Tapping her knuckle on the door, she got the okay smile from her organic chemistry professor and walked in. "Hello," she said softly, about ready to throw up. This was the professor to her class that gave her the most nightmares and God help her if she screwed up something.

"Miss Ansary, sit down. And your grades are fine so you can breathe," Professor Davis winked at her.
"Ah-ha," she laughed at herself. "So. I know I can't be getting asked to switch to your sort of department, knowing how many times I bug you or your student teachers."
He shut off his laptop and turned his full attention to her. "You do fine, I know I won't switch you from medicine. Which is why I have a possible resume booster for you."

"Oh yeah?" She asked curiously, though she knew Michael would rag on her about working more than she already did.
"I have a friend who does work with nerve agents for the CDC," Professor Davis said. Teodora couldn't help but lean back in her seat while swallowing. "He's looking for students to help with research and figured you know just about everything."

The one time she didn't like this fact. "Uh, um..." she stammered. "So, what exactly is the subject?"
"Sarin," he replied.
She cleared her voice, "So no insecticides." So much for hoping for something not used for chemical weapons. "Um. When does your friend need to start this project?"
"After break. I know you kids had it rough," Professor Davis replied.
"There are nice professors here that feel for us?" Teodora joked and he laughed. "Totally kidding. Sure, if you get me the information I'll think about it."

As she walked out of the office, she couldn't help but blow out. If she did this project, that would definietly help convince her to stick to Ear Nose and Throat. Of course like any other bad chemical, it was discovered by accident but the stupid Nazis helped bring the nasty gas about and now was credited for the 95 subway attacks in Japan and Iraqi insurgents using them on US troops in 2004. Maybe this work would magically wipe sarin from existence.
Teodora's phone buzzed and she saw it was Ryan McDonagh. DZ said hitch a ride with us.
Us meant him and Derek Stephan, the Minnesota boys. Teodora texted a reply back when she heard someone barking at her. An unfamiliar voice with a Russian accent.

"Girl!"
Teodora halted and spun on her heel. "You want something?" She spat at the muscled Russian. Eyeing him up, she said, "I've seen you on hockey highlight reels."

"Ilya Kolvalchuk. From the New Jersey Devils," he said.

"What do you want Ilya Kolvalchuk from the New Jersey Devils?" Teodora asked.
He eyed her up and down. "Rumor was that you were well educated and had a good heart. Maybe you're really rude..." She scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Or maybe you could stand up for yourself," he noted thoughtfully.

In her purse, her phone buzzed from someone calling. Probably Ryan asking if she was out of class yet. "So why'd you come all the way up here for?" Teodora asked.
"You seemed like a good person to help me with a peace meeting with Evgeni and Alex," Ilya replied.

"Evgeni, you mean Malkin? Penguins Malkin?" Teodora asked.
"And Alexander Ovechkin."
Damn, peace meetings? Teodora had no clue there was a beef going on. "So, what? They're both superstars going at each other's throats?"

He nodded. "I need this bullshit to end. Alex punched Evgeni's agent and I need them to behave for the Olympics. I thought you might help me calm them down but I had my doubts."
Teodora straightened up her shoulders to him. He thought she was a shy and sheltered girl?

She'd show him. "If I can get through gangs or the LA riots I can deal with hockey player beefs. You'd probably mess something up anyways." Ilya snorted but handed her a piece of paper with his phone number. She rattled off her own number. "You made me late. Later I guess."

As she hustled off to meet up with Derek and Ryan, she smiled to herself. I just mouthed off at Ilya Kolvalchuk of all people. Teodora prided herself in being kind and considerate, but if pushed, she felt it okay to defend herself and flash a little Van Nuys attitude. That would be her plan of attack for settling this beef between her acquaitance and Alex Ovechkin.

Finally, she reached their car and slid in the backseat. "Sup guys?" She asked happily.
"Sup stranger. Never see you anymore," Ryan said.
"Ugh. It's called school," she laughed. "Something I'm sure DZ mouths off to you guys about. At least he always gripes to me about studying too much."

Derek started driving north to the practice vicinity. "So, you had that O Chem thing to go do? What was that about?"
As she put away the papers that Professor Davis gave her, she wrinkled her nose. "Thought it was about my grades but its not so bad. I mean, it is bad," she said. "I guess a CDC friend of my professor is doing some sort of project involving sarin, which is a chemical weapon nerve gas."
Both of them looked horrified. "You aren't a weapons girl or whatever!" Ryan cried. "Why are you needed?"
"Sounds depressing," Derek added in.

