Stargirl of the Edge

Ch 19 - Molybdenum!

I've been working on the final chapter titles and Chinese text all this evening, and at one in the morning, Tuesday the fourth of November, I completed the final edit of the book. It is now complete (apart from minor corrections) and ready to present to selected people. The book will be availble  in PDF format, or (in a few days) in print format. The PDF / print has Chapter titles and dialogue snippets in Chinese as well as English. I will continue to upload chapters to Wattpad.

After the scare she had had today she knew she needed to make the pendant secure, so that she could keep it close to her at all times but with the minimum of risk.

She decided the best option was to conceal it, protected in a small box, in her bag. There was a pocket on the outer flap. She could cut a slit in the material inside and keep the pendant in there. 

She looked for a jewellery box but couldn’t find one, so she found an old empty matchbox in the drawer in the kitchen and took some cotton wool from the bathroom. She pulled the pendant out of the pencil case. Thank goodness she hadn’t lost it. Again she thought about how it had transformed itself during the encounter with Esther. Now it was ‘asleep’ but its power was real. She held it close to her body and could feel how amazing it was. 

She folded the pendant in cotton wool, pushed it into the matchbox placed it inside a re-sealable plastic bag and wrapped it in sticky tape. Then she cut the material of the pocket, slipped it inside, and sewed up the seam again. Now it was sitting inside the bottom right hand corner of the flap, close to where she put her hand when she was walking.

She carried that bag with her almost everywhere, and though she had lost things out of a bag in the past, she had never lost a bag. Now it would be with her at all times, it was as safe as it could ever be, apart from being back in her mother’s jewellery box. And if her mum did ask for it back, all she had to do was cut through the pocket with a pair of scissors, retrieve it from the box and return it. 

After she had finished her homework, she slept with the bag on the floor near the top of the bed. From now on it would never leave her side.

In the remaining weeks before the Easter holidays, Olivia’s performance improved even more, and she began to achieve top grades in all her subjects. People no longer seemed to regard it as strange any more.

Surfing the internet, Olivia continued her search for the apple and then, unexpectedly, she saw something. It was a competition on Facebook, a special promotion. “Win an apple from Isaac Newton’s tree”. All she had to do was ‘Like’ their page and answer a few questions. The questions were to do with Newton’s scientific discoveries. In many competitions, the questions are easy but these were a little more difficult. Olivia had no problem completing them however. After completing the quiz a message came back saying ‘Thank you for taking part, you will be notified if you have won.’

At her next private tuition session with Alan, something happened which seemed to confirm Olivia’s improvement.

In his usual way, Alan was talking at length about some topic or other - it was to do with the Periodic Table of the Elements - and he stumbled upon an element of a particular atomic number: 42. The name of the element was on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn’t quite remember it.

And then Olivia smiled as if a light bulb had just been switched on, she turned to him and said: 

“Molybdenum! It’s molybdenum!”

“Yes, of course, it is! Molybdenum, that’s the one. I am starting to get forgetful in my old age! Goodness, Olivia, you really have made excellent progress, haven’t you?”

Olivia smiled, feeling proud of her ‘molybdenum moment’ in which she had helped a distinguished professor to remember something.

Later, Liz asked Olivia if she had managed to find out a bit more about Alan’s family situation but Olivia told her that had been so involved in the lesson, it had simply slipped her mind. 

Liz asked her next time to ask a few friendly questions, just like she did whenever she met people. Olivia said she found it difficult but she’d try her best. 

A few days later there was a message in Olivia’s in-box. She had won the competition! The prize was an apple cut from Newton’s tree. She could either come to the historic house and collect her prize, or they could send it to her by first class post. There wasn’t enough time to visit, so she asked for it to be sent in the post. Olivia was very excited to tell her mum and dad about the prize.

The next day a red postal van drove up the drive and a delivery man walked up to the door and knocked. Olivia signed for it and opened it impatiently. Inside was a big green apple, quite hard, not really suitable for eating. She took it upstairs to her room.

Olivia had been observing the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter at night from the balcony of the house. As the month progressed, Venus rose closer and closer to Jupiter until the two planets seemed caught in a conversation. Through the telescope, she saw Jupiter’s rings. It was a magnificent sight.   

Alan returned the following Monday and they continued on some of the themes they had been working on. And then Olivia said:

“Alan, look what I won!”

She got the apple and showed him proudly. 

“Well…” he said with some hesitation, “be careful what you do with the apple! Knowledge is dangerous.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter!”

She put the apple to one side, they resumed the lesson and the apple wasn’t spoken about again.

After the hour was up, Alan discreetly took the envelope and they walked back through to the kitchen. Liz was ready and waiting.

“Alan!” she said, standing up “you really must come along to one of our coffee mornings. They’re all for charity, raise money for good causes, we’d love to have your support. And if you want to bring someone, that would be wonderful!”

He shook his head and said quietly:

“Thank you Liz but.. I’m really far too busy at the moment, what with student dissertations, deadlines, projects…”

“Oh Alan, darling!” said Liz with gleaming eyes, “You need to take a bit of time out for yourself! Relax, let your hair down! Enjoy yourself once in a while!” 

Olivia looked at Alan’s hair. Despite his age, he had thick, black hair. It was cut very short at the back, like a soldier’s, and was combed over to one side on the top. It would be a physical impossibility for Alan to ‘let his hair down’. Her mum said some silly things, she thought. 

“Actually Mum,” said Olivia, “I think I know something Alan might like to come to. Maybe he could give a presentation, at the astronomy society.”

“Oh, but astronomy is not my specialist area of study, it is not my main area of research,” Alan exclaimed.

“I’m sure you know more about astronomy than all of us put together,” said Olivia, “Well I thought you could do something on… the Origin of Matter or something like that.”

“Well perhaps, if time allows. Do you know what date that would be?” 

Olivia looked on her phone. “Wednesday 6th of June.”

“Ok, I’ll check my diary. But I really must be running along now…”

“Okay then Alan, bye bye,” said Liz, closing the door. Liz watched him through the window with big eyes, as he drove his pea-green car down the drive. “He doesn’t give away his secrets easily, does he? Ah well, I’m sure we’ll find out sooner or later.”

Olivia’s next meeting on the Edge would be on Thursday 22 March. The app on her phone told her that sunset would be at 6.25pm, so she would time her walk with Jessie to coincide with that. As Dad was away, Liz would have the Jaguar, so there should be no problem for Olivia to take the jeep. There were only a few more days to go.

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