The Science of Breakable Things

by Tae Keller

  And how do you even respond to that? I smiled and left.

  Everyone else had left by then, too, rushing off to see scary movies or pass out candy or go trick-or-treating or whatever they happened to have planned for Halloween. The hallway was practically deserted—all except for Dari, that is, who was sitting by the lockers. He was reading a textbook, advanced something-something. He was also dressed as a giant potato.

  He looked up when he saw me leaving Mr. Neely’s classroom and shifted in his homemade potato. It crinkled, as if it was stuffed with old newspapers. The costume practically swallowed him up, and his head looked tiny compared to the horror that took up his midsection. He stood up as I passed, and his costume shifted from side to side, throwing him off balance so he wobbled a little.

  “What were you guys talking about?” he asked, speaking even faster than usual, as if he was concerned—or jealous.

  “Oh, you know, just Mr. Neely stuff.” I wondered if I should ask about the potato, or if I should wait for him to bring it up, or if maybe we shouldn’t acknowledge it at all.

  But Dari looked at me like I was the one being weird, like he was waiting for me to finish my sentence. “Well, just, you know.” Dari kept waiting, and I realized there wasn’t a non-awkward way to get out of this. “We talked about the joys of science!” I did my best Mr. Neely impression, clasping my hands together while making my eyes go big and emphasizing Every. Single. Word.

  That made Dari smile. “You know he does try. He’s a smart guy and he cares.”

  I’d never heard a kid talk about a teacher that way. The words seemed too friendly. Dari seemed too friendly—we’d never actually spoken before, but here we were, chatting away while he sat there in a potato. The weird part: I was kind of enjoying it.

  “He had a boring job before he switched to teaching, so he’s just excited to be here,” he said.

  I nodded as if I’d already known that factoid. It made sense—Mr. Neely didn’t look young enough to be a new teacher, but he wasn’t old, either.

  But the way Dari talked about Mr. Neely was strange, like they were actually friends. I changed the subject. “Why are you still at school?”

  Dari raised his textbook as if that answered my question: ADVANCED ALGEBRA.

  “Well, yeah, but why are you still here? Nobody stays late after school.” I wanted to add: Especially not on Halloween. Especially not while they’re wearing a potato. But I didn’t. I felt like I’d missed the opportunity to say something about the costume, and if I said something now it would seem like I was making fun of him.

  Dari shrugged, pressing his bony shoulders all the way up to his ears. The potato crinkled and bobbed. “My parents work late. They can’t pick me up until seven.”

  “Oh.”

  “But when they come, we’re going to take a haunted hayride. It’s going to be fun.” I liked the way he spoke, all crisp and sharp. He carried the smallest trace of an accent, and his words sounded like they were walking along the countryside, up and down and up and down the hills. And then I felt guilty for being so aware of his Indianness, like I was judging him, even though I wasn’t.

  “So,” I said, since he was the one who brought up Halloween. “The potato?”

  “Is it weird?” He didn’t sound defensive or self-conscious. He sounded like he was asking a scientific question and wanted to investigate.

  “Um,” I said, wanting to be nice but not wanting to lie. “I guess I assumed you’d dress up as an atom or an equation or something.”

  Dari laughed. When I looked closer at the potato, I realized that what I thought were random squiggles—potato eyes or globs of dirt, or something—were actually small drawings: a pair of lips, an ear, what I assumed was probably a nose.

  “It’s a mixed-up Mr. Potato Head,” he explained, with a whole lot of pride in his voice and no embarrassment at all. “It was my older brother’s, when he was in middle school. I helped him make it for a costume contest. See, I drew the mustache.” He pointed to a squiggly black line near his hip.

  “Oh,” I said. I couldn’t help but think about how much Twig would have loved a mixed-up Mr. Potato Head costume, in all its weirdness, and I made a mental note to tell her when she got back.

  Dari kept going. “We forgot about the costume, but we found it when we moved to America a few years ago. I think it makes my parents happy to see me wearing it. It brings them back, you know?”

