CHEMISTRY
(second incarnation)
.
.
.
"They say love is but a chemical reaction, but could these two volatile substances mix without instantly exploding?"
.
.
.
As she steps out of their pink Ford Lynx, Kim and her sister Christine made their way to the university. People were immediately halted in their tracks. Why not? They were looking absolutely sensational. Kim was wearing a bright yellow denim jacket over a matching yellow skirt. She had a white pashmina on and some really large pair of sunglasses – ala Audrey Hepburn. Her sister, Christine was wearing an equally colourful green and pink combination.

Curious young male onlookers started to whistle. Kim was still not used to this kind of attention while her older sister seemed to be more at home with both the jealous and curious interests of the other students.

“Oh my gosh, sis, I’m still so tired,” said Christine, who Kim just picked up from the airport. Christine has this habit of doing several things at one time while talking. This time she was texting with her left hand while her right hand was busy rummaging through her large tote bag.

“Why did you have to go to Hong-Kong over the weekend?” Kim asked as she pulls out her powder to check her make-up too.

“I needed to take my mind off from him,” Christine said. “I’m still nursing a broken heart...”

“And you needed the weekend to go shopping?” Kim rebutted. “Since when did a week-end shopping trip in Hong-Kong become a therapy for the broken heart?”

“Don’t you know shopping counts as emotional, mental and physical exercise?” Christine said, waving distractingly to a boy on the side. “Exercise releases endorphins from the body cells, making you happy...”

“Yeah, yeah...so you’re the genius in the family.” Kim gave up. “Unfortunately, if you used that same intelligence in actually investigating that Carlo’s history, then you would not have had the trouble in discovering that he was just using you to boost his popularity.”

“Does it even occur to you that I loved being taken advantaged of...”Christine was blabbering, but her mind was somewhere else. “Wait, did I just say that out loud?”

“You’re crazy,” said Kim, shaking her head.

“Of course, and so are you...” Christine countered.

All of a sudden a group of stylishly dressed girls blocked their path. They are the mean girls of Science and Technology University of the Philippines. This year, the social throne is being shared by queen bees Nina and Jamilla.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the controversial Tan sisters, what is your fashion theme for the day? Neon mismatch?” Nina said, sashaying down the stairs of the main building in a white Calvin Klein dress.

“No, it’s avant-garde, not that you would know...” replied Christine.

“Avant...what?!” said the dim-witted Nina with her overly-textured eyebrows at full hilt.

“Avant-garde...did you miss out on your latest Cosmo issue?” said Christine. “It’s the new fashion movement... take note, not just a trend, but a movement!”

The other girls didn’t of course, understand what Christine said. Kim was in fits.

“Whatever!” said Jamilla. “Girls, let’s go...they’re just so...weird!”

The other girls followed their leaders and headed up the stairs to the main building. Kim , being the fighter that she is, almost ran to snatch Jamilla’s eye out, but luckily Christine held her back.

“Sis, it’s not worth it,” Christine reasoned in a sing-song voice. “They are already like that when I got here. It’s easy for people to despise what they don’t understand...”

“How did you put up with this for three years?” asked Kim.

“I just didn’t mind what they say...”explained Christine. “I know deep down they all love me, they want to be me...”

“Is that right?” said the sceptic Kim.

“What is there not to like about us?” said Christine “We’re cute, pretty, considerate, but most of all...we’re original.”

“I guess so...” Kim muttered as she waved goodbye to her sister, who made a bee line to the campus bookstore.

Kim thought deep inside that she wanted to believe her sister. She had been her best friend ever since. It’s natural for girls to find her sister to be a little bit strange. She is so headstrong and she has that unbreakable sense of oneself that she can really pull off that kind of a lifestyle. But Kim, being slightly less daring, just wants to blend in...sometimes. Being a freshman in this school, the last thing that she wanted to do was to antagonize the whole student population. Can you imagine hanging out with a 20-year-old version of Tessa Prieto Valdez? Kim had this notion that even no matter how good and kind you really are, it’s still people’s nature to reject the unfamiliar --- especially girls donning avant-garde fashion.

