The science room reeked of sulfur, with a touch of formaldehyde. The shelves in back held bottles upon bottles of mysterious liquids, all of which looked quite unfriendly to the bare hand. In front of the room stood a man in a lab coat, probably somewhere in his fifties, grinning as if he had one day mistaken one of the more potent liquids for another, hadn't realized it until the fumes were well up his nostrils, and was never the same since.
"Teachers have a way with first impressions here, don't they?" Link muttered to Zelda, who nodded in agreement.
The teacher, after counting the students in the classroom, turned and wrote "Chemistry" on the chalkboard in flamboyant letters. "Hello, class!" he began, underlining his scrawl a few unnecessary times. A few suppressed giggles made their way through the room.
"I love chalkboards, I wish everybody still used a chalkboard, they're so fun," he mumbled, on a random tangent. He snapped back into reality, saying, "Now you probably call most of your teachers 'Mr. This,' or 'Mrs. That,' but personally, I don't care much for titles. Call me Boom. That'll kill two birds with one stone: it'll give you something to call me, and it'll tell you what we do in this class. Now, chemistry is a cool subject because you get to blow a lot of things up. And I'm not talking about Mentos in soda kind of blowing things up, I'm talking about francium in water kind of blowing things up."
Zelda poked Link. "Isn't francium illegal?" she whispered.
"I thought so. Maybe not," he replied.
"Now we'll still have to go through all the math like specific heat and crystal lattices and blah blah blah, which may not sound as exciting as explosions, so I have something to tell you. They're not. But in case, say, ten percent of you decides to go into chemistry, or any kind of science, you need to know this stuff. And it's all relative. They might not be the most exciting thing, but they're a hell of a lot more exciting than a lot of things. Like football. Never really liked football. Oh, we have to get this oblong piece of leather to one side of the field before those guys get it to the other! Quick, let's bash our brains out against each other so we can get it closer to our side of the field!" Laughter exploded throughout the room. "No offense, football players, that's just my personal preference!" he called over the tumult.
"Now, who knows what happens when you pour sulfuric acid on sugar?" Everyone was silent as all eyes went to the pile of white powder in the middle of the lab desk behind which Boom was situated. "Nobody? Well then, prepare to find out!" He snatched a test tube from a shelf behind him, and, without much ceremony, dumped its contents on the sugar. It started to expand, the white powder turning black and crusty. Some of the unlucky fellows in the front row leaned back as the black mush began to creep over the edge of the desk, pieces of it breaking off and landing in a flaky bunch on the floor. Pretty soon, Boom had a pile of pure something-that-did-not-look-like-sugar on the desk, and a new stench was added to the already exotic bouquet of sulfur and formaldehyde.
"So what happened there," he began again, getting his chalk hand ready, "is the sugar was reduced to pure carbon while the water in the sugar was taken out by the acid. Dehydration of sugar. Good lab to do at the dinner table, assuming you have sulfuric acid at your disposal."
At that moment, the door flung open and a student tumbled into the classroom. It was Ghirahim. "Not this guy again," Zelda whispered.
"Yep. I'm afraid it's this guy. Again. But if you ask me, I don't think he's that bad, from what I've seen of him. I think he'll get along with this teacher pretty well."
"You've got a point."
Ghirahim stopped in the middle of the classroom and marveled at the pile of carbon on Boom's desk. "Can I touch it?"
"Why, of course!" Boom said, grinning. "Just wash your hands afterward. Now, could you please tell me of all the important things you were doing that obligated you to postpone my class?" Ghirahim prepared to make a sarcastic speech like he had in Ms. Maxwell's class, but before he could, Boom patted his arm, laughing. "Don't worry about it. I'm not that kind of teacher." The sparkle left Ghirahim's eyes dejectedly. He sat in a seat, next to Link, and leaned his chin jauntily on a fist.
"What'd I miss?" he asked.
"Not much," Link replied. "Basically, just a sort of class introduction, and a bunch of sugar being turned into...what you just touched, which is now pure carbon."
"Dang, I was hoping I'd stuck my finger into something slightly more badass than just sugar."
"Well, he poured sulfuric acid on it, if that helps."
"Oh. That does help."
"Glad I could be of assistance."
"Oh, shush, Ghirahim. Sticking your finger into sulfuric acid is not something to be proud of," Zelda chided. Ghirahim accepted the challenge.
"And why not?" Ghirahim inquired.
"Because skin is useful."
"So is experience."
"Tell me one thing you learned from touching that acid-drenched carbon pile."
"I learned that acid-drenched carbon piles feel flaky and crumbly."
"And is that information worth the sacrifice of your epidermis?"
He extended his long, pale finger and examined it. "My epidermis looks pretty unscathed."
"I'd have to agree with Ghirahim on this one," Link chimed in. "I don't think he would be allowed to touch it if it was overly dangerous. But then again..." He glanced at Boom's ecstatic face, which was currently spewing something about combustion reactions, and then back at the shelf full of strange liquids. "Well, he hasn't been fired yet," Link finished.
Zelda gazed at Boom critically. "Have you ever wondered if teachers like this are just putting on a show to get students to like their class?"
"I think this guy's earnest," Ghirahim said. "Did you know he put a class description on line?"
Link had a feeling he knew where this was going. "No, what'd it say?"
"It was a picture of an explosion."
"Figures," Link said, shrugging.