The Science of Breakable Things

by Tae Keller

  “Natalie!” Twig said.

  I didn’t have a plan. This wasn’t in the procedure. I did the only thing I could think to do next. I typed 3333.

  And then the flashing stopped.

  “Three-three-three-three?” Dari said. “That’s the code? Really?”

  I started laughing, this wild kind of laugh that I couldn’t control. Twig started laughing, too, and then we were both shouting, “Three-three-three-three! Three-three-three-three!”

  Dari stood there, looking at us like the whole world had gone upside down. “How is that the code? Did you know it before?”

  I laughed and shook my head. “I just guessed!” My voice belonged to a happy, carefree girl, and I almost didn’t recognize it.

  “But—” Dari said, shaking his head.

  And Twig threw an arm around his shoulder and said, “Sometimes good things just happen. Sometimes you get lucky.”

  Finally, all that dduk luck had paid off. My mind was a chorus of finally, finally, finally.

  Dari took a huge breath and shook his head, but a smile spread across his face. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get Natalie her flower.”

  The orchid wasn’t hard to find. I went all the way to the far end of the lab, to Mrs. Menzer’s side of the filing cabinet, where she’d pulled out the seed all those years ago. That moment was burned into my memory. I opened the drawer labeled GARDENING: MISC. and rummaged until I found a translucent blue ziplock bag like the one she’d pulled the seed from. Everything Mrs. Menzer did was color-coded.

  My hands shook as I ripped open the bag and pulled out a seed. There were three left in there, but I only took one. I only needed one. I pinched the bag closed and placed it back in the drawer, and that’s when I noticed the label: IRIS GERMANICA.

  But that was a mistake. This wasn’t an iris. This was my orchid. My Cattleya fortis.

  Orchidaceae. Cattleya. Fortis.

  I searched quickly around in the drawer, but there weren’t any other bags.

  “Is that what you came for?” Dari asked, and I could tell he was watching me and piecing all his observations together, trying to analyze the mystery of me, so I turned away and clutched the seed to my chest. Something was wrong that couldn’t be wrong. This had to be right. I played back the memory I’d burned into my heart, but I knew this was where she’d pulled the seed from. Maybe the bag was labeled wrong.

  “It’s the orchid!” Twig yelped, practically tackling me into a hug.

  Finding the seed should have been a celebration, but now I had all these questions. I felt as if I’d been working out a giant scientific mystery all this time, and I hadn’t even known it, and now all my questions and observations and data were click-click-clicking. And all I wanted was to get straight home before everything snapped together.

  “We have to go,” I said, still grasping the little seed. My nails dug into the heel of my hand, but I didn’t care. I didn’t explain the urgency to my friends—I don’t think I could have even explained it to myself—but I felt like I needed to get out, like I needed to get home and plant that seed right this very second, or else, or else—

  I led them back through the winding lab halls, needing to get to that elevator, needing to get home, and we were almost to those big glass doors when I stopped. I stood right in front of Mom’s office, and my feet wouldn’t budge. I was squeezing the seed so hard that my right hand was going numb.

  “Are you all right?” Twig asked. But I didn’t answer. I just stared up at the name on the door. ALICE NAPOLI. My mother’s name, my mother’s office, even though she hadn’t been to work in months. Even though she’d been fired.

  The questions pounded in my head. When Dad got extra stressed at work, he’d pinch the bridge of his nose and say, Migraine. It all seemed so old and adult, but I was sure this was what a migraine felt like—having so many questions crowded in your brain, and not quite being able to touch the answers.

  I ran through a list of observations in my head, a trail of clues:

  • Mrs. Menzer had told Dad, “We miss her.”

  • Mom still had her office keys.

  • Mom’s name was still on her office door.

  I could feel Twig getting restless behind me, could hear the swish-swish of her coat as she fidgeted, but then Dari said, “Twig and I will wait by the glass doors. You take your time.”

  I could have hugged Dari, even if I didn’t want him there. Sometimes you needed Dari and his way of understanding.

