by Tae Keller
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Tae Keller
Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by Alexandria Neonakis
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Keller, Tae, author.
Title: The science of breakable things / Tae Keller.
Description: First edition. | New York : Random House, [2018] | Summary: Middle schooler Natalie’s yearlong assignment to answer a question using the scientific process leads to truths about her mother’s depression and her own cultural identity.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016057633 | ISBN 978-1-5247-1566-3 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1568-7 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1567-0 (lib. bdg.)
Subjects: | CYAC: Middle schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction. | Science—Methodology—Fiction. | Depression, Mental—Fiction. | Racially mixed people—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K418 ScI 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9781524715687
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Step 1: Observe
Assignment 1: Observe Your Surroundings
Step 2: Question
Assignment 2: Questioning
Assignment 3: Frogs!
Assignment 4: Plants Are People, Too
Assignment 5: Eggscellent
Assignment 6: How to Grow a Miracle
Step 3: Investigative Research
Assignment 7: Educational Adventures in Board Game Land
Assignment 8: Things I Know, That My Parents Think I Don’t Know
Assignment 9: Investigative Research
Step 4: Hypothesis
Assignment 10: Meiosis and Mr. Potato Head
Assignment 11: Decisions
Assignment 12: The Egg List Hypothesis
Assignment 13: Operation Egg
Assignment 14: Investigative Research, Again
Step 5: Procedure
Assignment 15: Battle Plans and Beetles
Assignment 16: Turkey Day
Assignment 17: Magnets
Assignment 18: Counting (on Mom) to 100
Assignment 19: 2 + 1, Aka Not-So-Advanced Algebra
Assignment 20: Due North
Assignment 21: Doris Day
Step 6: Experiment
Assignment 22: The First Test
Assignment 23: #Mrneelyssnowday
Assignment 24: Dad’s Mission
Assignment 25: Observations, Round Two
Assignment 26: Eggs in Action
Assignment 27: Christmas, Cracked
Assignment 28: Twig’s Laugh
Assignment 29: Dduk Luck
Assignment 30: Open Up
Assignment 31: Objects in Motion
Step 7: Results
Assignment 32: Fly, Little S’meggs!
Assignment 33: Operation Orchid
Assignment 34: Team Captain
Assignment 35: All the Forgotten Things
Assignment 36: Observations
Assignment 37: Criminals
Assignment 38: A Word on Words
Assignment 39: Supervised Phone Calls
Assignment 40: The Greenhouse
Assignment 41: The Science of Breakable Things
Step 8: Analyze Your Results
Assignment 42: Analyzing, or Something
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For Mama Keller
Mr. Neely just wrote our first lab book assignment on the board in his scrunched-up, scratchy handwriting, and he’s getting all excited about this scientific process stuff. I’m not sure why he feels the need to use hashtags and spell perfectly innocent words with a z, but he’s one of those teachers you don’t bother questioning.
He has big plans for this lab notebook. Apparently, he thinks it’s important to teach students “dedication to long-term projects,” and this assignment is his grand solution. Basically, we’re supposed to observe something that interests us and spend all year applying the scientific process to our capital-Q Question.
As soon as we sat down, he passed out these dorky old composition notebooks and said, “This will be your Wonderings journal! You will record lab notes and assignments, and document the greatest scientific journey of all time—your scientific journey!”
We all stared, trying to figure out if he was for real or not. He was.
“You’ll spend this year developing your own scientific process, and it all starts with one question—that thing that sparks you to life.” Mr. Neely made a weird explosion gesture with his hands, and someone in the back of the room giggled, which only seemed to encourage him. “By the end of the year, I’ll be the one learning. From you!”
Mr. Neely is a new teacher, so he’s still all optimistic and stuff, but personally I think this assignment’s a lost cause. Last year, our English teacher, Mrs. Jackson, thought it’d be really great for us to keep journals. The only requirement: fifty pages by the end of the year, written from the heart. If you haven’t guessed already, that just resulted in everyone writing all fifty pages the day before the journals were due. I mostly filled mine with song lyrics, copied in my biggest, sloppiest handwriting.
And technically, this is supposed to be homework, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t get a head start. Without further ado, dearest lab notebook, I present Natalie Napoli’s Scientific Observations:*1
• Mr. Neely waves his arms in big circles when he talks, which makes him look like an overeager hula dancer. His white button-down—bright against his dark brown skin—wrinkles as he moves.
