by S. C. Davis
“I should—” he stumbled, “I don’t—I mean...”
“It's all right Ethan,” Chase interrupted. “It's not your fault. We'll be fine. Let's get back to brainstorming together.”
I had never heard such compassion coming from Chase, and something told me he had just shown us more of his real self than he ever had before.
By the end of the meeting, we had tossed around a couple ideas between bites of pizza. Ethan participated in the brainstorm, but it turns out he hadn’t given any thought to how the project could be done after all. He had been too busy basking in the glory of being selected as the peer advisor to think too much about it.
“I'm not a genius,” Ethan said, hanging his head in embarrassment after offering up a few mediocre ideas. “It’s just that I’m good at studying and memorizing and taking tests, so I get good grades.”
Chase once again got up and clamped his huge hands onto Ethan's shoulders, although this time there was care behind the gesture.
“Dude, stop being so hard on yourself. None of us are geniuses. You're still going to be a valuable part of this team, so buck up and let's get to work,” Chase said as he tousled the hair of the much smaller Ethan.
As it turns out, this would become a typical interaction between those two all the way up through high school graduation, as Chase would develop a protective big-brother role over Ethan.
I smiled as their exchange made me think of my relationship with Alma. Then I felt a little tug in my chest as I realized something: I hadn't spent much time with her at all in the weeks since the project began.
Was I the one who wasn't around, or was it her? It must be me...I would have noticed if she were withdrawing from me. Had she noticed? Was she hurt by it? I had to shake off the thoughts and make a mental note to deal with it later. It was time to get this disappearing act done once and for all.
Chapter 9
The Physicist
ON A COLDER THAN usual morning in late September, Dr. Terry Wyatt walked briskly along the winding sidewalks through the small campus back to his lab. He had been on to something much earlier that morning while contemplating his research, and he reluctantly left his lab mid-thought in order to go and give his eight o'clock lecture.
He was distracted for the whole hour and fifteen minutes, and now couldn't wait to resume his work. He was close; he could just feel it.
Upon arriving back at his lab, he found one of his graduate students, Kieran, organizing his own workbench. Kieran was attending the college on a scholarship from Ireland. He was cheerful and funny, and was the most hard-working student in Dr. Wyatt's lab.
“Good mornin’ to ya, Dr. Wyatt,” Kieran said in his charming Irish accent. “How was Introductory Physics?”
Dr. Wyatt grunted. “I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention.”
Kieran laughed. “It takes a truly talented professor to not even pay attention to his own lectures.”
“I was on to something good this morning before the class. My mind wasn't ready to leave it yet,” Dr. Wyatt said as he tossed his briefcase and jacket into a chair. He marched over to his workbench and checked his notes for where he had left off that morning.
Kieran had never seen his advisor so intensely preoccupied by anything. Intrigued, he walked over to Dr. Wyatt's side and tilted his head to read the notes.
“Balsam?” Kieran asked, once he was able to decipher the chicken-scratch on Dr. Wyatt's notes. “A tree?”
“Yes. Well, no, not the tree. The resin from the tree. It's the clove oil that made me think of it. It reminded me of microscope slides.
Clove oil is used to dissolve Canada balsam resin, which makes the slide cover stick to the slide. The balsam acts like glue, and because the balsam, clove oil, and glass all have virtually the same refractive index, it stays transparent.”
“Makes sense,” agreed Kieran, waiting for the professor to continue.
“The only problem is, eventually the balsam turns yellowish once it dries and the oil evaporates. But back in the day, balsam was refined and used as a resin to construct eyeglass lenses. Once it was purified, it stayed clear.” Dr. Wyatt stopped and thought for a moment. So did Kieran.
“This might be the missing piece, Kieran,” Dr. Wyatt said. “This might be what makes our Jasper Oil harden and dry without affecting its ability to manipulate light refraction before it passes through the glass.”
“You’re thinking that if we dissolved refined, clear balsam into some clove oil, and added that to the Jasper Oil, it would dry hard, like in a microscope slide. So the oil wouldn’t rub off or evaporate,” Kieran said.
“Exactly!” Dr. Wyatt said. “I don’t believe adding these would alter the cloaking ability of the Jasper. But we’d, of course, need to test it.”
A knock on the door of the lab interrupted their thoughts.
“Yes come in,” Dr. Wyatt said, without looking up.
Kieran turned to see a man and a woman enter the lab. He didn’t recognize them as faculty. They certainly weren't students. The man, tall and solidly muscular, wore a well-tailored dark gray suit with dark sunglasses. His hair, overly gelled and jet-black, came to rest at the nape of his neck in small neat curls.
The woman was short and petite, but not skinny. She also wore an expensive-looking skirt suit in a surprisingly attractive hunter green. Her shiny dark hair was pulled back into a neat bun, and everything else about her screamed perfection: manicured nails, a stylish tote bag, and flawless makeup with deep blood-red lips. She seemed confident and powerful, and she did all the talking.
“Dr. Wyatt, I presume?” she said in a stiff British accent.
“We do apologize for the unannounced visit, but we would love a moment of your time to chat,” the woman said, presenting a brilliant white smile.