  I tried to imagine myself dressed up as a Cobalt Blue Orchid. If Mom saw a costume like that, would it make a difference? Would it bring her back? “So, seeing you as a potato makes them happy?”

  Dari shrugged. The potato crinkled again. “I think just seeing the potato itself. It reminds them of how happy we all were when we made it.”

  “Oh,” I said again. “Well, I like it.”

  Dari smiled, and I smiled back, and there was a long silence where neither of us had anything else to say. I shifted my backpack on my shoulders. “Well, I better go, since, you know, I’m not a weirdo who hangs around in a potato after school.”

  He laughed as if I’d made a joke.

  And I guess I had.

  * Twig complained about this, if you can believe it. “It’s one of those brainwashing things,” she told me. “My mom is going to force me to sit through all those shows and watch tall girls walk back and forth, and then we’re going to go eat little cakes with her friends and talk about clothing.” As if tall girls and cakes and clothes were the worst things in the world. Sometimes I don’t understand Twig at all.

  I woke up this morning all alive with a new idea and filled with hope, and I ran to wake Mom. I wanted her to be alive with me.

  Dad was downstairs, packing up my lunch and getting ready for work, and I had to tiptoe very quietly toward their room, so he wouldn’t stop me in my tracks and turn me right around.

  “Mom,” I said, curling up next to her on the bed.

  She rolled around and smiled at me, her eyes bleary with sleep. She seemed happy, or at least content.

  “Mom, I had an idea,” I said. I was already dressed in my school clothes, and she was in her pajamas, and everything felt backward, but I focused on my plan and tried not to think of everything that was wrong.

  “What’s that, Nats?” She didn’t say it any particular way, but somehow, there was a shift in the air, like she’d been there for a moment, and all of a sudden I was losing her again.

  “The Cobalt Blue Orchids, in New Mexico,” I told her. I still felt excited by the possibility, like if I reminded her about the flowers, she’d wake up and say, Of course!—like if she just saw that orchid field again, she’d remember who she was. I could bring her back.

  “We have to go,” I said. “You told me you’d take me but you never did, and now our orchid is dead, and we should go get a new one. You have to see the orchids. And then—”

  “Our orchid?” she asked. Mom’s eyes were blue, but they looked gray in the dark. “What are you talking about?”

  Suddenly this felt like a huge mistake. She hadn’t known that the orchid was dead—how had she not known? How long had it been since she was in the greenhouse?

  “But we can get a new one,” I pushed on. “In New Mexico.”

  She looked so lost, and I thought she wouldn’t say anything at all, but then she said, “Okay.”

  I bit my cheek, trying to push down that hope that was building inside me. “Really?” My voice came out as a whisper, even though I hadn’t meant it to.

  “When we have the money, Natalie,” she sighed, and closed her eyes, and I wanted to shake her and say, Stay awake! For one moment just stay awake, notice your dying flowers. Notice me!

  “We just don’t have the money for travel right now,” she repeated, eyes still closed.

  I slipped back out of the bed and walked out of the room, tripping o
ver the dresser as I made my way through the darkness. I chewed on my cheek until the fleshy part was raw, and went to pack my backpack for school, because today was just another day.

  Not such a brand-new, hopeful day after all.

  But here’s the thing. When I glanced down in my bag, my eyes caught on that crumpled-up piece of bright yellow paper, and my hope flared up again. I reached in and pulled out Mr. Neely’s flyer, scanning straight past the happy egg to the bottom. And there, in big, bold letters and everything:

  GRAND PRIZE: $500!!!!!

  Seeing those letters, that big, fat money prize, I felt like I’d been falling into some deep, hopeless black hole, and the universe looked at me and said, Not yet, Natalie. Don’t give up yet.

  A million years ago, when I was about five, I got sick in the wintertime. Not the sniffly kind of winter-sick that everyone gets when the leaves change colors, but a real kind of sick.

