by Karen Rivers
Science Fair
The silky-haired, ribbon-voiced mean girl was called Heaven.
Sometimes people are just grossly misnamed, Nat thought.
Like Solly, whose name meant “sun” in French. Solly wasn’t always very sunshiney—although she was at first, when they were new friends.
Back when they were both on the same page.
Before everything changed.
Sometimes Nat worried that there was something wrong with her, that she was good only at beginnings, but not middles and definitely not endings.
It was hard to explain, even to herself, but even when she was angriest at Solly, she didn’t hate her. She loved her. She just didn’t like her very much.
It was complicated.
But with Heaven, it wasn’t that way at all. It was simple. She didn’t like her at all. Nat was worried she actually hated Heaven, and she didn’t want to be someone who hated anyone. Heaven was acting as though Nat were auditioning to be her friend, which couldn’t be more wrong. Nat didn’t want anything to do with Heaven. If she had to pick a friend who wasn’t Harry, she’d pick one of the nicer, quieter girls, like Maggie or Amelia, who sat in the back and secretly read e-readers on their laps instead of listening to Mr. Hajeezi. But they were already a tight pair, like the pair that Nat and Solly had been. Heaven’s group was bigger and looser, and she could probably “get in” if she wanted to, but she really, truly didn’t.
She didn’t want to be friends with anyone else except Harry.
But Harry didn’t feel the same way, as it turned out.
He had sat next to her on the log at the bottom of the path.
He had stared out at the sea, instead of looking right at her.
And he had explained that she was “wrecking” things for him.
Nat almost couldn’t stand it. She felt like she was on fire. She’d wanted to throw herself into the waves or scream or both. She blinked hard to stop herself from crying right then and there, sitting in the science lab with stupid Heaven doing this stupid project.
“Why are you staring at me?” said Heaven. She touched her hair. She did that a lot. It bugged Nat. But what about Heaven didn’t bug her?
Nat looked away. “I wasn’t staring. I was thinking.”
“You were. I saw you. When you’re caught, you have to admit it. You could just say ‘sorry,’” said Heaven.
“Fine, sorry, whatever.” Nat put her head down on the cool, shiny black counter of the science lab, where she and Heaven were meant to be making oobleck. She felt funny. Feverish or something. Her body was hurting. Either she was sick, or it was because of what happened the day before with Harry. Or because of what happened after that, when Harry left, walking up the path without Nat and rolling away down the road.
The after thing was that she and her dad had seen the Lion.
It was a lot different being famous in Canada than it was being famous in America. The locals treated XAN GALLAGHER very politely in Canada, Nat had noticed, like he had a brain injury or a mental disorder.
“Sorry, Mr. Gallagher?” they said, turning their apology into a question at the end. “A bit of a crowd has gathered by the entrance; would you like to use the back door?”
In San Francisco, people were always screaming when they saw XAN GALLAGHER in public. No one offered them the back door when they lived in America. They all wanted things from him, like he owed them: a photo or an autograph or a handful of his famous shirt. And if someone made a grab at him, everyone else followed suit, until sometimes there was a mini-riot of people all grabbing for her dad’s clothing.
They took pictures in Canada, too. Sometimes. But it was a lot quieter.
It was a lot better.
“It’s no problem,” her dad had said, back in SF and NY and all the other places. “Photos are free. This guy’s just makin’ his living. We all gotta work! It’s the price of fame.” But Nat knew that he hated being followed and photographed. He especially hated when she was followed and photographed.
But he never let on how much it bugged him.
Sometimes he even hugged the photographers, lifting them right off their feet. “Give ’em a story!” he said. “I’m givin’ you a story!”
But while Nat’s dad might have said it was “no problem,” if it weren’t a problem, they wouldn’t keep moving and keep moving and keep moving.
The night before, Nat and her dad found out—again—that you can’t outrun fame. It just packs its bags and comes padding along right behind you, camera raised.
