Chapter 7

The rest of the way to school was just plain weird. Betsy Lou was always back where I could see her, almost like she was afraid she'd get lost if I got out of her sight. I knew she was watching me but every time I turned around, she was looking someplace else.

The assemblage at the gate seemed larger today and they had that "Hi, Schlong" thing down pat. Just about everyone I passed on the way to my locker said something to me, too. Guys and girls. That was new.

We were in different classes for the first two periods so things went pretty good until Science. Mr. Hendrix passed out a kind of a homemade book. It was about 20 Xeroxed pages of Science experiments stapled together and he said that's what we were going to work on till Christmas vacation. There was all kinds of neat stuff; Bunsen burners, chemicals, physics stuff, you name it. The only problem was that he also assigned everyone a partner for all the experiments. You guessed it, Betsy Lou was my science partner.

Three or four days ago, it would have been perfect. Like I said, we'd been best buddies for five years and this was the kind of thing we'd have done on our own if we could get our hands on the stuff to do it with and knew what we were doing. Today it was like taking a cat and a dog and tying their tails together.

The Science classroom had these big long counters along the back and side walls, the whole length except for where the door was in the back. There were 8" partitions set up every four feet or so that could be moved around or taken down. Under the counters were cupboards were supplies were kept. All of them had whatever was needed for the first week's experiments. Mr. Hansen said a couple of us could earn extra credit by coming in for two or three hours on a Saturday and storing the stuff for the following week. Each team got their own workstation that included one of the four foot sections with one cupboard below it and one stool in front. Most of the time, at least one of the students needed to be standing in front of the counter, mixing chemicals or burning Bunsens or whatever. The stool was for the person not doing the stuff at the counter.

Betsy Lou sat down as soon as we got our workstation. She wasn't silent but she would only talk to answer questions. The answers were all short. Any time I asked what she wanted to do, her answer was "I don't care" or "Whatever you want" or something like that. There was none of the usual excitement, no "Let's try this" kind of thing she'd usually come up with.

I decided if she wanted to act that way, it was her problem and I wasn't going to let it ruin my day. I just opened the cabinet and took out the box labeled "Experiments 1-6" and put it up on the counter. It had a little metal stand with six test tubes in it, sort of like a drill holder my Dad has only all the test tubes were the same size and there weren't any little ones missing and none of the tips were broke off. There was another stand that you could put one of the tubes in so you could work with it and not mess up any of the others. There were some tong things that had a spring and held onto one of the test tubes real good until you squeezed them and then it slid out. I knew there were some klutzes in the class who would end up turning a test tube upside down but at least it would be tougher to drop than if you just used your fingers.

There were two dozen or so little bottles with chemicals in them. A few were a liquid, kind of like water, with a symbol on them like a pirate flag. I knew it meant poison but Mr. Hendrix made sure to announce that that's what it did mean and that it wasn't pirate rum so don't try to drink it. Betsy Lou actually laughed out loud when he said that until she caught herself and got all serious again. I didn't because I knew some of the kids in that class would have thought exactly that or would dare each other to drink some.

The other chemicals were mostly white powders or sort of clear crystal stuff, like the Epsom Salts Mom uses sometimes when I twist my ankle. I don't know that they do any good, but Mom seems to get a thrill out of making me sit in a tub of water hot enough to burn my skin off if I happen to damage myself. That and cod liver oil are her favorite ways of keeping me healthy. I don't know about the medical part of it but the fear is plenty to make me think twice about being sick.

The experiments were kind of neat. Most started out with half a test tube of distilled water and then chemicals were added to it. It was all about following directions. Using the right chemicals, measuring them correctly, putting them together in the right order, that kind of thing. What was cool about it is the instructions didn't say what was supposed to happen. We could have been building a bomb, for all we knew. One of the tricks was translating the instructions to the bottles. The instruction would say something like "Hydrogen Hydro Chloride" and the bottle said "HCL". There was a Periodic Chart folded up in the box but it still took some work. Plus, all the measurements were in grams and milliliters and such.

I was just adding the last chemical on the first experiment when I heard an "Ooooh!" from across the room. I turned around and saw Betsy Lou swivel on her stool to see what it was about. I couldn't see anything so I turned back to the table and made my own "Oooh!" The liquid in the test tube was the most blue blue I'd ever seen. Of course, my body was blocking the test tube and Betsy Lou's curiosity was bigger than her pissed off-ed-ness and she said, "What is it, Mark?"

I moved out of the way and let her look.

"I wanna do one."

I didn't use the stool; I just stood over to the side a bit and watched her work. I had an idea that each of these experiments was going to give us a different color. That would make it pretty easy to grade. I heard some of the other students complaining. Things like "How come theirs is blue and ours is all black?"

The one I'd made had been moved to the far left position of the large stand and she put a fresh test tube in front of her. I noticed right off that she was doing it differently than I had. "Betsy Lou, you've got to level the spoonfuls off or it isn't going to work."

"I know my way around the kitchen, Mark. This will work out just fine."

I decided not to point out that we weren't in her kitchen.

She figured it out for herself a couple of minutes later. The mixture in her test tube turned an awful muddy gray color and it was bubbling a bit, putting off a god awful smell.

Mr. Hendrix looked like he'd been waiting for this to happen. He didn't say anything to us but he came over and stood right next to Betsy Lou. "People, chemistry is an exact science. If you follow the instructions in front of you exactly, you will be happy with the results. If you don't... well, I don't have to clean it up." He reinforced my idea by saying, "If you do follow the instructions, I'll be able to tell. Like this." He picked up the stand with my blue test tube in it and held it out in front of him.

I decided saying something to Betsy Lou would not be in my best interests so I asked Mr. Hansen if it was OK to use the sink to clean out the test tube. He assured me that none of the chemicals we were using were harmful and smiled. Betsy Lou didn't give me a chance to do anything. She grabbed the holder with the vile test tube in it and went over to one of the two sinks set up in the back corners of the room. I picked up a brush that was designed for cleaning test tubes. I held it out to Betsy Lou when I got over to her and she said, "What's that for, you perv... Oh." She took the brush from me and scrubbed the inside of the tube she'd already rinsed out.

"What did you think?"

"It looked like a tampon when you came over."

"Oh. Sorry about that." It just seemed I should be sorry; I had no idea what a tampon was. Another word I was going to have to look up in the big dictionary when I got home.

We went back to our station and Betsy Lou started the experiment over again. She didn't say anything to me but she was being very careful using this thing like a popsicle stick, only bigger, like the one the doctor puts in your mouth, scraping all the measurements so they were level. This time she ended up with a clear mixture. It wasn't quite like water; you could see there was something mixed in with it. There just wasn't any color to it.

"What did I do wrong, Mark?"

I just pointed to the line at the bottom of the experiment. There was a space between the list of ingredients and that line, so I'm sure she wasn't the only one who ignored it.