Of Mochas and Macchiatos

thirty-five. drowning girl

"Rafe Archer, you are now the proud owner of a teapot."

It is honestly the most beautiful teapot I've ever seen. It looks like something out of a Vogue editorial done in a Victorian manor house. Something you'd use to serve the queen if she ever happened to stop by. It is bone white China, its surface alabaster smooth, with resplendent detailing across its china surface.

The situation is so ridiculous and barely feels real as if sprawl out on the wooden slats of the verandah, basking in the last of the day's heat. Rafe looks slightly concerned though. "We should return this. It's not right to steal." I blink at him. Who knew his moral compass was so fixed. Then I feel like a bad person because I'd thought it'd be cool to keep it.

"Chill, they wouldn't even know you took it! There aren't even any cameras in the store."

"Well, yeah, but it's wrong. I've literally just stolen a teapot. God, what if somebody calls the police? And they have detectives and whatever? They'd find fingerprints, surely? But there'd be like barely any evidence, right?"

I think quietly for a moment. "I don't know. I mean, I hardly think Leo's is going to call the police over a missing teapot, however decadent the thing may be." I gesture at the thing. "But," Rafe tenses. "If they did, they could use PCR and find out it was you maybe?"

"Evie, I'm starting to get a little stressed about stealing a teapot. PCR sounds like a K-pop boyband."

"Okay, Okay! So PCR is this technique used to amplify tiny amounts of DNA found at crime scenes. It stands for polymerase chain reaction and it's when a whole, I don't know, 'cocktail' of ingredients including DNA nucleotide bases, primers, a certain Taq polymerase enzyme from this specific bacteria that lives in super high temperatures, uhm, a buffer solution and, uh...? Oh! The DNA template, obviously, are mixed up. Thee are three main stages."

Rafe is staring at me wide-eyed, still looking worried. Who knew that luxe louche loverboy Rafe could be scared of a teapot. Well, the consequences of stealing a teapot.

"So, step one is denaturing. It's when the double stranded DNA is heated to 94 or 95°C to separate it into two single double strands. Because the hydrogen bonds are broken by the high temperature."

Rafe slightly perks up at that, possibly recalling my spiel to Gareth about hydrogen bonds. He nods uncertainly.

"The next stage is annealing which is when the temperature is lowered to about 50 to 65°C in order to allow the DNA primers to attach to the template DNA. And then the final main stage is when the temperature is raised to 72°C and the new strand of DNA is made by the Taq polymerase enzyme. Theses three stages of 'thermal cycling' are repeated, like, 20 to 40 times with the amount of DNA being doubled each time and a complete PCR reaction can be conducted in only a few hours."

Rafe gives me an expression. "Yeah, Okay but what does that mean for me? That they have like a billion copies of my DNA already?"

"I guess so? I mean, obviously they'd need to match you up to like a DNA profile data base with the FBI or whatever but yeah. This is all kind of a moot point though because, first off, who's gonna be calling the FBI, or even detectives, for that matter, to investigate a missing teapot-"

"Detectives? Duvall and Montague?"

"Oh, uh no, I mean real detectives but probably them too, yeah."

"Oh, of course: Astoria's top detectives!" He says the last part sarcastically but it is true. And anyway, Madeleine can be quite the inadvertent gossip sometimes. What a scandal that would be if she accidentally let slip that the resident Rich Boy stole a teapot.