Catalyst (7 page)

Teri sits on the other chair. “Why don’t you sit down, Kate? Sit next to Mom.”

Why don’t I run out the door screaming? I want my watch back, that’s why. It’s worth more than my car. She’d better not be stretching the band. It looks tight on her.

I sit on the couch. Mrs. Litch turns her face to me and extends her hand. I was waiting for a whiff of beer or whiskey, but she smells a little like lemon. I, on the other hand, reek of sweat and stewed chicken.

“I’m Kate,” I say, shaking the cool hand. “Kate Malone.”

“Kate is Rev. Malone’s daughter. She goes to school with Theresa,” Ms. Cummings explains.

“How nice,” says Mrs. Litch.

“Oh, it’s great,” Teri says.

“That’s a cool watch you’re wearing, Theresa,” I say.

The scar over Mrs. Litch’s eye twitches just a hair. Someone loses a thousand dollars on the game show and the audience groans.

“It looks just like my watch. In fact, I can’t find mine. Have you seen it?”

Teri takes a deep breath. I shrink down to a size one. She can’t beat me up, not in front of her mother and a teacher.

Can she?

I am saved from certain death by the arrival of a small, blond boy. Or rather, a NASCAR race car disguised as a small, blond boy. He motors into the room, a red metal Corvette in his left hand, a small ambulance missing its wheels in his right. His eyes are the color of a clean spring sky. He’s wearing jeans, red sneakers, and a faded pajama top. As he runs around the room, he makes engine noises, shifting gears up and down, squealing tires. A diaper rustles under his pants.

“Come here, boy,” says Mrs. Litch.

The little guy climbs into her lap and hides his face against her shoulder. He peeks at me once. You could get lost in those eyes; they’re heartbreakers.

“That’s Mikey,” Teri says. “He’s two.”

Mikey peeks at me again and smiles. He has dimples and tiny Tic Tac teeth. I put my hand out. Mikey grabs my finger for a second, then lets go and hides his face again. Another contestant is trying for big money on the television. Teri turns up the sound of the audience roaring. She’ll pound the snot out of me later, I guess.

“I really should be going,” Ms. Cummings says as she stands.

“So soon?” asks Mrs. Litch.

Teri stares at the television, her arms crossed over her chest. The wrist with the stolen watch is hidden. I push myself off the couch.

“Me, too. I have homework.”

“Suit yourself,” Teri says.

The game show cuts to a commercial and there is a loud knock at the door.

“Is there a Mikey bear in there?” shouts a gruff voice.

Mikey squirms out of his mother’s lap and races to open the door. My father steps inside.

“Bear!” Mikey squeals.

My father growls and crouches to the ground. Mikey Litch jumps into his arms. They wrestle like grizzlies for a second, both of them laughing, then Dad stands up, holding Mikey. The little bear hands him the ambulance.

“Thank you,” Dad says. “Is that ear feeling better? Got a kiss for me?”

Mikey plants a wet one on Dad’s cheek and Dad looks at Teri. “Did the medicine help?”

She nods, eyes on the television. “Fever’s gone.”

“Good evening, Mrs. Litch . . . ” His voice trails off.

“Evening, Reverend,” Mrs. Litch says.

“Hello, Dad.”

You don’t see my dad speechless very often. Mikey runs the race car along his shoulder and up his neck. Dad stands there, his eyes locked on me, like he is seeing me for the first time.

Ms. Cummings breaks for the door. “I really have to be going. I have a conference in Troy tomorrow. You’ll have a sub, Kate. I hope they dig up a good one. Don’t forget to put the chicken in the fridge.”

Bam
—she’s gone.

Dad waits until the lights of her Toyota have backed all the way down the driveway before saying anything. “What are you doing here?”

“Teri has my watch.”

“Do not,” Teri mumbles.

“I want it back.”

Teri crosses the room and takes Mikey from my father’s arms.

“You know it’s mine,” I say.

She bounces Mikey up and down on her hip and he clutches at her shirt. “You can’t prove it.”

“What? How can you say that? Dad, take a look at it.”

Rev. Malone frowns and turns off the television. “Kate, this isn’t the time. I came here to talk to Mrs. Litch about the fight.”

The scar over Mrs. Litch’s eye jerks upward. “Another one?”

