“What did you call me?”
The dark-eyed boy tosses a bored glance over one shoulder and opens his mouth as if to follow up on his comment. But something about my face must change his mind, because his eyes widen in what looks like panic, and before I know it he has slithered back into the crowd.
“What was that all about?” Camila asks hazily as I help her to her feet.
“I hate costume parties,” I mutter. “Hard to give someone a piece of your mind when they’re dressed as...”
“As what?”
I grasp at a word or an idea for a second, but it slips away from me. “I didn’t get a good look at him,” I tell her with a shrug. “Some kind of angel? Or a demon.”
Camila giggles as I maneuver her into the car.
“Well, which was it?”
“I mean, like a fallen angel,” I explain, but I can’t put my finger on why I think so. I try to conjure up a mental image of him, but I don’t remember him wearing anything special or carrying any props, and his face is now a muddled memory. I can’t quite get a fix on whether his nose was big or small, his cheeks sharp or soft, his skin dark or light—all that stands out in my mind are those intense black eyes, and the strange fear I read in them.
I can’t stop thinking about that guy who ran into me at the kegger. It’s weird to see anyone you don’t know in a town like this, where almost everyone is connected in some way to the Research Park. London’s funny that way.
No, not that London—London, Illinois. Up until the 1970s, it was an unincorporated farming community called Plachett, an hour and a half out of Chicago on winding country roads. It didn’t even have a post office. Then Lonsanto Agrichemical Corporation bought out a bunch of the local farmers and built a major research facility right in the middle of nowhere, and people started moving in and building houses. In 1978, Lonsanto merged with Donnelly Pharmaceuticals to create London Chemical—Big Farm meets Big Pharm, people said. That’s when they built the Research Park, and more housing developments, and in 1984, the town of Plachett incorporated and changed its name to London—for LONsanto and DONelly.
That history makes London feel different from most small, Midwestern farm towns. Most places grow up naturally around a river or a railroad, and they wind up a mishmash of old buildings and new, straight roads and roads that wind off into nothing, fancy brick houses and old wooden shacks. In London, the whole town was planned by the company from the beginning to attract the best scientists in the country, so it’s like living in the pages of a tourism pamphlet. There’s a picturesque Main Street with coffee shops, antiques stores and a microbrewery. The buildings all have solar panels, the flower beds are filled with noninvasive wildflowers, there are bike paths crisscrossing the whole town... When you go to a friend’s house, you always know exactly where the bathrooms are, because every house was based on one of three different plans.
I have to admit, it’s beautiful in the spring and summer, especially on the London Chem grounds, which are basically a big park right on the edge of town, with paths through the trees for bikers and joggers, free and open for anyone to use. Of course, that means us locals have to share space with protesters yelling, “GMO, just say no!” and “No more frankenfoods!” but you get used to them. It’s all worth it for the botanic garden, the butterfly pavilion and the mirrored glass lab buildings in strange, fanciful shapes, all designed by famous architects. The biggest are the twin headquarters of Lonsanto and Donnelly, curved around each other to reflect the symbiosis of the companies. They tell you all this when you visit—when I was a kid, we had field trips to London Chem every semester or so.
That’s another thing London Chem won’t let you forget: how invested they are in education. They paid for both schools in town—the K-8 and the high school where I go now, with its state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, better even than most colleges. That means science is a huge deal at London High, and the top students are super competitive—especially when it comes to the various science fairs and competitions sponsored each year by London Chem. Monday morning after the kegger, the latest award is all anyone can talk about.
“Jayesh Kapoor won the Gene-ius Award again?” Steve Polaczek says, reading the morning announcements off his phone. “I can’t believe it. Who the hell is this guy?”
We’re in the middle of setting up another mass spectrometry lab in biochem. It’s our third this semester, after Donnelly donated a hand-me-down QTOF. Now we have to use it every other week just to show how grateful we are. Really, London Chem should be thanking us. Sure, we get fancy lab equipment, but they get a massive tax write-off every time they toss something our way.
My lab partner, Danny Carew, claimed he can’t find his goggles and is wandering the room asking people if they’ve seen them, which is a transparent excuse to curry votes for the upcoming student council election. He’s left me to do all the grunt work of setting up, which I’m not really doing because I’m distracted by Steve’s question. I’m itching to answer him, but he and his partner, Mark Cheong, are across the lab bench from me, very clearly not including me in their conversation.
“What do you mean, who is he?” replies Mark lazily. “He’s the guy who wins all these awards.”
“Yes, I know,” says Steve sarcastically. “This time for research into—” he reads from the screen “—metabolic pathways for the artificial synthesis of (S)-reticuline.”
Mark raises his eyebrows. “Impressive.”
Steve dismisses this assessment with a wave of his hand. “Sure, whatever. But who is he? If he’s good enough to win the Gene-ius Award, how come he’s not in any of my classes? I’ve asked around before, and no one seems to know him. Does he even go here?”
Steve’s got a big mouth and loves to act like he’s a real player in the school’s science competitions, but it’s mostly hot air. He placed once as a sophomore, but that’s it. Truth is, he isn’t half as smart as he thinks, and he spends more time obsessing over what everyone else is working on than studying and developing his own ideas. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen him in class with his head bent over in deep concentration, only to realize that instead of taking notes, he’s recalculating his GPA in the margins of his notebook.
Mark shrugs. “It’s probably some awkward loser you never even notice. Keeps to himself, you know? A silent, nerdy ghost, haunting the halls of London High,” he finishes in a fake-spooky tone.
I can’t ignore them anymore.
“He’s not a ghost,” I say, my eyes fixed on my notebook.
I can feel their stunned stares immediately. It clearly hasn’t occurred to them that I might know anything about this situation. This happens all the time. I’ve been in classes with these kids for years now, but they still act surprised when they realize I’m in the science track with them. As far as they’re concerned, the science track is for the London Chem brats—the ones whose parents work at the Research Park—not kids like me, the children of farm laborers. I’ve heard all the smooth comments about how great it is that London “supports diversity,” as if there’s no way I could have earned my spot in this class. Sure, biochem isn’t my best subject, but I’m at the top of my electrical engineering and information technology classes, if any of them cared to notice.
I clear my throat. “And
