-be stiff. A dead ringer for a dead ringer.
Plus, if I were a character in a novel, my name would be Estella. Or Hazel. And I’d be thinner.
Okay, I’m being dramatic. Turning thirty isn’t The End. At least not of my actual life. Just of my hopes and dreams. I’m pretty sure I saw them swirling down the drain last week along with my dignity.
I’m three decades old. I’ve spent 10,950 days on this planet, and I really thought my life would look a lot different by now.
When I graduated college, I was bound and determined to live a big life. To make a big splash with my significant contribution to the world of academia. I had a whole list of ways I was going to make a difference, a dent in the universe, something, and yet here I am, hours from the cliff of thirty with nothing to show for it but a job that’s going nowhere and a life that’s doing the same.
Actually, I stand corrected. My life has gotten somewhere. It’s gotten to the parking lot of the Stop ’n Shop.
And now I’m staring at a neon-outlined sign on a brown brick building, knowing there’s nothing terrifying about a grocery store.
I can practically hear the Funeral March as I blow out the thirty-candle inferno raging atop a store-bought cake.
Maybe to most people, turning thirty isn’t that big of a deal. It’s just another trip around the sun. Easy. All I have to do is stand here.
But it feels like I’m standing with my toes peeking out over a precipice. An Enter at Your Own Risk sign. A line in the sand. Life before and life after. A moment and a checkpoint. So I, of course, did what I always do. Last night, I carefully and objectively calculated my options.
Clinical. Scientific. Detached.
Isadora’s work as an academic researcher gives her the tools to make decisions without emotion, fully based on facts and figures. And as she inputs the data into the chart, she sees the writing on the wall. Something in her life needs to change. There’s just one problem—she has no idea what. And worse, no idea how to make that happen.
Man, my inner monologue sounds like Sir David Attenborough. It speaks with an elegant, calming, steady British accent. If I’m not careful, my inner monologue will lull me to sleep.
If only I were as well-versed in plotting a course of action or taking big leaps into the unknown as I am in studying other people’s actions and leaps.
If you’re around me for five minutes, you’ll know I’m a rule follower. It’s who I am. Envelopes stay un-pushed. Lines remain toed. I collect data, calculate outcomes, and act accordingly. The line from A to B is literally stick straight. Which is why I would never walk directly to Aisle 8 at the Stop ’n Shop.
Aisle 8 is, of course, where the candy is.
I love candy. But I don’t eat candy. I know what’s in it, and half of the things you can’t pronounce on the label I can find in the lab. It’s bad, and I won’t allow it.
Correction, I wouldn’t allow it.
Surely the narrator in my head would agree to skirt the Skittles rule just this once.
Today is a day like no other. Furtive, sugar-laden delicacies dot the landscape, and it is here we find Isadora Bentley foraging for t
he most delectable sweet treats. Today, Isadora would gather candy and chips and ice cream because turning thirty warrants an all-out junk food binge.
Skittles, Doritos, and Cherry Garcia. Not the fanciest birthday meal, but then, I’m not a fancy person. I don’t want filet mignon or duck and mushroom foie gras. I don’t even want vegetables. Let’s be honest—no one wants vegetables. However, if we’re talking about what to indulge in to make this birthday borderline healthy, ripe pineapple would certainly make the list.
It wouldn’t be as high up as chocolate, or a whole box of Mike and Ike’s, and it only makes it into my cart if it’s fresh and already cut. I’m not wasting my time chopping up a pineapple, for Pete’s sake. I’ve got life to avoid.
A man walks by me, and I realize I’m still in the parking lot. Good lord, how long have I been standing here? I see the look on his face. Yeah, buddy, I know this looks weird, but listen, you’ve got no idea the confectionary decisions I’ve got weighing on me.
Glass doors slide open. One foot in front of the other. Aisle 8. Candy.
Nope. First, pineapple.
If I were a different kind of person, I’d take my savings and go on a trip to celebrate my big day.
But then, a different kind of person would have an active social life. Or meaningful connections. Data to offset the negative side of the equation.
As it is, that’s not my data. No matter how much I want it to be. And unlike people, data never lies.
What’s worse is that I don’t see a way off this path. I don’t have what it takes to do anything about it. I keep waiting for something to change—or more accurately, someone else to just come and tell me what I need to change—but I’m stuck.
And look. All of the precut pineapple is gone. The empty spot on the shelf where the clear plastic cups stuffed with bright yellow chunks should be stares back at me, and I wonder if it’s a metaphor.
