Chapter 17. In Which I Utilize Chemiluminescence, a Mesmerizing Glowing Chemical Reaction Found in the Earth’s Upper Atm
IN WHICH I UTILIZE CHEMILUMINESCENCE, A MESMERIZING GLOWING CHEMICAL REACTION FOUND IN THE EARTH’S UPPER ATMOSPHERE THAT OUR ANCESTORS BELIEVED WAS GOD, AND ALSO GLOW STICKS
The moment I step into the privacy of my cabin, I press my back against the door like I’m keeping out the Bachelor Island Ghost. Blood pumps so loudly in my ears that it’s impossible to process my scrambled thoughts.
Thank you. I accidentally confessed to having a crush on Luca—which I do not have. In return, he gave me a dismissive thank-you. After saying I “look good.” Did I misunderstand?
Did he reject me? Or no?
What is going on?
A groan comes from farther within the cabin. I look up.
My cabinmates are here for once. They’re lying down in their respective beds, exhausted. Whether because of their hangovers or our second failed test, I’m not sure. The PEACE BE WITH YOU banner still hangs above them, albeit tilted and ripped now.
Regardless, they’re here. Not murdering one another. With any luck, that’s a step in the right direction.
“FUCK,” Jade shouts. She punches a wooden pillar of her bunk bed so hard that her knuckles crack, and her long black hair flips into her face. She blows it away. “I can’t believe those lowlifes did that to us after all the effort we put into the peace party.”
I tense. “Who?” I ask, glancing around the room.
“Cabin Gamma! They stole our bedsheets. They’re the reason we had to sleep on bare plastic mattresses last night. Like, do they know how hard it is to plan a party? All the work we did so that everyone had a bitchin’ time?”
“Wait.” I shake my head. “Luca’s cabin did this?”
“Benedict saw them leave with the sheets,” Christiana whines, her face stuffed in the depths of her pillow.
I try to think rationally. It’s possible Luca wasn’t involved. He was with me most of the time. Or was that part of his cabin’s plan all along? For him to distract me, too?
Has everything he said to me, all his attempts to spend time with me, been a lie? Even today?
Betrayal festers in my stomach. It’s unjustified. I’ve been weighing sabotaging Luca with my heartbreak plan, too.
But in the canoe today, things felt different. Almost like, if I closed my eyes and imagined, it could have been real. No wonder Luca said thank you. He must’ve offered to help my cabin study to dodge suspicion and further gain my trust.
No more hesitation, then.
I’m jumping headfirst into payback. The way the brAIN Wars intended.
I will make Luca fall in love with me. And I will stomp on his heart.
“So, we’re no longer arbiters of peace, I take it?” Benedict asks, staring up at my mattress above his bottom bunk. He’s on his back, a gloved hand pressed to his forehead like he’s on his deathbed. His eye bags are dark and heavy. So is his tone.
“Absolutely not,” Jade says. “I want blood, Benny.”
“Benedict.”
As I take in their unanimous anger, the fact that we’ve been humiliated hangs heavy in the air. We’re agreeing on something for the first time. This sabotage may be exactly what we needed to unite us.
And carry us all the way to the Medal of Victory contest.
“Hear me out,” I say, walking toward them as slowly as I can. If I move too hastily, this chance may shatter, and the cabin will break back into screams and cries. “This is a good thing.”
Christiana lifts her head off her pillow.
Curiosity shows in Jade’s pencil-thin brows. “How?”
“Think about it,” I say. “Our team keeps losing on the bracket. Yet Gamma went out of their way to sabotage us. Why would they do that unless they see us as a threat?”
Even Benedict looks over, pausing his stare down with my bunk.
“We can sabotage Gamma as much as we want, but the only true way to make them regret what they did is by beating them in the bracket. Ultimately, what they care about is winning, and everyone already thinks they will. We can take that away from them.” I point to my whiteboard, where Mom and Dad’s distractions are still written.
“As you know, my parents have a lot of rules—”
Groans come from everyone.
“—that work,” I finish curtly, sending them a disapproving frown.
“My mom tells me this, too: To get to the top, you have to crush others, whether you like it or not. To get back at them for humiliating us, we’ll need to work hard.
And get along. But we should also think up some sabotage to make them lose next week’s test.”
“That’s mean,” Christiana says, playing nervously with her hands.
Jade whistles. “Yeah, I want blood, but I don’t know.”
When Mom told me this rule, at first, I viewed it as mean, too. But the more I lost to Luca, the more I learned that it was just the cold hard truth.
I try to consider what Experts Biomedical Science and Social Science would want to hear. “It’s not supposed to be mean, really. It’s more like … natural selection.”
Intrigue returns to Jade’s and Christiana’s gazes.
“Are you truly willing to sabotage Luca Melendez’s cabin and ruin their chances at winning?” Benedict cuts in, sitting up straight now. Distrust seeps off his words. “Or rather, Luca specifically?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I ask.
“I believe you know why.”
Jade and Christiana show me equally nosy looks.
My heart rate picks up, increasing more the longer I’m cornered.
I can’t reveal that I’m trying to break Luca’s heart and sabotage him further.
The risk of that leaking to the rest of the camp is too high.
Everyone would happily skin me alive and burn me on top of a bonfire, all the while chanting witch.
Besides, after Luca betrayed me today, that plan may not even work. Being a genius means having backup plans.
