When they left Mumtaz’s office, Shelly could see that Newton was worried.
“It’s going to be okay, Newton, I promise,” she told him. “But I’m sorry if I made it seem like Mumtaz could fix everything. I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. Honestly, I’m a little confused.”
Newton hesitated. “Did you—did you get the feeling she’s, maybe, hiding something?”
Shelly nodded. “Whatever it is, I am going to do everything I can to figure it out, okay?”
Newton looked at her with sad eyes. He had reminded her of a lost puppy dog from the moment she saw him, and she was a sucker for any animal that needed help, or was hurt or lost.
Back home it seemed like they were drawn to her. It was some kind of strange sixth sense. She once caught a baby bird just as it fell out of its nest. An injured squirrel showed up on her doorstep, and she made a bionic leg for it. She even knitted a bodysuit for a bald porcupine, and nursed a star-nosed mole with a hurt paw back to health. Shelly felt very lucky that her mom and dad appreciated what she was doing and let her turn the garage into a wildlife rescue center.
As Shelly got more interested in mad science, she started making animal hybrids. Some people called them “monsters,” but Shelly’s goal was for the greater good. She wanted to make animals that could withstand harsh conditions, repair their own bones, and survive oil spills. Animal rescue was her first love, and she was grateful that when she had left for Franken-Sci High, her parents promised to keep her rescue work going.
When she thought of Newton, who had no idea who his family was, she felt a pang of sympathy. She wanted to help him.
“Let’s go to your locker first,” Shelly told him. “Let me see your tablet.”
Newton passed it to her, and Shelly nodded.
“We’re in the same locker hive,” she said, handing the tablet back to him. “Come on! To get to our lockers, you make a right here at the Sentient Vegetation Incubator,” she said, pointing to a glass wall where Newton could see that some unfortunate student was wrestling with an aggressive ivy vine. “Try to remember that if you get lost.”
“Well, my brain is pretty empty right now, so I should be able to fill it with a lot more stuff,” Newton joked.
Shelly laughed. “That’s pretty funny, Newton! Guess your brain bank is pretty empty.”
She made a right turn and about halfway down the hall, stopped in front of a gleaming metal locker.
“Locker number 352.17,” she said. “You’re lucky you’re on the first hive level.”
Shelly looked up, and Newton saw that rows and rows of lockers, going up as high as fifty feet, were stacked on top of one another. “I’m all the way up there,” she told him.
Then she looked back at Newton’s locker. “They’re a bit tricky to open. I’ll show you,” she said.
She pointed to a glass pad on the right side of the locker door.
“Students here are very protective of their experiments and their research, so the school developed a triple-factor verification program for lockers,” she explained. “First, it reads your fingerprint.”
She motioned for Newton to touch a button on the pad with his finger. He obeyed, and a beep sounded.
“Next is the eye scan,” Shelly said. “Just open your eyes wide and put them close to the pad. They don’t have to touch.”
Newton leaned forward. A green light flashed across his eyes. Beep!
“So far, so good,” Shelly said. “Finally, the saliva analysis. You need to lick the lines on the bottom of the pad, and it recognizes your DNA. Professor Phlegm is in charge of it, and he chooses a different flavor for the pad every day. What kind of flavor we get usually depends on his mood. He must be in a good mood today because it tastes like cotton candy.”
“Cotton candy tastes good?” Newton asked.
“Try it and see,” Shelly said.
Newton cautiously leaned down again and licked the pad. Then he smiled.
“Good,” Newton agreed, nodding.
“I’m glad,” Shelly said. “Yesterday it tasted like a sweaty exercise mat!”
Newton moved to open the door, and Shelly put her arm in front of him.
“Stop!” she cried. “Do it slowly, and look first before you reach in. There have been black holes popping up inside some of the lockers recently. The Physics Club has been trying to get them under control, but black holes are, well, kind of major. They’ll suck you into—oblivion!”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Newton said.
“It’s not,” Shelly said.
Newton slowly opened the door and peered in.
“All clear,” Shelly said. “When you get books and stuff, you can stash them in here between classes. Or use your locker to store anything you want to keep safe. At least now you know how to open it.”
Newton closed the door, and Shelly heard his stomach growl loudly. She giggled.
“Sounds like you’re hungry.” she said.
“Hungry?” Newton repeated.
“It’s when your stomach feels empty, and you want to eat food,” Shelly said.
Newton nodded. “Then I guess I’m hungry.”
“Come on, let’s go to the cafeteria,” she said. “They should still be serving food.”
Shelly led him down the hallway to a large glass tube. She pressed a button and the tube hissed open. She stepped inside and Newton followed.
“You just have to say or think where you want to go, or press a button on the screen, and the tube will take you there,” Shelly explained. “It’s a little intense the first few times you try it.”
“Intense? I woke up in a room full of brains and I don’t know who I am,” Newton said. “Bring it on!”