Fortunately, the last few months had been great. People had finally adjusted to her being her sister’s younger version. More and more she would find boys and even some girls too, go up to her and make an effort to make friends with her. Especially, Melissa whose company she enjoys a lot.

The bell rang and Kim was still half-a-block to the next building. She had to manage through her high heels to get to the fourth floor --- into the far-off land of the nerds which was known as Chemistry 101.

Kim tiptoed her way into their Chemistry Lab. She knew very well that she was late. Her classmate and lab partner will surely be ballistic. She slowly sneaked into the room from the back entrance. To her good fortune, their teacher, Professor Ocampo was busy scribbling stuff onto the blackboard.

Gerald Lewis, meanwhile was busy writing down notes from his book down to his lab notebook. Kim immediately put on her lab gown and sat right across him. She looked at him. He was so into what he was doing. Kim observed him even more. Little did she know that she was already staring at him for at least five minutes before she finally shifted her attention to the day's experiment. Kim actually thought that Gerald was good looking, if only he combed his hair a little bit. He has this geeky appeal to him that Kim actually pictured herself kissing him. The thought made her blush.

Gerald Lewis lives just across the street from Kim's house. When they were younger, they used to be playmates. In fact, they were really tight before. However, puberty caused Kim to be more outgoing and fun-loving while Gerald became a bit of a recluse and concentrated more on his studies. Being on different schools too, made the moat between their territories a little bit wider.

However, now that they were on the same school, it still had not been smooth between the two of them.

“What did I miss?” Kim whispered as she slid onto a lab stool.

“You missed your spaceship...call your planet to pick you up from earth and out of my life,” said Gerald lazily. He momentarily looked at her but instantly went back to his writings.

“Sometimes, you are not even remotely funny!” retaliated Kim.

“What is not funny is that you’re late...” said Gerald, fixing his thick glasses. “We have our thesis proposal presentation tomorrow and you have the nerve to be late
today, of all days...”

“Was that tomorrow?” Kim cluelessly said.

“If you paid more attention to actual school it would not have slipped your mind in the first place!” said a slightly unnerved Gerald. He stopped his scribbling and faced Kim eye to eye.

“If you actually let me helped you, you would have found out that I can totally tackle this...thing....uhhmm... thesis with you.” Kim said avoiding his gaze.

“Lucky for you I let you in with this project,” he said. “All you have to do is write your name in it with mine and for sure you’ll get an A.”

“You should, because this was actually a group work,”reasoned Kim. “...and it would not be group work if you will do it by yourself. If you will not let me on it, I will tell Professor Ocampo that I didn’t get to participate!”

Kim tried to raise her hand to get her professor's attention. Gerald meanwhile caught her hand halfway through.

“Wait! Are you crazy?!” Gerald said. “Maybe you really are crazy, like they said you are!”

The words 'weird' and 'crazy' tends to trigger a switch in Kim's system that allows her to release an energy field that will threaten to obliterate anything that will stand on her warpath. She grabbed him by the collar and threatened to punch him. Gerald meanwhile, in his attempt to escape, toppled a beaker of chemical sending it’s content spilling across the whole length of their tiled laboratory table.

“What the heck is going on there at the back?” asked an irritated Professor Ocampo.

Kim let Gerald go. She glared at him, as if taunting him to tell on her to the Professor.

“Nothing, sir,” answered Gerald, the entire classroom looking on. “There was just uhh...a stray cat...and it toppled the beaker.”

The whole class erupted in laughter. Kim rolled her eyes and shook her head. He was useless.

“Stray cat? Where did it go, Mr. Lewis?” asked their professor, looking incredulous.

“Uhhmm...”Gerald mumbled, in total void of what to say.

Kim raised her hand.

“It came this way, sir. Then, it jumped from this table and then it leaped out of the window.” Kim explained.

“From a fourth floor window?” said the unconvinced professor.

“Poor cat!” said Kim in dramatic effect, making the sign of a cross. “...he will be missed.”