Should Isadora wait for a better weekend, a weekend with pineapple, to note this landmark passage of time?
I sigh. No can do, Attenborough. Watermelon it is.
To the chip aisle next. And there I stand, repeating my parking lot posturing, surrounded by crinkly bags of goodness. I’m pretty sure that’s the same guy who just walked past me again.
Like a drunken sailor looking for a good time, these chips make promises I know they will not keep.
In the end, I choose the Doritos, a bag of salt and vinegar kettle chips, and a canister of original Pringles to keep it classic.
And then it’s like the Red Sea parts. I think I hear angels singing. Aisle 8.
Putting it like that suggests I’ve happened there by chance, which I can
assure you I absolutely have not. I’ve been flirting with Aisle 8 for years. It’s why I capitalize it in my head. Aisle 8. And now here I am, about to make out with it. A one-night stand with Reese’s.
I hope he’ll call.
I know I look like I’m prepping for the birthday party of a ten-year-old boy and fifteen of his closest friends.
But I’m elated. Who knew breaking my own rules could feel so decadent?
As I maneuver my cart into the checkout line behind an old woman who’s searching her bag for what I can only assume is her alphabetized coupon file, I notice the cashier eyeballing my Cherry Garcia.
Today, I’m a rule breaker, Janice. Feast your eyes.
As a defense mechanism, Isadora Bentley often held full-on conversations with people in her unique and spectacular head. It made up for all the conversations she didn’t have in real life. Let’s zoom in and observe.
“Yep. Cherry Garcia. I’ve simply stopped caring, Janice. I’ve lost the will to follow any rules.”
Janice’s eyes will widen. “Oh my word! Are you sick?”
“Nope. In fact, I’m in perfect health. I’m just doing what I can to not have a horrible birthday.”
Janice will pause. “Well, only you control your destiny,” she’ll say, or some other simplified cliché that sounds like something on a poster under a picture of a dolphin or a light bulb or a herd of wild horses running on the beach.
Something like “You are in charge of you,” or “You’re just one decision away from changing your life.”
She’ll pause again, likely for dramatic effect, and I’ll do my best not to roll my eyes at this. As a rule, “dramatic effect” irritates me. As does office gossip and anything having to do with falling in love with vampires.
This is when the conversation will get awkward. I know this because nearly every one of my conversations turns awkward at some point. I’ll do my best to explain my system to Janice—the variables I used, the data I analyzed, the conclusion I’ve reached. I’ll point out that dolphin clichés help no one and “changing your life” isn’t as easy as everyone makes it sound.
As if it’s even up to me. I can’t help the hand I’ve been dealt.
But, like most of the people I talk to, her eyes will glaze over, she’ll start nervously laughing at the wrong times, and she’ll get that pained smile people get when they’re trying to escape a Chinese finger trap. I know this because most of what I do or say doesn’t make sense to other people.
It’s been hard to make friends.
“I have a coupon for that,” snaps me back to reality. The old lady, as predicted, hands a paper-clipped stack to Janice. This could be a while.
For what it’s worth, it’s not for lack of trying. The friend thing. It’s just that when it comes to me and other people—it’s like I’m speaking
a different language.
This could be because the things I love—science fiction and math and Doctor Who—aren’t as popular as more socially acceptable interests like rock concerts or cute boys.
“You need to try harder to be friendly, Isadora,” my mother would say. “The other girls think you don’t like them.”
Oh, Mom. If only you knew that I really was trying.
Connections at work are no different. The only one who congratulated me when I was promoted last year was a succulent I inherited when Frieda forgot to clear him off her desk when she retired. I named him Gary after my boss.
Being alone isn’t a bad thing when it’s your choice. But a lonely life, chosen or not, really isn’t living. And frankly, I’m tired of my own company.
That doesn’t mean I’m ready to “take the bull by the horns!” or listen to the frog halfway down the snake’s mouth croaking, “Never give up!” Turning thirty has amplified my feelings on the subject—and now that I’m painfully aware of them, I don’t know how to make them go away.
The Coupon Queen is through, and of course she’s writing a check. I begin to pile my junk food onto the conveyor when a colorful magazine that looks more like a newspaper in the rack next to the checkout line catches my eye.
I’m slightly put off by the bikini-clad woman on the cover and the gaudy headlines sprayed haphazardly across the front. Bright pink letters shout: “Five Things Your Lover Won’t Tell You—But Wants To.”
