The Science of Breakable Things

by Tae Keller

  “Well.” Dr. Doris frowned—but her eyes were a blend of sad and hopeful and something else, too. “That’s all the time we have left today. Will you think about what I’ve said?”

  I nodded, and I thought, Twenty-six.

  After our session, on the drive home, Dad turned down the radio to ask, “How did your talk with Dr. Doris go?”

  His voice was about ten notches too innocent, so I responded just as innocently. “It went well,” I said, and my voice sounded like sparkles and sunshine in the middle of this blizzard.

  He didn’t fall for it. “Natalie, I know you aren’t happy about the sessions. But I would like you to open up a little.”

  When he said open up, I pictured him ripping open my chest and exposing all my organs, like a dead frog on a lab table. Without meaning to, I flinched.

  Dad looked over at me with concern, even though the world had gone white with snow, so he really should have been keeping his eyes on the road. “Things have been really hard for you—for all of us,” he said, his eyes returning to the road. “But I do think it’s important for you to express yourself.”

  I almost said I wanted Mom to open up and express herself, but I’ve gotten too familiar with Dad’s miserable almost-crying-trying-not-to-cry face, and I didn’t want to see it again. Instead, I told him, “I’ll try. I promise.” I’m mostly sure it was a real promise—because even though I still hated the Dr. Doris appointments, part of me knew he was right. Part of me almost wanted to “open up.”

  And even if I couldn’t quite express all that, Dad looked over at me, and he smiled.

  * Twenty-three by that point. That woman has some scientific questions of her own.

  Mr. Neely was the only teacher to assign something over winter break, and his “homework” was simply to keep thinking about our scientific process experiments. Normally, this would mean do absolutely nothing, but since the egg drop competition is on January 13, Dari, Twig, and I had our work cut out for us. Our Mission Analyst (aka Dari) reworked some of Twig’s ideas, and we’d settled on testing two designs today, before Dari goes to India for the rest of the break.

  The school is closed for winter break, so we had to work at one of our houses. And because Dari’s parents wanted to meet his new friends and see what he was working on for school, we met at his house. Which made sense, I guess, but was kind of weird because Dad doesn’t care what I do as long as it’s school-related, and Twig’s parents don’t care what she does, period, so I’d kind of forgotten that “involved” parents were a thing.

  It was too cold to bike to Dari’s house, so Dad drove Twig and me over there and then decided to be all responsible and meet Mr. and Mrs. Kapoor. Both of them greeted us at the door when we arrived, while Dari hovered behind them in the house. They were one of those super-in-love couples, and Mr. Kapoor kept his hand on Mrs. Kapoor’s back while they spoke—as if he didn’t even notice he was doing it. And even though I used to get embarrassed when Mom and Dad did stuff like that—I kind of missed it.

  I started to feel that fluttery anxiousness, so I stopped thinking and tried to pay attention to the parents’ conversation. Only, they were talking about boring things, like school and the weather. So Twig and I slipped past them to say hi to Dari.

  “Okay, goodbye, Yeong-jin and Mr. and Mrs. Kapoor,” Twig said as we walked around them. “I’m sorry I don’t know your first names yet, but I’m sure I’ll learn them soon.”

  Dari’s parents looked at her with matching frowns of confusion, but Dad just sighed as we disappeared into the house.

  When we got to Dari’s living room, Twig stopped. “This. Is. Awesome,” she said, taking it in.

  And it was: nearly every inch of the walls was covered with family photos and bright, colorful paintings of people, landscapes, animals—anything and everything.

  Dari cleared his throat. “Yeah, my parents paint,” he said, his tone a mixture of pride and discomfort. “My whole family is full of artists. They kept signing me up for art classes but…I wasn’t very good at it.”

  He shrugged. I could tell that bothered him, and I realized there was so much about Dari that I didn’t know. I hadn’t meant to, but I guess I’d been thinking of him kind of as a teacher—like he only existed in the context of school and our egg drop.

