“I hope this works,” Birdie wished out loud.
Another groan. This time from Mia. Her horn slid all the way down her forehead. It bumped over the top of her nose, dangling on her chin until she pulled it off.
“Oh. Hold it! I’ll grab more glue for you, Mia.”
Soon the rest of the horns toppled off as well. And no extra amount of glue helped. The horns just got more slippery.
“The glue’s not working,” stated Mia, which was pretty obvious.
“It can’t be dragons vs. horses,” moaned Jeremy.
Mrs. Hansberry strolled closer, frowning thoughtfully. “I’m afraid you’re right—Dragons vs. Horses doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.”
Avery wrinkled her nose. “I don’t get why this is happening.”
“It’s probably just not strong enough glue,” I said.
“But it’s theatrical quality,” said Avery with a huff. “My dads use it to stick feathers on masks.”
“Masks, did you say?” said Mrs. Hansberry. She inspected the bottle. “Hmm, perhaps this is the wrong sort of glue. Since ours needs to act as an adhesive on skin.”
“But not peel anyone’s skin off,” I said.
“We could tie rubber bands to the horns,” suggested Mia. “Or stick them on headbands.”
“But these golden horns are perfect,” said Birdie. “And the rubber bands or headbands would look so goofy.”
“These horns have to work,” I said.
Suddenly, the stage went completely dark. “Sorry!” yelled Elijah. “Something’s wonky with the lights.”
“How are we going to rehearse the dance?” cried Birdie. “With the dragons and unicorns. I mean horses. We can’t even see!”
She did have a point.
“Oh my. Children, let’s try to remain calm.” Mrs. Hansberry sighed dramatically. “I can see that things are heading in the wrong direction.”
“And I didn’t even say good luck.” I clapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh. Sorry! Didn’t mean to say that.”
Birdie rolled her eyes, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. What bad thing was going to happen next?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PERFECTLY ROTTEN
Entropy (noun). The randomness of molecules, like how many different ways they can totally rearrange themselves during a reaction. Sort of like all the different ways a bunch of kids can move their desks to confuse a substitute teacher.
AFTER EVERYONE TOOK A BREAK, loud groans echoed from the lighting booth. Obviously, Elijah and his crew still couldn’t figure out how to fix the lights. On the stage, which I’d been lighting with the flashlight from my emergency kit, two unicorns held their horns in place. The others had given up. A half dozen horns lay in a jumbled heap on the floor, like some unicorn horn junkyard.
With a deep sigh, Mrs. Hansberry frowned at her watch. “Elijah, please turn on the house lights.” Instantly, the theater was no longer dark, and the magical illusion of Unicornland disappeared. The hulking volcanoes were just giant cardboard rectangles. The rainbow was clearly only a cellophane banner.
“I’m afraid I’m going to end rehearsal a tad early, before anything else breaks,” said Mrs. Hansberry. “Everyone is on edge. Why don’t you all run around the field for some good fresh air before your parents pick you up?”
A bunch of kids went outside to play a game of pick-up soccer. Normally, I would have joined them, but I needed some space. Even though that only made me feel worse. Settling next to a sugar maple tree with golden and red leaves, I breathed in the cool October air. Sure, it was a bit nippy, but that would help me think more clearly. Underneath my legs, the bumpy knots from the roots of the maple made me feel like I wasn’t alone. Actually, I wasn’t. Birdie sat silently across from me with her sketch pad balanced on her knees.
“What are you working on?” I asked.
“You’ll see.” She wiggled her fingers in the air as if she were about to do a card trick.
I opened up my biography about Marie Curie, who won two Nobel Prizes for science. It didn’t take me long to get lost in those pages. Wow, Marie Curie was unstoppable. Back when girls couldn’t study science in universities in Poland, she met with friends in secret locations that they called a flying university. They moved from building to building, so they wouldn’t get caught. I tried to imagine my life if chemistry were off-limits. No more reading science books or watching Dr. Caroline. Worst of all, no more experiments.
Whenever I got frustrated, my dad always told me to go outside and blow off some steam. Only sometimes you could be just as frustrated outside as inside. Like Birdie sitting next to me. With a frustrated grunt, she crumpled a sheet from her pad.
“C’mon. It can’t be that bad.” I reached to pick up the paper, but Birdie grabbed it away.
“Oh, it is. Trust me.”
“You working on arms again?”
Birdie hasn’t figured out arms yet, so she makes all of her people with their hands behind their back.
“I’m drawing a unicorn. Mrs. Hansberry asked me to make one for the cover of the program.”
“Wow, Birdie. That’s awesome. You’re great at unicorns.”
“I just can’t get the proportions right on this one.”
“You’ll figure it out. I know it.”
I could see the hint of a smile. And some of the geese in the sky honked as if they agreed.
Soon I went back inside the theater to check in with Mrs. Hansberry about the plans for tomorrow. Thursday was going to be the rehearsal where everyone was working very hard to be off-book. Mrs. Hansberry also told me that she expected the dress rehearsal to go much better on Friday. But not too much better. “In theater, the rule is if you have a terrible dress rehearsal,” she explained in her calm soothing voice, “you’ll have a wonderful opening night. And given that our opening night is also our closing night, that’s a comforting thought.”