Starting to reply to Ryan's comment, she paused to laugh at Derek. "Yeah it is depressing. But there are the body reactions to the sarin. Typically first starts off with a runny nose, tight chest, constricted pupils. Then a nasty mess of stuff that follows but l'm not making this car ride depressing or gross."
"No kidding," they agreed so she changed the subject to more pleasent things until they reached the rink and she found Jake Biron.

"C'mon, Mike's getting his side looked at," Jake said and she followed him to the trainer's room where Michael was on a table.
Teodora squatted to peer at his stitched side. "Getting even better. Me being the doctor suggests not to play just yet but I know you'd say different," she said, giving Michael a look.

Teodora frowned at the number. She had that Ilya guy's number and it wasn't him so who was it? "Bueno?" She asked.
"Uhh, Teodora?"
She laughed. "Oh, my bad Ms Del Zotto. Didn't recognize the number." Maybe it would be a smart idea to put his parents number in her phone in case something else happened. "You want your knucklehead son? I just checked over him."

"Is he training? I figured he'd have practice so I'd just talk to you," she replied.
"Yeah, he's off skating. Taking it easy of course," she nodded. "And its healing up fine so far. No infection, no pus." Another idea struck her. "Once he's done I'll take a picture of it so you all can see."
"Ew, well. That's good," Lee said. "Though I didn't know you wrote." Teodora frowned and blinked. "I read one of your old news articles."

Noting Jake gesturing, she nodded and followed. "Oh yeah? Which one?"
"It was one you wrote in the spring. About some explosion," Lee said casually.
Teodora's eyebrows raised. It wasn't just some explosion, it was the BP oil rig explosion. "Oh. Yeah. My classmate Brandy wanted to push through a piece on the Coumbine anniversary. Thought the story was nothing."
"Oh yeah? And it wasn't," Lee boasted, clearly pleased with her son's choice of roommate.
"Mmmhmm," she agreed. It was actually the worst oil rig accident recorded so far and Brandy still was sore over it. "Yeah the girl wasn't exactly pleased when people said change from pre-med to journalism instead of her."
Lee giggled and Teodora frowned at her phone buzzing from a text. Ilya already.

Meet me @10. Both of them are close enough.
"Dang that was fast," she murmured, figuring she had at least a couple days. Clearing her voice, she called, "Yo I need a ride back to the Campus apartment."
Michael glanced up from his defense group and nodded once. Luckily he made no comment or he'd blow up at her going to talk to big name Russian hockey players. In the meantime, she hung out with Jake, laughing with him at the big hits or oh'ing at the big saves.

When practice was finished, Jake gave her a high five. "You hafta lay off the homework. Dad says I squirrel around too much and you keep me under control."
She snorted.

"You know he's right," Michael announced while slipping on his coat.
"Hey, blame the school, not me," she retorted and said goodbye to the Birons. "Your mom called and I'm taking pictures of your cut to send to them."
He wrinkled his nose. "My mom got your number? I bet it was Chris."
"No big deal," she shrugged. "Plus they're all the way up north while we're in New York so I don't mind filling them in."

They got to his car and she set her backpack on her lap. "She say anything else?" He asked.
"I guess she read some articles I wrote last year. She liked them," Teodora said. "That's all."
"Oh, right. I remember that Haiti article. What'd you wrote last year?" Michael asked.
She sucked in. "Well? Ask me anything about the BP oil spill last year cause I swear facts can still leak out of my ears, I researched it so much."
He blew out. "Medicine, languages, politics, writing...what else can you do?"
"Gee, make me sound like a nerd much?" Teodora laughed with him. "But yeah, believe it or not, certain people tried to say it wasn't a story when it first broke out and wanted to push the Columbine shooting tragedy."
"Matt or Brandy?" Michael asked and she laughed. When he pulled up to her apartment. "If you stay at the apartment-,"

Teodora waved him off and hustled up to her own apartment. She opened the door and looked around. "Man, it is nice having a roommate again," she admitted, dropping her backpack to the ground.
Her phone buzzed again and she found the club they were having the meeting at. No doubt they'd be put in a private room at the restaurant he was having them meet at. She scooped up a purse she had left at this apartment and did a quick look-over of her outfit. She half considered putting on something nicer but maybe this Alex was a player with the girls and flirting wouldn't do for peace talks. She decided to leave it-after all it wasn't like she was in sandals, sweatpants and a hoodie. Transferring her wallet and other needed items into the new purse, she set off and made it to the restaurant early.

Blowing out, she tapped the table and looked around the quiet and private room. Bored, she decided to rifle through her purse and found something she hadn't peeked at since last year-newspaper notes. "Speaking of which..."
Teodora thumbed through the pages and suddenly found a shadow towering over her. She glanced up and nodded once at Alex Ovechkin. "Hi. Ilya probably mentioned me coming."

