“What are you studying?”
The slightly old, slightly warm voice broke my reverie. I looked up and saw one of the older female teachers talking to me. Too engrossed in my thoughts, I had no idea when she sat down along with us.
“Some chemistry,”
“Do you have a test,” She asked. She was keeping a neutral face, impossible to read or dissect for thoughts.
“No,” I shook my head partially to convey the message and partially to shake the thought out of my head. “I’m revising. Trying to catch up with the rest of the class.”
“Huh, that’s good.” She said nodding and ended the conversation without feeling the need to tell me why. She simply turned away and started talking to another female teacher of the same age sitting across from her.
I glanced at her one last time to see if she was going to bother me again and then turned back to my notes. The notes weren’t mine. I had borrowed them from Kartik. Arrogant as he seemed he was very devoted to his studies. At least he had not failed a single test since we started the class. I wouldn’t say he ranked at the top of the pile, but he never slipped much from the middle. At least he wouldn’t have any problem getting into a good enough state college. Whether he could get into a national level or international level college was up to debate.
As for me, I was trying out my new and improved photographic memory. With the limiter working, it no longer bothered me with a flood of unstoppable information needling into my brain. The limiter was like an on-off switch that I could flip at a moment’s notice. It didn’t have an intensity regulator, however. So I couldn’t control the powers with it as I liked. I believed higher skill levels would solve that problem.
Even limited, Photographic memory wasn’t devoid of problems. The skill was still not precise enough to capture and record all the information on the page in one glance. It was a concentration problem. Because it was humanly impossible to concentrate on more than a word at a time, it still took me a considerable amount of time to get through a page. Leading to increased energy consumption, memory deterioration, and overall mental fatigue. Photographic memory, I realized, was just not enough for regular use.
Despite all the limitations, I would still say that I did a good job acquiring the power because I’d read and memorized almost ten pages in the last hour of our bus travel. Which was an impossible task for the current super brain. I didn’t understand the knowledge, but with it already imprinted in my brain I could always think about it later and slowly try to make it my own using super brain. These two powers turned active studying into passive reading. But this was not enough. I, in my inflated ego, still thought it was wasteful of my time to try to read every word on the page to memorize it. There had to be a better way to learn knowledge than reading books.
Growing up as a kid, I used to watch this fictional show about an alien impersonating a human who could read books by simply touching them to his head. It used to fascinate me as a kid not having to study anything. Now, knowing that it might be possible to replicate that power, I started to fantasize about having all that knowledge stored in my brain. I would become an academic monster if I managed to achieve that.
As for my energy needs – I had a big breakfast almost twice as much as I regularly did and packed lunch for the first time since I joined the school. I usually ate junk food from the canteen instead. I also regretted that there was no actual canteen in our school with an all you could eat buffet. The way my powers consumed energy, I was sure it wouldn’t be long before my energy consumption would reach ten thousand calories per day or even more. A normal human barely expends 2000 cal per day. Imagine how much food I would need to consume to fulfill my calorie needs. It scared me a little.
Perhaps figuring out how to absorb so much food wasn’t the only problem I would face in the future. I would also need to find out a way to procure the food because my parents didn’t have the financial capacity to fulfill my needs. So now moneymaking was also on my agenda.
I closed the book and looked around. The bus was a standard-size school bus, but it carried more students than seats available. Hence, not everyone got a seat. Sometimes people had to stand on their way to school. Which was considered normal considering overbooking was the norm where I lived. At least the school bus wasn’t packed full like most commercial buses running the routes.
I looked around and saw a sea of students. Creating a clamor that was hard to parse. All the voices melded together to create a garbled language that I found quite soothing. It made me forget my worries for a while.
Accidentally, I saw Arzoo looking at me. She passed me a smile when our sights crossed, which made me remember that now I needed to apologize to her for my behavior at the grocery store.
There really was no break for the wicked.
Abhey tapped my shoulder and saw him holding a mocking smile upon tuning my head his way.
“Don’t think about it.” He said cryptically.
“What?”
“Don’t act stupid you know what I mean.”
“Why,” I asked while wondering about a thought that had been blooming in the back of my head for some time. “Am I blocking your interests?”
He snorted and turned away. I realized I had hit the nail right on the head.
“She's older than you,” I said.
“So?” He said without looking over. As if he didn’t care to have this conversation.
“By three years my little brother!” He didn’t say anything. Perhaps, Kartik could have made fun of him but I couldn’t. I only felt concerned, for the girl. My pig brother was in love.
“So you like older girls, huh.”
Finally, he turned and faced me. Keeping a deadpan face, he stared at me with startling, unblinking eyes.
“What?” I muttered in unease.
“Don’t say another word or I’ll share the recording with everyone.”
I agreed with a nod. I didn’t even dare to say yes. He once threw a 10 kg hard rubber gym plate at my head just because he was annoyed at me. Who knew what he’d do if he got mad?
It took the bus an hour and a half to run the route and get to school. Most of that time was wasted waiting for the students to come out of their homes. We didn’t wait long, but those two or three minutes added up. That was why housing societies around schools and colleges were so high in demand. We lived in a government-allotted quarter, however, far away from the school. So we had to wake up at dawn with the birds.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Still, we were in school by 8:00 am. The classes start at 8:30, giving everyone plenty of time to do their things. Everyone usually gets there by the time the bells ring. Anyone late to class was only late for the morning prayer, not for the class itself. That was mainly because almost everyone commode to school via the school bus. As for the school environment, it was calm, and inviting. Nor too sporadic, nor too slow. Everything there happened at its own pace.
That day, the only note-worthy incident happened during our chemistry session.
We were in the chemistry lab and I was sitting next to Sonam. She couldn’t hold her smile for some reason or another. I didn’t give myself the credit. I was self-conscious like that. Perhaps, a bit too much.