If by “it,” Nat meant “the Lion.”
They’d gone up to the Food Mart to get ice cream. Nat’s dad always bought her ice cream when she was sad, and he knew she was sad. He’d tried to jolly her out of it, or to get her to explain it, but she’d refused. So he’d decided that ice cream was the only thing for it.
Nat was just reaching into the freezer to get the last all-fruit, no-sugar sherbet for her dad—she’d already gotten the mint chocolate chip real stuff for herself—when her dad froze in his tracks and made a ribbiting sound, almost like a frog.
Nat looked, and there was the Lion, camera aimed, crouching behind a display of corn on the cob.
“No,” she said. Her heart lurched.
Nat’s dad didn’t pick up the Lion that time and give him a hug, but he raised his hand in a half wave and did his signature one-eyebrow raise. Nat could tell he was trying.
The Lion yelled, “GOT IT, MAN!” and scurried away with his photo.
Just like in SF.
Nat put the sherbet in the basket her dad was carrying.
But then she noticed that her dad’s hands were shaking the tiniest bit. That’s very un-Dad-like, she’d thought. Now Nat still had that thought in her head, but she didn’t know what to do with it.
It’s hard to imagine someone as big and jovial and famous and safe and giant as her dad actually being anxious, but why else would his hands shake?
After the Lion left, her dad had walked two aisles over and selected a box of sugary cereal. His body was a temple, he said often, but sometimes his temple worshipped on its knees at the altar of Fruity Pebbles.
It was his one weakness.
He said it was because it tasted like his childhood. It reminded him of being a kid, of the time before he was XAN GALLAGHER.
“We all contain multitudes,” he’d told Nat. “Everyone isn’t ever all one thing.”
Nat hated sugar not because of the taste, but because it made her teeth feel squeaky and strange. She liked crisp fruit and crunchy almost-but-not-quite-burned toast, food that was sharp and convincing in her mouth.
BUT she also liked mint chocolate chip ice cream, so she got it.
It made perfect sense to her.
“Yep yep,” she said.
By the time they got to the checkout, he wasn’t shaking anymore, but she could tell that he was upset. She could tell that Canada had been ruined now, for her dad.
Nat knew at that moment they for sure wouldn’t be staying past June. She tried not to think about it though. Thinking about it hurt more than she would have thought. Thinking about it made her want to cry, and she was already close to crying because of Harry.
She was miserable for the rest of the day. Her dad seemed miserable, too. At least, he left her alone, which he almost never did. He didn’t even work out.
Everything had gone bad, all at the same time, like milk you accidentally left out on the counter, and when you poured it, all you had was curdled lumps.
• • •
Oobleck was water and cornstarch mixed together. There was nothing complicated about it; it was just those two things. Heaven and Nat sat next to each other, using the school’s iPad, and watched a bunch of YouTube videos of people making it. That was the “research” part of their science fair project.
I
t was, according to the Internet, a popular thing to make in preschools. It obviously should have been very easy.
But their oobleck was a mess. It refused to come together. It was impossible to stir. It turned as hard as a rock under the tines of the fork, but turned to water as soon as they stopped trying.
“You do it this time,” said Heaven. “It feels gross. I have to wash my hands.”
It was their tenth attempt. They had almost no cornstarch left.
“Fine,” said Nat. “No problem.”
Heaven swished away, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she walked. She was all about the hair. Nat flipped her own hair, but then felt dumb, so she pretended she was just trying to stretch her neck. She did not want to be a hair flipper. She did not want to be anything like Heaven.
Heaven was awful.
Since the day before, everything had felt awful.
Maybe she was sick, she decided. She had eaten two spoonfuls of Fruity Pebbles to try to cheer her dad up. Every time he bought them, he was sure that she’d love them. And every time, she didn’t.
Even thinking about them made something in her stomach churn and threaten.
Nat stuck a fork into the cornstarch and water and tried once more to stir it into something that resembled what was in the videos, but she couldn’t.
