Chapter Ten: Practical Science
Author's Note: Written for a Creative Writing class. (Posted for kicks.) Wanted to write something Death Note…didn't think I could explain L (therefore any sentence with him in it has been added). Didn't want to write about Light (he's really no fun without L). Knew I couldn't explain the Death Note or Kira to the class. Figured I could just about get away with Matt and Mello…although did consider reverting Mello back to Mihael for the duration of this story, just so I didn't have to explain the name. Problems: a) can't think of him as "Mihael", and b) can't pronounce.
Disclaimer: Based on two sentences in chapter "One Hundred", altered in expansion.
ON WITH THE SHOW!
"This," Matt said firmly, but quietly, "is so not a good idea."
His best friend tucked long, golden hair behind one ear and glared at him. "It is so," he retorted with all the immovable certainty of a ten-year-old. "It'll be funny." Mello shifted his glare from Matt to the offending pool pump. "If this damn thing will just shift—" He barely refrained from kicking it. As he was wearing light sandals, this was probably a good idea.
Matt, forced to be the practical one yet again, sighed and fetched a stick. Between the two of them, the boys managed to jam it through the handle and open the pipe that fed the school hot tub. Application of physics classes, two points. Maybe it would be useful in case their physics teacher this year decided to tell them to find ways physics can be used around the home.
Last year it had been a chemistry teacher who had assigned the class, as part of their unnaturally accelerated education, a search for fifty common household items that could be made to explode, with the microwave off limits. That had been a lot of fun, but the man had apparently been told to never, ever do that again.
Temper vanishing as quickly as it had come, Mello grinned and dropped his end of the stick. "Pass me the bottles," he urged his partner in crime. Accepting two from the armful Matt gathered up from the heap of bubble bath containers lying at their feet, he popped the lids open with a careless gesture and began pouring the contents into the pipe.
Between the two of them, the boys put about four and a half gallons of bubble bath solution into the hot tub's water supply. By the time the bottles were empty, their hands were slippery with suds and they both reeked of artificial flowers.
"Yuck," Matt summed it up, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Maybe we should go play in the mud now."
"It hasn't rained for weeks," Mello pointed out with the air of someone struggling not to roll his eyes.
"So? We could get the hose. Or several hoses. We could turn the whole football field into a swamp."
The blond looked doubtful. "I like the football field."
"Oh, give it a rest," Matt brushed his objection off, trying to figure out a way to do the same to his hands without getting the smelly liquid on his clothes or scruffy red hair. He settled for scraping the worst of it off on the pipes. "It's not like the games stay on the field, anyway. I seem to remember a ball going into the kitchens."
"That wasn't me," Mello objected.
"Oh, come on, Mel—you forget I was watching. Besides, it's too darn hot for you and the rest of your crazy team to run around kicking a ball. Isn't that why we're turning the hot tub into a bath tub?"
"I just want to see what'll happen," the blond corrected him, hurrying to keep Matt off the topic of dirty footballs rebounding through the orphanage's kitchens just as they were serving lunch. "If it works, it'll be even better."
"And if it doesn't?"
"We hide under the bed for a week."
"Glad to know there's a plan. That's a nice change."
"Shut up."
The conversation satisfactorily brought to a temporary conclusion, they returned to the task at hand. "I think we'd better put the lid back before we turn it on," Mello guessed.
"Yeah, good idea." Matt grabbed the cover from where it had been buried under empty bubble bath bottles. Wedging the stick back through the handle, they spun it shut, hands slipping along the lever. It generated even greater amounts of soapy, smelly bubbles, which floated up into the cool Saturday air before popping in little explosions of scent. Both boys glanced surreptitiously around before jumping up to slap them out of the air in a manner that did not at all suit their ten-year-old dignities.
With the momentary amusement that the bubbles had brought them reminding them why they'd come up with this idea in the first place, Matt kicked the main body of the bottles into the tangle of pipes to hide them while Mello clambered over them to flick the switch that turned on the hot tub's circulatory system. As it started up, he slid down, eager to see what would happen.
The pump rumbled to itself seismically.
"Um…" Matt began, a second before the half-closed lid blew off, spraying water in all directions.
Both boys yelled in surprise and distress as they were deluged with water, trying to cover their eyes with their hands. The soap still on their hands and spilled on the ground began to turn to suds.
"Run!" Mello shouted, spitting water, and they did, slipping and sliding in the instant, soapy mud.
Stopping at the top of the stairs leading to the back door, Matt and Mello looked guiltily at each other.
"I think we're in trouble," Matt summed it up.
Mello chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully. "L?"
The redhead nodded. "L."
They inched the door closed quietly, tiptoed past a door…and then broke into a sprint up the indoor staircase, yelling, "L, help!"
The two boys careened up two flights of stairs, slipping and sliding on wet feet and leaving a dripping trail behind them. By the time they'd reached the closed door at the end of the hallway, they could clearly hear adult-type voices being raised downstairs.
L looked up from his computer in surprise and subdued amusement as the two boys dived under his bed. A second later, Mello's head emerged, holding a finger to its lips.
"If anyone asks," he hissed, "we're not here and it's not our fault."
There was a few minutes silence. L opened another program on his laptop, tapping into the various surveillance cameras installed around the orphanage. It didn't take him long to reach the pool and hot tub. One thin eyebrow went up, but he made no comment.
Slightly muffled, Matt asked, "Can we eat this?" Faint clanking sounds indicated that he had opened one of the candy tins L kept under the bed.
"No."
"Please?" Mello chipped in plaintively.
"No."
"One piece."
"Fine."
It was almost worth the staff's general consternation at the towering mass of bubbles in the hot tub, not to mention the repair bill that resulted from four and a half gallons of bubble bath being put into the system. The children loved it, and were in and out of the water all day—until the bubbles died down, and twenty different girls realized that it was their bubble bath the boys had stolen for their experiment.
Matt and Mello gathered up more chocolate, video games, books, flashlights, and batteries, and returned to hiding in L's room until he evicted them for being too loud.