2 Waiting for a Reaction

CHAPTER TWO WAITING FOR A REACTION Chemical Reaction (noun). A process where one thing changes into a completely different thing, irreversibly. Like how we convert chocolate and flour into a cake, but we can't turn a cake into chocolate and flour! ELIJAH LIFTED THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER over his short afro, grunting as if it were heavy, which it wasn't. He could be such a drama king. "I'm on it," he said. "Just call me the Firefighter." Birdie whipped out her phone. Well, not her phone. Her older sister Meela's. Birdie had dropped hers in the pond by my house. Mostly because she had been a little shocked when I told her I was going to breathe fire after school today. I wasn't sure why she was surprised. It's not like I hadn't been planning this demo since last spring. Ms. Daly said that if I wrote an essay on

combustion (the science word for fire) and showed her I was ready, I could breathe fire when I got to fifth grade. So I had written about my need to understand fire, starting with why toasted marshmallows taste better (the heat from the fire breaks a whole bunch of bonds within the molecules creating yummy marshmallow goo). Ms. Daly loved it. And now, guess what? It was October 2, and I had been a fifth grader for thirty days. And don't say not that anyone was counting. Because I was. I love math. Ms. Daly handed me a pale blue fire-resistant lab coat. "More safety precautions," she said firmly. My hair was already pulled back into a ponytail. And the bowl of water sat on a nearby counter. I rolled up the sleeves of the lab coat. Even though I was tall for ten, the long coat brushed the tips of my cowboy boots. The coat would help keep me safe because it was made from a fabric that was not supposed to melt and would protect me from heat. It was okay that it smelled bad and made me look like I was wearing ugly pajamas that my grandma Dort wouldn't wear, even if you paid her.

I crossed my fingers and toes that everything would go exactly as I had practiced.