by Katrina Cope
The students did this then gave several excited gasps, marveling over the bright light that shone through the light bulb.
Jayden looked at his little experiment and saw that it wasn’t working. He glanced around the room to see if anyone else’s didn’t work. He heard a groan from Robert and a huff of annoyance from Eva, so he turned to look at their experiments. Neither of theirs was working, either. He smiled to himself, amused and glad that he was not the only one who didn’t get it to work.
Professor Anna noted their predicament and went over to help. After a quick look, she realized what they had done. “No, you duffers!” she teased. “You don’t connect positive to positive. You connect positive to negative.”
Jayden laughed at his error, while Robert shook his head at his pathetic effort.
“Oh my!” Eva exclaimed in astonishment. “How the heck did I get that wrong?”
They fixed their errors quickly.
Professor Anna smiled broadly then continued in a slight tease. “Now that we all have it connected properly, I want you to move the short wire coming straight from the light globe up and down the length of the spring, closer and farther away from the other wire attachment.”
The students did this excitedly, watching the light changing from stronger to dimmer the farther away from the wire it went.
Other students were observing this. Robert picked up his glasses again and had another look to check and see if the vision was back on. He raised his chubby arm and pointed his big thumb up, causing Professor Anna, Eva, and Jayden to look at him. They saw his big cheesy grin and the signal showing everything was right again.
“It’s back on,” he exclaimed.
They smiled and continued working with full attention on what they were doing.
“Who can tell me why we are getting the reaction we are getting?” Professor Anna asked the class.
Eva awoke from her stupidity and put her hand up.
“Yes, Eva.” Professor Anna pointed at her.
“The steel wire in the spring is not a very good conductor of electricity, and the more of this kind of wire electricity has to pass through, the more resistance there is. This will cause less electricity to be available.”
“Nice to see you back with us, Eva.” Professor Anna smiled. “That is correct. What you have all made is a rheostat, which is a device to vary the amount of current passing through it to complete a circuit. Now I want you all to start taking notes, writing down your observations, and then clean up your benches.” She left the room, entered the adjacent science room, and started to fill out paperwork on her desk.
Eva turned to Robert and indicated the glasses. “How was he doing?”
Robert looked back at her with a questioning expression on his face.
“Aaron,” she said impatiently. “How is he doing?”
“Oh!” Robert said. “I didn’t really look.”
“What?” Eva said sounding astonished.
“Well, I was so excited the glasses were working again that I forgot to check,” Robert said.
“Are you serious?” Eva’s voice rose short of screaming.
He looked embarrassed over his distraction of working technology shadowing the importance of looking after his friend.
Eva went over the top of him and grabbed the glasses from the bench. “Give me those!” She put them on and started observing Aaron and his movements. “He looks very still and tense at the moment,” she told the others. “He’s not running or fighting anything though, so I’m hoping he’s fine.” She continued to clean up the science experiment while observing Aaron through the glasses.
When they were nearly finished cleaning up, Jayden asked, “How’s he doing?”
“He’s starting to look a little bit more relaxed and walking around a bit. Whatever he was nervous over before seems to have disappeared for the moment.”
“From our side, it seems pretty uneventful. We should check with him once we speak to him again,” suggested Jayden. Eva and Robert nodded in agreement.
As they finished their class, it looked as though Aaron had also finished, and they headed straight over to the video tech room to help him pack up the equipment.
When they arrived, Aaron was immediately notified of their presence because Shelly let out a squeal, calling out Robert’s name and running into his arms for a big hug.
“What happened to your video feed, Shelly?” Robert asked her while checking her externally to see if everything was okay.
Shelly gave him a puzzled look, so he asked her differently. “Did you lose your sight when we were gone? Did you stop seeing for a little bit?” She shook her head in response. “It was gone?” he pointed to her eyes.
“Gone!” she said in a cute two-year-old manner, lifting her shoulders together in a shrug. “Uh-oh. Gone.”
“Yes,” Robert agreed, sounding frustrated while still looking closely at her outside for any faults. “I will have to look into it more later to see what went wrong.”
Jayden turned his attention back to Aaron and asked, “So how did it all go?”
Aaron filled them in on his successes and failures while they packed up equipment. “I’m not sure if I should be worried or not,” he finished. “But Eva, I need you to triple-check my background history so that Brendan comes out squeaky clean. I am pretty sure Dr. Ernest is about to check it all thoroughly.”
“I’ll start working on that now,” she said, making her way over to her computer.
- Chapter Thirteen -
The Painful Lesson
Their time for kitchen duty had come again. The students filed into the kitchen, and Ms. Helen greeted them. She dusted the last of the flour off her hands and onto her apron. Her gray hair was tied into her trademark bun at the back of the head, with wispy strands of hair floating loosely around her face.
“Good day, students. I hope you’re ready to get cracking. We have a lot to do today.”
“Of course we are, Ms. Helen,” Ashley said. Her slightly plump face was flushed with anticipation, ready to take action. Cooking was her favorite pastime, so much so that she even volunteered in her spare time. Ashley’s long blond hair was pulled away from her face and tied back into a ponytail. Ms. Helen had given her a pale-green apron as a thank-you gift for all the extra work she had done in the kitchen, and she wore it with pride. It even had her name embroidered across the front.
