The Science of Breakable Things: "Step 6: Experiment"

Originally, we planned to ask Mr. Neely if we could use his window after school on Monday, but Twig shook her head and said sagely, “Better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“Do you think anyone saw us?” Twig whispered loudly. Her hair was all staticky from the invisible electric current that seemed to run inside her. “Probably not, right? We were as stealthy as secret agent spies.”

Dari still hesitated, and Twig threw her arms in the air, exasperated. “Don’t be such a worrywart.”

She sighed and shook her head as if this were just some strange Dari quirk. “Ready?” she asked me.

I gaped at my reckless, illogical best friend. Twig had done some inexplicable things over the past few years, but this was a whole new level.

“Abort mission! Abort!” Twig yelled wildly as we pounded down the three flights of stairs.

On his forehead, just below his hairline, a red welt had started to form.

He’d haphazardly swept the remnants of the contraptions into the plastic bag, and yolk dripped from a hole at the bottom.

“Nothing,” Mikayla said, and then, just for good measure, she looked at me and added, “Whatever,” before turning and sashaying away with Janie.

“I’m sorry because I should have stayed up there with you guys. I wasted so much time being indecisive and coming down here. I should have been part of the team.”

Twig, of course, was oblivious. “Next time we break into a girls’ bathroom, you’ll be right by our side,” she said.
I really hoped she meant this metaphorically, not literally, but with Twig, it was a toss-up.

Twig, of course, was oblivious. “Next time we break into a girls’ bathroom, you’ll be right by our side,” she said.
I really hoped she meant this metaphorically, not literally, but with Twig, it was a toss-up.

In order of least exciting to most exciting: the movies, the aquarium, the arboretum, Six Flags, Disneyland.

“Take my hand,” Dad said after we got out of the car, sticking his hand out with mock seriousness.

One crisis averted, another incoming, because Dad’s wild want to be happy smile was back.

I read further: THIS HARDY FLOWER CAN SURVIVE IN NEARLY ANY CONDITION.

That was Question Number Twenty-Four. I was busy tallying that question on my mental scoreboard, so that was what was on my mind.

I hadn’t meant to, but I guess I’d been thinking of him kind of as a teacher—like he only existed in the context of school and our egg drop.

His mom wears a sari, his kitchen smells like foods I’ve never tasted, and his whole house is decorated with pictures of his family back in India—aunts and uncles and cousins and his two brothers, who are already adults.

Dari raced downstairs to inspect our fallen egg—Dari, our calm, collected, studious Dari, running over to our egg like a doctor to his patient.

They were sleepy, and I was too giddy to realize it was anything more than that—too Christmas-happy to realize today was a Bad Day for Mom.

Whenever Twig and her mom went to France, Twig brought back these little figurines. She was obsessed with them for some reason, even though anything so fragile seemed anti-Twig.

She told it to me like a legend or a myth. “This is a flower that achieved the impossible,” she told me. “This flower survived in the face of chemicals and toxins, and it turned all that death into something beautiful. That miracle field, Natalie, that’s the happiest place in the world.”

Kinetic Energy: The energy of motion. A force that seems unstoppable,.

It looked wild, frenzied, like it wasn’t sure which way to go, forward and back, forward and back, and before it could slow down, I clamped my hand over the washer.