The stuff was still like concrete. Then she tilted the bowl from side to side and it turned into watery soup. It was supposed to be oozy. Not soupy. Goo. Not water.
Nothing was as it was supposed to be.
Certainly not Nat.
Definitely not Harry, who was supposed to be her BFF.
Not even Canada, which was supposed to be paparazzi-free.
And especially not XAN GALLAGHER, who was supposed to be superhuman and not ever anxious. Definitely never shaky.
“Everything is wrong,” she said out loud. “Nothing is working.” She slammed the fork down on the worktop.
“It’s not my fault,” said Heaven. “I was following the instructions. You must have messed it up.”
They both stared at the oozy mess.
The magic of oobleck was in its impenetrable surface tension. (Nat wondered if people could have impenetrable surface tension. She felt like she could definitely use some.) They had watched one video where someone filled a whole pool with oobleck and people rode bikes on it. As long as they were moving, it was fine, but if they stopped pedaling, they sank.
There was no chance anyone could ride a bike on the surface of their oobleck.
Nat dumped in some more cornstarch.
“It might be OK,” she said. Heaven delicately wiped her hands on a paper towel. “Maybe it’s supposed to start out like this.”
“I hate this lame project,” said Heaven. “I wanted to make a volcano.”
“Oh,” said Nat. “Well, I hate it, too.” She wondered privately if Heaven meant that she hated working with Nat and that she would rather work with her real friend, Shay. Shay was very pretty but, like Heaven, was pretty mean. They deserved each other, Nat thought. She didn’t want anything to do with either of them. But the rest of the girls in the class—Amber, Ashley, and Catrina—were all in Heaven’s “squad,” too.
Shay was working with a boy named Kevin. Kevin was cute and tall and smart and pretty nice, a combo that should make him crush-worthy, but Nat didn’t have a crush. She didn’t want one.
Maybe she never would.
Besides, Kevin was best friends with Seth, and Seth was the reason why Harry didn’t want to hang out with Nat.
All Nat wanted was the kind of friend you could call and say, “Something happened!” and that person would say, “What? What happened? Are you OK?” That kind of friend.
She’d thought she had one, in Harry.
Duh, she thought.
She got it—why he’d want to be in with Kevin and Seth—but it sucked. She knew that it wasn’t personal.
But it also was.
Nat blinked some more. She didn’t want to start crying right there in the classroom while her fork bounced off the surface of the mess she was making. “My eyes hurt,” she told Heaven, just in case she’d noticed all the blinking Nat had been doing. “Something has fumes maybe.”
Heaven sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything,” she said. “Your face is all blotchy.”
“Allergies,” lied Nat. “Maybe I’m allergic to cornstarch.”
“You should take a pill or something,” said Heaven. It sounded almost like she cared. “You could go to the sick room and lie down.”
“Thanks,” said Nat. “But I’m OK.” She smiled at Heaven. “Thanks,” she repeated.
Maybe if she got to know Heaven and Shay, she would like them. No one was all bad. Maybe they were just jerks about Harry because their parents were terrible. You couldn’t blame someone for having rotten parents. Take Solly, for example. Her mother was truly terrible.
And Solly was at least half bad, in that she had done some mean, dumb things. But Nat couldn’t really fault her for being excited about boobs and boys and her period when her mom was sort of famous for having huge boobs and lots of boyfriends. (Nothing period-related though.) Lots of people were like that. Boys-and-boobs people. Maybe even most people. It was just her, Nat, who didn’t want to think about it.
“Why do you keep saying ‘thanks’?” said Heaven. “I didn’t even do anything. You don’t have to be grateful.”
“Rude,” muttered Nat.
“Sorry?” said Heaven.
“I’m not grateful,” said Nat. She closed her eyes.
Solly, she thought, as loudly as she could. SOLLY.