“Naturally you would be, Ashley—our little cook.” Miss Helen smiled as she spoke to her proudly. “You’re turning into quite the little chef.”
“What should we do?” Ashley reached out her hands as though ready to grab her next cooking assignment.
Ms. Helen immediately delegated jobs among the students. After rattling off a few chores to other students, it came to Robert’s turn. “Right, Robert. You should know already what to do,” she said with a tone of certainty.
“Peeling potatoes. Really? Again?” Robert groaned at her. “Ms., can I please have another job?” His eyes pleaded with her, and his lips pouted.
“Tell me, Robert, have you stopped eating everything in sight?” She scrutinized him under a raised eyebrow.
“Possibly.” He looked hopeful, except he was betrayed by a mischievous glint in his hazel eyes.
Eying him from head to toe, Ms. Helen gazed down her nose and said, “Exactly! Off you go, Robert. You know what to do.”
Robert turned around and dragged his feet with disappointment as he headed off to the big stainless-steel sink and the mountain of potatoes to peel.
“Little Miss Eva!”
“Yes, Ms. Helen?”
“As you know how to follow instructions precisely, I will have you making the hollandaise sauce. It can be quite difficult if the instructions aren’t followed properly. I know you will do this correctly.”
“Naturally.” Eva smiled, looking pleased. She grabbed the recipe book and went to collect the ingredients.
Ms. Helen then turned around to Aaron and Jayden. “I hear Aaron has
been teaching you better knife skills, Jayden.”
Jayden nodded.
“Good. In that case, I have a bit of a tedious job for you both. Our chili plants have gone overboard in providing us with abundant fruit.” As she said this, she leaned down and picked up a huge bucket of chilies then placed it on the bench not far from them.
The two boys’ eyes opened wide in astonishment over the size of the bucket. It was full to the brim.
“I need you boys to take the green stalk ends off all of them and at the same time take out most of the seeds and the vein.” Ms. Helen showed them briefly how to do it. “Once you have done this, put them in these bowls here.” She pulled two huge stainless steel bowls out of the cupboard and placed them on the bench next to them.
Both of the boys’ mouths dropped open in astonishment at how many chilies they needed to deal with.
Seeing their expression, Ms. Helen continued, “Yes, you have a lot of work to do. You should be busy throughout the lesson. I suggest you wear gloves while doing this.” She opened a drawer nearby and pulled out a box of latex gloves then placed it on the bench in front of them.
Following her instructions, Jayden and Aaron reached over and each grabbed a pair of gloves. They slid them onto their hands, then Jayden pulled his plastic cutting board closer and reached for his sharp knife. He proceeded to remove the stems, veins, and seeds from the chilies. He was having trouble doing so with the gloves on. Although they were thin and flexible, they just kept getting in the way.
“I’m getting rid of these things.” He grunted with frustration. “They’re slowing me down.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Aaron said. “Ms. Helen would only recommend we use them if there was a meaning behind it.”
“It’s a chili. What could possibly happen?” Jayden scoffed at him, sounding unconvinced. “It’s not like it’s going to bite me or anything.”
“Suit yourself, man. But I’m sticking with the gloves.”
Jayden shrugged then continued dissecting the chilies. He was doing it at a faster rate than Aaron, even using his thumbnail to scrape out the seeds in the vein. “See, it’s easier this way. I’m even faster than you.” He wore a self-satisfied smile.
Aaron shrugged at Jayden’s cockiness. “Do what you want. I’m still sticking with the gloves even if I am slower. I’ve worked in these kitchens with Ms. Helen long enough to know better than to go against her instructions. I’ve never done chilies before, but I’m sure there’s a good reason for the gloves.”
It wasn’t long until Jayden had half a bowl full of prepared chilies. He looked over at Aaron’s effort and smiled victoriously at him. Aaron shook his head with an indifferent attitude.
They worked for a while, and Aaron looked deep in thought. After a while, he spoke. “You know, I still haven’t found out who took over Brendan when I was out of action with the head injury. I really need to find out. Whoever it was must have caused some trouble. Ever since then, Hayley’s been on my case about being inconsistent in what I do and how I act.”
“Is it causing you that much grief?” Jayden asked.
Aaron nodded. “It is, especially with Hayley. I’m not sure about the other two. They might just be being smarter about investigating by acting like nothing is different. It’s going to take me a while to smooth things over. She was really quick the other day to rat on me to Dr. Ernest over finding out about the locked door and everything.”
“I don’t know. I’m sure you will get through it. At least it is only a surrogate there and not your real self. So if you do get busted, you won’t be locked up or anything, ’cause they can’t find you,” Jayden said.
“True, but if they find it’s a surrogate, I’m afraid they will be able to lead back to here,” Aaron said, worry plastered all over his face.
“I doubt that’s possible, as it feels like this place is very secluded,” Jayden said. “I don’t know. It’s as though Avando’s gone to a lot of trouble to have this place hidden.”
“What do you mean?” Aaron sounded puzzled.
