by Tae Keller
He was living a double life, and maybe the Mr. Neely we knew wasn’t completely real.
Then I realized I was being ridiculous, so I took a few breaths and tried to calm down.
Eventually, a tall woman with glasses stepped up to the microphone. Finally, somebody was in charge and giving us direction. “Welcome, young scientific minds of Lancaster! My name is Charlaine.” Charlaine looked like Doris, only ten years older and a twinge more Southern, and for some reason, the comparison made me itchy with discomfort.
“I know how hard y’all have worked on your egg drops,” she continued, “and I want to tell you, first and foremost, you are all winners!”
Dari nodded along, but Twig looked at me and rolled her eyes because this Charlaine woman was being a Mr. Neely. She pointed to her chest and then mine and mouthed, Winners.
Charlaine went on to introduce the other five judges, but I was too busy eyeing the competition to pay attention. Most were uninspired inverted egg cartons. Ours was definitely one of the best designs.
I felt better seeing everybody else’s eggs, and when Charlaine and the other judges started setting up, Twig, Dari, and I abandoned our parents and walked around the room to get a closer look.
“You did a really nice job with the tweaks, Dari,” Twig said, admiring the contraption in Dari’s hands.
Dari blushed. “Thanks, but you’re the one who had the great idea for S’meggs.”
I sighed—I couldn’t help it—and then they both turned red, and all three of us kind of wanted to disappear for a few seconds.
As we made a lap around the library, a pair of redheaded twin boys stopped us. “What a creative design,” the first one said. They were dressed in matching sweaters stitched with the Valley Hope crest, and it took me a moment to realize they were talking to us.
“I would never have considered marshmallows,” the second twin continued. “How cute.” They spoke in that fancy Valley Hope way, enunciating their consonants and rounding their vowels, and it was hard to tell whether they were sincere or sarcastic.
“Thank you,” Dari said, polite by reflex. “Clever design yourself.”
I glanced down at the contraption in the first boy’s hands, and my heart seized up and settled in my throat. They had cushioned the egg in cotton balls and placed it into a ziplock bag full of Lucky Charms cereal.
Twig gave Dari a look of disappointment and stepped forward. “Cereal is a stupid idea,” she said. “S’meggs is gonna beat your egg.”
The first twin said, “S’meggs?” and the second stiffened and said, “May the best egg win,” before they took their cereal and walked away.
Twig turned to Dari and said, “Did you see that? Did you see that?” As if maybe he could have missed the entire exchange.
Dari mumbled a response, but I tugged on her hand. “Twig, let it go,” I said.
She frowned, but for once she actually listened.
To be honest, I’d forgotten about Mom’s cereal idea until that moment. Or if I hadn’t forgotten, I’d at least buried it deep with all the things I wouldn’t say, and I stood there for a few minutes, watching Twig ramble on without really hearing her. I don’t know what our egg dropper would have looked like if Mom had helped us, if she had been happy and real and full of experiments. But I guess I wouldn’t have been at this competition at all if that were the case.
I tried to put the cereal out of my mind. S’meggs would win, and that was all that would matter in the end.
The judges passed around a bowl for drawing out numbers, and as the team captain, I took a slip. Number 16. The 1 and the 6 still smelled like Sharpie, and I folded it into a tiny square in my palm. Out of the twenty teams, we’d be one of the last to go.
The drop would happen off the roof into a designated spot in the parking lot, so after drawing our numbers, we all shuffled into our winter coats, rewrapping and bundling and buttoning, until we were standing outside in the parking lot, breathing hot air into our mittened hands. The judges took our eggs up to the top of the building, except for a young curly-haired judge with a name tag that read SHAWN. He stayed below to announce the status of dropped eggs: Cracked or Not Cracked. A few contestants tried to make conversation with him, but I tuned them out, bouncing on the balls of my feet, battling the cold and my nerves.
“We’ll be fine,” Twig said, calm as could be.
“This is much higher than our test at my house.” Dari clenched and unclenched his hands, buzzing with nervous energy.