“I guess you think you’re too good to be grateful because your dad is famous.” Heaven rolled her eyes, Solly-style.
“I—” Nat started. Then she stopped. “Whatever.” She was suddenly having trouble breathing. It was like Heaven and Solly had merged into one person. But they couldn’t do that, because she hated Heaven.
She didn’t hate Solly.
Did she?
Solly had done that one huge terrible thing, but Nat didn’t want to think about that. Sometimes she wished she could just erase her brain and not have to think about anything that had already happened. A break from thinking would be nice.
Nat would call Solly when she got home, she decided. She may not have a BFF here but she still sort of had Solly, and Solly, at least, would get it. She would scorn Heaven and her posse of hair-flipping morons. She would understand how cool Harry was and how much it sucked that he didn’t really want to be friends.
Solly would approve of Harry. She liked people who were who they were meant to be, even if it meant they were purple-haired people in a sea of blondes and brunettes.
“Let’s just put the food coloring in and get it over with.” Heaven sighed. “It’s good enough. It’s fine. I’m bored of this already.”
“Sure,” said Nat, trying to sound like she cared. “Great idea!”
“You do it,” said Heaven. “Food coloring takes forever to wash off your hands, and I don’t want to have green and blue blotches.”
“I don’t either!”
“But you don’t care what you look like,” said Heaven. “People like you just don’t have to worry about it.”
“I do so!”
“You do?” Heaven sounded so dubious that Nat questioned it herself.
“Not always,” admitted Nat. “I just don’t think what I look like is very interesting.”
“You’re lucky,” said Heaven.
“What?” said Nat. She heard what Heaven said, she just wasn’t sure she understood it. People like her? Lucky? She wanted to know what Heaven meant. “Sorry?” she added.
“Nothing,” said Heaven. “Nothing for you to be grateful for, anyway. It wasn’t a compliment. Let’s dump this stuff onto the speaker and see what it do
es.”
The point of the project was to make the oobleck dance. With the food coloring mixed in, it would gyrate mysteriously to music. Or at least, it was supposed to.
It did in all the videos.
Nat glopped the oobleck into the cup that was balanced on the speaker, and Heaven turned the music up. Loud. And then louder. The song was so loud that the windows in the lab were shaking and the other kids were groaning and covering their ears.
“Gracie sucks!” shouted Seth from the back row.
Seth was working with Harry on a project about genes. It was Harry’s idea. When Harry had told Nat about it, she thought he meant to work on it with her. Nat knew that he was doing it because he was looking for something to explain why he’s a boy but was born with parts that didn’t match. Nat hoped that he figured it out. They had only gotten as far as how to tell if a pea plant was going to be green or yellow. But that scientist guy, Mendel, didn’t really get into the complications of being transgender, she didn’t think.
Nat also didn’t think Seth knew that’s why Harry chose the project in the first place.
She didn’t think he’d get it.
She knew a person like Seth would never really get Harry. Not like she did.
But Harry wanted to work on the project with Seth and not Nat. Nat’s feelings were so hurt that even looking up at Seth brought tears to her eyes. Again. She had no idea why Heaven picked her as a partner. She’d only said yes because she’d been so caught off guard. Heaven definitely seemed like the type to try to befriend her for being XAN GALLAGHER’s daughter, but she hadn’t exactly been friendly so far, so the whole thing was pretty confusing.
“This is Gracie?” she said.
“What?” shouted Heaven.
“GRACIE?” Nat tried again.
“Isn’t it AWESOME? She’s making a total comeback. She’s ancient. From the eighties.”
“I know her!” said Nat, but she didn’t explain. It seemed too hard and the music was too loud and the oobleck still wasn’t moving, it was just lying there in the cup, like it was too exhausted or sad to even consider a small shimmy.
Mr. Hajeezi clapped his hands. “ENOUGH!” he yelled. “Turn it off and try again tomorrow, girls! This music will make us all crazy!” He pulled the plug on the stereo.