The Science of Breakable Things

by Tae Keller

  Then Twig leaned in close to the frog’s stomach and shouted, “Holy cow! Holy cow!” I looked over her shoulder to see she’d cut open the stomach and found a grasshopper in there, totally intact. Stomach grasshoppers: decidedly cool.

  Mr. Neely came over to see what was going on, and he got excited, too. “Class, look at what these scientific explorers found!” he said.

  And then the whole class was crowding around us and saying, “So cool” and “Oh, gross.” Even Genius Dari came over to look, and I could tell he was upset that his frog hadn’t had a nice dinner before dying.

  Dari bent over our lab table for a better look at the frog. His arms were stiff at his sides as he fidgeted with the bottom of his T-shirt. Finally, he gave us a reluctant “Well done” before walking back to his own table.

  Twig stuck her tongue out at him behind his back. Only it’s too bad because Mr. Neely noticed, and we were no longer his star pupils.

  MATERIALS:

  • 1 scalpel, sharp

  • 1 pair of tweezers, metal

  • 2 pairs of gloves, rubber

  • 1 frog, dead

  PROCEDURE:

  1. Let Twig do the dirty work.

  2. Let Twig discover dead grasshopper.

  3. Collect bragging rights.

  * * *

  —

  After school, Twig invited me back to her house, which we figured we could get away with under the pretense of doing our frog lab reports.

  I dialed Dad, and Twig leaned over. “Tell Yeong-jin I say hello!” she shouted into my ear and the receiver.*2 I waved her off.

  Dad sounded tired when he answered, and when I asked to go to Twig’s, he got all concerned-sounding. Hanging out with Twig after school had never been a problem before, but since this summer, things have been different. “Natalie, I think it would be best if you came right home. I don’t want you running away from this situation.”

  Dad’s always calling Mom a “situation” and making a bigger deal about things than they need to be. He thinks the “situation” is really bothering me, and it is, I guess, but it’s not like she’s really sick, even though that’s how Dad keeps referring to her. The way I see it, she just got bored with life—bored with us. I’m not going to waste my time being sad about it.

  “It’s not like I’m sneaking out in the middle of the night and running away from home. I just want to go to Twig’s for a couple hours.”

  He sighed. “Natalie, I’m hearing what you’re saying, and I know this has been really hard on you, but please understand—”

  “Dad,” I interrupted, “I’m hearing what you’re saying, but this is for school. I really need to finish my lab report with Twig.”

  He was silent for a beat, and I could picture him running his left hand flat down the side of his face, debating. He used to do that when he thought about his research and his clients. Now he does it when he thinks about Mom and me.

  In the end, his fatigue won over his desire to Therapist me. “Please be home for dinner?”

  And then, simple as that, we were free to escape to Twig’s place. It’s only a fifteen-minute bike ride from the school. Ten if we’re biking fast, and we rode fast today, trying to maximize our time together before Dad made me go home.

  Twig and her mom live in this mansion of a house. Twig’s dad is a banker in New York and makes buckets of money. Her parents are “amicably separated,” but he sends these huge checks once a month, and Twig’s mom makes a lot of money, too, designing apps that tell pretty people what clothes they should wear. Twig’s mom is beautiful and used to be a supermodel, so she’s basically obsessed with pretty clothes and pretty people, and they fly to Paris three times a year.*3

  Every time we pull up to her house on our bikes, I’m like, Whoa. We’ll be biking along this tiny road covered in trees, and then out of nowhere their giant brick house will appear. Twig doesn’t talk much about her parents, and she never brings anyone else to her house, which I guess isn’t much of a problem because she doesn’t have any friends besides me.

  Here’s the thing: Twig showed up in the middle of fourth grade. Like, one day she kind of poofed in from a different universe. She wore an outfit entirely made of sequins to celebrate her first day and appeared as we all stood outside the classroom, waiting for school to start. Twig wore these plastic-heeled shoes that clacked when she walked, and everyone hushed and stared like we were in a movie. She laser-beamed over to Mikayla and me and said, “We’re gonna be friends.”

  Mikayla made this weird, wrinkly look I’d never seen before and said, “Uh…,” but I smiled and said, “Awesome.”

  Not everyone gets Twig—but I do.

  Anyway, Twig and I rode in through the big gate to her house and tossed our bikes on the lawn. As soon as we walked inside, her housekeeper, Hélène, started fluttering around us. Hélène’s from France, so she speaks with this fancy accent that Twig and I try to copy when she’s not around. We don’t do it in a mean way, though. We both really like Hélène.

  “Natalie, is good to see my second-favorite girl,” she said as she took our backpacks and hung them on the coatrack.

  “Thanks, Hélène,” I said. She poured us two tall glasses of cold milk, and Twig and I made our way down to the basement.*4

  “What should we play?” Twig asked as she flicked on the basement lights, illuminating our favorite hangout spot for the past few years. Two huge beanbags rested atop the hot-pink shag rug that Twig’s mom hates but we love.

  Twig walked over to the far wall and put a hand on her hip as she examined her huge bookshelf, filled entirely with board games. “We could play Sorry! or Parcheesi or Clue,” she continued, but Twig only ever asks to seem polite. She always ends up picking the game herself.