As she handed me a checklist of things to do, I tried to relax.
Mrs. Hansberry placed her clipboard in her bag and grabbed her coat. “Expect the dress rehearsal to be a rather interesting day as we work out the wrinkles. Prepare for Murphy’s Law.”
“Is that a science thing?”
“Not exactly. More like folk wisdom created by a pessimist. According to Murphy’s Law, whatever can go wrong will go wrong.”
“Hey, that sounds like entropy. You know, the principle that everything will naturally become a mess.”
“They do sound similar, don’t they?”
As I started to grab my backpack to leave, Elijah emerged from the lighting booth. “Are things better?” I asked, although I figured with Murphy’s Law they shouldn’t be.
“With Mr. Anderson’s help, yes,” he said. Mr. Anderson was a dad volunteering in the booth. “We figured out it was a frayed cord that made the whole thing go kablooey.”
“Like our nerves.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good it’s all fixed.” Actually, it was bad. I was the assistant director. I shouldn’t have left to go outside, even though Mrs. Hansberry had encouraged me to do so. It was my job to make sure everything was okay.
When I grabbed my backpack, I drew in a sharp breath. “Ah! Not again!”
Sticky globs of glue clung to the outside of my zippered compartments. At least this time it was my bag and not my mom’s. And I could tell it was the theater glue. That’s what I got for sticking horns on unicorns all afternoon.
Later in my mom’s minivan on the way home, I thought about all the stuff that went wrong and what I could do tomorrow to make it better. I tapped my chin quickly. Okay, more like frantically.
“What’s up, Kate?” asked Mom, who definitely could read minds.
I didn’t want to admit that it had been a really tough day. That somehow it felt a little bit like my fault. If
I knew what I was doing as assistant director, I could have helped out more.
It was the assistant director’s job to keep the show together. To keep things moving as efficiently as an enzyme. Enzymes break down and build molecules snappy quick. And all I was doing was the first part. But I could do better. I knew I could. And I knew I would. First problem to tackle? Unicorn horn glue.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE STICKIEST SITUATION
Colloids (noun). Mixtures in which the particles are evenly stirred in everywhere; it looks all nice and smooth like milk. Also, like a jump-worthy mud puddle.
FLINGING OPEN THE KITCHEN CUPBOARD, I dug out anything that could be used to make glue. I was determined to figure out a way to keep the unicorn horns from falling off—and to do it quickly, since I really didn’t have much time. It was close to dinner. I found a jug of Great Lakes Maple Syrup, wildflower honey, blueberry jam, and a jar of chunky peanut butter.
But I didn’t think any of those things would work to make face glue. Though they would all be tasty on bread.
When Dad made a sugar water concoction for the hummingbirds, it got pretty sticky on the counter if it spilled. A sugar mixture could probably be used to stick paper onto someone’s forehead, but not a cardboard horn.
On the internet, I discovered that special effects people in Hollywood used something called spirit gum—which sounded perfect for a play full of spirit, which ours was. But it was supposed to be really hard to work with and took forever to dry. Anyway, I didn’t have time to order it.
The unicorns needed a strong glue. That way they could whinny, toss their manes, and prance onstage without the horns smashing to the floor.
Adhesive is a more science-y word for glue, and it made me feel like a real scientist to say it. “Adhesive,” I said aloud, imagining myself as a professor in a lab surrounded by my future graduate students. “Adhesive. Yes, please pass me some of that adhesive.”
Mom popped out of her office in back of the kitchen. “Did you want me, Kate?”
“No, I was just talking to myself,” I admitted.
“That’s supposed to happen when you’re my age,” said Mom. “When you have too much on your to-do list and get frazzled.”
“Guess I’m ten going on forty-one then.”
“Thirty-nine,” corrected Mom. It was this running joke that she never grew older and that every year was her thirty-ninth birthday. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know that the grant committee just asked for a bit more documentation,” she continued. “So back to the grindstone. I’ll be in my office if you need me. Tell Dad when you see him that it would be good to eat dinner a little later tonight.”
“Sure, I better get back to work, too. I’m trying to make face glue.”
“Maybe when you get your formula, you can also glue me to my desk. That way I can stay put and figure out this grant.”
“Watch out. I might just try that.”
Pacing around the kitchen, I tried to figure out how to make the perfect face glue. Once in Girl Scouts, we had made glue from milk, vinegar, and baking soda. It looked like Elmer’s white glue. I decided to try it. I heated a little bit of regular milk from the carton.
When I whisked in the vinegar, the milk curdled. “That’s a chemical reaction,” I murmured, staring in fascination at the gloppy pieces that looked like cottage cheese. I used a paper towel to filter out the liquid.
I added a little bit of water and baking soda. The mixture bubbled and looked like sea foam. I knew exactly why. It was the carbon dioxide making a great escape.