  I slept through the winter, the way plants hibernate. I slept and the house turned dark and silent, but Mom lay next to me, refusing to leave my side. And then spring came, and I woke up with all those brand-new blooming buds. I don’t remember much about the illness or the recovery. I only remember waking up. And I remember Mom waking with me.

  Dad and I never talk about that time. We don’t talk about how we’re leaving Mom alone now. We don’t talk about how to cure her.

  We hardly talk at all.

  But I remember, and I know we can’t give up on her. She never gave up on me.

  I took the flyer and I decided, right then and there: I’m not leaving Mom alone. I will win the money, and Mom and I will fly to New Mexico. We’ll pick one of those magical blue flowers, and Mom and I will study it, and everything will go back to normal. Everything will be perfect.

  The contest was about two months away, right after winter break, so I had to start as soon as possible. I figured, This can’t be that hard. I’ll just sandwich the egg in a bunch of pillows. But when I started reading about the contest online, things got a little more complicated.

  Issue #1: The Lancaster County Young Scientific Minds Organization’s website is ancient. I’m talking last updated in 2003 ancient, so it’s hard to navigate and find all the rules.

  Issue #2: As it turns out, this whole egg drop thing is more than just wrapping up an egg in pillows. Not only do they drop the egg from three stories up, but they also have a point system for things like bounce factor and aerodynamic design. I’m starting to think I should’ve left this project for Mr. Neely’s “top students,” but then again, five hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars that might bring Mom back.

  I made up a list of materials and took it to Dad, who was in the kitchen again. He’s been in the kitchen a lot lately. When Mom was, well, Mom, she loved cooking. She would blast eighties music and zip between the stove and the cutting board and the oven. Sometimes I would help her, and we’d always end up singing into our spatulas and dancing around to some Bon Jovi song.

  Dad doesn’t play music when he cooks.

  “I made a list,” I said.

  Dad turned around and he had flour spilled all down the front of his shirt, and I snorted, because I didn’t think Dad in the kitchen would ever stop being ridiculous.

  “A list?” he asked.

  “Yeah. What are you doing?” I asked, waving my hands at the flour mess.

  He wiped his hands on his jeans, which didn’t help, since flour coated his jeans, too. “I’m practicing—trying to make Grandma’s cran-apple pie.”

  It took me a second to realize that by “Grandma” he meant Mom’s mom, because Dad’s mom only cooks Korean food and chicken nuggets.*1 Which meant this was the pie Mom made for Thanksgiving every year after her mother died. The one I always helped her make.

  I felt very sad all of a sudden.

  Dad must’ve noticed, because he walked over and took the list from my hands. “Eggs? Are you baking your own pie?” He half laughed at his joke, even though it wasn’t funny. “Bubble Wrap? Parachutes? Play-Doh?”

  The Play-Doh was a shot in the dark. “It’s for school,” I said.

  “Ah.” He nodded and got excited in that embarrassing way parents get when they try to Be Involved in Their Kids’ Lives and also possibly try to Distract Them from Their MIA Mother. “The egg drop! I remember that! Of course we can pick these things up. What’s your plan?”

  “I don’t really have a plan,” I said. I didn’t feel all that excited about the egg drop anymore.

  Dad hesitated. “Do you want to help me with my pie?”

  I wanted to scream at him for even thinking of taking Mom’s pie and making it his. But I just said, “Thanksgiving’s still, like, a month away.” I tried to sound casual, like I didn’t care, like I was only stating a fact, but my voice wobbled and I could feel my eyes stinging. I wanted to catch all those feelings before they escaped and force them down. I wrapped my arms around myself, crossing them over my chest.

  It didn’t take Dad long to morph into Therapist Dad.*2

  “Natalie, why don’t you have a seat?” He gestured to our dining table.

  I stayed standing.

  Dad went on, “I think it might be best for you to see someone outside the family. That way, you can talk freely.” He looked so lost telling me what to do. That had always been Mom’s job—bossing us around—and we’d let her, because she’d always done a pretty good job of it.

  I held up my list. “I have to focus on the egg thing, Dad.”

