Up in the Air

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jenny had to say goodbye when we got to the door of the Chem Lab. Unlike Allie and I, she had Marine Biology.

She'd been beyond happy when she found out our school offered a Marine Bio elective. Since she was seven, she knew what she was going to be: a marine biologist.

It cracked Allie up when Jenny had told her that all those years ago and it cracked me up just as much last week when Jenny told me where she was headed to after lunch.

Here was the girl who, on five different occasions, got sunburned after just ten minutes in the sun and she was gunning for a career in a field that would make her a human briquette. Jenny would now only be getting buckets of sunblock from me on her birthdays and Christmas.

I frowned when I saw that the long tables in the Chem Lab had setups for an experiment on them. This was not a good sign.

True, I may be the holder of the highest GPA in the school but I'm also clumsy. I don't trip on my own two feet – I'm not that helplessly clumsy – but being surrounded by breakable glassware and chemicals, harmful or otherwise, raises my stress levels.

The only reason I was in AP Chem instead of AP Biology was because cells bored the life out of me. I'd rather be stressed than bored, I'd said when I signed up for the class but seeing all the beakers and test tubes on the tables made me question my thinking at the time.

Allie and I took our usual seats at the front of the room. I can practically hear you hissing, Nerd, but we have our reasons for sitting at the very front: Mrs. Rouleau has the most ridiculously illegible handwriting on the planet.

"Settle down. Settle down," Mrs. Rouleau called out to the class as she shrugged on her lab coat. She was a small woman, much shorter than my 5'6" and built as if someone had wrapped a skeleton in loose skin and held it all together with a tight gray bun of her hair on top.

"Today we will be performing an experiment we were supposed to do last week had the school been able to get its funding on time," she continued to grumble something about schools and funding for the sciences for a little while then shook her head as if to clear it.

"Anyhow, no use crying over spilled chemicals," Mrs. Rouleau laughed at her own joke. "We'll be pairing up today – and no, I will be deciding who goes with whom," she screeched that last part when people had begun looking excitedly at one another.

"We're here to learn about chemistry, not to fraternize," she said to the class's collective groan.

She took out the class roster and began to read off pairs. People shuffled around to where their new stations were.

I cringed while Allie beamed when she'd gotten Alice Chang as her partner. Allie and I had wanted to work together but if she had to have a different partner, I knew she'd want it to be Alice Chang.

It wasn't that Alice was Asian – that's kind of racist, don't you think? – but because she and Alice had worked together last summer at The Chang's restaurant – and no, they don't own a Chinese restaurant. Alice and I were the only two people Allie knew in the class. After a quick smile at me, Allie moved to where Alice was sitting.

"My, my, Ms. Preston. Looks like there'll be no more spills in your future," she looked at me. Not only was the comment weird but it reminded me of last year's beaker fiasco.

I turned to look at the other students and it seemed I was the only one without a pair.

What did she mean by that? Sure, I'd broken a few – alright, I broke six – beakers last year but I don't think that was enough of a reason to exclude me from the experiments, wasn't it?