The texture was nice and lumpy. If it was too watery, it would slide right off someone’s skin. I needed those lumps.
I also needed to find a test subject.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE TESTY TEST SUBJECT
Experiment (noun). A scientific protocol that’s used to test a hypothesis. If you think that chocolate milk tastes better with three scoops of cocoa instead of two, you’ll have to test it out.
“LIAM!” I CRIED. “LIAM!” I searched in the family room. Nope. No little brother in sight. Or in the garage. Or outside tossing a basketball in his little kid-sized hoop.
Dribble wagged his tail and brushed up against me. “Where’s Liam, Dribble?” I asked, rubbing under his chin. “Probably in his room.”
As I bounded upstairs, Dribble trotted after me. The hallway and the bedroom were dark.
“Liam!” I called, flicking on the hall light.
“I’m not here!” called Liam.
I charged into his pitch-black bedroom. The shades were drawn, and there was a Liam-shaped lump under the covers. “What are you doing?”
“Pretending the power went out. Like what happened to you at drama camp. Only I can’t use my flashlight to survive.”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t have batteries.” He let out a whoosh of air. “It’s getting really boring in here. There’s nothing to see.”
“Hey, I’ve got a great idea. And it’s waaaaaay better than a fake power outage.”
Five minutes later, Liam sat in a kitchen chair. “Will it hurt?” he asked, pointing at the glue. Then the horn.
“No, it’s going to feel cool. As in literally cool and not warm.”
He squirmed in his chair.
“Stop moving.” The experiment wouldn’t work unless he did. But I might as well have told him to stop breathing. “Liam, I mean it.”
“I can’t.” He leaned over and tapped his forehead. “Can’t get a song out of my brain.”
Grabbing him by the waist, I tipped him upside down. “Now your song will fall right out of your ears,” I said.
He giggled and told me it dripped out of his left ear.
I got him right side up again to test out the white glue. With a paintbrush, I coated his forehead with a dab of the glue and plonked on a horn that I had made out of a paper towel roll.
“Okay, now hold it in place,” I urged. “At the count of ten, let go. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi—”
“Why do you say Mississippi? We don’t live there.”
“It’s just the state you’re supposed to say when you count, Liam.”
“That’s not fair to the other states. Say Michigan,” he insisted.
“Fine.” I began to count using Michigan.
Only when I got to six, Liam wiggled so much that the horn slid right off.
“How about you hold it until twenty-five Michigan?” I suggested.
That didn’t work either. Neither did one hundred Michigan. Liam said he was as bored as sitting in the dark.
“Maybe you could glue it on Dribble,” he said.
“No. He’s got fur. I’ve got to figure out something that will stick to people’s skin.” The problem had to be that my formula was water-based like Elmer’s. Which meant basically any kind of moisture would mess it up. Including five-year-old kid sweat.
“How about use Super Glue,” suggested Liam.
“No way. You want me to pull off your skin?”
“Yeah! So I can be a skeleton for Halloween.”
I laughed. “Only you would think of that.”
Checking online, I finally found a face glue that I could modify.
I gathered:
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup corn syrup
2 teaspoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons food coloring
1/2 teaspoon glitter
1 medium bowl
craft sticks
Then I put everything in a saucepan over medium heat. Liam stirred constantly until it was well blended and thick.
“I want to try it!” cried Liam.
“First it has to cool down.” I wanted the glue to blend in with the horn, so I added some
yellow food coloring and glitter.
This time, we put it on the horn, and Liam held it in place for about a minute. He began to neigh. The horn didn’t fall off.
“Toss your head.” It still didn’t fall off.
“Jump up and down,” I instructed. “And toss your head at the same time.”
Liam jumped and tossed his head, yelling, “Neigh! Neigh!” Both Mom and Dad poked their heads into the kitchen.
“What are you up to?” asked Dad.
“I’m a unicorn,” cried Liam. “And I might be one forever. Because we don’t know if the horn will be stuck until I’m old and shriveled like Grandpa Jack.”
“That’s not nice, Liam,” scolded Mom.
“Okay, just old and wrinkled,” said Liam.
“You know how to put things very pleasantly.” Dad put his hands up to his face, but I could see he was grinning.
“Let’s all pull Liam’s horn together,” suggested Mom, “and see what happens.”
“Maybe my face will come off,” said Liam hopefully.
At the count of three Michigan, we pulled the horn right off. Everything was fine, except that my hands were gluey. When I went to open my bag to grab some tissues inside the side zippered compartment, it was filled with glue. Plus, the tissues in the compartment were filled with glue. I couldn’t figure out what had happened. I hadn’t opened it all day. And there had never been that much glue on my hands.
It was time to do some more investigating.
After swiping inside the compartment with my finger, I inspected it.
Just as I thought.
It was the same bad unicorn glue. Avery’s glue. It just had to be Avery. Again.
I thought we were done with this!
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE REAL DEAL
Matter (noun). Anything that has mass and takes up space. That means kids, dragons, and brownies are matter!
Kate the Chemist: Dragons vs. Unicorns Page 6