I set a bag of candy down onto the conveyor belt, followed by a box of Twinkies.
The woman on the cover is smiling. If I looked like her, I’d smile too. Perfect white teeth. Tan, toned body. A full-time Photoshop editor on retainer. A playful, girl-next-door vibe men supposedly liked, though how would I really know? I could count on one hand the number of conversations I’ve had with a man this year about anything other than research.
And I wouldn’t even need all my fingers.
Two pints of ice cream, onto the belt.
I wasn’t exactly killing it in the dating department.
The woman’s hand is pointing to a smaller, blockier headline: “31 Ways to Be Happy (Today!).”
I scoff a little louder than I intend to, and the cashier, whose name I now see is Linda, not Janice, tosses me a look.
I glance back at the magazine and softly snort again. Does this magazine actually think it knows something I don’t? And then it hits me.
Are there really thirty-one ways to be happy?
Ridiculous. It’s the same magazine that is telling me that eating chocolate in the morning will fix my metabolism. Which, incidentally, I'd
d totally be willing to try.
But . . . are there really thirty-one ways to be happy? I start plotting a graph in my mind as Linda slides my junk food over her scanner.
“Your son having a party?” she asks.
Oh no. Small talk.
I resist the urge to tell her the truth for all the reasons I’ve already been over with myself. Instead, I say, “Oh no, it’s for me . . . and . . . um . . . a small gathering.”
Linda stares.
“Of people. A small gathering of people.”
I smile as if a small person inside my empty head controlling all of my autonomic functions ran the program for smile.exe.
Yep. Small. Just me and Gary, who I’m going to bring home from work for the weekend. My loyal cactus companion.
“This is a lot of junk food,” Linda says with a laugh.
Doritos, slide, beep. Oreos, slide, beep.
I’m suddenly self-conscious of my purchases as I search for an answer that’s not one word.
“Yeah. It is.”
Fail.
“Is that everything?” she asks, then adds, “Or did you want to wash this down with a Diet Coke?” She chuckles at her little joke.
My eyes are planted firmly on that headline. Attenborough? Any help?
“31 Ways to Be Happy.” A simple yet profound conundrum. Like the birds of paradise finding their perfect mate in the jungles of New Guinea . . . Isadora Bentley, this was created just for you.
Linda pops her gum. “You okay?”
I turn and stare at her, and then, before I can give it another thought, I pick up the magazine and toss it on the belt.
Linda shrugs her eyebrows, rings it up, then hands it to me. I shove it into my purse and pay. And not with a check.
I push my cart through the glass doors leading to the parking lot and stand in the same spot where I stood before I came in. Only this time I’m not staring at the Stop ’n Shop.
“31 Ways to Be Happy (Today!)”
Maybe there’s something I didn’t consider in my research. Maybe there’s one more
variable to ponder.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll survive another year.
The following morning, I find Gary—the person, not the plant—standing outside my office talking to a student researcher named . . . nope. Don’t remember his name.
Ted? Fred? I think he has a superhero name. Clark? Bruce? Thor?
This is certainly something I need to work on. I’ve taken on a leadership role in the Behavioral & Social Sciences Research Lab here at Chicago University, and it’s done wonders for highlighting my shortcomings, but forgetting names is perhaps my most serious offense. After all, nothing says “I don’t really care about you” like not being able to remember a person’s name.
These are students, and part of my job is to help train them. So far, most of my attempts at training them have ended with questions and me retreating to my office. I need to do better.
“Morning, Miss Bentley.” Gary looks expectantly at me.
“Morning, Gary.”
He’s trying to grow a mustache again. Last year at this time, he ended up with something less Tom Selleck and more Steve Buscemi. Unfortunately, this in-between stage makes my wispy boss look like the kind of man who would drill a hole in the wall of a woman’s bathroom.
I force a smile. Focus on his eyes, Isadora. Do not look down.
“Logan was just telling me about the sleep study he conducted this week,” Gary says.
Logan. Wolverine. Very different from Clark.
“Yes. Logan. The sleep study.” Not looking at Gary’s peach fuzz is stealing all my focus.
The student researcher raises his hand in a half hello.
I open my office door. Even after all these years, the former janitor’s closet still has a lingering lemony disinfectant scent.
Logan starts talking—I’m pretty sure it’s something about studying the effects of sleep on the brain. Another one of my shortcomings as a leader—I’m not a good listener. Too many overlapping internal monologues to make space for other people.
