There I stood, Brian at my left hand and a vial that could change the world in my right. In front of me was a concoction of fizzing potions, steadily streaming into another vial. We were trying to make a potion to make things invisible.
As thick steam drifted from the potion, Brian and I snapped on our goggles.
Brian drummed his fingers on the big metal table twice. That meant it was time to add the potion in the vial I had. We rarely used words anymore when mixing potions. Hand motions worked just as well, and often silence was key as to not break our concentration.
The potion slowly surged down into the other vial. “Wow,” I breathed.
The sight was breathtaking. The potion was now a shiny silver color, but that wasn’t the breathtaking part. The amazing part was what was happening inside the vial.
Little pictures solidified through the glass, then dispersed. Brian and I watched a horse gallop around the vial before melting back into the potion. The picture that replaced it was a kid playing on the monkey bars. The third was a hand painting on a silver canvas.
I slammed my hand on the table. I winced as the vial shook a little, but thankfully nothing happened. As much as I loved the pictures in the potion, that wasn’t the point. “I know what we’re missing.”
“What?”
“Fire.”
Brian followed me to the cupboards behind the table where I started rummaging for matches. “Anthony, are you sure this is a good idea? What if it has a bad reaction and sets the whole place on fire?”
Holding the box of matches, I turned to him. “Come on Brian, you of all people know how important this is. For science.”
He sighed, then replied, “I of all people know the risks.” I wore my stubborn expression, and eventually he gave in and mumbled, “For science.” Then he glanced at me and tore the matches from my hand. He struck one, and started lowering it towards the beautiful silver concoction.
The potion caught fire so fast I jumped back, accidentally kicking the table in the process. Brian’s mouth hung open. The images that had been shown less than a minute ago now were bordered by fire. From the top of the vial, a column of fire spewed. The silvery color had now become an angry reddish orange.
Brian rummaged through the cupboards as I had done only a few minutes ago. After a few seconds, he produced a black feather. He ran back. There was a tenseness in the air, a smoky feeling. The fire died down, and Brian dipped the feather in the potion. As he pulled it out, the black color faded to match the white on our lab coats. Then it was gone. We stared at the place where the feather had been in awe. We’d done it, we’d really done it! We figured out invisibility.
A sharp, hot pain slammed on my ankle. As my leg gave out under me, I saw what had caused that pain. I found myself face to face with a discarded match and a growing fire. Now, it blossomed from the match and had only spread up an unused bookshelf, but who knew how long that would last?
I started yelling immediately. “Brian, run! We have to get out of here now!” While we had time to pull the fire alarm, the firemen were a few towns over and by then, all our previous work would be lost. We had to grab what we could and go.
First, the bookshelf collapsed. Carpet caught fire in no time at all. The metal table suddenly became much too hot to touch as I hauled myself up off the floor. Brian grabbed the vial and I scrambled to grab some of our most important notes and potions.
Suddenly, Brian’s foot clipped on a burning textbook. He flew down, and turned in the air making sure to keep the now corked vial from breaking. The place was a minefield. Step in the wrong place and you could be seriously injured. The fire spread from the carpet, up the walls and even to the ceiling in some parts. The smoke was getting so thick it was only a matter of time before one of us started choking. When I accidentally dropped one of the notebooks and it caught fire, I dropped them all and ran for the door. All the stuff we had made could be recreated, but not the potion. Our only goal was to reach the door safely, with the potion.
A big piece of ceiling fell in front of us. I was able to duck and run past it, but Brian wasn’t so lucky. The block fell on him, narrowly missing his head but pinning his chest down.
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In the smoky air, tears started forming in my eyes. “Brian!” I called over the loud sounds of the fire, “Brian, if I don’t leave now, all our work is lost. Maybe if I leave now I can get help to get this off you, because it’s too heavy for me to lift myself. I’m sorry! I’ll come back for you!” And with that, I tore the potion from Brian’s ever outstretched hand, shoved it in my lab coat pocket, and ran for the door.
The door shrieked as I yanked it open, and I lunged out into the open clean air. My lungs burned and I could barely get out the door. I only had time to call out for help before my ankle gave out and my head hit the cold stone floor and black filled my vision.
When I came to, the first thing I noticed was the ringing in my ears. I attempted to clap my hands over my ears, but it was like they didn’t work, they were disconnected. I tried humming and even just turning my head into my pillow to block out the awful sound, but it wasn’t just my hands that weren’t working. None of my body was working. The sound didn’t go away until I slowly slipped back into oblivion.