• He tells us he wants us to “embrace the joys of science.”
• Mikayla Menzer raises her hand.
• Mikayla Menzer answers without being called on. She says, “Science is literally the joy of my life. I am literally embracing it right now.”
• Mikayla Menzer is not literally embracing anything. She’s just sitting at her desk, catty-corner to mine, with her hands clasped in front of her, and her thick dark braid twisting over her shoulder.
• Mikayla Menzer smells like sunscreen, which kind of makes the entire classroom smell like sunscreen, and the air in here is damp and hot. I wish Fountain Middle had air-conditioning.
• I wish we had enough money for me to go to Valley
Hope Middle, which does have AC, but now that Mom’s “sick,” Dad says we need to “tighten our belt a notch.”
• And anyway, Twig’s here, even though her family can definitely afford Valley Hope, so I guess this place isn’t so bad.*2
• Mr. Neely is saying my name, but I haven’t been listening, so I just nod at him and give him my best I’m embracing science smile.
• Mr. Neely says, “I’m glad you’re having so much fun with the assignment, but making observations is supposed to be homework, Natalie. Please pay attention in class.”
• I am paying attention.
• And Mikayla Menzer still smells like sunscreen.
*1 Only the most brilliant observations you’ll ever read. Imagine you’re hearing a drumroll right now. Go on, imagine it.
*2 Twig: best friend in the entire galaxy. (Her words.)
Mr. Neely had us go around and read our scientific questions out loud today. So Tom K. said, “What’s the maximum voltage before a battery implodes?” and Mikayla Menzer said, “How will plants grow if raised in different light conditions?”*1
I hadn’t done the homework, and by the time he got to me, I still hadn’t thought of a question, so I blurted, “Why does Mr. Neely use so many hashtags?”
My cheeks got hot right away and my palms started to itch, because I’d never insulted a teacher like that. But Twig busted out laughing and gave me a thumbs-up from across the room. Mikayla rolled her eyes and flipped her braid from one shoulder to the other.*2
Nobody else knew how to react, and they basically looked at each other like, Is she serious or joking?!
Mr. Neely smiled, because for all that energy of his, apparently he’s pretty patient. I felt the knots in my stomach untangle. “That question doesn’t quite prompt scientific investigation! Keep searching the world around you for a valid question!”
To be honest, it was kind of embarrassing, because I hadn’t expected everyone else to take the assignment seriously, and it didn’t help that Dari, new-kid-slash-class-genius, read his question right after mine and said some annoyingly smart stuff about acute angles or whatever. So now I have to come up with a new question, and I’m not sure what to ask.
In other news, Mom didn’t come out of her room for dinner again, which was extra bad tonight because Dad went to all this trouble making it. When I came home from school, he was hovering over some fat, old cookbook, trying to stuff herbs into a chicken, and the water in a pot of pasta started bubbling over the edge.
I stood there staring, not sure whether this was funny or sad, until Dad yelped, “Natalie, stop standing there and help me!”
So that was what Dad and I did for the next hour, him cooking and me measuring ingredients, and it was nice. We didn’t even need to talk. Dad’s a therapist, so whenever we do talk, he asks me a bunch of questions and says things like, “And how are you feeling?” To which I always answer, “Annoyed.”
Anyway, the whole kitchen smelled wonderful, and the chicken tasted surprisingly good. But when Dad and I set the table for dinner, Mom didn’t even come out of their bedroom.
“Should I go get her?” I asked.
Dad gave me this sad smile and said, “I think she needs space right now,” which seemed to be his answer for everything Mom-related these days.
“But don’t you think she should be here?”
“I would like that, but we need to give your mother some space.”
“But, Dad.”
“But, Natalie.”
We ate the rest of the dinner in silence, only this time it was the bad kind of silence, and the food stopped tasting so good.
Later, I tried to think of a scientific question for Mr. Neely, but I just kept thinking, over and over, like an annoying song stuck in my head, Mom would’ve helped me with this.
Whenever I’d had science or math questions for school in the past, we’d sit down at the dining table and spread all my worksheets and equations and diagrams out in front of us. She’d twist up her strawberry-blond hair and clip it back, because for Mom that meant Business, and we’d get to work.