“Shit,” Teri murmurs. She turns and disappears down the dark hall, Mikey still in her arms.

“What about my watch?”

“Did somebody bother you?” her mother calls. “You promised me, Theresa!”

Dad moves a chair in front of the couch and sits. His voice is soft. “I’ll explain. It wasn’t too bad, but you need to—” He breaks off and looks at me. “Kate, why don’t you take that food back to the kitchen?”

Actually, I’d love to sit here and figure out what is going on. Reality feels rather plastic, as if I’ve been operating in an enclosed sphere, and the covering melted, and all of a sudden I’m in an entirely new world—a world in which my father is tight with the Litches, my chem teacher is a closet social worker, people use lawn tractors for furniture, and watches change hands much too easily.

“Kate,” Dad says, a little too loudly. Mrs. Litch sniffs and dabs at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve.

“I’m going.”

The kitchen is stuffed into an addition off the back end of the house. The window over the sink gives a terrific view of the rotting barn. Air from the heating vent flutters an old calendar nailed to the wall. Above the small table hangs a plastic clock, frozen at twelve noon. Or midnight, depending on your perspective. One corner of the table is piled high with magazines.

Someone did the dishes earlier. Pale yellow plates and bowls, a couple of coffee cups, and a small plastic mug are upside down in the drainer. They are all dry. The counters are wiped clean.

I put the chicken into the refrigerator and sneak out the back door. I need to run.

Part 2

Liquid

“A catalyst is a substance which increases the rate of a reaction. It is consumed in one step of the reaction and then regenerated later in the process. The catalyst is not used up, but provides a new, lower energy path for the reaction.”

—ARCO Everything You Need to Score
High on AP Chemistry,
3rd Edition

3.0

Galvanize

SAFETY TIP: Store oxidizers away from other chemicals.

We have a substitute teacher in chem. He says that we have to watch a movie because chemicals give him a rash and he’s really an English teacher. He brought a video from home for us,
Alice in Wonderland
. A family classic, he says.

My lab partner snorts. “Family classic,” she mutters. “Mind-altering drugs, demented hatters, and a homicidal queen.” She opens her Spanish book to the pluperfect subjunctive.

The movie opens with Alice perched in a tree, complaining about history to her sister. Enter the White Rabbit, stage left, his glasses wobbling at the end of his nose. “I’m overdue, I’m in a stew,” he frets.

I sigh and rest my chin on my books. I would not admit this under torture, but I love Disney movies. Everybody does. Disney is our collective stepparent, the nice one who tells us bedtime stories and bakes cupcakes.

Alice follows the rabbit down the hole. She falls, she shrinks, she worms her way past locked doors and winds up a stranger in a strange land with Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum blocking her path. They have an eerie Litch-look to them.

I glance at my empty wrist. My watch is still in the clutches of the evil Tweedle-Teri. I borrow Diana’s pen and draw a sports watch on my skin. It has a timer, fifty-lap memory, altimeter, barometer, and compass. Alice in Wonderland could use a watch like this. She eats a cookie that is probably laced with human growth hormone and shoots up as big as a house.

I should ask Toby if he’s been sneaking Wonderland cookies. That would explain the size of his feet.

There is a soft knock at the door of the classroom. A thin face peers in the window and waves a white envelope at me. It’s my father.

Diana looks up from her subjunctives and nudges me.

An envelope. The envelope? An envelope. No, you can’t fool me twice. It’s too early for the mail. Dad motions for me to join him. Diana pokes my shoulder with her pen. My brain feels like a Slurpee, cold and slow.

Diana shoves me. “Get going, moron.”

The sub doesn’t notice as I walk across the room. Is it possible to have a heart attack at eighteen? I open the door, step over the threshold, and enter the hall. My father is holding an envelope. The envelope. After all this time, things are happening too fast. I’m not ready. I am going to puke.

“This was stuck in a catalog that came yesterday,” Dad says. “You told me to bring it to you.” He hands it over. The magic words glow in the upper left-hand corner: “Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Office of Admissions.”

It is a thin envelope.

I open it badly. The envelope tears and rips across my name and address. A jagged opening. The letter is brief, murder by stiletto, a thin, sharp blade: “We regret to inform you . . . thousands of qualified candidates . . . not a reflection on your abilities . . . many opportunities elsewhere . . . Sincerely . . . ”

The need to vomit vanishes. Dead girls don’t puke.