Dr. Wyatt, being the polite man that he was, tried to hide his frustration over the interruption of his deep thoughts.
“Uh, yes ma'am, I'd be happy to assist you,” he said as he forced himself to turn away from his workbench and shake hands with the strangers.
Kieran noticed out of the corner of his eye that the tall man was staring right at him, rather than Dr. Wyatt.
“To what do I owe the pleasure? Oh, my manners. This is Kieran, my best PhD student. He's working on a study for—”
As if the woman read the mind of her silent colleague, she interrupted the professor. “Dr. Wyatt. Or may I call you Terry?” she said with a wink.
“Yes, of course,” Dr. Wyatt said with a slight blush.
“Terry. Do you perhaps have a private office we could adjourn to for this conversation?” the woman said.
Dr. Wyatt began to laugh heartily, looking over at Kieran. Kieran snickered as well, knowing just what was so funny.
Dr. Wyatt's desk in his office was a mythical object piled under years’ worth of collections of papers, old lab equipment, and random trinkets he had found interesting at one point or another. The floor, filing cabinets, and chairs were just as disguised as the desk.
“Oh I have an office, sure. But it would take me an hour to clear a spot for a proper lady like yourself to have a seat,” Dr. Wyatt said once he had composed himself.
“Heck, I don't think I've spent more than fifteen minutes in there myself in the last five years. Unless I'm looking for an old paper or something,” Dr. Wyatt said, quite amused with himself. This was one of Kieran's favorite qualities about Dr. Wyatt: his ability to laugh at himself.
The woman's face started to show the beginnings of annoyance, but she caught herself right away and revived the beaming smile. The man continued to stare at Kieran, who simply decided to take his cue and save Dr. Wyatt any further embarrassment.
“Actually, I have to head off to a lecture myself. No need to excavate the office,” he said with a small nervous laugh.
Somehow, he didn’t trust these people. Something seemed off about them. They did not seem like the type of people who would have any sort of business with Dr. Wyatt, or interest i
n his work. What exactly did they want?
Kieran gathered some of his research material and exited the lab. He closed the door behind him, leaving it cracked a bit. He thought for a moment about staying and eavesdropping from the hallway.
Come on, Kieran, he said to himself. It's none of your business.
He reluctantly pulled the door shut and walked away.
Chapter 10
An Invisibility Cloak
THE REST OF THE fifth meeting for the science project was spent brainstorming. We came up with some ideas, but eventually decided against each one. We couldn’t quite come up with something we thought would impress Mr. Gregory.
Britta had been up pacing the floor for a few minutes when she spoke up.
“So here's what I'm thinking. We've been focusing on making something disappear by making the object itself change somehow. Change into a different color, change to a different phase, stuff like that. But what if we started to think more about another object causing our object to be invisible?” she suggested.
“But one of the rules says that it can't be hidden behind another object,” Ethan countered.
“I know, but I'm not thinking of hiding it behind anything. I'm thinking of another object indirectly making our object invisible. I was thinking about an invisibility cloak,” she said.
We all snickered.
“Really, Britta?” Chase teased. “You know Harry Potter is fiction, right?”
“Yes, I'm well aware of that, thank you Chase,” she said, glaring at him. “I don't mean a literal invisibility cloak; I mean the idea of it. Visibility is just based on the manipulation of light, right?”
“Yeah, refraction! Of course!” Ethan said suddenly. At the mention of the word, I could see the wheels start to spin in Ethan’s head along with Britta’s.
“So you're saying if we can change the way light interacts with an object, our eyes wouldn't see it anymore?” I asked, sort of understanding.
“Guys, check this out,” Wes said from the computer. “Great thinking, Britta. I started Googling as soon as you said it.”
Wes pulled up a YouTube video of someone running a simple optics experiment. They submerged a small clear glass into a large beaker that was filled with cooking oil. When the glass was fully submerged, it became totally invisible.
“Wow,” Alexandra said with raised eyebrows. “How does that work?”
“The refractive index, which is basically the angle at which light bends when it hits an object, is different depending on the material. But it’s pretty much the same for oil and glass.
“If it were a different object in there, say a clear plastic cup which doesn't refract the same as oil, the light would pass through the oil, then bend again when it reached the cup. The bending of the light is what makes the cup visible to us,” Ethan explained. So there was the genius, coming back from hiding.
“So since the light doesn't bend anymore once it passes through the oil and reaches the glass, it's as if the glass isn't there at all,” Alexandra concluded.
“Right, or at least not to our eyes, it isn't,” Ethan said.
I was getting excited and I felt like we were on to something, but the fact that it was all over YouTube concerned me.
“This is a really cool idea and all, but remember what Mr. Gregory said? He already Googled a ton of ideas and I'm pretty sure he would’ve seen this one. I mean, look how many other videos there are showing the exact same thing,” I said as I pointed to the list of other videos on the right side of the screen.
“I agree,” said Alexandra. “I think it's worth exploring the topic more, though.”
“Yeah I'm sure this experiment is all over the place because it's so easy and cheap to do it. But it's only scratching the surface of the subject of optics. I think we just need to learn a little more about it and see if we can come up with something clever,” Wes said.