Maybe I should work on that too.
Students need encouragement, Gary has told me, and I’m not great at giving it. Hasn’t exactly been modeled for me.
Mine were parents who didn’t subscribe to the idea of praising children.
And then, like the rain in Orlando, Logan abruptly stops. He stares, head cocked a little to the side, waiting for . . . what exactly? I feel like I’ve just been caught stealing.
Oh no. Did he ask me a question?
“I think that’s . . . a great direction . . . Logan. Do that.” Smile. Nod. Encouraging, right? I pat his arm for good measure.
Logan glances at Gary, then at me, then slumps his shoulders and walks off, leaving me standing there like an idiot. And because I’m not sure what else to do, I squeeze behind the too-big-for-this-space desk and pray Gary will walk away. He doesn’t.
“You think it’s a ‘great direction’ for him to shelve the last six months of research and start over?”
I look up, mostly to see if his nose breaths are ruffling the hairy bits above his lip.
“We’ve talked about this, Isadora.” He keeps his voice low. “If we . . . if you . . . want to create the next generation of researchers, you have to build them up. Show interest. Train them. Actually care. For crying out loud, fake it if you have to. One of them could discover the cure for cancer, you know? Think of what that would do for the program.”
To say nothing of all the people who would be cured of cancer.
“I know, Gary. I’m trying,” I say. And I was—at least in my own mind. If I’m honest, there’s a chance I’ve talked myself out of trying more times than not.
He sits on the edge of my desk. His butt cheek covers my expense report. “They look up to you so much, Isadora,” he says. “Everyone knows how good you are at analyzing data, at digging up facts other people miss.”
I blush a little under the compliment.
“They’re all trying to win you over.” His smile wants to be encouraging, but my mind trips over his words.
“Oh, are they?” I want to say. Is that why they go out every night after work without me? The thought is ludicrous. It’s not like I want to go get pizza with Logan and the rest of them.
An unexpected wave of sadness washes over me.
It’s been hard to make friends.
Despite that, this little office and the lab across the hall are the places I feel most like myself. Things make sense here. Problems have solutions.
I have this whole conversation in my head while Gary sits and waits for a response, and by this point, I’ve forgotten what he said.
“Anyway.” Gary turns awkward, like he’s not sure what to do with my silence. “Please consider what I’ve said, Isadora.” He stands. “You have a good day.”
After he’s gone, I check the wall behind my desk for small, camera-sized holes, then quietly chastise myself for thinking ugly thoughts about my boss. Mustache or no, Gary is a nice man.
Maybe he could date Roberta from the cafeteria. She has a mustache too.
I lay my bag flat on the floor next to my chair, and the magazine from the grocery store slides out. I kick it under my desk. It would destroy my professional credibility if anyone saw me with that thing.
Thirty minutes pass. Then an hour. I can’t focus.
Now in her natural habitat, we find Isadora Bentley at her most serene, but also at her most vulnerable. Like the wildebeest tenderly reaching down for a drink, unaware of what toothy reptile may be lurking just beneath the surface, Isadora Bentley’s mind is not focused on what it should be.
31 Ways! 31 Ways! It’s thrumming in my brain like the telltale heart beneath the floorboards.
Giving credence to a tabloid fundamentally goes against who I am as a person. I’m surprised when I retrieve the magazine from under the desk and flip it open.
I scan the table of contents and find “31 Ways to Be Happy (Today!)” listed on page 43. I casually thumb past “Dating Dos and Eating Don’ts” and countless ads for miracle weight loss until I find it.
Written by Dr. Grace Monroe. Is this a real person with a real degree? And if yes, are we talking an associate’s in communication or an
actual PhD in behavioral psychology?
The article is a numbered list, the way most are these days, meant to be easily digestible for people who are too busy to read. The last time I took advice from a magazine was in the ninth grade when my mother left a copy of Seventeen on my bed with an arrow drawn on a sticky note stuck next to the headline “Make Yourself More Dateable.”
Given how well that worked out for me, I have very low expectations for Dr. Grace.
Okay, Monroe. Let’s see what you’ve got.
I push my glasses up and skim the list:
- Smile more. Really? Not a great start.
- Get enough sleep. That I could get behind. I have a chart ranking thirteen different kinds of naps.
- Exercise regularly. Well, that doesn’t sound fun at all.
I skim the rest of the list and grow irritated. This isn’t rooted in data. Dr. Grace was paid money to write an article that’s basically common sense? Anyone with half a brain would’ve already tried these things. I’m certain I’ve done at least half of them.
