Itchingham Lofte had caused explosions before. There had, in truth, been many bangs, flashes, and smells coming from his bedroom in the past. His multi-stained carpet and pockmarked walls were a testament to that. But there had been nothing like this explosion—it made even more of an impact than the small earthquake that had rippled under Cornwall a few months before. It wasn’t just the bedroom walls that shook; it was the whole house. Windows and doors rattled, the pots and pans in the kitchen jumped, and two drawers in the dresser opened.
Not that Itchingham was aware of any of that, because he was unconscious. He would have stayed that way, too, if it hadn’t been for the fact that his eyebrows were on fire—and the astute decision of his eleven-year-old sister, Chloe, to throw a cup of water over his face.
Itch (everyone called him Itch except his mother, whose bright idea it had been to name him Itchingham in the first place) sat up sharply, shaking the water out of his eyes.
“What did you do that for, Chloe?” he said. “I had it all under control, you know.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Your eyebrows were burning,” and she turned and went back to her bedroom, which was across the hall.
Itch felt for the prickly remains of what used to be his eyebrows—what was left crumbled in his fingers. Then the unmistakable smell of burned hair filled his nostrils and he realized Chloe had been right. He stood up a little gingerly and thought he’d better go after her and admit it, but when he poked his head into her room, he found she was already asleep. Itch marveled at her ability to fall back to sleep in seconds—something he had never been able to do. The truth is, if you sleep in the room next to a fourteen-year-old science-crazed boy who likes to blow things up, you learn very quickly only to take notice of the very big bangs.
Itch went into the bathroom to dry and inspect his face. Both eyebrows were indeed gone, and about an inch of his bangs too. His wavy blond hair tended to be straggly anyway, but this explosion had forced it into a completely new style. Most of the sooty black smudge on the left side of his face came away with a vigorous rub.
Itch went back to his room and surveyed the mess. A really bad one this time. White smoke hung in the air and clung to the walls. Where the contents of his beaker had splashed, the carpet had turned black. Itch thought it had originally been green, but that was a long time ago. The beaker itself had shattered into a number of pieces, three of which had embedded themselves in the curtains, where they continued to smolder. Burn marks surrounded each of the fragments. He climbed onto his bed to retrieve them and stepped on a fourth piece, which poked its way right through his sock. Itch winced and pulled it free. Blood began to ooze through the cotton.
There had been a few posters on the walls, all bearing the scars of previous mishaps. All had now been blasted to pieces. He put what was left of them under his bed, together with the fragments of the beaker. He scraped the chemical remains of the explosion off the carpet and wrapped them in his wet towel. These too he shoved under the bed.
Itch changed into his pajamas and took his clothes, along with his bloodied sock, downstairs to the washing machine. As he had learned, this was the only way to get rid of the smell of smoke. His foot still hurt from the sharp beaker shard and he hobbled along to get the laundry detergent. He put the washing machine on its quickest cycle and hoped it would all be done before his mother got back. Thirty-one minutes later the machine beeped at him, and he hung his clothes up to dry.
With any luck, thought Itch, Mum won’t notice, and I’ll get away with it. He had gotten away with so much over the years that this wasn’t necessarily wishful thinking.
But Itchingham Lofte had forgotten about his missing eyebrows….
Jude Lofte arrived home just after eleven-thirty. Though she often had to work weekends, this was late, even for her. Itch had been in bed for twenty minutes but was nowhere near sleep. It always took his brain a couple of hours to shut down anyway, but tonight he was lying in his dark room, increasingly aware of how much it stank. Even with the window open, as it had been for the two hours since the explosion, there really was no escaping the smell of burning phosphorus. He was annoyed with himself for many reasons; mostly because he’d used too much of the phosphorus he’d collected from a couple of old ship flares. Too many matchstick heads as well. And maybe, on balance, mixing everything up with a screwdriver had been one of his stupider ideas. He was also irritated that he had awakened Chloe and that she had seen the post-explosion chaos in his room.
Itch had a pretty good relationship with his sister, even though she was a girl, and only eleven. He knew that most fourteen-year-old boys either ignored their younger sisters or dismissed them as deeply stupid. But Itch and Chloe Lofte tended to stick together. They got called Itchy and Scratchy, after The Simpsons, of course, but as Itch had explained to her on one of their walks home from school, there are plenty of things worse to be called. Chloe had pointed out that it was OK for him because he had such a ridiculous name anyway.
Itch heard his mother shut and lock the door and go into the kitchen. She wouldn’t inspect anything too closely. Normally she made herself a cup of tea and then worked downstairs in her study until very late. Sometimes so late that even Itch was asleep.