“Haven’t you noticed? We don’t seem to have any contact with the outside world.” Jayden’s hands felt unusually hot. An itchy, burning feeling shot from the tip of his thumb and under his thumbnail. It was the nail he had used to scrape out the chilies. He raced to the sink and started to wash his hands.
Aaron remained deep in thought, not paying any attention to what Jayden was doing. “We have contact with the outside world all the time,” he said, glancing up to look at Jayden. When he realized Jayden was not next to him, a surprised look crossed his face. He glanced around the room, quickly searching for Jayden before spotting him near the sink. Surprised to see him there, he paid more attention to what he was doing.
In response to the questioning glance, Jayden filled him in. “My hands just started burning.” He groaned.
A broad smile spread across Aaron’s face. “Must be those chilies. Run your hands under cold water.”
“I’ve done that. It hasn’t made any difference.”
“Have you washed them thoroughly with soap?” Aaron asked.
“Yes.” Jayden groaned. “They kill just touching my hands together. It’s like they’re on fire.”
“Should’ve worn the gloves. I’m going to have to get Ms. Helen to see if she has any other suggestions.”
Jayden sighed as he watched him walk away to get help. He knew he was about to get an earful. It wasn’t long before Ms. Helen came racing over with Aaron and a big tub of yogurt in her hands.
“You silly boy! You should have worn the gloves.” She clucked her disapproval while tipping some plain yogurt into a bowl. “Here, dip your hands in this and hold them there.”
Jayden did as instructed, and at first, it felt so good. It didn’t take long, though, for the yogurt around his hands to start warming up. It felt like a hot little stew. It made his hands feel as though he had dipped them in lava. He pulled his hands out and ran over to the tap to wash them off again.
Ms. Helen watched him. “Didn’t it work?”
Jayden shook his head, reeling with disappointment. “Unfortunately not.”
“You should’ve worn gloves,” she said again, shaking her head. She raced over to the computer in the office, which was situated at the side of the kitchen, and Googled remedies for chili-burned hands. Within two minutes she was back with salt and lemon juice.
“Right,” she said while cutting open the lemon and squeezing some juice into the salt that she had poured into a bowl. “You need to grab handfuls of this coarse, lemony salt mixture and rub it all over your hands harshly.”
Jayden did this while flinching in pain. After vigorous scrubbing, he washed his hands off and let them sit out in the open. He shook his head. His face screwed up with pain as he gazed at Ms. Helen.
“Still no luck?” She seemed surprised. Her remedies were supposed to get rid of all of the chili oils. She exhaled loudly, grabbed a large container, and raced to the freezer. She filled the container with ice and added water on top. “Here,” she said, placing it in front of Jayden. “Stick your hands in this.”
Jayden threw his hands in the icy cold water with enthusiasm. “Oh. This feels so good!” He breathed a big sigh of relief.
“Well, now you just have to walk around with this bucket for the rest of the day. Maybe next time you will listen to my advice?” she snapped.
“Yes, yes. I know. The gloves were annoying me, so I took them off. My lesson is learned.” He sounded cranky, but really he was annoyed with himself for getting into the situation and frustrated that even though he was in pain, he still had to listen to Ms. Helen rightfully telling him off.
Robert strolled over with a big smile on his face, reveling in the commotion. “Oh, it’s so good to see I’m not the only one that gets into trouble by Ms. Helen.” He saw Jayden’s hands dipped in the icy cold water and chuckled. “Are they really that bad? I’ve never had chilies before. What do they taste like?” He reach
ed over, grabbed one out of the bowl, and went to place it in his mouth.
Aaron shook his head at him as a warning, and Jayden squealed out, “I wouldn’t!”
Robert shrugged his shoulders. “I have to try it. I can’t leave any food untried.” He threw it into his mouth and chewed it with a thoughtful expression on his face. “That was actually nice. How are you in your mess?” he asked Jayden while looking closely at Jayden’s hands.
Shocked that not even a tear trickled out of Robert’s eye, Aaron picked up one chili and nibbled the end. As soon as it touched his lips, tears were streaming down his face, and he was running for a drink of water.
Ms. Helen had been watching from the other side of the kitchen and called out, “No, Aaron! Don’t drink water. Drink milk. Water makes it hotter.”
Without saying anything, Aaron ran to the fridge and grabbed the milk.
“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Robert said, grabbing another one and throwing it in his mouth. “I think I’ve just found my new favorite food. I definitely want to try whatever it is you’re making after it’s finished.”
Hearing this, Ms. Helen shook her head and rolled her eyes.
Aaron returned with a glass of milk in his hand. He took sips, rolled it over his tongue, and dipped his lips straight into the milk. He rubbed his stomach as though he was trying to push away the warmth of the burning. Once it had all cooled down enough, he went back and finished his job of cutting chilies. Robert grabbed a small jar, pinched enough of the prepared chilies to fit into the jar, sealed the lid, and buried it deep in his pocket before Ms. Helen saw him. He saw a look of disapproval from Aaron over him taking food again.
“What? It’s not like I am taking a major ingredient that will ruin a dish,” he defended his actions.
“Do you seriously love them that much, Robert?” Jayden asked him.