Smoke and Mirrors

Chapter Seven

  

 

“Carmen come here please?” Mr. Winooski called her over. Carmen was sitting on Leanne and Angelina’s desk as they carried out a qualative analysis for lead nitrate; she’d been late to class and has missed the first stages.

“Yes sir.” Carmen saluted.

“Why were you late?”

“The bus broke down.” Carmen had hardly caught a bus in her life. Aside from the fact that she preferred to abstain from public transport the Sydney bus system was slow.

“You’ll join Hadley.”

“It’s okay sir, I’m working in a three with Lina and Leanne.” Carmen turned around.

“No Miss Fontaine needs a partner. You’ll work with Hadley. No threes.”

“What! But Mister…”

“No.”

“Whatever.” Carmen turned around. Who was Hadley anyway? He obviously wasn’t much of hunk whoever he was or else Carmen would have his fingers latched on to her belt. But the only person working by themselves was not a boy at all. The girl was gently studying the flow chart of chemical equations. She had sun bleached hair, a range of blondes that looked like the color of dried grass and little warm brown eyes. Her skin was sort of an over baked tan, speckled and damaged. She looked up at Carmen after a few seconds.

“Are you Hadley?” Carmen walked up to her.

“That’s me.” Hadley brushed her hair out of her eyes and smiled.

“Cool. I’m Carmen. You’re new here right?” Carmen clicked sliding in the seat beside her.

“Sure am. We moved to Sydney just this year.”

“So what are we doing? I remember that if you add this cool stuff to lead it goes yellow.” Carmen rubbed her temples trying to fetch the memory.

“I think we just use this flow chart. I added the ammonia and excess…” Hadley trailed off not really understanding what she was saying.

Carmen flicked through her own Chemistry book and then the homework book underneath. But as she did so a bit of paper flipped out, it had her name scrawled across it in messy writing. Carmen! Last night was amazing. Sorry I had to rush off. Maybe we could do that again some time? Ryan.

“I won’t ask what you were doing last night.” Hadley interrupted. Carmen could’ve sworn she saw her wink. “Aren’t you with that guy Trent Del Vechio?”

“Carmen, what did you guys get when you added the sulfuric acid?” Leanne loomed over their desk.

“Um yeah. We added the methocrylate and then the hydoxyisohexyl saturate and it turned a purplish color so we know for sure that it is lead nitrate.” Carmen explained to Leanne in a proper voice kicking Hadley under the desk and trying not to laugh. Leanne looked fed up and walked away.

“It’s not supposed to turn that color white.” Leanne added pointing to their beaker. “You’ve clearly added a bromide and ruined the whole thing.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m just saying this is a serious assessment. You can’t go fooling around all the time.”

“She’s sour.” Hadley winced.

“Tell me about it.” Carmen rolled her eyes. “I am quite the fool-er around-er though.”

“Me too. It’s called having fun.” Hadley shrugged. “Do you think there are potentially any highly destructive chemicals here we could use to sabotage their reaction.” Hadley copied Carmen’s proper voice.