“Our egg is strong,” Twig said as Charlaine announced the first egg and dropped it off the edge of the roof.
It broke, and I let out a sigh of relief.
With so many contestants, the drops took a while, interspersed only occasionally with the cheers from a surviving team. Later, the judges would score the surviving eggs based on durability and bounce factor and aerodynamic design. We’d survive, too—I just knew it.
Somewhere along the way, Twig slipped into Announcer Mode, whispering observations into Dari’s and my ears.*2 She spoke in a low voice and said stuff like, “The Blondes are tense with anticipation. Will their Bubble Wrapped egg make it past the Drop of Doom? The crowd holds its breath—hold your breath, guys—and, wait for it, our fearless Charlaine is about to drop the egg and—ohhh, close but no cigar. This is a tough break for our Blondes. Literally.” The kids around us turned to glare, and eventually some random parent came up and told us to please be quiet, which was embarrassing for Dari and me, but of course Twig didn’t mind at all.
Listening to Twig’s commentary, I could get through most of the round without too much anxiety, but by the thirteenth egg, none of us spoke. Instead, the three of us held hands with the number 16 pressed between Twig and me, and it wasn’t even weird or embarrassing. This abandoned library parking lot was like an alternate universe where everyone really cared about raw eggs, and holding hands was a totally acceptable thing to do.
When Charlaine got to our number, I looked over at Dad and he gave me a big, goofy thumbs-up. Twig squeezed my hand so hard I was pretty sure all my bones shattered.
In that moment, when everything stood still and the outcome was unknown and all of us were hopeful, I got this huge surge of love for Dad and Twig and Dari. For Mr. Neely and even Dari’s parents and all these people who were making my life so much better. I wanted to hug each one of them, but I didn’t want to get sappy, either. I missed Mom, of course, but the weird part was that I didn’t feel angry or sad or uncomfortable about missing her, like I usually did. Instead, I felt hopeful, partly because winning seemed so inevitable and I had big plans for that money, but also because if my world could be so happy just because of a silly little contest and the fate of an egg, then I knew Mom’s world could be happy again, too.
She would be okay because we would win and I would save her.
Charlaine dropped our egg.
My heart burst into Super Panic Mode and in my head I said, I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay. But this was different from dropping the egg with Twig and Dari. Then, it had been only us, and we had only been experimenting. Now everything was out of our control.
My heartbeat thudded in my ears.
And S’meggs hit the ground.
The twigs went flying, bits of marshmallow exploded, and a cloud of glitter burst in the air.
We didn’t need to wait for Shawn’s announcement. The sound it made was enough. That cracking, crunching noise was the loudest sound I’ve ever heard in my whole life.
I looked at my friends because I didn’t want to look at the puddle of yellow, growing bigger and bigger around our egg. The broken sticks were like broken bones.
Dari was shaking his head, back and forth, back and forth, like he didn’t even know he was doing it, but Twig was still.
“The glitter was supposed to be a surprise,” she murmured, in a voice f
ar too quiet for Twig. Still, she did not move, and I had this scary thought that maybe she would never move again.*3
Dad and Dari’s parents came up to us, and Dad put a hand on my shoulder. “Do you want to go?”
Twig answered for me. “Yeah, we don’t need to see those stupid Valley Hope kids win.” She was shaking with fury and disappointment, so I guess she was moving again, but not in the way I wanted her to.
“Wait,” I said. “I want to wait.”
One summer day, a rare one when she wasn’t working, Mom had taken me to the local pool. We’d been talking about sound waves, and to demonstrate the difference in water, she’d concocted an experiment.
“Ready?” she’d asked as we both hung on to the edge of the pool. And I’d said, “Ready,” and we’d slipped under the water. She said a sentence, and the water molecules twisted and morphed the sound, and when we both emerged, I had to guess what she’d said—had to find meaning in that garbled underwater language.
That was how my words sounded to me at that moment.
