After school, right after I swing by my house to check on my sustainable energy project, I will figure out who is responsible. It shouldn’t be that difficult. Anyone stupid enough to steal crap from the chemistry closet, and then use it to set fire to the lab—during school hours, less than a week later—will be easy to catch.
And then they will turn themselves in, unless they want to know what a real pyro is capable of.
Chapter 2: Recruiting Mr. President
The back gate creaks as I ease it open. Cringing, I step onto the stone path with as much stealth as possible. Every footstep, and bump against the surrounding foliage freezes me in my tracks, waiting for my mom to jump out at me. Dad is speaking at a seminar today, so I won’t have to worry about him until later.
I’m not scared of her, I remind my-self. I just don’t want to wake her up, in case she’s still sleeping. And if she’s not, I don’t want her to get all worked up about today. She has it in her head that I’ve regressed, that I’m back to my old tricks. And I’m not. So, I’m just doing her a favor, helping her to keep her blood pressure down, by staying out of sight.
After a whole year of court mandated therapy I learned a couple things. First, I’m not a true pyromaniac. That title is reserved for those who compulsively start fires to relieve stress, or for gratification.
For me, it isn’t a compulsion. It’s like a favorite pastime. Gamers don’t compulsively play Halo every night into the wee hours of the morning. They choose to do it because they enjoy it so much. Fire is my game.
The second thing I learned is that, if I just change the name of my favorite pastime everybody is happy. Chemistry is celebrated, whereas making explosives is frowned upon. The difference is that now my equipment is more specialized, and I can call it experimentation.
In the name of supporting their recovering pyromaniac son, my parents built me a laboratory in the back yard, just because my therapist suggested it would help me channel my enthusiasm in a positive direction. I’ve been meaning to send her a thank you card for the past few years.
I’m not the kind of guy that sends little cards out or anything, but I figure that a person who can convince my parents to build a chemistry lab in the perfectly landscaped backyard deserves a medal, at the very least, a thank you. Maybe I should enlist her help when Christmas comes around.
But to me, my lab represents Christmas every day, endless possibilities of what I can create, with the right chemicals. My favorites are acids, like nitric acid, which is one of the chief ingredients of ammonium nitrate, a compound used in numerous explosives.
I glance up at the third story window of my parent’s bedroom, to make sure my mom hasn’t seen me before slipping into the lab. I lean against the door and let out a deep breath once inside.
“Rough day?”
I jump to see my mom standing in front of my chemical storage closet, her arms crossed making her look taller than her actual five foot height. Praying that she hasn’t been sniffing all of the chemicals that I’ve labeled “H2O”, I decide its best just to get this over with so I can get back to the school to check out the lab before they lock up.
So instead of running in the opposite direction, I shrug my shoulders at her and walk toward the table where I have a special heat resistant glass beaker suspended in the air by a metal support. Inside it is a blue liquid, burning a low flame, which although I leave it burning when I’m not here, has almost no chance of causing a fire. Not with the flame resistant glass, and the fact that it doesn’t touch anything.
Ignoring the way my mom leans around my shoulder to watch my progress, I dip a mercurial thermometer into the liquid using gloves and tongs.
Mom still hasn’t said anything since I shrugged at her, which wracks my nerves. Normally she wouldn’t stand for that. But I can feel her breath on my arm, waiting to pounce. My heart beat begins a trot, as the silence thickens.
I write down the results in my chart, before she speaks again.
“Any progress?”
“Same old, same old. Just trying to nail a water to pyridine ratio that burns stable, yet hot, and slow enough to power an engine for an acceptable period of time,” I shrug again, then add, “I’m thinking of trying a different chemical though, or maybe a combination. This just burns too cold, and it reeks.”
I indicate the fish guts smelling mixture that was now cooling on the metal table top. I know I’m talking too much. I don’t normally give up so much information without a struggle from her, but today I just want to keep her happy.
Mom laughs. She actually laughs before she reaches up—I’m more than a foot taller than her—and pats my cheek.
“I wasn’t going to mention the smell baby,” she says still smiling, “I’m just proud of you. You have such a wonderful future ahead of you.”
This is the most important thing to her. She often reminds me what it was like for her, growing up in Guatemala, and the miracle it was to come here and earn her PHD in Astro-Physics at Cornell. How it changed her life, giving her children limitless opportunities.
I cringe thinking of the chemicals I’d mislabeled in the closet, less than three feet away from my mom, and all her fervor for my future. I’m not technically doing anything wrong. Having potentially destructive compounds in my possession is completely different than using them.
I was just glad she didn’t scrutinize my lab equipment orders too much, because then she might start asking questions about my side projects. Having her PHD in Astro-Physics really makes it hard to pull stuff over on her. Why couldn't she have been an English Literature major?
“Sorry for that phone call this morning. I was just so upset that I wasn’t listening. I trust you, and if you say you didn’t do it, then you didn’t do it,” she paused, patting my forearm, “I am going to have a word with the principal though. He has no right to accuse you of anything, especially since you weren’t even there. He needs to get his facts straight.”
I could argue with her about the uselessness of telling him that I am actually a responsible pyro now, and that he needs to spend more of his valuable time looking for the real culprit instead of pinning it on the first scapegoat that comes to mind, but I know that conversation would me more useless than the one she would inevitably have with Mr. Graham.
Championing her kids is her favorite pastime, and she rarely gets a cause so worthy of her efforts. So, I’ll save my breath, and the time it would take to argue against that idea.
“Gotta go Mom,” I say leaning down to kiss the top of her head.