  “I don’t care,” I said, taking a sip of the milk and settling into the purple beanbag. By that point Twig had already pulled Clue out of her stack of a hundred billion board games and set it in front of me. She flopped onto the green bag and we set up the game, laying all the pieces out on the rug. We had this down to a science, and within a minute, Clue was ready.

  We played twice; the second time we got Mrs. White with the candlestick in the kitchen, and the first time I don’t remember. When Twig started resetting the pieces for the third time, I suggested we actually write our lab reports. She agreed reluctantly, then doodled all over the cover of her composition book.

  “Doodles are an important part of the process,” Twig said as she drew a row of cartwheeling frogs across the NAME line.

  To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her do homework, even though I know she’s smart. School’s not really something that concerns her, and she definitely doesn’t care about this assignment.

  But I spent an hour doing mine and writing all this because, I guess, for some reason, I kind of do.

  *1 Scalpels, for the record.

  *2 Yeong-jin: Dad’s Korean name, which Twig found on his diploma in his office. He goes by John, but Twig refuses to call him anything else, and I think Twig scares Dad, so he doesn’t argue.

  *3 Actually, Twig’s mom is the one who named her, after some famous old supermodel. Everyone assumes Twig is a funny nickname because she’s long and skinny and her ash-blond hair sticks out everywhere, but it’s actually short for Twiggy. Twig’s embarrassed about her name, so she doesn’t bother correcting anyone.

  *4 Hélène’s obsessed with milk. Every time I come over, the first thing she does is ask if I want milk. I don’t even like milk, but I always end up drinking it at Twig’s house because Hélène insists “ze bones must grow, ze bones must grow,” and it’s impossible to resist.

  Mr. Neely must’ve gotten scared off by Mikayla’s protest last week because today our assignment is boring. He walked around the classroom and handed out worksheets, which we’re supposed to be si
lently filling out right now. It’s just a giant picture of a plant, with little arrows and blanks where we’re supposed to label the parts. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss cutting up dead frogs.

  Even though I know how to fill out this worksheet, even though Mr. Neely’s gone over the plant parts, and even though Mom has mentioned them more than a million times—I can’t do it. Plants are a language I know, but thinking about them makes my stomach cramp, so I’m writing down my thoughts instead, just to look like I’m doing something.

  Mikayla raises her hand and asks if this is a test, but Mr. Neely says, “Not a test for me, no! Not a test for a grade! But a test for you, to explore your own knowledge! A journey, a scientific quest,” etc., etc.—you get the gist.

  Dari’s already done with his worksheet, of course, and I’m realizing now that the answers were probably in our reading from this weekend, which I didn’t do. I haven’t been doing much homework outside of this lab journal, and Dad doesn’t bother me about it because he assumes I’m upset about Mom.

  Here’s a fun fact: Mom is a botanist. Or should I say: Mom used to be a botanist? I’m not sure, but before she got “sick,” that was what she did. She worked for Mikayla’s mom in a lab at Lancaster University and did all these scientific things, talking about plants and genus and species all the time. I know it sounds boring, but it wasn’t. One time at dinner, Mom and Dad were talking about work, and they were going back and forth, laughing and joking like they used to, and Dad turned to me and said, “We’re so different, your mom and me. I don’t know the first thing about plants. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  But Mom shook her head and got serious and said, “That’s not true. If you think about it, we do the same thing. You work with people and analyze how they think and feel, and I do the same—just with plants.”

  I laughed at that, but Dad stared at her in a way that said I am so in love with you, which made me want to gag and smile at the same time.

  Looking back, I’m not so sure she was right. I want to say to her: Plants are not people. Plants eat and grow and breathe, but they cannot laugh or sing or wonder. And now she cannot laugh or sing or wonder.

  I want to say to her: Come back.

  Because maybe she is doing all of those laughing, crying things on the inside, just like her beloved plants, and she only needs someone to push her out, out, out again so she can laugh and sing and wonder on the outside, with me.

  Mr. Neely asked to see me after class today. He actually announced this during class—“Natalie, can I speak to you for a moment?”—which not only was embarrassing but also meant there was no way to escape.

  I figured he was going to yell at me for daydreaming all through the hour, so I tried to think through everything Mr. Neely had said during class, and I didn’t get very far. On the board, he’d written the definition of homeostasis,* but I hadn’t paid much attention beyond that.

  Mr. Neely didn’t quiz me. Instead, he said, “I know you’ve been having trouble settling on a scientific question.” He said this straight up, without any dorky exclamations or hashtags. “I thought you might be able to use a little help.” He held out a yellow piece of paper: a flyer for a science competition. “I usually only recommend this to my top students, but I thought this might be good for you as well.”

  I’m pretty sure that was an insult, but I took the flyer anyway.

  “There’s no pressure, of course, but take a look. I think you might be interested, and I think you might surprise yourself.” He smiled like he knew something I didn’t, which is something I hate about adults. They always need to prove they’re smarter than you. “Dari’s doing it, too,” Mr. Neely added. “Maybe you should work together. Science is always more fun with a friend.”

