Shirin sat with her friends at lunch the next day, and Hugo wasn’t there at all. Alma had been waiting impatiently to tell them about the light on the mountain, so this was especially disappointing. And even though Hugo had only eaten lunch with her one day, sitting by herself felt lonelier than ever. At least, Alma thought, taking her old, out-of-the-way seat, she would see them at the lecture.
That afternoon, she did what she had done on the day of the first club meeting. She waited next to the door of the classroom until the last student had left, then waited ten minutes more for the halls to clear. Then she headed down the empty hallways to the Science Lab, which would hopefully now also be empty except for the two people she wanted to see.
In the lab, Shirin was spinning distractedly around on one of the high table’s swivel stools. Hugo was straightening one of many stacks of paper, each covered in colored tabs and highlighter marks, which Alma guessed was how he had spent his lunch period. Mrs. Brisa was there too, wearing one of her earth-toned dresses with an earth-toned scarf around her neck and gray pebble earrings that looked distinctly handmade.
“Hello, Alma,” she said warmly. “I was so pleased to hear that you started this club.”
Alma was surprised that Mrs. Brisa recognized her outside of class, and even more surprised that she knew anything about her.
“I didn’t start it,” she replied nervously.
Mrs. Brisa smiled, as if Alma was being modest. “It was a team effort then? Well, I love it. The sciences are full of beauty and mystery and joy, but people seem to miss that a lot.”
“Well,” Alma said, “the stars aren’t easy to miss.”
“They are if you’re not looking up,” Mrs. Brisa replied.
“Apologies,” Hugo called from the head of the table, “but it is four o’clock, which means it is time for the lecture to begin.” Hugo’s voice, Alma noted as she sat by Shirin, sounded as unrobotic as she’d ever heard it. “You may each take a stack of notes. They are three-hole punched for your convenience. Future lectures will build on this material.”
Shirin spun toward Alma. “Alma,” she whispered. “Oh my goodness. What have we gotten ourselves into?”
Alma smiled back and pulled a set of notes to herself as Hugo put a slide of the periodic table of elements up on the overhead projector.
“My lecture has been somewhat altered in light of recent developments,” Hugo began. “When we talk about elements in science, we are usually referring to those listed on the periodic table. Everything on Earth is made of these chemical elements. Everything in the universe is made of these elements. And that includes the so-called classical elements, which I will focus on today.”
He put a new slide up. This one showed the ocean, vast and blue under a vast and blue sky.
“The first classical element is water, which, of course, is made of the chemical elements hydrogen and oxygen,” he said. “In the ocean, there is also sodium and chloride—that is, salt—as well as additional ions.”
“What about the water from the Fourth Point Spring?” Shirin called. “What’s that made of?”
Ignoring Shirin, Hugo flipped to a new slide, this one of a field of windmills. “The second classical element is wind, which is simply air in motion. Earth’s atmosphere—that is, air—primarily consists of nitrogen and oxygen. There is also carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other elements like argon and neon.”
Alma didn’t shout out like Shirin, but she thought of the light she’d seen on the mountain last night. What kind of wind would they find up there?
Hugo’s next slide was a cross-section of the Earth’s layers. “Earth is the third classical element,” he said. “Over ninety-eight percent of the Earth’s crust is made up of eight chemical elements: oxygen, silicone, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium. Additional elements include titanium, hydrogen, copper, silver, bismuth—”
“Do I seriously have to listen to this weirdo?”
Alma felt her whole self go tense. It was that voice again. She looked over her shoulder and sure enough, there he was.
Dustin.