  I hadn’t made a new friend since Twig, so maybe I’d forgotten how it worked?

  Dari led us out of his living room and turned to me as we climbed the stairs. “I didn’t know your dad was Asian,” he said. I guess there was a lot he didn’t know about me, either.

  “He’s half Korean,” I said. “My grandpa was Italian, but I never met him.”

  “You never talk about being Korean,” Dari said, and then I felt weird about it, like I’d done something wrong.

  Being in Dari’s house, you could tell they were proud of being Indian. That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. I mean, Dari never seemed ashamed of it. He actually talks a lot in school about being from India. His mom wears a sari, his kitchen smells like foods I’ve never tasted, and his whole house is decorated with pictures of his family back in India—aunts and uncles and cousins and his two brothers, who are already adults.

  I don’t know, it kind of made me feel like my family was bad at being Korean. Like I was bad at it. Because, to be honest, I usually forgot that part of me existed until my grandmother visited or someone brought it up. I was only a quarter Korean, and most people couldn’t tell just by looking at me. Every once in a while someone would ask about my race, but I mostly just ignored it.

  That had never felt wrong until now.

  The last stop on our tour was Dari’s room, where Indian mixed with American, Bollywood posters bordered baseball posters. And I decided I wanted my bedroom to be all of me, just like that. I promised myself that the next time I saw my grandmother, I’d ask her about Korea.

  “We can drop the egg designs from my window,” Dari explained as Twig and I walked over to the window to peer out at his setup. Directly under us, in his backyard, he’d laid out a giant tarp and positioned a video camera so that we could play the drops back and examine them.

  “Wow, Dari,” I said. “This is, um, really intense.” And then, because that didn’t seem like enough, I added, “In a good way.”

  He smiled, then led us back downstairs and into the backyard, eager to show us more of the work he’d done. On their picnic table, he’d already laid out all our materials and drawn up detailed, realistic diagrams for Twig’s top two designs.

  Twig held up the diagrams, laughing. “But, Dari, where are their faces? How will we know what the eggs are feeling?”

  Dari looked at me as if he needed me to tell him whether she was joking. I’m pretty sure the idea of somehow upsetting Twig was his personal nightmare. “Um, well, your designs did have a lot of personality, but…”

  “We like your designs, Dari,” I said before he could make things awkward. “And I think they’re pretty artistic, too. At least, artistic in a science-y way.”

  Dari grinned and ducked his head as he grabbed a cotton ball. He pulled the cotton apart, and Twig and I joined him, fluffing white clouds for Cotton Ball Heaven. By the time we got to work on S’meggs, cutting up twigs and marshmallows, Mrs. Kapoor had come outside with mugs of hot chocolate.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come in? It’s so great to meet Dhairyash’s friends,” she said, hovering over us for a few extra seconds before going back inside.

  I think she felt bad about us working outside in the cold, but we were on a mission.* We wouldn’t stop, not even to go inside and drink our chocolate. Instead, we warmed our hands against the mugs as we sat around Dari’s picnic table. Twig rifled through our egg-building materials and stuffed one of the giant marshmallows in her drink, and Dari and I followed suit. Mrs. Kapoor watched from the kitchen window, and Dari smiled into his m
ug.

  “She’s so happy that I finally have friends,” he said.

  Twig laughed awkwardly, because who admits to not having any friends?

  “When I moved here a couple years ago, my parents spoke to all my teachers at Lancaster Elementary and asked them to help me make friends,” Dari added, as if it were just some silly story and not at all embarrassing.

  “Actually,” he continued, even though I kind of just wished he would stop, “that’s one of the reasons I did this egg drop. Mr. Neely said I could ask some of the other kids to form a group with me. Of course, I got too nervous to actually ask anybody—until you guys invited me onto your team.”

  I figured now was not a good time to point out that he’d actually invited himself onto the team.