The next time I awoke, I noticed a lot more than just the ringing in my ears, though it hadn’t really gone away. I was in a hospital room. After a few minutes of just examining the room, a nurse came in. “Mr. Taryn! How nice to see you awake!”
“What happened?” I tried to say over the ringing in my ears, but my voice didn’t work. I could make a sound. The nurse looked at me sympathetically, then seemed to read my mind.
“You were in a fire with your coworker Brian Deris. It was an awful fire, the whole room was destroyed by the time we found you. You called for help, and then, well, you fainted and the doorway collapsed behind you. Now you’ve got a broken ankle, a nasty concussion, and the smoke messed with your vocal cords a bit. We don’t know exactly what it is, but it should be fine, just it’d be best if you don’t talk for a while.” She said this all as if she was talking to a toddler, loud and commanding but very simple. The way she said everything though was weird, she made it sound like I had a choice whether I talked or not, but I didn’t. I could not talk. Then the nurse pulled out a notepad and added, “Just write for a while.”
I took the pen she offered and wrote, “ What about the ringing in my ears?”
“Your ears are ringing,” she repeated warily.
I nodded. The nurse replied, “ That must be a side effect of the concussion. It should pass over the next few days.” Then she stood up. “I’d love to stay and keep answering your questions, Anthony- is it okay if I call you Anthony?” I nodded again and she kept going. “Well, Anthony, I’d love to stay and answer your questions, but I have more patients to attend to.” Then the nurse handed me a bell and said, “Ring if you need anything.” And she left, her black curls bouncing slightly behind her. The nurse was young like me, with sharp ice-blue eyes. Her nurse's skirt matched her pale skin perfectly.
And she was true to her word. Slowly, the ringing in my ears disappeared. I was so excited when I could hear everything again without a constant reminder of the fire. The day I first got out of bed was supposedly four days after I had gotten in the hospital. I tried walking around on my ankle, but between the big bulky cast that now encased it, and a new pair of crutches, I wasn’t walking for long. That was also the same day the nurse came in and started speaking exercises with me.
“Just say, ‘My name is Anthony Taryn.’ Just say that, and we can be done for today if you want! We just need to make progress quickly.”
“My name is Anthony Taryn.” I croaked. It didn’t even sound like my voice, but it was an improvement from the last time I’d tried to say something, even if my voice gave out halfway through the sentence.
Another time the nurse came, she brought a tray of different foods. “These foods will help with sore throats, so I want to see if you eating them will help you get your voice back.” Before the nurse left that day, I asked for her name. “Capri.” And she left.
Each day we tried something different to bring my voice back. I steadily began to talk again, though only during our meetings. I didn’t want to talk so much as to ruin my vocal cords when they had just started healing. Most of the time I wrote in the notepad.
The next time Capri came back, she brought some people with her. “I have some visitors,” she told me, and when she opened the door, my little sister, Taylor ran in with my parents in tow.
When Taylor saw me in the bed, she started freaking out. “Anthony!” she cried, “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I wrote, “I just have to write instead of talking because my throat is a little sore.” As much as I wanted to talk to her, I knew it would only scare Taylor more to hear my voice.
“But why are you in the bed?” Taylor asked confused.
“I just got a little hurt. It’s no big deal, I’ll get better soon.”
Taylor furrowed her brow, deciding whether or not to believe my story. She had the same so-blonde-it’s-almost-silver hair as I did as well as my deep brown eyes. Even though we were six years apart, me at 17, and her at 11, anyone could mistake us for twins if they ignored our heights. Finally, Taylor decided she believed me and she sat down in the armchair beside me.
My mom walked up and patted my cheek. “You’ll be fine in no time, I just know it.”
When it was my dad’s turn to say something, he just nodded to me respectfully and said, “Sad you lost all your experiments. Heard you were working on something really cool.”
Then I remembered. Sometime when I was asleep, I had been changed into a hospital gown, but my scorched lab coat sat at the end of the bed. It had holes in it, which I have no memory of getting, but at least the pockets were intact.
I reached for it, ignoring the resistance in my limbs, and while my family was staring, confused at me, I finally wrote, “I didn’t lose all my work.”
Dad’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
Slowly, I pulled out the invisibility potion