My father picks up the letter and envelope from the floor. He says something I can’t hear. When I don’t answer, he looks in the envelope. Maybe the real letter, the acceptance letter, is hidden in there, written in invisible ink on invisible, space-age paper. Or it’s a Cheshire cat letter and it will materialize any second now. Somewhere deep in that envelope are my registration instructions, my financial aid package, and a handwritten note from the cross-country coach.

If Dad says that he told me this would happen, I will die all over again.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

I heard that.

I wish I were three feet tall and he could pick me up and he still had a beard and he wore cotton sweaters that felt soft on my cheek and I could cry it all away and I would wipe my tears on his shoulder and I could suck my thumb and suck the end of my ponytail and he wouldn’t tell me only babies did that and he would rock me on the front porch with the wind coming clean from the north and he would sing nursery rhymes with made-up words like Mom used to and he could teach me the alphabet again and how to walk and how to run and maybe I would do it better this time.

Dad clears his throat. “It’s not the end of the world, honey. You have all those other schools. Come here. . . . ”

He pulls me into a hug. He is wearing the tweed jacket from last night (smells like chicken) and it scratches my cheek. The ground shakes. The iceberg that traps us shifts and groans and I come so close—this close—to being his daughter, the Malone girl, Jack’s girl, and letting him be Daddy and love me for all these stupid mistakes, and letting him try to put a Band-Aid on this one even though we both know it’s going to bleed for a very long time, but it’s the Band-Aid that counts.

I have not inhaled since I saw the envelope. I am inert, an expired reaction.

“You could talk to Mr. Kennedy,” he says. “He’ll help you choose from the other schools. You have options, honey.”

I am so dead that I can’t even think about what this means.

“Or I could talk to him. I have a meeting in the guidance department”—he looks at his watch over my shoulder—“in a minute.”

I step back, a rush of cold air on my cheeks. “Why?”

He cracks his knuckles. “Mrs. Litch asked me to come. The police are involved because of the fight Teri was in yesterday.”

I stand up straighter. “And you thought you’d drop off my letter on the way?”

He frowns. “No, it was more than that. You asked me . . .”

The iceberg stops groaning and arctic salt water swirls, restoring the space between us, putting us back in our places.

“I have to get back to chem.”

We both look through the door. The cartoon has lulled the class into their happy place. Alice is lost again. Dad folds the letter and inserts it back in the envelope. “We’ll talk about this tonight. I know you’re upset, but we’ll figure something out.”

He hugs my head and I hold my breath. I take the envelope and turn my back to him. I step over the threshold, enter the classroom, and close the door behind me, quietly, so it doesn’t disturb anyone.

3.0.1 Scientific Method

At my lab table, I review the experiment:

Step 1. Hypothesis—I am brilliant. I am special. I am going to MIT, just like my mom did. I am going to change the world.

Step 2. Procedure—Acquire primary and secondary school education. Follow all rules. Excel at chemistry and math, ace standardized tests. Acquire social skills and athletic prowess; maintain a crushing extracurricular load. Earn national science fair honors. Apply to MIT. Wait for acceptance letter.

Step 3. Results—Failure.

Step 4. Retrace steps. Procedure flawless.

Step 5. Conclusion—Hypothesis incorrect. I am a loser.

So simple.

I light the Bunsen burner. The thin envelope goes up in flames.

3.1 Flammability

Someone has been messing with my locker. 27-18-28. Jigglejigglejiggle the handle. Locked. 27-18-28. Jigglejigglejiggle. Damn.

If I weren’t trapped in a hall of bodies I could kick this sucker or punch it or find a chair and smash it against the crap metal piece of shit until I was standing in a pile of kindling up to my ankles and then the lock would tumble into place and the handle would jigglejiggle-open. If there weren’t four thousand strangers bumping into me one after the other, I could get a crowbar and pry this thing open because I have to get my books and my notebooks and look at all the stupid crap that is stuck to the inside of my locker so it can remind me of who I am on days when I forget or want to forget like this one. If there were any justice in the world, I’d be able to flatten myself and slide through the vents in the locker door like Alice in Wonderland, Kate in Wonderland, off with her head!