“Okay,” Dad said. “We’ll wait.” His hand hadn’t left my shoulder, and he squeezed hard, as if to remind me I was still there.
Around me, Twig and Dari and Mr. and Mrs. Kapoor were speaking, but I couldn’t quite hear them. Mrs. Kapoor knelt next to Dari, and her yellow sari, the color of bright, fresh yolk, peeked out from underneath her long down jacket.
Charlaine was somehow still carrying on with the competition. I watched as another egg dropped, another egg broke, and I counted: Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.
Dad kept holding on to my shoulder, and I kept counting, and Dari said into my ear, “It’s always good to see the results.”
I nodded vaguely, even though I wasn’t really seeing. I was waiting.
And then it was the Valley Hope twins’ turn. I couldn’t see the cereal all the way up on the roof. I could only see the ziplock bag.
My feet and hands were completely numb with cold, but I didn’t bother trying to warm them up.
Charlaine dropped the cereal egg.
And this time, there was no crack. Only the crunch of Lucky Charms.
I couldn’t breathe. I was back underwater. I thought, I should have listened to Mom.
“What?” Dari asked, and I realized I’d spoken that out loud.
Shawn stepped forward to inspect the egg, and my head rang with Mom would be so disappointed in me—but then he gave a thumbs-down. Cracked.
The egg was broken.
The egg had a tiny fracture, hardly noticeable, but its life was oozing out, just like all the other broken eggs. So Mom was wrong.
And that was worse.
“Yes!” Twig shouted, and the crowd turned around to glare at her. Twig lowered her voice, but only a little. “I told them cereal was a stupid idea.”
The crowd started rustling around us, and Shawn announced that anybody who wanted to stay for the final deliberation could wait inside the library.
I heard myself say, “We can leave now.”
All of us kind of adjusted and readjusted our clothes, saying goodbyes, all long and drawn out, because we wanted to leave, but we also weren’t ready to go.
Mr. Neely came up and gave us hugs and tried to act happy even though we obviously weren’t. “I’m so glad you guys participated,” he said, and I wanted to cry at the word. Participate, as if that was all we were capable of.
“I have to say, your design was my favorite.” He winked. “So creative and inventive. What Charlaine said earlier is true—you three are winners, no matter what. You’ve worked so hard, and you’ve learned so much about the scientific process. I’m proud to be your teacher.”
Dari blushed and mumbled a thanks, and Twig stared up at Mr. Neely in shock, because I don’t think she’s used to praise from a teacher. Beneath all the numbness, anger sparked inside me, heating inside my chest, because Mr. Neely had no idea. He stood there, talking about the scientific process—as if that mattered. As if his stupid science experiment had anything to do with real life.
“Let’s go,” I said, and turned to walk away without waiting for a response. Dad was probably horrified by my rudeness—I was sort of horrified, too—but I had to get away.
Twig and Dari ran after me, and Twig grabbed my arm. “This can’t be it, though. Operation Egg can’t be over.”
I shrugged. I knew the sadness would come later, but at that moment, I was upset and a little bit nauseated—anger on an empty stomach.
Dari got quiet, too, and he whispered, “We’ll still be friends, right? After this.”
Twig looked like she’d cry, and we were all Not Okay. “Of course we will,” she said, first to Dari, staring straight at him, and then she turned to me. Her eyes lit with a fire deeper and bolder than I’d seen in her. “Of course we will.”
She hugged me and I hugged her back, holding on tight. I felt kind of bad because I knew Dari felt awkward and out of place, but I couldn’t stop hugging her. Twig was my best friend and I needed her.
When we pulled away, her eyes were fierce. “Operation Orchard is still on. We can still fix things,” she said.
I sighed and shook my head. “It’s over, Twig,” I said. I couldn’t think about the orchid. I couldn’t even look at her. I felt the sadness growing inside me, and if I thought about what this meant, that sadness would take root and never leave.
Dari didn’t ask, but he looked at us, questions and half answers dancing in his eyes.
“But—” Twig said.