He heard the kettle being filled and the clatter of the tea canister being opened. Then a silence—followed by his mother’s footsteps in the hall, where she stopped. Itch tensed. He could hear sniffing. His mother was now coming up the stairs, still sniffing. The smell of the burning phosphorus in his room had been so strong, he hadn’t noticed that the whole house was filled with the stench.
Jude Lofte paused outside Itch’s room. She waited all of two seconds before opening his door. Slowly at first; then, as the still powerful smell hit her nostrils, she opened it fully. The hall light shone into the darkness of the bedroom. Itch was lying on his side, curled up in the classic fetal position, with his back to his mother. Why he was bothering to go through this pretense he wasn’t sure. He knew exactly what was going to happen next. He knew exactly what his mother was going to say.
“Hello, Itchingham. Been busy?” She sat down on the side of his bed. This was, he knew, the calm before the storm. She always started gently, but it usually didn’t last long.
“Oh, hello, Mum. Er, yes, I’ve done my French homework—though I did get—”
“I wasn’t thinking of your homework. I was thinking of the smell of bonfires, which almost certainly means you’ve had another accident.”
His mother got up and turned on the light. Itch had made a reasonable job of cleaning up, but he hadn’t calculated on a late-night maternal visit. Fixing Itch with a stare, Jude crouched down beside the bed and peered underneath.
I really need to think of somewhere else to hide stuff, thought Itch as she pulled out the damp remains of the evening’s experiment-gone-wrong.
“You really need to think of somewhere else to hide stuff, Itchingham,” his mother said, as though reading his mind. “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t look here? Did you think I wouldn’t know where to find the source of the stench—the latest you have blessed us with?”
Sarcasm was the final stage before eruption. In geography class, Itch had just learned about volcanoes and the Volcanic Explosivity Index, which was used to measure the power of eruptions. Mr. Watkins, Itch’s favorite teacher, had said that it went from “gentle” to “severe” to “colossal” and finally “mega-colossal.” From his mother he could expect “colossal”—though he wouldn’t rule out a full-blown “mega-colossal.”
Jude Lofte’s top lip quivered. Itch’s stomach tightened.
“How many times, Itchingham? HOW MANY TIMES? I told you the last time when you set fire to your bed that any more—ANY MORE—accidents, and that was it. We only escaped then because Chloe started keeping a fire extinguisher in her room.”
“That was the classic volcano experiment!” said Itch. “I just didn’t realize how close the bedspread was to the flames—”
“Enough! Stop! No more experiments. At all. NONE.”
Itch said nothing, and now his mother slowed down. “Have I made myself clear? I want your stuff—chemicals, powders, potions, flasks, and whatever else you have hidden away in your closet to be taken outside after school tomorrow. No explosions, no ‘volcanoes,’ no burning hydrogen bubbles. No nothing.”
Itch’s jaw dropped. “But I can’t just leave everything in the yard. It will all be ruined!” He felt a bit panicky now. His “stuff,” as his mother called it, had taken a long time to assemble and was his pride and joy. His friends at school talked mainly of soccer and surfing; he had no interest in the first and only a passing one in the second. His passion—his “really lame hobby,” as Chloe called it—was about to be cleared out of his room forever.
“Well, you should have thought of that before you tried to blow up the house. And what have you done to your face?!” Jude had stopped looking around her son’s bedroom and had only just noticed his eyebrows. Or lack of them.
“Oh, they burned off. Sorry.”
“SORRY?” shouted Jude. “Sorry? You could have been blinded! Really, Itchingham, you are an idiot sometimes.” She put her hand under his chin and tilted his head up to the light. “Well, they’re gone.”
“How long ’til they grow back?”
“Depends what you torched them with.”
“It was phosphorus.”
Itch’s mother put her head in her hands. “Good grief,” she said. She sat silently for a few moments. Itch thought he should stay silent too. Then she stood up and turned to the door. “All of it—outside. Tomorrow.” She walked out of the bedroom, switching off the light as she went.
Itchingham Lofte’s obsession was a strange one. It thrilled him to his core, but he was coming to the conclusion that he might be on his own with it. He couldn’t understand why no one else got it. As soon as he tried to explain, everyone yawned and changed the subject.
Some people could name every single computer game released in the previous year; others could describe every goal scored by Manchester United in the current soccer season. Itch could name, explain, and was collecting the elements. The Table of Elements. The Periodic Table. Whoever came up with those titles, Itch thought, had done a spectacularly bad job. It was as if they were trying to put people off by disguising a great subject with the world’s dullest name. If it had been called “The Rocks Factor,” more people would get it. If his hobby were marketed the way newspapers once were, with vendors shouting: “118 TO COLLECT! WHO WANTS GOLD AND SILVER? GET YOUR PLUTONIUM HERE!” maybe things would be different.