  “Thanks, Dari,” I said, and I felt all that anger whoosh out of me. It wasn’t his fault Twig invited him, after all, and I knew he was just trying to be a good friend. Maybe he wasn’t my best friend, but we were still a team.

  I heard my friends leave, and the big glass doors shut, and then I turned the knob to Mom’s office all the way before stepping inside. Quick, quiet.

  Her office was the same as it had always been.

  There was the couch where I used to nap, read, do homework. There was the checkered rug where Mikayla and I did our experiments, the purple stain where we’d mixed baking soda and vinegar—and a whole bottle of bubble bath. And there was Mom’s desk and her pictures of Dad and me, and her calendar that was stuck in July. Why was this office still hers, still exactly the same, if she’d been fired?

  I didn’t realize I’d been moving through the office until I was picking up those framed photos, those happy, smiley, million-years-ago pictures of our perfect family. I gripped the family photo of us at Disneyland so hard that the edge of the glass frame pressed into my hand and I wished I could escape into the memory.*

  “Natalie, Natalie!” Twig’s voice came from the hallway, followed by the sound of slamming doors and loud footsteps.

  Twig ran into Mom’s office, her hair flying around her face, as if every strand were fleeing in panic. “Natalie!” she said again, breathless.

  Behind her, a security guard appeared, with Dari trailing behind him, and the guard stood right there in Mom’s doorway.

  I dropped the frame. And it shattered at my feet.

  * Dad, Mom, and me, wearing our Mickey ears in front of Fantasyland, that trip where Mom scheduled our whole vacation down to the minute, and we didn’t mind one bit.

  My panic filled the whole room, and the guard filled the whole doorway. He was big and tall, with thick black glasses and a name tag that read JOE. To be honest, that was a bit of a relief, because Joe is a friendly-sounding name.

  He stared at us as we stared at him, and we were all frozen in one moment. Then he tugged at his right earlobe and said, “Um?”

  I guess he hadn’t expected to see three kids breaking into a botany lab.

  “Uh,” I said.

  “Good morning,” Twig said.

  Dari stood behind Joe, gripping his hair with one hand, face pale with horror.

  “You triggered the alarm system,” Joe said, shaking his head like he wasn’t sure why he was explaining himself. “If you type in the wrong code three times, I get an alert.”

  “So three-three-three-three wasn’t the right code!” Dari said, and then snapped his mouth shut like he hadn’t meant to speak.

  So I guess I hadn’t been that lucky. All that dduk for nothing.

  Joe frowned. “I should maybe call the police?” he said, as if it were a question.

  “No,” Dari gasped. I’d never seen him so unraveled, and I hated myself for letting him come. He had risked so much to be here, and he’d be in so much trouble. I didn’t deserve a friend like that.

  “Don’t.” I hesitated, but I knew what I had to do. I stepped forward, broken glass crunching beneath my sneakers. “Call Dana Menzer instead. She’s the head of this lab. We’re—we’re friends of her daughter.”

  Twig made a choking noise.

  Joe looked relieved to have an out, and he
nodded, grabbing the cell phone clipped to his waist. “Uh.” He looked at us like he had no idea what to do. I didn’t blame him. This probably didn’t happen too often. “Don’t move.”

  He stepped outside to call Mikayla’s mom, and Dari slipped inside the office. The three of us stood together, not saying a word, and then the guard came back in.

  “She’s coming.” Joe sighed and sat in Mom’s chair, gesturing to her couch. “It’ll be a while.” His voice was a shrug. We glanced at each other, debating, because kids in Big Trouble don’t normally hang out on the couch, but we sat, because he was right. It probably would be a while.

  And it was. For forty-five minutes nobody said anything. That was the worst forty-five minutes of our lives, sitting in silence and regret. My mind felt broken, stuck in an endless loop, and I couldn’t think anything except: Mom decided to stop working. She stopped caring. And she stopped caring about me.

  I’d be in trouble. Dari and Twig would be in trouble, too, and it was all my fault—all because I wanted to get up and fix everything, because I wanted to take charge and be the team captain and save my family.