I cut her off. “It was a stupid idea anyway,” I said. I brushed past her and got into the car, slamming the door in her face.
*1 Do you think there’s any significance to this? Like, move over, books, SCIENCE IS THE FUTURE.
*2 Although Twig isn’t really capable of whispering. Being quiet isn’t her strong suit.
*3 Not literally never move, obviously, but never move again in the way of Twig, like maybe she would be Not-Twig from now on, like Mom was Not-Mom. I don’t know. I was in Super Panic Mode.
The car ride home was awkward, to say the least. I didn’t speak. Dad didn’t speak. And Twig didn’t speak.
Not until, finally, as we drove down that long road to Twig’s house, Dad said, “I’m sorry the drop didn’t work out like you’d hoped. Would you guys like to talk about it?”
I thought the answer was pretty obviously no, but Twig was the one who responded. “Natalie doesn’t want to talk right now, Yeong-jin. And that’s okay.”
I could feel her looking at me, but I kept myself turned away, looking out the window at the bare trees.
I kept silent while we dropped off Twig, silent the whole way home, even though I could feel Dad’s tension growing, pressing in on me from all sides. I knew I should say something, because that was the Right Thing to Do, and I should be a Good Daughter, but if I acknowledged what happened, I’d be swept away in that tidal wave of hopelessness.
When we got home, I went right upstairs to my room and wrote about what happened, and lay in my bed and tried to go to sleep—even though it was only seven o’clock. Dad came knocking, but I didn’t respond, and he drifted away, trying to “give me space.”
And as I lay in bed, my mind swung back and forth—even when I tried to silence it—and it spun and spun, pointing in all different directions.
I told my brain to be quiet and checked my phone.
Twig: CALL ME!!!
I sighed and tossed my phone across my bed. For some reason, I kept thinking about Mr. Neely and taking charge—and I’m not sure how, but apparently I managed to fall asleep, because I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing.
I fumbled for my phone in the dark and managed a “Hello?”
It was the middle of the night. I was tucked in, surrounded by all my favorite pillows, and a glass of milk sat on my bedsid
e table. I took a deep breath and shook my head, forcing out the sleepiness and the memories from earlier that day that kept slamming into me.
“Finally! This is my fifth time calling!” Twig’s voice blared into my ear, and I turned the volume down on my phone. “I know you probably still don’t want to talk right now, and that’s okay, but just let me do the talking. Because I couldn’t let the plan die. Not like that. And I was thinking and thinking about it—and I think there’s a way to get the flower.”
I knew from experience not to pin much excitement on Twig’s big ideas—but it was so tempting. Maybe Twig had found a way to fix everything. Maybe I hadn’t lost everything just yet. “Really?” I asked. My voice sounded breathless.
“I stole my mom’s credit card,” Twig explained. “We can go to the airport and buy plane tickets, and we’ll bring an orchid back for your mom.”
And just like that, my hope wilted. I should have known better. This reckless plan was totally Twig. It would never work.
“Twig,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment and anger from rising in my voice. I was frustrated with myself, more than anything—for hoping. It wasn’t her fault. “That’s a terrible idea. We can’t just hop over to New Mexico for the night.”
“But we have to! We have to go to New Mexico because that’s where you got the orchid in your greenhouse. And we have to replace it because you’ve been so sad—”
“Twig, wait.” Suddenly everything clicked into place. All night, my mind had been spinning in circles, and now, finally, it stopped, pointing in one obvious direction.
Because of course we could still get the Cobalt Blue Orchid.
After all, I hadn’t gotten the greenhouse orchid from New Mexico. I’d gotten it from Mom’s lab. And that was only a short bus ride away.
It was such an easy answer, yet it had never crossed my mind. The betrayal of going back to the place that hurt Mom—the place that had thrown her away like she didn’t matter—was almost too painful to consider. Just the idea of being back there twisted my stomach. But I would be doing it for Mom, so I pushed away the ache. If I couldn’t bring her to the orchids, I would bring an orchid to her.
