Leap of Faith

Day Twenty-Six

*~*~* Cate *~*~*

“Are you ready?” Liam asks as he sprays the window of the laboratory with hot water.

It was lunch time and Liam had roped me into doing the Physics project with him. He’d done the write up and had his method all planned out, so all we needed to do was photograph the light refraction and then we’d be done.

Today was surprisingly sunny in Hastings. Liam was excited by the sun and had forced me to forgo my lunch period so that we could photograph his physics phenomenon. His kept saying that we might not get another sunny day again and we should take advantage it. I didn’t disagree because I was getting itchy about starting my own project and needed to get Liam’s out of the way first. Ok, so Mr. Hall said that I’d pass if Liam passed, but I didn’t want a free ride. I wanted to get started on my own work.

“I’ll be ready as soon as I see a rainbow,” I say as I hold up my camera to show him. I watched as Liam got all his apparatus in line and stood back nervously. “Are you ok? You look a little on edge.”

“I just hope this works, that’s all,” he answers as he starts chewing on his nails. I swat his shoulder and frown at him. “Sorry. Nasty habit, I know, but I don’t want to fail, that’s all.”

I smile at him encouragingly. “You won’t fail, Liam. I won’t let you.”

We wait a few minutes for the light to refract and for a rainbow to appear, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Liam starts to anxiously pull on his hair and paces the room, muttering ideas to himself on how to improve his method. I shook my head as I watched him move. His theory was sound and his method was right. There was nothing wrong with the experiment. We needed more direct light, that’s all.

“How about we do it with a pan of water and a mirror?” I suggest as Liam does another lap of the room. He stops in front of me and looks horrified. “Trust me. It’s work. It’s basically the same experiment, but we don’t need to reply on the weather.”

“Fine,” Liam says. He huffs out a breath of air and starts collecting the apparatus we’d need. He sets up the experiment and holds the flashlight in his hand. “Ok. Get ready.”

I nod and take my position. Liam and I had already spoken about the way he wanted the photograph to look, and I knew it was going to take a lot of work on my half in order to give Liam the results he wanted. He requested a black and white photo where the rainbow colors were the only colors in the print. He told me to think of The Dark Side of the Moon album cover, and I would do great if I could recreate that in the photo.

Liam turned off the light in the room and flashed the light against the mirror. I had to get in close to the white paper that was propped up against the wall in order to get a glimpse of the rainbow, but even then, the colors weren’t as vibrant as they should be. I clicked nonetheless, but when Liam saw my face, his smile disappeared.

“It’s not working, is it?” He asks as he drops the paper and turns off the flash light.

“No, it is,” I assure him. He isn’t fooled though, and I offer him a weak smile. “Hey, you said you wanted to recreate the Pink Floyd album cover right? Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t they do the prism experiment to get that photo? Dispersion of light?”