“Where do you think you are going Galileo?” she asks, emphasizing my whole name. If she were in a good mood she would just call me Leo, but she’s not, “You just got home.”
She actually likes my name, Galileo. I guess she is obligated to since she’s the one who put it on the birth certificate, but she honestly doesn’t see anything wrong with naming a child Galileo. When I’ve complained in the past, she’s just told me to be grateful she didn’t name me Schiaparelli. I shudder to think what junior high children would do to a kid with a name like that.
Still, I can’t understand how my eleven year old sister ended up with a relatively normal name, Halley. She was named after the astronomer who figured out how to apply Newton’s laws to calculate the reappearance of the comet now named after him.
So, they were obviously capable of coming up with an astronomy related, yet socially acceptable name for my sister. Why couldn’t they do their first born child the same courtesy?
“Got to do something at the school before the close it,” I reply before walking back out of the lab with my notebook and pen in hand.
An hour and a half later I wait in front of a red brick rambler that I hadn’t stepped inside for four years, waiting for someone to answer the door, hopefully not his mom. She would probably dump the cookie dough she is no doubt brewing right now on my head, before yelling at me to stay away from her angel, and slamming the door in my face.
I honestly wouldn’t have come here if I had any other choice. Plan A was to go all CSI on their butts, find a hair at the scene of the crime and use it to identify the vandal responsible. There were several problems with this.
First, a hair found in a public school chemistry lab could have been dropped there a decade ago, since that was the last time they cleaned in there. Second, even if it were the hair of the culprit, I would need a comparison sample. Which means I need to form a theory on who it is first, and then pull some of their hair out.
And that’s why I am here, to find more evidence.
Suddenly the door swings open so fast I think Kramer will come stumbling out, but it’s not Kramer. It is George W. No really, his name is George W Busch. His parents are big time right wingers. We are in Texas after all.
His eyes alight directly on my chest, since it is at eye level, then travel north until he sees it’s me. That’s when his already pale face, pales even more and his jaw works up and down without any sound coming out. He peeks right and left before pulling me into the house, closing the door behind us.
“Who was at the door Porgie?” his mother’s voice issues from the kitchen. His parents were just as terrible at giving nicknames as they are given names.
“Um, it was a salesman, a vacuum salesman,” his voice warbles as he pushes me toward his room, “with a carpet bag. Very suspicious. I told him to stay away or I’d call the cops.”
I swat his hands away from my back. He was trying to force me down the hall at mach ten. Once we make it to the safety of his room, I’m not surprised to see that it hasn’t changed much. He has filled up most of the empty space on his walls. Now he has posters for all editions of Halo, and World of Warcraft.
“So, uh, why don’t you sit down?” he gestures toward his Yoda beanbag chair.
I can’t help but laugh at his formality, but I remain standing. He sinks into the beanbag chair instead, rubbing his hands on his reddish brown hair, mumbling under his breath. My hearing was damaged from standing too near an explosion, so I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying.
“Knew it….back after….knew it….can’t do anything….”
“Hey, I need something,” I say, just to put him out of his misery.
I know he’s close to beating his brains out, wondering why I’ve appeared now, in our senior year. But if I wanted revenge, I could have done that long ago. He looks up at me with wide eyes, swallowing.
“What makes you think I’ll help you?” he asks, but instead of it sounding hard and determined, as he intends, it sounds defeated.
“You know why.”
“You can’t pin anything on me now. It’s been too long, and nobody would believe you anyway.”
“If I was going to rat you out, I would have done it before. You owe me though.”
“What do you want?”
“Hack into the school security system.”
“No way. No way, no way, no way. Huh-uh. Do you have any idea how illegal that is? If I got caught—” but I cut him off.
“Never stopped you before. And I’m not going to do anything bad. I just want to see something.”
He still doesn’t look convinced, but he was cracking.
“Something’s getting pinned on me, and Mr. Graham doesn’t want to go to the trouble to find the person really responsible. But I’m going to find them. My life will be ruined if I don’t.”
He sighs in defeat, looking at his hands. I knew when I used that argument that he couldn’t say no. The guilt was eating at him, even after all this time.
“Just this once,” I promise him, “Just to see who screwed up the chem lab.”
As soon as I had seen the damage in the chemistry lab, I knew it hadn’t happened during first period today. It takes a while for acid to eat through a stainless steel sink, and assuming the chemistry teacher isn’t a complete moron— which is debatable. His primary title is football coach, because the school doesn’t have enough money to pay both a football coach and a chemistry teacher. So he gets to wear both hats—he would have poured several gallons of water on the spill area upon discovery. And unless they ignored the hissing and steaming all day long as the metal sink got eaten away, the spill had to have happened at night, when the school should be closed.
The chemicals stolen from the lab closet on Monday happened to include several acids that have a strong enough PH to eat through metal. It was no wonder they suspect me really, since the thief went through the closet like they had a recipe for nitroglycerine that they were reading off of.
But I don’t steal my junk. I buy it online, one item at a time hidden in the orders for my legit experiments.
“How about I help you, if you do me a favor.”
I look at him, deadpan, waiting for him to muster up the courage to ask for whatever it is he wants. Even if I say no to the favor, he will still help me.
“Get me in to Finch’s party tonight.”
“What, World of Warcraft doesn’t fulfill you anymore?”
He doesn’t laugh at my joke, probably because I’m not smiling, and he’s too scared to realize I’m not serious. I shrug at him
“Whatever.”
For the first time since he saw me on his doorstep he cracks a big grin, and rubs his hands together.
“Then let’s get started,” he says, pulling his laptop onto his beanbag chair with him.