  Apparently, Mr. Neely didn’t know me very well if he thought I’d be interested in doing extra homework and hanging out with super-genius Dari, but I nodded and forced a smile. “Um, thanks, I guess.”

  I glanced down at the flyer, which had a cheesy drawing of a giant smiling egg, with location and cash prize details underneath. I stuffed it into my backpack, knowing it would probably get crumpled with all the other random papers.

  “Consider it,” Mr. Neely said, still grinning way too hard. “And if you decide not to use it for the Wonderings project, I do want you to come up with a different scientific question by the end of the month.”

  I thanked him again and left.

  * * *

  —

  When I got home, I spent the rest of the day thinking about Mom. The old Mom would have loved this project. She would have sat with me for days, brainstorming different questions and experiments.

  But that doesn’t matter now. The old Mom has disappeared, replaced by someone I don’t quite know—and for this project, I’m on my own.

  * According to Mr. Neely, “Homeostasis: this is your body’s way of making sure everything runs smoothly! Even if your external environment changes, your body can maintain a stable internal environment—which lets you function, eat, sleep, play, and do your homework! #ThanksBody.”

  I’m not allowed in my parents’ room. I used to be allowed, before this summer happened, when the door shut and stayed shut. Back then seems like a million months ago, even if it was just three.

  It happened slowly. I didn’t even notice the change at first—like when you grow out of your favorite jeans and you don’t even realize how short they’ve gotten.

  Mom started working less and sleeping more, and she wore pajamas around the house, which she’d never really done before. I was happy about this, at first. I thought it was a good thing, at first. I figured this meant she’d be around more, and we could hang out and talk, and she wouldn’t have to go to the lab so much.

  Only it didn’t work out like that, obviously, and I didn’t notice in time. Mom and Dad had been having whispered conversations at night, talking about problems at work, and I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know something was Wrong.

  I didn’t know until one dinner, when I finally understood: things were Not Okay. We were eating spaghetti and meatballs, only Dad had cooked, so it wasn’t very good, and the air was thick and heavy with July heat. Dad made some joke and I laughed and Mom didn’t.

  And then I thought: I can’t remember the last time Mom laughed.

  I could hardly breathe, because I knew that something bad was happening, but I wasn’t quite sure what.

  Dad noticed, too, and his shoulders slumped, and his smile slipped away. It’s the worst thing, to watch a smile fade like that.

  The next morning, when I came downstairs, my parents’ bedroom door was shut, and Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, by himself. I started walking toward their bedroom, but Dad stopped me before I could get any closer. I could tell he was as sad as I was, but he didn’t say why.

  “We’ll be okay,” he said, “but why don’t you give your mother some space for now?”

  And just like that, I wasn’t allowed in their bedroom anymore. Dad put on a happy face and tried to be Normal Dad, and Mom disappeared into that dark bedroom and became Not-Mom, and “Give your mother some space” became Dad’s favorite phrase in the whole world.

  But this evening, while Dad was holed up in his office and I should have been studying like a good daughter, I decided to break the rule.

  I tiptoed past Dad’s office and went to my parents’ bedroom door, turning the knob slowly, pushing the door open, careful not to make any noise, barely even breathing. My heart beat in my ears, and sweat prickled against my palms, and I kind of hated Mom for scaring me. I kind of hated myself, too, for being scared.

  Therapist Dad could probably dissect my whole heart based on that one little feeling, because who in the world is afraid of their own mother?

  I took two quick, quiet breaths and told myself I was there for a reason. I still had to thi
nk of a scientific question, and maybe I could get some ideas from one of Mom’s books. I didn’t look at the lump on the bed that was Not-Mom. I just walked straight to the far wall of the room, to my parents’ bookshelf.

  Quick, Natalie. Quiet, Natalie.

  The room was dark, but strands of light streamed in through the blinds—cracks of brightness and swirling dust in the midst of all this empty—and I could read the titles on the bookshelf. Mom has this one book, Basic Botany, that she used to read to me, and I meant to reach for that one, but my hand fell on another book instead. Mom’s book. How to Grow a Miracle, the book she hated because she wrote it ten years ago.

  She told Dad once that she sounded young and naive, but I loved the way her paragraphs sounded—the way the botany-speak blended with her excitement and became a secret language with magic words. She wrote like it was a fairy tale, and reading those pages felt like peeking into the Mom of ten years ago: the Mom who wrote a book and nursed a baby. The Mom who loved growing things.

  In the semidarkness of my parents’ bedroom, I flipped the pages to the table of contents. Her book was divided into three sections, for three miracle plant stories, and the biggest section by far was the last:

  The Cobalt Blue Orchid: The Flower of Mystery and Miracles.

  I’d read this section over and over, but seeing those words now sent my heart whirring. Ideas and hope started sparking together inside me, reminding me of the way my mother used to be—excited by science and life and questions. I shut the book because I felt like I was on the brink of something dangerous, and if I took one step further, I’d never be able to go back.

  I cradled the book to my chest and turned to watch Mom as she slept, dark and dead to the world. I told myself to put the book back on the shelf, to go back to my homework and stop thinking about the miracle orchids.