  He smiled hopefully, and I glanced over at Twig, because she was the one who usually started talking in awkward situations, but she’d turned pink and was busying herself by picking apart a marshmallow.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, I’m glad you joined us. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without you.”

  I looked around the yard, with Dari’s thoughtful, precise setup, and it was true. But still—it was a pretty cheesy thing to say.

  We all just slurped our hot chocolates and cleared our throats and looked anywhere but at each other for a few minutes.

  As soon as I finished my mug, I pushed it aside. “Ready to put the final touches on S’meggs?”

  They both looked relieved to change the subject. Twig raised her hand in that silly salute.

  We finished up with S’meggs and then got to dropping.

  Cotton Ball Heaven went first.

  And here’s the truth: it broke.

  It happened fast: Drop, splat. Dropsplat.

  After the failed drop, we stood outside, huddled around the video camera as Dari played it back for us. For the first time, the cold air got to me, and I wrapped my arms around myself.

  We watched our egg break in slow motion. The drooooo­ooooo­ooop, splaaat was way worse when you knew it was coming and watched anyway, waiting without hope.

  “The cotton balls weren’t thick enough to absorb the impact.” Dari paused the camera and pointed to the screen, explaining every single thing we did wrong. “Theoretically, we could add another layer and increase the density here if we need to, but let’s test S’meggs and see if that works.”

  Twig nodded like yes, yes, tell me more, but I wasn’t listening. I just stared at the frozen egg on the screen, right before the splat. When it was still breakable but not yet broken.

  Up until now, the egg competition had been important but far off. It didn’t really matter if the eggs broke, because we still had so much time to test them.

  Today felt like our last chance, and if both eggs broke today—

  “Let’s just test S’meggs already,” I interrupted my thoughts.

  Dari looked up from the camera, surprised at the sudden panic in my voice, but Twig always jumped at the invitation to go.

  “Got it,” she said, running over to grab S’meggs off the picnic table.

  We carried our last hope up into Dari’s bedroom, and Twig held it out the window, as high as she could.

  “I’d like to thank everyone who believed in us and our egg,” she said, addressing an invisible audience as if she’d won some grand award and inexplicably putting on a fake British accent. “I promise we’ll remember the little people when we achieve egg drop stardom.”

  Dari smiled, but I felt a flash of annoyance at Twig—for still acting silly. For not understanding that the time for jokes was over. This moment was dead serious.

  I held out my hand to stop her. “Can I drop this one?” I asked, my voice sharper than I wanted it to be.

  Twig’s eyebrows pinched as she noticed my mood shift for the first time, but she stepped back and handed me the egg. “Sure thing, Captain,” she said, her voice just a little uncertain.

  I held my breath and then I let S’meggs go—

  Drop

  Drop

  Drop

  Drop

  And the sound of S’meggs hitting the driveway. But no splat.

  We all kind of looked at each other for a minute like, Do we even dare?

  Dari raced downstairs to inspect our fallen egg—Dari, our calm, collected, studious Dari, running over to our egg like a doctor to his patient.

  Twig and I ran after him, breathless while we waited for his analysis, and then he shouted, “It’s alive!”

  Twig screamed and jumped around, celebrating as if we’d won the Egg Drop Olympics or something. “We’re done!” she shouted. “This is the one! This is our winner!”

  Dari laughed at Twig’s enthusiasm, staring at her with a happy kind of surprise, as if he’d never seen anyone so excited before.

  I laughed and cheered, too, because this was exactly what I wanted, and I knew I should’ve been the happiest of all—but for some reason, the happy feeling turned sticky inside me. Maybe we really would win. Mom and I would go to New Mexico and soak in the miracle of blue flowers and then—and then everything would be okay again. Right? Because if it wasn’t—then what?

  * It probably didn’t help that we had to take our gloves off to build the contraption, and Twig kept shouting “MY FINGERS ARE GONNA FALL OFF,” even though you didn’t see Dari or me complaining. The day was warm for winter—forty-five degrees—and all the snow had melted away.