  The muscles between his eyebrows twitched. “Okay, the pie can wait. If we go pick up the items on your list, will you let me schedule an appointment for you to meet with someone?”

  I wanted to tell him no, because the thing was, I didn’t have anything to say. He acts like I bottled everything up inside, but really, I’m okay. I’m fine. “Yeah, sure, Dad,” I said.

  So we went to pick up eggs, and Dad got distracted pretty fast, asking all these questions about the egg drop, etc., etc., etc. I answered everything and acted all excited, but here’s a hypothesis: Adults don’t want to know how we’re feeling. They think they do, but really, they just want to believe we’re okay, because it makes their job easier. Dad and I talked a whole lot about the egg drop list, but we weren’t talking, not really.

  *1 Apparently, when Dad was a kid, he went through a phase where he ate only chicken nuggets. This information comes in handy when he pesters me to finish my vegetables.

  *2 Therapist Dad, n.: pinched eyebrows, lowered voice, lots of questions, feared by daughters everywhere.

  Twig enlisted herself to help with the whole egg thing. Only, Rule #1 of Twig’s help: Stop calling it “the whole egg thing.”

  “It sounds boring,” she shouted from up ahead as we biked to her house after school.

  “It is boring,” I said. “It’s for school.”

  “Not if I’m helping. From now on, we will hereby refer to it as Operation Egg.”

  “Fine. Operation Egg it is.” It kind of had a ring to it, even if it was a little kid-ish. Operation Egg made this feel important. It was important.

  Mr. Neely had practically burst with joy when I told him I’d chosen the egg competition for my Wonderings project, and he allowed Twig to work on it, too, as long as we investigated different questions.*1

  “You can both take different approaches to the project,” he had explained. “For example, one of you could study velocity—”

  “I call velocity!” Twig had shouted, and it had been decided. I still didn’t know my own question, but I’d figure that out later.

  “Hey, Natalie,” Twig said as we pedaled down the long road that led to her house. “Check out my velocity.” And then she pumped her fist in the air and her bike teetered for a moment before she leaned forward and pedaled faster, leaving me behind.

  When I finally made it to Twig’s m
ansion, she was already sitting at the kitchen table. She raised an eyebrow and smirked at me. “I’ve been waiting for ages,” she said, lifting her hand to her mouth and fake-yawning—but her cheeks were flushed and her chest was rising and falling. Twig’s not the best actress, to be honest.

  “Natalie!” Twig’s mother floated into the kitchen as I sat down across from Twig. I’m not kidding, the woman seems to float everywhere, as if she’s too posh to walk like all of us peasants. “How lovely to see you.”

  According to Twig, she and her mom had a huge fight in Paris. Twig had insisted on dressing as an evil witch/candy cane hybrid for Halloween,*2 even though nobody really celebrates Halloween in France, and Twig’s mom said she was being embarrassing. Long story short, their trip was a disaster. But the way Twig’s mom smiled at me, it was as if nothing bad had ever happened. She’s a better actress than Twig, but I guess she’s had more years of practice. Adults are good at pretending.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I said, and when Twig’s mom raised an expectant eyebrow, I added, “Clarissa.”

  Twig’s mom insists that everyone, including Twig, call her by her first name.

  “And how is your family?” Clarissa asked. “I haven’t seen your mom in a while. She works so hard.”

  I bit my lip and tried to nod.

  “I really should give her a call. You know, us working girls have to stick together.” She flashed a smile as my stomach twisted.

  “Mom,” Twig said, shooting Clarissa a what are you even saying look.

  At school, Twig’s always crawling around under desks, pretending to be a secret agent spy or something weird like that, but when her mother’s around, Twig turns into one of those embarrassed sitcom-type twelve-year-olds.

  When her mother’s around, Twig becomes almost normal. And I’m not sure how to feel about that.

  “Okay, okay.” Clarissa cleared her throat, faked a smile, and gave a high-pitched glittery laugh. “I have to run to my office anyway. Ask Hélène if you want some milk.”