There was, he thought, no point in collecting anything else; this was everything else. It was the catalog of everything that existed in the universe, stripped down to its 118 basic ingredients. If Itch was honest, part of him was relieved that most people just left him to get on with it. How boring to be the same as everyone else. Did the world need another soccer fan? He didn’t think so.
He had tried to keep up when he started at the local high school—Cornwall Academy—just so he could take part in the conversation. He had read the sports pages of his mother’s paper, talked to his older brother, Gabriel, about what happens in Call of Duty, and watched the odd match on TV, but his heart just hadn’t been in it and his classmates soon realized he was a phony. He didn’t get their passions, they certainly didn’t get his, and Itch had slowly come to the conclusion he’d just have to accept it.
He had always enjoyed collecting things. Tucked away in a drawer somewhere, he still had folders and albums stuffed with Pokémon cards, coins, maps, marbles, and frogs (that one didn’t last long). They all seemed a very long time ago now. For two years now, Itch had considered himself an element hunter, and it had slowly taken over his life.
It had taken over from friends, too. He had never found it easy to make friends, particularly since his family had moved to Cornwall from London when he was eleven. He felt like an outsider from day one. All his new classmates were a good three inches shorter than he was, spoke differently, and to Itch’s bafflement, many said they weren’t even English, but Cornish. He had learned not to argue and had given up trying to get along with them. They all got on fine without him, and he could get by without them.
Itch woke up when his sister banged on his door. They had a well-established routine. Chloe always woke first, and after she had dressed for school she would knock loudly as she passed his door. She would go downstairs and start breakfast. Itch normally came down ten minutes later, but this morning it took him longer to get dressed and find his school things. The twin explosions—of the phosphorus and his mother—weighed heavily on his mind. He hoped she had worked late and slept in.
He was to be disappointed. He hadn’t been in so much trouble since the stink bomb moment six months ago. He had gotten hold of some American army spray that made the whole house smell like a toilet. It took a professional cleaning company three days to get rid of it.
“Hello, Itchingham,” said his mother. “Still no eyebrows, then.”
There should be a law against parents using sarcasm, thought Itch as he poured his cereal. He looked up at his sister. Her expression suggested that it was best to stay as quiet as possible for the next few minutes. He felt sure Chloe wouldn’t have said any more than she had to, though she did mouth “Boom!” at him whenever she was sure their mother wasn’t looking.
Jude Lofte stood at the stove in what Itch was sure were the same clothes she had been wearing the day before—her usual dark gray skirt and white shirt. They looked a bit rumpled, as did she. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with the same mousy-blond, wavy hair as Itch.
“From now on,” she said, “no experiments in the house. Ever. At all. Is that clear?” Before Itch could reply she continued, “And I will be inspecting your room. Any bits of equipment or,” she paused, “strange rocks will be thrown away. I can’t have you endangering your sister or the house again. From now on, if you have anything to mix, anything to smash, anything to play with that’s more dangerous than, say,” she looked around, “a bowl of Cheerios, then you do it in the shed.” She went over to the kettle.
Itch’s mouth fell open. “What?” he said. Hardly believing what he had heard, he pressed for some clarification. “You mean I can carry on as long as I only experiment in the shed? Really?” He was trying to keep the relief out of his voice for fear that his mother would realize she had been surprisingly lenient. Working in the shed had the huge advantage of being at the end of their sixty-foot backyard. Itch would have suggested it himself but had assumed there was no room for negotiation and that the answer would be no.
“It seems last night’s incident has affected your ears as well as your eyebrows,” Jude said.
Chloe snickered. Itch shot her a “Thanks-for-nothing” glance.
“OK, fair enough. I agree,” he said, slightly too quickly. Such was his relief that he then gave the game away completely by trying to give his mother a kiss on the cheek. She was unprepared for this, and moved her head away so that Itch ended up kissing the air where his mother had been. Displays of affection when their father wasn’t around were rare in the Lofte house—and this attempt at one left both mother and son slightly embarrassed.
Jude covered the awkward silence by turning on the radio. The kettle boiled, and she made another mug of tea. She sat down at the table and blew on the tea. Itch was about to explain how pointless that was and how it would never lower the temperature of the liquid unless she blew continuously for twenty minutes, when again he checked himself and said nothing. Chloe continued to eat her breakfast. Jude sipped her still-very-hot tea and looked up at her son.
“Please, Itch—nothing dangerous. You got away with it this time. Just stick to rocks that don’t blow up, OK?” She sounded genuinely concerned.
Itch, taken aback, agreed. “OK, just the safe stuff, Mum. Promise.”
She managed a half smile and started to clear the dishes.
It was then that Itch remembered the arsenic.