  What a ridiculous idea.

  “I’m sorry,” I said without looking up at my friends.

  They didn’t respond at first, and I thought, They hate me, they hate me, they hate me.

  But then Dari whispered, “We’re a team.” And Twig made that soothing egg-cracking motion down my back, and my chest tightened.

  Before I had a chance to respond, Mrs. Menzer arrived, her footsteps thudding down the hallway, stopping at the door of Mom’s office.

  Joe jumped up in relief. “Do you need any help?”

  Mrs. Menzer looked at the three of us and then at him, and then back at us. Her mouth opened and closed a couple times. With her curly hair gathered into a messy bun, and her sweatpants tucked into her boots, she looked like she’d rolled out of bed and stumbled into a bad dream.

  I used to love Mikayla’s mom. I used to think she was the second-best mom in the entire world, until she fired my mom and I decided to hate her. Only, she didn’t really fire my mom, I guess. If I analyzed all those observations, all that data, that was the cold, hard truth. Mom stopped going to work because she didn’t want to go anymore, or maybe because she couldn’t.

  And Mrs. Menzer had kept Mom’s office the way it was—waiting, waiting for Mom to come back, just like we were. I wasn’t sure how to feel anymore. My emotions spun around and around like a broken compass, not quite sure where to land.

  Mrs. Menzer shook her head no, and the guard got out of there real quick.

  Once we heard the glass doors slam shut and the elevator ding-dinging down, she said, “What are you doing here?”

  Twig said, “We got lost,” which was probably the worst lie she’s ever come up with, and Twig has come up with some pretty bad lies under pressure.*

  Mrs. Menzer frowned, but she looked more curious than angry. She was a scientist, after all. She kept her eyes on me and waited.

  “Here’s the truth,” I said, and then I told the whole story, for the first time ever, spoken aloud so I could never get it back. And I was okay with that.

  I told her about how Mom and I had planted the orchid she gave us. About how it grew and bloomed and how we loved it. About how I know the plant is a miracle. And then I told her the harder stuff, about how Mom stopped working and I thought she’d been fired, but really she’d just stopped. About how the plant died—how we’d killed a plant that could survive toxins and death. About New Mexico and losing the egg competition and how I needed to find another Cobalt Blue Orchid. How breaking into the lab had seemed like the last shred of hope.

  “Because the flower is magic,” I said, my voice cracking. “And I need the magic to save her.”

  Dari’s mouth hung in a little O, because whatever Twig had told him to get him here, it hadn’t been the full story.

  Mrs. Menzer’s expression softened. “Oh, Natalie, I’m sorry. That flower—it wasn’t magic. It was just an interesting, unexpected anomaly.”

  I wanted to tell her I knew that, that I wasn’t silly enough to think it was actually magic, but I got stuck on the way she said was. It was interesting.

  “And you didn’t kill a Cobalt Blue Orchid, sweetie.” Mrs. Menzer bit her bottom lip. “I’m sorry, Natalie, but you should talk to your mom about the flower you grew.”

  And then I knew there was more to this terrible puzzle. Everything I’d thought about Mom had been a lie. She’d been wrong about the cereal egg—it broke. She’d given up on her work because it had gotten hard and she didn’t want to keep going. She hadn’t been fierce or bold or brave. She’d given up on me. “What about the flower we grew? What do you mean?” I asked. I didn’t want to know. But I did.

  Mrs. Menzer gave me a sad smile. “I’m going to call all your parents now. You three need to get home.”

  “What about the flower?” I asked again, because my world was shattering, and I needed the truth to build it back up.

  But she shook her head and said, “You have to talk to your mother, Natalie.” And then she turned to Twig and Dari and asked for their parents’ phone numbers, and I knew the conversation was over. I wouldn’t get any more answers. Not from her.

  When Mrs. Menzer went outside to call our families, we stayed in our little huddle for a long time, and Twig said in this small voice, just like Dari’s after the egg drop, “Will we still be friends after this?” Like, somehow that had become the depressing catchphrase of our friendship.

