Owen slid the lab sheet off the table and skimmed through the instructions. “Not this one again. Didn’t we do this foam experiment in class last year?”
Students were busy carting buckets of supplies over to the four-top lab tables.
“No, year before that.” I grabbed a Bunsen burner from the back counter. “Cassidy’s not that good-looking.”
Owen crumpled up the instructions and tossed them toward the trash can. He missed. Of course. “You can’t ignore the facts, Tor. Process of natural selection. Girls like Cassidy Hyde are genetically superior to the rest of us.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, lighting the burner. “I’m not exactly a troll, Owen.”
He did a once-over. “It’s hard to tell,” he said matter-of-factly. “Because you dress like a boy half the time.”
“I do not!” I looked down, pouting. “I dress, I don’t know, boho … chic. That’s a thing, right?” I tugged at the frayed edge of my oversized tee, trying to recall the last time I went shopping.
Owen measured out a half cup of 6 percent hydrogen peroxide. Our teacher insisted that we do the experiments with the rest of the class, but we were allowed to work on our own projects afterward. “Why are you getting your granny panties all in a wad? Who cares? I would take you over a Cassidy any day.” He smirked. “They’re a dime a dozen, which”—he scratched his chin—“observationally really serves to further my hypothesis on the increased prevalence of physically gifted human specimens, but that’s beside the point.”
I filled the beaker with water and turned the valve to start the flow of propane gas. My chin hovered an inch over the tabletop. “You know, maybe you’re right.” I frowned, straightening. “Take black panthers for instance. They’re more plentiful than the spotted leopards but they actually are leopards. They’re just melanistic.”
“Meaning?” He poured a tablespoon of yeast into the beaker once the water had started to bubble.
“Black panthers are hot leopards. The color is a recessive trait but since it’s more advantageous for ambushing…” I bit my lip, thinking. “They win.”
“See, and all this time I thought we were talking about Cassidy.”
I added green food coloring to the mixture and turned up the flame while Owen drained the hydrogen peroxide. “I’m saying that physical characteristics are the greater indicator of genetic evolution.”
“At least two significant parts of her are highly evolved.” A dollop of dish soap. An ingredient Owen and I had thought to add on our own without consulting the teacher.
“That’s it.” I walked around the lab table. I could never think while stationary. “Doesn’t the greatest scientific breakthrough of the century deserve the best model on the market?”
The flame reflected two orange flecks in the lenses of Owen’s glasses. “I think what you’re referring to is the eugenics movement. Probably not ground you want to tread.” I ignored him. What I was proposing was not the select breeding of the human race for the most desirable characteristics. I was thinking about Adam. And he at least was one of a kind.
The beaker’s mint-green liquid had begun to transform and expand into a swirling foam that overflowed the glass and spurted out onto the table.
“Need I remind you that you’re contemplating letting Adam date people that once left a dead fish in your gym locker to convince people you’d stopped showering again.”
“It was your idea,” I snapped. “Plus, the weird part is that everyone was nice to me today. It was like they all had amnesia and made a collective decision to forget who I was. Even Paisley was tolerable.”
“People in town would give up both kidneys if they thought it’d make our football team win. Hanging out with you is mildly more comfortable than death by organ donation. If Adam likes you, then so do they. Stir.” He pointed. I grabbed the pipette and swished it around our mixture. I had promised Adam we’d find some other way to make him feel, and while I watched froth tendrils crawl along the black surface of the countertop, I realized that I might know what that something was. What he needed was a chemical reaction.
“Can I borrow forty bucks?” I picked my bag off the floor. The lab partners next to us had somehow succeeded only in boiling water, or at least that was what it looked like.
“Were you even listening to me?” Owen scratched behind his ear. “Because sometimes I get this weird sense that voices in your head are way louder than the voices out here.” He drew a circle in the air with his pencil eraser.
“Please, you make me sound crazy.”
“I think you accomplish that all on your own.”
I held my hand out, palm up. Owen stared at it.
“You literally just won a hundred dollars last night at the carnival. What do you need a loan from the Bloch Bank for?”