"All he said was you speak Russian," Alex said and eyed her up and down. "Didn't know you were a model."
She gladly held up her notepad. "Medicine, actually. I graduated school early and got into a hard school. No way I will ever model."

"What is this?"
She looked up and waved at the newcomer Russian speaker. "Hello Evgeni," she greeted. "Ilya said I should mediate."
Evgeni looked angry, but not at her. "Uh, hi," he said calmly to her in English. "Roommate okay?
"Of course," Teodora nodded. "I can speak Russian if you want."

"All of you beat me," Ilya announced and came in and slipped into Russian. "This is Teodora Ansary, her roommate is from the Rangers. She's very smart and won't fall for tricks." He broke off to glare at Alex. She shifted in her seat and took her chance to show off her rarely shown Van Nuys attitude.

"Whatchu smiling at boy?" Teodora asked Alex and his smile shrank a little. "You're getting called in by the principal for being a child. I would be fucking embarrassed if I was you."
Ilya had to mask his smile by quickly drinking his drink. "That's enough, the both of you. Everyone sit down."
"Don't like this," Evgeni stated but still sat down. "Teo doesn't need to be dragged into this."

Teodora shrugged. "I'll be fine. Been in much worse situations than a peace meeting between two athletes."
Ilya frowned at her. "What's that supposed to mean? I guess I heard your parents are immigrants."

"They ran out from Afghanistan from that whole mess," she said, avoiding using the Russian or USSR. "But before they adopted me when I was eight, I lived in LA. Long Beach and Van Nuys technically but it was always inner city and always shootings. Asian guys on my block killed the Spanish ones right in front of us. Chinese gangs shot the non-Chinese on my block, my abusive foster parents taking us on black gang streets to buy drugs, the Rodney King-," she halted, wondering if they knew about him. "Or the LA Riots."
"You Russian then?" Alex asked.
She shrugged and decided to ask curiously. "Dunno. Do I look Russian? Parents weren't around to put down my ethnicity. All I know is I'm white but don't burn to easily."

"So why do you care if we fight?" Alex asked. "Do you want Russia to win over your Canada team?"
"California is in the United States, not Canada. But I'm helping a friend end a feud that doesn't need to be going on. You could do not to punch people off the ice," she replied as Ilya snorted. "So I would kindly suggest sitting here calmly to talk with Evgeni or you might get your head torn off."

For awhile, Teodora sat back and let the boys talked so she casually flipped through her notebook.
"What is that?" Ilya suddenly barked at her.
She blinked and looked up. "What?"
"Don't bark at her," Evgeni ordered Ilya immedietly.

She glanced down at her notebook. "Writing for-OH!" She slid the notebook over. "I was a former writer for Columbia's newspaper but I got too busy for it. For the record, I don't think I've ever seen an article written about the NHL," she said.

"What's this?" Ilya pointed at a section of notes.
Teodora leaned in. "Boring. Just the tallest building in the world-Burj Khalifa opening. I've written about the BP oil spill, helped out with teacher protests in Wisconsin, a volcanic eruption in Iceland. Nerdy sort of thing."

He seemed impressed. "Smart, not a nerd."
"Maybe. People said I should switch to journalism but I think I've been known to get stuck while writing. Plus I've been set on medicine for a long time," she said.

Ilya shrugged and moved on. Evgeni seemed to be angry with him with his silent accusations of her spying for a sports story. Teodora shrugged and shook her head. At the end of the dinner, the two superstars seemed to have greatly reduced their animosity for each other.

"I hope I didn't piss you off," Ilya said as he escorted her out and she frowned. "I mean, I heard of you because of your school and level-headed attitude. Not because you had to toughen up from your childhood neighborhood."
"Nah," she shrugged it off. "Everyone's surprised when they hear of where I'm from. I just take the best qualities of being rich and being poor. Then if someone pisses me off over my very high tolerance level, then they get a bit of a Van Nuys attitude."
"Alex was definitely taken aback," Ilya laughed. "Though I'm glad you have those qualities." Which meant a different version of apologizing for her childhood.
"Right, I don't feel like going to jail or dying," Teodora replied.

"Don't seem so offended by being called smart." She glanced up and Ilya smiled. "Good notes, from what I could read. English can be tricky still."
Teodora nodded happily, glad that someone else could understand what her language struggles were after she was eight.
"You did well tonight," Ilya patted her arm once.

"Didn't feel like I did much," she snorted.
"No, you kept Alex in line. Exactly why I wanted you here," he winked and left her. "You need a favor just call. Anything."

Teodora snorted as she let today's events sink in. "Damn, what the hell happened?" She laughed and walked to her apartment for Michael to pick her up.

Notes