Okay, maybe a quarter of the things.
I read the list again.
Okay, a solid three of them. Maybe.
I’ve at least got step two down to a science. I am an excellent sleeper.
A laugh pulls me from the article, and through my open office door, I see Logan and one of the other students—a short, dark-headed girl named Shellie. I can’t believe I remember her name.
All at once I’m fourteen again, sitting in the chemistry lab during my lunch hour because I don’t have anyone to eat with.
Shellie smiles at Logan, and Logan smiles back at Shellie.
And that’s when I get an idea. It’s the kind of idea that comes seemingly from somewhere else, making you question whether you’re the one who actually thought of it.
The idea is simple.
What if I disprove Dr. Grace Monroe and this entire ridiculous article?
Using a single test subject (me), I could put the steps into practice, calculating the effects of each step. I would keep detailed notes and, ultimately, prove that this article is, at best, an oversimplification. At worst, a beacon of false hope.
I’ll treat it like I would any other research project. I’ll observe, ask, hypothesize, predict, test, and iterate my way to happiness. Or not. That is where the mystery lies.
This experiment will determine whether or not Dr. Grace Monroe has any idea what she’s talking about. And if she doesn’t, I’ll promptly send her my findings with a note to practice responsible
journalism in the future.
I tear the article from the magazine and tuck it inside my calendar.
It seems Isadora Bentley, contrarily, and for the first time in a long time . . . has a plan for the weekend.
Oh, stuff it, Attenborough. I had a plan already. And I’m not wasting the junk food.
* * *
That night, surrounded by wrappers and Whoppers, I create a checklist. A procedure. A system.
Each of the 31 Ways has been broken down into solid, succinct bullet points. Over the course of the next however-long-it-takes, I’ll try a new point. Monday, the experiment will begin with the very first item on Dr. Monroe’s list.
Step one: “Smile more.”
No problem. I have a lovely smile. I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass of my fireplace and try it out.
Hmm.
I try again with teeth.
Yikes.
But I can do this. Of course I can.
How hard can it be to smile?
Turns out, smiling is hard.
I have a new appreciation for models. I’d always assumed it was easy to stand there and let someone take photos of you.
I now understand it is not easy.
My smile lands somewhere between “feeding hyena” and “painful constipation.” So if I encounter anyone on the dusty African plain, I’ll win the bigger zebra leg.
The next day, I arrive to work late. I don’t want to stumble into this experiment haphazardly, and the two-liter of Coke I drank at 12:30 a.m. made it impossible to fall asleep.
Especially after consuming nearly three-quarters of an entire store-bought birthday cake. By myself. I’m actually pretty proud. I won’t get into all the details of my pathetic birthday party, but it’s worth noting that my advice to humans everywhere is to keep a random stash of birthday candles in a junk drawer in the kitchen. You’ll forget all about them until you realize “candles” wasn’t on your mental grocery list and you have to set a Clean Linen jar candle on top of your cake. The worst part is, the cake wasn’t strong enough to support the jar candle, so I ended up with a giant crater in the middle.
And I discovered that I’m not above licking frosting off a jar.
I also chose the perfect blank notebook from my vast and varied collection for compiling data, and paper-clipped the article to the inside cover. On the top of the first day, I wrote:
Staring at it now, the directive feels so simple—but somehow . . . terrifyingly impossible.
I’m transported back to my first day of kindergarten. While many memories through the years have faded, this core memory has not. I’m back there again, six-year-old me, in pigtails and a red-and-white polka-dotted skirt that my mother insisted on buying.
She’d picked it up off the sale rack, claiming it was “darling.”
I scrunched my nose. “I don’t like red” was my way of saying, “Can I please wear something less bright?” How did a person hide while wearing red polka dots? It was as if even then I knew better than to draw attention to myself.
Mom wouldn’t hear of it, of course. I was her baby doll, always a reflection on her, and she was going to dress me however she wanted.
We walked to school, and when we reached the edge of the playground, I pulled her to a stop, squeezing her hand. She looked down at me, and while I’d expected kindness, I was met with frustration.
“Isadora, what are you doing? You’re going to be late.”
Words were hard for me. Words are hard for me. I didn’t know—and still don’t know—how to put my fears into sentences. I stared at the kids laughing and playing and running around the grass and a tightness took hold in my chest.
They made it look so simple. ...
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