This, for now, is one.
“I promise I’m on board,” I say. “We just said that we’re throwing peace out the window, right? I’m mad at their cabin, too.”
Benedict narrows his gaze, still unconvinced. At least he doesn’t argue back. He gets up to approach his cubby and rearrange a few of his gloves set inside. “Very well. Keep silent about our knowledge of Gamma’s betrayal. They must not suspect that we are preparing a counterattack.”
Jade rises, too, and with more vigor than I expect.
From a white-dyed ghost-shaped backpack hung beside her bed, she pulls out a key chain.
A collection of rhinestone-studded objects dangle from the ring, which most likely turn into weapons if given the proper twist, pull, or bop. “So, what’s our next move?”
“We need to start taking our study sessions seriously,” I say. “It doesn’t matter how many tests Gamma loses if we can’t win one. And we need to win both remaining tests to stand a chance at competing for the Medal of Victory.”
Jade rushes to the whiteboard like she wasn’t just trapped in hangover hell minutes ago. “When’s the next session? I’ll write it down.”
“You may rely on my presence,” Benedict says, crossing his arms.
Christiana shows me a tiny smile.
It’s working.
“Tomorrow morning,” I say with a newfound enthusiasm. “Seven o’clock like always. Food Laboratory.”
“Seven like always!” Jade shouts. “What about the sabotage? Let’s brainstorm.”
There’s no way I’m letting these people take charge. “I’ll think of something and get back to you all—”
“Christiana,” Jade interrupts. The fact that she’s willingly addressing Christiana despite their huge fight proves how much this sabotage is unifying us. “What’s the worst thing we could do to Cabin Gamma?”
“K-kill them,” Christiana splutters on an anxious tremble, her eyes blown wide from being called on without warning. She scrambles to pick up a nearby journal to take notes. “Sorry. I don’t. Sorry—”
“Benny.” Jade moves on.
“Strip them of their essential needs: Breathing. Food. Water. Shelter. Clothing. Sleep,” he says without looking away from his glove shelf.
“Maslow’s hierarchy of needs dictates that these must be met before any further objectives can be satisfied.
Remove only one, and they will revert to an infantile nature and crumble.
Like how they stole our sheets, robbing us of our good night’s rest and our erudition. ”
Joining Jade at the whiteboard, I snatch the marker from her hand. “No. I agree with sleep being a potential target here, but I can really handle this one on my own—”
“CHEMILUMINESCENCE!” Christiana screams, jumping off her bed and lifting her journal in the air.
I stare at her. “What just came out of your mouth?”
Christiana joins us at the whiteboard while frantically tapping her notebook with her pencil. “It’s any chemical reaction that produces light. Like, what happens to glow stick liquid when you crack it. If we fill their cabin with that, it’ll be way too bright for them to sleep that night.”
“The disco ice-skating night or whatever is this Sunday,” Jade offers. “We could totally get this prepared in six days. Wouldn’t that be a good time to sneak into their cabin when no one is around?”
The ice arena is down by the Catenoid Meadow, on the southernmost point of brAIN’s grounds. And the cabins are at the northernmost point. Since the skate night is a camp-hosted event, the mentors should also be there to host it. Totally distracted.
But there’s still one big problem.
“Where are we getting glow sticks?” I ask.
“We can’t,” Christiana clarifies. “But we can make the same liquid in the Shared Instrumentation Facility. We just need to combine a solution of an oxalate ester and an electron-rich dye with a hydrogen peroxide solution when it’s time to paint.”
“Is glow stick juice really enough to keep people awake?”
“We’ll smear it all over the walls and floors!” Jade cheers, taking Christiana’s hands into her own. “They’ll drown in it. Drown in it!”
Christiana beams, her cheeks bunched up into her eyes. Although that seems less about her idea and more about Jade.
Benedict and I trade a long, unsure look. It’s the most I’ve ever felt on the same wavelength as him.
Putting my future in the hands of such a childish, weird idea can’t possibly be the right move. But at the same time, I would’ve never thought of this because it’s so weird. Even if Cabin Gamma still sleeps that night, they’ll need to clean up the mess. That could take days.
“It’s a risk,” Benedict mutters, crossing his arms. “We could be sent home.”
Jade barks out a laugh. “No one else has been. They need our funding.”
“No one has defaced brAIN’s property before,” Benedict argues. “This is hardly the same as placing a bunk bed on a rooftop or uprooting knockoff poison ivy. They may well have to reconstruct the entire cabin.”
Benedict has a point. Then what would I be left with? No Medal of Victory, plus a worse image than I already have?
The memory of Luca smiling at me in the canoe filters through my memory again, replacing those worries with frustration in an instant. We deserve some form of respect here. Whatever the cost.
“We should be smart enough to avoid getting caught,” I say with confidence. “Just like the peace party.”
“Yeah,” Jade agrees.
“Yeah,” Christiana says, but it’s quieter, like she may be regretting her own idea now.
“How do we make sure every person in Cabin Gamma is at the ice-skate night?” Jade asks. “Or at least in the stands?”
“Luca could probably persuade them,” Christiana says.
Everyone looks to me.
Unease stews within me. “What?”
But I already know the answer. It’s obvious.
“You were the one who got all buddy-buddy with Luca at the peace party,” Christiana says. “If anyone’s gonna be able to do it, it’s you.”