1 Under Pressure

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CHAPTER ONE UNDER PRESSURE Pressure (noun). When molecules work together to apply a force. Like if kindergartners push over an ice-cream truck at recess, or when lava forces its way out of a volcano. BREATHING FIRE IS EASY. At least that was what I told myself. I stood in the science lab after school in front of a couple dozen fourth and fifth graders. All waiting on me. No pressure. "Ready, Kate?" asked Ms. Daly, our after-school chemistry club advisor. "I was born ready!" I pumped my arm in the air like I was in the huddle before a soccer game. "Egg-cellent," said Ms. Daly. It was her typical cornball humor. Mostly because of this stinky experiment we did last April that turned raw eggs into bouncy balls. A bunch rolled all over the place, and one got lost in the radiator. Only there weren't rotten bouncy eggs involved in my demo.

Instead: 1 blowtorch (with a steady base so the school wouldn't catch on fire) 1 big mouth (mine—words pretty much launched out of it and thoughts came later) 2 scoops of cornstarch (nothing to do with Ms. Daly's cornball humor. It had to do with carbon.) 1 straw (reusable, my BFF Birdie made sure of it) 2 legs (to run with if things got too explosive) 1 bucket (to spit out the cornstarch) 2 best friends (1 to hold the fire extinguisher and 1 to cheer me on) 1 glass of water (to rinse out my mouth after the demo) 1 big bowl of water (safety, duh!) 1 fire blanket (Unlike Supergirl, the girl of steel, I'm fully human.) Ms. Daly secured the blowtorch onto a nearby desk. With its attachable base, it looked like a missile.

"It's ready," she declared. Soon a 2,000-degree flame would spew out of its brass nozzle. Not just anywhere. A foot from my head. I swallowed hard. Why did I volunteer for this again? Chairs scraped the floor. Kids leaned forward to see better. Normally, we got about a dozen for our Friday meetings. Today, three dozen crammed into the room. It was the very last meeting before fall break, and everyone had flocked here to see me. I didn't want to blow it. Strike that. I NEEDED to blow it—cornstarch, I mean, spitting straight toward the flame to make a gigantic sizzling fireball. "Is that a real torch?" asked Avery Cooper, a chemistry club regular who played midfield on my soccer team. She pointed so enthusiastically that her short blonde braids bobbed. "It looks like a prop from my dads' theater." "Oh, it's real all right," I said. "I'll vouch for that," said Ms. Daly. She should know. She's a retired air force flight engineer. She knocked on the tank with a wrench from her tool belt. The silver wrench was the same color as her cap of short hair. "It's loaded with fuel," she said.

"Awesome," sniffed a nasally fourth grader in an Avengers T-shirt. He made a kaboom sound that was a little too phlegmy. "It's going to be a beautiful swirl of color," said Birdie Bhatt in a hushed voice. Of course Birdie would say that. She's my best friend and really amazing at drawing, especially unicorns. "Take a step back," instructed Ms. Daly, shooing everyone with her arms. "You should be in the second row. Just in case." "In case of what?" snapped Phoenix Altman, who locked eyes with Avery. "It's only a precaution," said Ms. Daly. Just like the fire blanket. And the fire extinguisher that Elijah Williams, my other best friend and also my next-door neighbor, was holding. For a moment, regret zipped inside me like hot gas molecules. Had I really declared in a not-soquiet voice during recess that I could breathe fire? Yup. Speak-and-then-think Kate Crawford at your service! If I had known what was going to happen afterward, would I have breathed fire? That's complicated. Because it wasn't just the fire breathing demo.

It was all the stuff days later. Because of the demo. Because of me. But I didn't know any of that then. I just knew I had to breathe fire like Dr. Caroline, on YouTube. It's not only because she blows things up and makes the best and weirdest messes. Or because of her hot-pink lab coat and cool shoes. It's because by listening to her, I realized that chemistry is way more than a bunch of facts in a book. Chemistry is what you eat, it's how you sleep, it's why shampoo stings your eyes in the shower. You can taste science, you can smell it. And you can watch it explode. And that was the reason I had to breathe fire. It was also why weird things started happening to me. You might call them messages. Or formulas that didn't make sense. And when something doesn't make sense, I, Kate Crawford, get very, very curious and just have to figure it out.