She’d think of an experiment for everything and anything. You don’t get chemical reactions? We’ll inflate a balloon using baking soda and vinegar! Can’t figure out water density? No problem, let’s build a lava lamp!
It didn’t matter that I was bad at science, not when I had Mom to help me. Our kitchen would end up looking like a war zone, and Dad would walk in and act all mad like, I won’t be cleaning up this time! Even though we knew he would.
He always did.
But now Mom’s in the bedroom and Dad’s cleaning the kitchen, and it won’t take him long. I think even he misses her mess.
Now I’m sitting alone, realizing I can’t think of the experiment that will explain everything. How can I get the answer when I don’t even know the question?
*1 Mikayla Menzer, n.: Cheaty McCheater, because I know for a fact she’s done that experiment before.
*2 Mikayla’s obsessed with braids and knows how to do all different styles. I used to let her braid my hair, but not anymore.
Mr. Neely sprang a doozy on us today.
“Guess what, class!” His eyes were big behind his black-framed glasses, and his bald head glinted under the fluorescent classroom lights.
Nobody responded.
“Guess what,” he repeated, only this time he didn’t wait for a response. “We’re doing dissections today! Hashtag: frog dissections.”
Everybody started whispering at once. This was only our second week of school, and most teachers don’t hand knives out before they’ve even learned their students’ last names—even if they’re only tiny frog-cutting knives.*1
But Mr. Neely grinned and passed out a list of safety instructions. “We’ve been lucky enough to receive an unexpected opportunity, and like true scientific explorers, we will make the best of it!” he said—which, knowing Fountain Middle, was probably code for: the school messed up and ordered a whole bunch of dead frogs way too early.
Mr. Neely kept talking. “We’re going to open up these frogs and see what makes them tick. You never truly know how an organism works until you see what’s going on inside.”
We all kind of grimaced, because, gross.
Mikayla raised her hand and spoke before being called on, again. “Mr. Neely, you know how much I love science, but I literally can’t do it. It’s against human rights.”
Mr. Neely frowned. “Well, I suppose I can’t force you, Mikayla, if you feel this is against animal rights. You can sit in the hallway by the lockers and fill out a worksheet.”
Janie, Mikayla’s best friend, raised her hand and explained that she, too, believed in animal rights and must be removed from the experiment.
Mr. Neely sighed. “Anybody else?”
Personally, I’m more comfortable with plants than dead animals. But considering the choice had become dissecting a frog or hanging out with Mikayla and Janie, I chose the less vile option.
It’s not like I hate Mikayla. Not really. It’s more that there’s this black cloud of awkward whenever we’re together, and everything feels all wrong. Sometimes I don’t know where the old Mikayla went—the one who made magic potions with me while our moms worked together, the one who dug up dirt and helped me pack it into test tubes. I used to think someone else replaced her overnight with a Not-Mikayla who was not-my-best-friend, but now I try not to think about her at all.
Mr. Neely sped through a two-minute lesson on what we were actually supposed to be learning from this whole dissection business, but none of us were listening. We were too busy scanning the room and silently making important partner arrangements for our first lab of the school year.
Twig and I looked at each other immediately. She didn’t actually need to ask, since of course we were going to work together,
but she made an exaggerated you, me? gesture, and I grinned and nodded back.
As soon as Mr. Neely finished explaining safety precautions, we both hurried over to claim the lab table in the far back. It’s in a corner that Mr. Neely can’t really see, so it’s obviously the best. Twig was moving at double speed, and by the time I pulled out my notebook, she’d already organized our materials. Our materials being, you know, the dead frog and such.
She tied her blond hair back haphazardly, so random strands hung loose from the ponytail. “I’m so excited about this, Natalie. Can you believe it? Can I cut first? I wanna see the heart. And maybe the bladder. Frog pee: gross or cool?” Twig was talking fast in her usual way, excited about things nobody should be excited about.
“You can cut the whole time,” I said, as if I were making a grand sacrifice.
Twig squealed. “It’ll be like Operation!”
That’s the thing about Twig: she’s obsessed with games. Not video games like most people, but those old board games nobody actually likes to play. Although, to be fair, she makes me play those games a lot, and I actually do enjoy them. Twig has a way of making things fun.
And I hate to admit it, but I started getting into the dissection, too. I wasn’t cutting the frog open or anything, but I started narrating as Twig sliced, like Twig was one of those doctors on TV. I even made the little heart-monitor beeping sound.