  I wasn’t the one who answered. Dari was. He said yes immediately, as if that never should have been a question in the first place, and that was when I knew I wanted them in my life forever. I’d do anything for them. Just as they had for me.

  I tried to think of the right words to say, but I knew if I tried to speak now I would cry, and Dari saw the look on my face and nodded. Because that’s the thing about best friends: they just get you.

  Mrs. Menzer returned, and when she herded us out of the lab and into her shiny black BMW downstairs, we marched like inmates. After Twig and Dari got in, right as I was about to slide into the backseat, she tilted my chin up to her face and kissed my forehead.

  I’d seen her do that to Mikayla so many times. Now she was giving some of that love to me, and I swallowed hard.

  We drove back to the suburbs, through those streets full of broken buildings, and Mrs. Menzer dropped Dari off first, because his house was the closest.

  “Thank you,” I whispered into his ear as he got out of the car. His lips were pressed into a thin line, anticipating his parents’ anger, but he looked at me and nodded in a way that said, Of course.

  “Good luck,” Twig said, and then threw her arms around him. Dari couldn’t seem to let her go.

  “Come on now,” Mrs. Menzer said in her gentle way, and she led Dari up to his house while Twig and I waited.

  “I’m sorry,” Twig said into the ringing silence of the empty car. “I shouldn’t have called you about going to New Mexico. I should’ve just let things be.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”

  “You didn’t drag me into anything,” she said fiercely. “I’m always going to be with you.”

  “But I was a terrible team captain,” I blurted. “Everything we tried to do failed, and I got you guys in trouble.”

  “Natalie,” Twig said, “you aren’t the captain because you do everything right and stay out of trouble. You’re the captain because you bring us all together.”

  I chewed my lip, not sure what to say. Part of me had always thought they’d be better off without me.

  Then, more softly, she said: “I know I shouldn’t have brought Dari. I knew you’d be upset. But I was scared, and he always knows the answers, and…I don’t know.”

  I reached over a
nd grabbed her hand. “It’s okay. He does know a lot of answers.” The truth is, I was glad she brought him. I was glad to have my friends.

  And some things are better left unsaid, but then again, other things aren’t. I looked over, right in her eyes, and she looked back. She seemed to glow in the light of the streetlamps. “I don’t know what I would do without you guys,” I told her. “Especially you, Twig.”

  She unbuckled her seat belt and scooted over until she was pressed right up next to me, and she laid her head on my shoulder. “Me neither.”

  After a long while, Mrs. Menzer came back to the car. She swallowed hard, but she didn’t say anything about her conversation with Dari’s parents. Twig and I peeked through the window, but Dari’s front door was already shut. The lights to his house were on, but we couldn’t see anything.

  “Do you think he’ll be all right?” I asked.

  Twig swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  Twig was next, and I waited in the car again while Mrs. Menzer walked her up to her front porch. Alone, I expected to feel guilty and sad and scared, but I didn’t feel any of those things. I felt okay. Twig’s mom opened the door right away and dropped to her knees, hugging Twig. No matter how strange her mom acted, I could see she loved her daughter. She would always love her daughter.

  When Mrs. Menzer walked back to the car, she looked like she might cry. I didn’t know why, but adults are strange, and maybe the night was just sad for everyone. “Thank you, Mrs. Menzer,” I said when she got in.

  She turned around to look at me in the backseat. “You’re all so young,” she said.

  I didn’t know how to respond, because it’s always so awkward when adults comment on your age. They look at you and say You’re still so young or You’re getting so old, and you want to shake your head and say I’m not young or old. I’m just me.

  “Mikayla always tells me how funny you and Twig are,” she said. And it took all my willpower not to be like, Wait, what? And then she added, “I think she misses you.”

  I had to put the whole conversation out of my head because adults have no idea what they’re talking about—and if I’d thought about that any more, my brain might have exploded. This night was already too much, and I think Mrs. Menzer sensed that because she didn’t say anything else on the drive to my house.