We Are All Made of Molecules Read Online Free PDF Page B

that
him
?”
    “Shut up, Lauren.”
    And she did.
    But I knew her silence wouldn’t last. I knew word would leak out by lunchtime that this hideous creature was living in my house. And I knew who would be responsible for the leak.
    But I also knew that by lunchtime, everyone would
also
know that the person responsible for the leak—the person who claims to be a 34C—is really a 32AA.

IF I DREW A graph of my first day at Borden Secondary School, it would look like this:

    At the beginning of the day, I felt terrified, hence the dip well below my normal mood, which is the baseline. The spike at 8:55 a.m. indicates the brief moment of happiness I experienced when I saw my almost-sister, Ashley, in English class. This is followed immediately by a sharp plunge, when I was reminded that even though she has made no effort whatsoever to get to know me, she hates my guts.
    Period 2—history—was uneventful. But lunchtime was a low point. When I walked into the cafeteria with the money Dad had given me as a treat for my first day, it was full of kids from eighth grade up to twelfth, and it was noisy and overwhelming. As I approached the food line, a tall guy with an actual
mustache
turned around suddenly and whacked me in the head with his tray, spilling some of the gravy from his fries on my shirt. “Sorry, kid, I didn’t see you,” he said.
    I believe he was sincere, but he was also huge. And that made me think about a Stephen King novel I’d read called
Under the Dome
, where people in this town find themselves living under an impenetrable bubble one day, and, well, I don’t want to give away the ending, but let’s just say I started to feel like an ant among giants. So I left the cafeteria without any food and hid under a stairwell until my next class began. It calmed me down, and it brought me back to my baseline.
    I had science after lunch, and we’re doing chemistry experiments, one of my favorite activities in the whole wide world. I got paired up with a cute girl named Phoebe, but only because her regular partner was home sick. And guess what, she laughed at my joke! I said, “What is the chemical formula for the molecules in candy?”
    “I don’t know,” she replied.
    “Carbon-Holmium-Cobalt-Lanthanum-Tellurium.” She looked at me blankly till I wrote down the elements’ symbols on the front of my notebook. “CHoCoLaTe!”
    It’s true that she only laughed a little bit. And it’s true that she said, “You’re an odd duck.” But she didn’t say it in a mean voice. She said it with a smile. So, as is clear on my chart, that part of the day was a highlight.
    My last class was phys ed, and because it was a nice day, the teacher, Mr. Stellar, took us outside to play baseball. I was picked last, which didn’t bother me, since after all I am (1) the new guy and (2) shorter than everyone else. Also, (3) my hand-eye coordination is not a strong point, so I struck out when I got to bat. That part of my chart stays around my baseline because at least there were no surprises.
    But in the change room afterward, I had what was easily the worst part of my day. Because that was when Mr. Stellar said, “All right, boys, shower time. And I
will
be checking on your way out.”
    At Little Genius Academy, the school was so small it didn’t have showers in its change rooms. So they just scheduled PE for the end of the day. That way our teachers didn’t have to put up with a class full of stinky kids, and, if we felt so inspired, we could shower when we got home. (I usually didn’t, unless my mom insisted.)
    But here at Borden Secondary, it’s a whole new ball of wax, as my mom used to say. The moment we got into the change room, boys who were twice my size started to get naked. And when I say
twice my size
, I mean
in all areas
. I didn’t know what to do. I just sat quietly on one of thebenches and tried not to stare, but it was impossible not to notice that almost every single guy in my class was well into