Our chemistry teacher, a tall man from the Sikh community, Mr. Balraj, was not only teaching us but also testing our knowledge to see if we were smart enough to handle the experiment. The experiment in question was a simple exothermic reaction in which two chemicals upon mixing would react and release heat and energy. This was our teacher’s way of demonstrating the dangers and allure of the subject. Even though we had already handled chemicals like concentrated hydrogen chloride and hydrogen sulfate in the past. I guess he wanted something with a bit of pizzazz for this round.
I only knew about this because of the things I’d read in the morning. I had already digested the knowledge over the day. Now I was through the twenty-fifth of the chemistry book. Which was a bit slow, said the boy who hadn’t read a single page in the past five months.
The experiment and the test proceeded calmly. Soon it was my turn to answer the questions. Usually, I would be a little scared of our teacher because we had our differences. That day I was feeling confident, as long he asked me questions from those twenty-five pages I’d read.
There was one time when he was teaching and I was goofing around in class. Like any, self-respecting teacher, Mr. Balraj, had stood me up and asked me a few questions to show the importance of studying. Being an academic pariah I was back then, I couldn’t even answer the chemical formula of ammonia. He asked me how I would pass without studying and I had the gal of coming out on top and saying that I would study on my own. He asked me to sit down and I thought nothing of it. For me, it was only a short burst of anger, a momentary release of tension. But I guess he felt ashamed because he called my parents to school.
He didn’t even tell me about it. I only found out when my father called me out at home and asked me about it. He asked me how I would feel if someone disrespected him like that in front of others. Only then did I understand that my burst of anger had far-reaching consequences. I in my foolishness had challenged our chemistry teacher’s authority and even dealt damage to the boss-level character. I hadn’t just talked back to him, I had stood against him. I remember fearing for my life for the next couple of days every time Mr, Balraj came to teach. However, nothing happened. He simply ignored me.
Now we were on slightly bad terms, not completely at odds but always wary of each other. I wasn’t a ruffian who didn’t know his limits. I realized I made a mistake, but my pride wouldn’t let me apologize to him. So I made sure to stay out of his way. Now here we were, separated by ten feet, with our fists clenched and sights unwavering. This was a standoff, but only he had the gun and I could only dodge or die.
I’m joking.
“What are the properties of potassium chloride?” He fired the first bullet
I shrugged it off. “It’s a metal halide salt of potassium and chlorine. It has a white or colorless vitreous crystal appearance. It dissolves easily in water and the solution has a salt-like taste.”
Seeing that it didn’t do the trick, he pulled out a bigger gun. “How do we separate chlorine gas from potassium chloride?”
I hide behind a slab of concrete to survive that. “We can react iodine with potassium chloride which results in potassium iodide and chlorine gas.”
“What happens to potassium chloride when you heat it?” He aimed the gun and fired two consecutive shots. “What is the principal behind our experiment today?”
As if they could stop me.
“We are showing off,” I said. The class laughed. I didn’t see him expressing any emotions or trying to stop me. So I continued once the laughter died some. “How something small like a gummy bear, which is sugar, can contain a large amount of energy.” The class listened quietly.
I looked around and saw some gleaming eyes staring at me, but the teacher showed no such reaction.
“Sit down” was his only response to my passionate speech. Then he started explaining the experiment.
“Have you started studying again?” Sonam asked me.
“What do you mean? I never stopped.”
“Liar,” She smiled and turned back toward our teacher to listen to the explanation. A sunflower indeed she was.
“What you are going to do is, you are going to take exactly ten grams of potassium chloride and heat it up. When heat, which is energy, is provided to a stable system it induces instability to it. In this case, it will cause the stable potassium chloride to transform into potassium perchlorate, in which some extra oxygen molecules will become attached to the salt. This molten form of potassium will then try to retain its stable state by releasing the extra oxygen.”
“That’s what you call a bad relationship.” Someone muttered loudly, causing some muffled giggles among the girls.
Our teacher continued unabated. “This type of reaction is called an Exothermic reaction, meaning,”
“It releases heat,” The class echoed in unity.
“And when we introduce a gummy bear to this solution, the sugar in the gummy bear goes rapid oxidation forming carbon dioxide, water, and heat. And this is what the result will look like,” Mr Balraj said dropping a gummy bear with a tong into the beaker with the molten potassium.
Instantly there was a bright flare in the beaker before the gummy bear started melting, reacting with oxygen and releasing a bright purple flame and a lot of smoke.
Our teacher stepped back for safety and that proved to be necessary as I don’t know if the beaker was too old or it was faulty, but a few seconds later the beaker exploded! The girls sitting too close to it screamed and ran. Even Sonam sitting next to me gasped and I guess she also got scared because she grabbed my hand. The others stood up to watch the drama, while I sat there stunned and looking at her.
Thankfully, our teacher didn’t panic. He knew how to handle the fire and stopped the reaction by throwing a jug full of water at it.
“All right, that's enough chemistry for today. Go back to your class.” Mr. Balraj said and everyone started leaving.
It was only then did Sonam realized that she was holding my hand. She looked at my face and then at my hand, before quietly releasing me and walking away.
“Hey,” I went after her, but she didn’t stop to hear whatever I had to say. I didn’t push it either. I had nothing to say actually. I could barely muster a thought over my beating heart.
Kartik nudged me on the shoulder, a meaningful grin plastered across his face. “Now you know she’s interested in you. At least she thinks you are trustworthy. She wouldn’t have held your hand otherwise. So… what are you going to do now my friend?”
I couldn’t answer. What if I was like oxygen to her potassium chloride? I didn’t have the heart to be in another unstable relationship in the heat of the moment. Only to get released by her so she could find some stability in life.