The Final Solstice

II | Chemistry's Rival

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Sofia Accetta

Suffering has always been a broad word.
To some, it's the uneasy feeling of passing by a yard littered with garden gnomes. To others, it's show tunes. To me, it was being in a school amongst simple minded people incapable of excelling at anything. In other words, I would suffer every single day, and it was painful. Chemistry was the only class I could endure. Given that most revolutionary historical figures where chemists, it seemed to be the only one with the potential to be great. Marie Curie, Alfred Nobel, Ernest Rutherford, their discoveries planted the base of what we would learn. As an aspiring chemist myself, I too planned to do something legendary. My biggest goal was to fuse the seed of a baobab tree, but most teachers labelled it as an impossible feat.

Chemistry on the other hand would soon beg to differ. It's the bad boy of science.

Fortunately, class came sooner than I could've wished. Before I knew it, the maze like hallways of Montessori led me to the disheveled room, resembling the laboratory of a mad scientist. Peeking in through the doorway, I noticed it was empty, but everything was set up for our weekly lab. The granite topped counters littered the entirety of the class, two high mahogany stools behind each. Every desk had an array of glassware and beakers, messy wires connecting a few with distinct liquids passing through every one. At the very front of the dimly lit room stood Mr. Alves behind his desk, scribbling away in his notebook. His lab glasses sat nimbly on the bridge of his nose, strands of his slicked back copper hair falling against them. A long white lab coat engulfed his adult figure, obscuring the orange shirt he wore beneath it as he tapped his shoe repeatedly against the floor. I never liked Mr. Alves, he lacked ambition and was never willing to do real science, instead reducing us to changing liquid colours and mixing borax. Child's play.

I walked into the quiet class, the low heels of my shoes clacking against the marble floor. Instantly, Mr. Alves' vision raised from his sudoku.

"Good morning, Sofia! Ready for our Friday lab?" he asked, excitement lacing his voice.

I didn't respond.

I sat at the very front, directly in the view of Mr. Alves and the chalkboard. He gave me a strange look, though I didn't know what for, before picking up a yellow chalk and scraping it against the board, writing the lab's objective. Sooner than I liked, the rest of my peers began to file in. The once silent classroom became loud with the chatter of my classmates filling the thin walls, cancelling out the melodic scratching of the chalk, shoes and heels resounding against the floor. The late students sprinted in as Mr. Alves was finishing up, a chorus of chairs being pulled and bags being opened eventually fading into nothing. In my peripheral vision, a ginger tumbleweed appeared, accompanied by a giddy voice.

"Hey partner!" Doreen cheerfully greeted as I put my brown locks into a bun. I turned to look at her, her frizzy hair messier than it was before, the same leopard print glasses tilted as always. Her misty gray eyes bore into my soul. I found it threatening.

"Hello," I responded, civil as could be.

She removed her cobalt blazer and threw it on her pink backpack that sat on the floor, pulling out the mahogany chair just as Mr. Alves turned to face the class. He began to explain the overall goal of the lab, going into detail concerning measurements and mixing. He would point here and there on the board as he spoke, an irrepressible excitement eliciting in his voice. I darted my eyes from the scribbled chalk and looked down at the vials that sat unmoved on my desk, each of them a different size. I would do this for a while, Mr. Alves' voice slowly fading out, before I felt a tap on my shoulder from behind.

I turned to meet the juvenile eyes of Francisco. Last year, he was convicted of a felony.

Allegedly, he bullied middle schoolers into stealing money from their parents to buy drugs from him. When he was caught, Montessori's dead halls and dull nature became the liveliest it ever was. Everyone would talk about it, even I did. At first it was nothing but a truckload of measly rumours, nothing that seemed to be credible. But, when the cops came in at the end of the school day to arrest him during my math class, the typically silent people housed within the school walls bursted with talk and hot gossip, the once seemingly fake news being proved true. To see a convicted felon get arrested was exhilarating, I checked it off my bucket list that night. People said that he was sent to jail for a few months because he disappeared and didn't show his face until just two weeks before, but I wasn't one to gossip.