I spent last night reading too many articles about terrible diseases. But I managed not to look at the vlog. Now it’s Monday morning, and I’m sitting in science with Lauren, watching Danny Trudeau.
And I’m not the only one. He’s been picked to perform an experiment in front of the class. Never in the history of school anywhere in the world has potassium permanganate been put on a dish so perfectly. The way Danny picks up a spatula is poetry. He follows instructions on the whiteboard with tiny glimpses and, without even looking properly, manages to scoop just the right amount. Danny Trudeau: Scoop Master. If this were a YouTube video, the comments section would be all heart emojis and jealous scientists saying they could do it better. They couldn’t.
“Mills,” whispers Lauren, “he’s about to add the glycerin. In a few minutes, we’ll see the fire. The true fire of Trudeau.”
This makes us both giggle a lot. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about Danny starting a small chemical explosion that is just about taking my mind off my vlog. It has been itching around in my brain now for hours. All night. ALL day. I am desperate to see how many views we’ve had, what comments we’ve got, who has seen it, and who hasn’t seen it. Now I FINALLY have the perfect distraction. Doctor Danny and his spatula of love.
After the lesson, Lauren and I are walking behind the Canadian scientist of dreams and I realize I have the perfect opportunity to talk to him about something clever. I understand everything that just happened. I paid TOTAL attention to all of it. It’s like things have all come together to make this one moment. It’s like …
It’s like Bradley Sanderson is straight in front of my face. Completely blocking the view of Danny’s brilliant, atoms-changing body.
“I saw it,” he says. “I saw your vlog.”
There are two problems here. I really want to see Danny, but I also want to hear what Bradley thought about the vlog.
“What did you think?” I ask. I try to split my eyes to keep one on him and one on Trudeau’s magic. It doesn’t work. I just go cross-eyed.
Bradley stares at me hard. “It’s really, really … brave.”
I find this a bit worrying. The way Bradley says “brave” doesn’t make it feel like a massive compliment. In fact, it makes me feel like I’m doing something really stupid—like riding a bike over a really tall cliff with just a big shirt as a parachute.
Bradley can see my face has slightly collapsed and tries to reassure me. “No. I thought it was, like—honest and fresh. I showed my mum, and she really liked it.”
Lauren nudges me in the ribs and makes I told you so eyebrows.
“Great! Mums like it!” My sarcasm explodes with more fizz than Danny’s experiment. I feel instantly bad, though. Bradley seems almost hurt.
I go all enthusiastic. “How come you saw it? Did you go hunting for it?”
Bradley looks down and sideways and up and everywhere eyes can possibly go. “Er. No. That girl in your year who’s always posting on Instagram shared it.”
Lauren and I stare at each other.
Oh no. This is not good.
Danny has stopped to talk to someone. We walk past him. He grins in our general direction. If I wasn’t feeling so worried, I could almost think he was smiling JUST at me. But that’s the thing about my anxiety—it changes the entire world and how I see everything. He was probably just generally happy at making a small bomb that teachers approve of.
I want to go to the Zen Loo and check my phone immediately, but I can’t. I have to sit through half an hour of Mrs. Caldwell going on about binary code. I usually love Mrs. Caldwell and her amazing glasses that have interchangeable color inserts for different days of the week, but I NEED to see what Erin has said.
An Erin takedown could take me down. FOREVER.