We all agreed, and began looking through our books and online to find more information on the topic. But it seemed like everything we could get our hands on was either too basic or too complicated for us to understand.
Eventually, Wes spoke again from the computer.
“The top search results for 'refractometry research' are for a few foreign labs and schools,” he said as he continued scrolling down the page. “A few schools in the Netherlands. One in South Africa. Then there's this American guy, Dr. Terry Wyatt. Wonder where he—HEY!” he said, and we all jumped.
“What?” I gasped.
“This Dr. Wyatt guy works at Bradbury College! Right in our own town!” he exclaimed.
“Oh my gosh, it's a sign from the universe,” Britta said dreamily.
“Sign or no sign, it's definitely something we should take advantage of,” I said. “My mom is a professor at Bradbury College too. I'll ask her about him tonight.”
Wes was still furiously scanning something on the screen, and a fascinated smile was forming on his face.
“This article talks about how he uses something called ‘metamaterials’ combined with basic principles of refraction to make organically derived invisibility cloaks! It sounds like it’s some seriously groundbreaking stuff!” Wes said excitedly. “Britta, you might have really started something.”
Chapter 11
Dodging the Mom Bullet
LATER THAT EVENING, I offered to help my mom fix dinner so that I could talk to her about Dr. Wyatt. My dad was always such a chatterbox at the table, so I figured I would ask her beforehand while I could get a word in edgewise. Plus, being such a natural in the kitchen, cooking relaxes me.
“Mom,” I began as I worked on dicing vegetables with my best Santoku knife, “do you know a professor at Bradbury named Dr. Terry Wyatt?”
Mom looked at me quizzically. “Yes. He's in the Physics department. I don't know him well, but I do know who he is. Why do you ask?”
“It's for the science project. We found him online while we were doing some research today on our topic. It's basically in his field, so we thought we might try to go talk to him,” I said.
Mom looked impressed at my level of effort.
“Oh, that's a good idea,” she said. “Now just so you know, he can be hard to pin down for a meeting. One of the things I know about him is that he refuses to hold open office hours during the week.
“He says that the lectures he teaches and the student work he has to grade take up enough of his time away from his own research, without dealing with students dropping in and asking questions on weekdays.
“But the college requires every faculty member to hold office hours. So, Dr. Wyatt has his on Sundays,” she said with a laugh, as if it were a running joke among the college employees.
“The policy didn’t specifically say that office hours had to be held on a weekday, so they had to allow it,” she said with an amused shrug.
“Huh,” I said, thinking that this guy sounded like quite a character already. “Well, we're kind of on a tight schedule, so I think we might have to go pay him a visit this Sunday then.”
“So who's 'we' exactly?” Mom asked.
“The other kids on the project. Britta Schwarz, Chase Ortiz, Wes—”
“Wait a minute,” Mom interrupted, setting her sauce-covered wooden spoon down abruptly and looking at me with narrowed eyes. “You've never said anything about a science project. Why is this the first time I'm hearing about it? And why such a tight deadline if it's a new project?”
I felt my face warming. How could I be so stupid? I hadn't mentioned the science project to my parents at all. I couldn't think of any way to cover it up without hinting that I was failing, so I had just decided not to tell them at all. Now, that was coming back to haunt me.
Think, Jenna. Think quick. You're good at this. What's it gonna be this time?
“It's for extra credit,” I blurted out. Once again, not entirely a lie.
Mom's brow furrowed. “Do you need the extra credit, Jenna?” she asked, looking at me suspiciously.
“Ha, well, u
m. Even if you already had a million dollars, wouldn't you still want another million dollars if you had the chance?” I said, laughing nervously. I thought I sounded like a complete idiot. The pause afterward seemed to last an eternity, and I waited for Mom to call me out.
“Hmm, good point,” she finally said, picking her spoon back up and stirring the saucepan. “Well that makes me proud, sweetie,” she said and smiled at me. “I look forward to seeing that big fat A-plus on your report card.”
I couldn't believe I had dodged that bullet. I didn't even have to technically lie. I mean, the project was extra credit...mandatory extra credit, but still. And I avoided the second question by asking another question! How slick was that? I guess playing “Questions” during my summer improv class was paying off in an unexpected, though not entirely innocent, way.
The only problem now was that Mom was going to expect an A in science. Even if this project brought me up to a passing grade, there's no way it would take it straight up to the top. I was going to have to figure out something. I decided I would have to deal with that problem later, and for now focus on getting the project completed.
Chapter 12
Jenna the Jerk
THE NEXT DAY WAS Thursday, and I knew the science group wouldn’t have a chance to meet again until the following week. We only had one meeting left, and we were going to have to finish the whole project in that one hour.
We needed to get the visit in with Dr. Wyatt as soon as possible, and it sounded like Sunday would be our only opportunity. When the bell rang for lunch, I rushed to the cafeteria so that I would have enough time to talk to each of the other kids.
“Hey guys!” I said cheerfully when I got to my usual lunch table. Julianne, Audrey, and Ashton all greeted me in their normal ways, but Alma was quiet.