  This morning, I woke up early and ran into my parents’ room, shaking them awake just like I do every Christmas.

  They were sleepy, and I was too giddy to realize it was anything more than that—too Christmas-happy to realize today was a Bad Day for Mom. Dad said ten minutes. Give them ten minutes, and they would be downstairs. Only, twenty minutes later, Dad came downstairs alone. And I knew: Mom wasn’t coming down.

  “Look at all those presents,” Dad said, gesturing to our tree. “Why don’t we open them? We can show Mom later.” The way Dad speaks—the way he’s always spoken—is smooth and rhythmic like one of those old-timey waltzes, but when he said that, I heard anger spike in his voice.

  To be honest, that scared me more than anything, because this whole time, Dad has never been angry with Mom. He’s been sad and tired and probably a little bit angry with me at times, but never with Mom.

  “Come on, Nats.” He came over to sit next to me on the couch. “Aren’t you excited? It’s Christmas!” The anger in his voice was gone by then, but I know what I heard.

  I shook my head and turned away. “I’m not excited,” I said, and I didn’t bother controlling the anger in my voice.

  Dad sighed and he sounded so old. I’d never thought of my parents as old—old in the way of parents, maybe, but not old. And then I was mad at Dad, too, because he’s a therapist. He helps people for a living, so it’s basically his responsibility to help Mom. And if he can’t even do that, what is he good for?

  I don’t know what I was thinking next, but I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a carton of eggs. Before Dad could stop me, I sprinted into our greenhouse, took the eggs out of the carton, one by one, and slammed them into the dead plants. I watched as those eggs exploded, thick globs of yolk soaking into the soil. My little Korean Fire sat in the corner, wrapped in a big, happy Christmas bow, and I threw an egg at that one, too, but I missed.

  All of a sudden, I couldn’t even find it in me to stand anymore. I dropped the egg I was holding, and it cracked at my feet, and all the energy just seeped from my legs and into the earth. And then I was sitting on the dirt, not even caring about all that egg yolk, and then Dad was next to me, because he didn’t care about the yolk, either. The greenhouse floor was warm from the heat lamps, and we sat and stayed sitting.

  I kept waiting for Dad to Therapist me, and when he didn’t, I handed him the last egg in the carton. He to
ok it and held it up to the light and stared at it as if it were some foreign object. He looked lost. And I thought, If he throws this egg, I won’t know what to do. Because then look at us: we’d both be sitting in the greenhouse, making a mess, and who would clean it up?

  Dad held that egg for a long time, until he finally placed it back in the carton.

  And I think, maybe, putting that egg back was even worse than throwing it.

  When I heard Dad on the phone downstairs, asking someone to come over, I thought it was Dr. Doris. Like, maybe she made emergency therapist house calls on Christmas? It couldn’t have been my grandmother, anyway, because she was in California this Christmas with her boyfriend, Uncle Gene.

  I’d already made the decision not to leave my bedroom, even though I really had to pee, because I didn’t want to see Dr. Doris. I didn’t want to be Therapisted. But when the knock on my door came, it wasn’t Dr. Doris.

  Somehow—Christmas miracle!—it was Twig.

  “Let me in!” She pounded her fist against the wood in her too-loud Twig way.

  I jumped up from my bed and opened the door, all my energy-yolk-guts back in me, and when I saw her standing there in a reindeer sweater and jeans with tiny painted Christmas trees, I threw my arms around her and started crying. Kind of embarrassing, thinking back on it, but at that moment, I didn’t care about anything except my best friend, standing in my doorway on Christmas.

  “Why are you here? You should be with your own family,” I said when I’d managed to get myself under control.

  Twig took in my tears, opening and closing her mouth. I’d never seen her at a loss for words. But then again, I don’t think she’d ever seen me cry.