This remark elicited the juiciest smirk from their classmates. Even Gerald had to laugh. Professor Ocampo, sensing that further discussion will not lead them anywhere, returned to writing his endless chemical formulas on the black board.

“I saved your !” Kim regaled to Gerald. “Say, thank you!”

“I didn’t need you to bail me out,” protested Gerald,
still scribbling some notes into his lab book.

“Never mind, now about that project...”Kim said whistling, holding another beaker, threatening to mix it with another pretty looking liquid.

“NO...YOU FREAKIN’ THING!” Gerald said stopping Kim from pouring the contents into another beaker. “You’ll kill us all with that! You don’t mix an organic liquid with a reducing agent! It will freakin' explode!”

“Say you’ll include me in the project first!” insisted Kim.

“Okay, okay!” Gerald said in defeat. He snatched the offending container from her hand, very careful not to spill its contents. “Come to my house, the one across your street, at exactly seven tonight. Prepare to be up all night.”

“Silly, of course I know where you live. I use to pee in your house, remember?” chuckled Kim.

“...and dress nicely!” Gerald added.

“What do you mean dress nicely?” said Kim.

“I meant, dress normal...” he quipped with a sly grin. “...and don’t be late!”

This left Kim slightly annoyed, but she didn’t feel as bad today as she had before. Considering their cat fights from the beginning of the semester, today's squabble was way milder to say the least. Kim, to this day, doesn't know why Gerald has not warmed up to her like most of her classmates did. She used to remember him to be very sweet and thoughtful, now he is very acerbic and slightly cross. Perhaps, too much studying, Kim thought, affects one’s social skills to the point that one can no longer process the breadth of the human emotions. Case in point, Gerald. He is the living equivalent of a pH paper. He can only process two emotions, anger and frustration. Too much frustration make him blue, too much anger makes him red.

Kim mused at the mental image she formed of Gerald. Then she began noticing something about his scribblings...

“What are you doing?!” Kim said.

“Duh...writing?” Gerald said wryly.

“You can’t answer those lab reports in advance!” exclaimed Kim.

“Why not?” Gerald answered. “I know the answers to them. It’ll save me the time later on...”

“I’ll tell Professor Ocampo!” she threatened.

“Wait, I’ll let you copy them...” yielded Gerald, putting his pen down.

“Okay!” Kim clapped in delight. “See...you’re not so bad after all.”

“Thanks, but in the future, can you please stop blackmailing me...chemically?!” he said with a hint of smile.

Kim happily nodded. She fluttered her fingers over the different multi-coloured mixtures in the test tubes. She opened her book on the page of their exercise. It says there to mix one of the chemicals in one test tube to another powder in another test tube.

Whistling, Kim poured the contents of the test tube to the beaker. As she was reading further the instructions, a cloud of smoke suddenly appeared from the mixture, slowly enveloping the room in a rotten egg odour.

Gerald noticing it, jumped out of his seat and shouted:

“Kim, it’s hydrogen sulphide! You’re suppose to use the chemical hood! Everybody get out!”

Kim shrieked as she dropped the beaker.

The whole room erupted in pandemonium. Girls screamed at the top of their lungs. Everybody panicked, even those guys pretending to be guys. Everyone grabbed their belongings and stampeded out of the nearest exit. Gerald grabbed the ashen-faced Kim and dragged her out of the door.

The whole lab had to be closed down for the rest of the day. Kim was crying heavily outside the science building as people in chemical space suits entered the rooms to detoxify the lab. Scores of students now crowd Kim. Fearing that they will admonish her for her stupidity, she began to cry even more. Melissa came to her rescue. Gerald meanwhile was just looking on --- somewhat amused.

“Kimmy, don’t cry,” said Melissa as she Kim’s hair. “They’re here to tell you something!”

“Huh?!” Kim looked up, wide-eye in shock.

“Kim,” said one student. “Our whole class would like to extend our thank you to you. If not for your fateful accident, we would have had our major exam today. But thanks to you, it was cancelled and we will have more days to study.”

The rest of the students clapped leaving Kim looking dumbfounded.