At my last school I could get lost in a sea of blue shirts. Thorncroft sixth-formers don’t wear uniform and stand out like shark fins in that sea. I feel like a minnow, a flicker of colour, tiny but just visible. These sharks will eat me alive. I want to be accepted, popular. If I’m going to be here a while, I have to be somebody. I have to become a shark.
“OK, listen up, people!” booms Mr Paluk, the Chemistry teacher. “This demonstration involves electrolyzing water, and the explosive recombination of hydrogen and oxygen. Goggles on!”
The lab door bursts open. A figure appears, all beaming smile and confidence and oh-so-late. Paluk rolls his eyes, obviously used to this behaviour. Finn perches at the front in the only free space, the seat next to me. He throws me a grin. My self-awareness sky-rockets. Still, I can’t help but smile back. He’s here, sitting next to me, breathing the same air…
The whole class moves to retrieve goggles from the box on our bench.
The Girl With the Blinding Hair touches his shoulder and he turns to face her.
“Be my partner, Finn? Marcus said he’d swap.” Violet runs her fingers through her uber-straight, dark cherry locks.
“I have a partner, Vi. I’ll catch you in History.”
He picked me over her?
Violet shrugs, takes a pair of goggles and heads back to her seat.
“Looks like we’re lab buddies,” he says.
“I guess so,” I say, mentally cramming joy into my jeans pocket so it doesn’t spill out as a crazy three-foot grin across my face.
Finn oozes confidence. I could learn a thing or two from him. Finn Masterson: Master of Ease. I’m wound tighter than a spring.
Mr Paluk turns to the whiteboard and draws up a list of the equipment and chemicals we need next to a diagram of the apparatus.
I watch Finn set up the experiment. He seems eager and like he knows what he’s doing. Behold: behind his cocky exterior beats the heart of a scientist. Swoon.
He holds out a rubber bung to me.
“Can you thread the platinum wire through this, please?”
I take the silver string and poke it through. I glance up at the diagram, grab some plastic tubing and put it into place.
“Hey, sorry if I scared you with the tiger thing this morning. I can be an idiot sometimes. Just tell me to shove off if I get lairy.”
“It’s OK,” I say. “First day. Wasn’t expecting to be pounced on.”
“Yeah, pouncing is usually a day three or four thing.” He smiles.
He rolls up his sleeves, exposing strong, muscular arms. The skin is scraped from his elbows, which look red and sore. He pours a solution of hydrated sodium sulphate into a glass jar.
“You like Chemistry?” I enquire.
“Don’t I seem the type?” he asks, batting his chocolate lashes. I’m starting to think he’s the one with the legendary looks, not Violet Brody. He’s like Thor or Hercules or I don’t know, Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man. Gorgeous.
“Are you the type?” I ask, sarcastically.
“Oh, she strikes me in the chest!” Finn fakes an arrow with a piece of plastic tubing and thrusts it at his torso. “I like many things, Carla.”
He remembered my name.
He peeks at me through his not-so-cool goggles and I realize that while he still looks stunning, I probably look like Deirdre Barlow from Corrie.
“Yeah, I like Chemistry. It’s something I get. Surprised?”
“No, just sketching your character.”
“You can sketch me any time.” He winks, then stares at me for what seems an eternity.
“Are you going to put the bung in?”
“Excuse me?” I feel a flush creeping up my neck and across my cheeks.
“In the jar. Are you going to put the bung in or just stand there holding it? I don’t think this experiment is going to work without it.”
“Oh, I thought… Never mind.” I put the stopper in the top of the jar.
“Press it hard. We’ve got to make it gas-tight.”
I search deep in my armoury of social skills, which, as it happens, isn’t that deep, for something to say. The only subject I can think of is school.
“How about Art? You like it as much as Chemistry?”
“Not exactly. It’s not that I don’t like it. Basically, I thought it would be a doss. I was wrong though. It’s hard work.”
I connect the wires to a power pack. Soon bubbles start to appear in the solution around the wires.
“Beaker.” Finn holds out his hand expectantly, like a surgeon waiting for a scalpel. He smiles so widely, so openly. It’s infectious. I smile back and pass the beaker. He pours in some water.
“Washing-up liquid.”
I hand him the bottle. He adds a squirt to the water.
“Tube.” I put the other end of the plastic tube into the beaker.
“Careful, this is a tricky manoeuvre.” He mock-wipes sweat from his brow while, being this close to him, I actually start to sweat. It’s my first day. My heart has grown three sizes bigger and will soon pound right out of my chest.
Gas starts to bubble in the beaker. While he’s watching it, my eyes develop minds of their own and start to roam across his torso, his neck, his thick hair.
“Now comes the fun part. Bunsen burner on,” he says, throwing me a glance so full of warmth and charm I feel I’ve been lit from the inside and can be seen glowing from space.
“Check.”
“Spatula.”
“Coming at ya.” I smile, then inwardly groan at saying such a dorkish thing.
Finn scoops some bubbles onto the spatula, holds it in the Bunsen flame and, CRACK! They explode with a bang.
“This is why I like Chemistry, tiger.”