It was science.
“Are you sure I can’t go outside to watch the explosion?” Ishmael asked.
“My answer is the same as the other twelve times you asked.”
I wasn’t expecting a large blast, and the explosives were set up decently far from us, but safety came first in all scientific pursuits.
“Can I press the button at least?”
“Shut up, Ishmael,” I said.
I licked my lips. I took a deep breath. I looked affectionately at my seismograph, a machine I’d poured so much energy into.
Then I pressed the detonator.
The explosion rocked my lab. Shelves shook. A book fell off the table. Dust flew into the air.
And the sound.
It was loud.
Even after the noise subsided, my ears rang. A burnt smell filled my nostrils and dread twisted my stomach in knots. The explosion was larger than I’d anticipated. Much, much larger. How had my calculations been so inaccurate?
I looked at Ishmael. His eyes were wide, his face ashen.
“Shit,” he said.
We turned and jetted for the door.
Ishmael beat me outside. I followed, racing across the field, choking on dust and smoke. When Ishmael stopped short, we collided. I moved around him to see what had caused his sudden halt.
There was a crater. The explosion caused a crater.
My brother and I stood side by side, gazing at the new geological feature of our parents’ farm.
“Ishmael?” I said in an even tone that didn’t betray my rising panic.
“Yeah?”
“Can you explain this to me?”
He hesitated. “I… Well, I thought the explosion should be a little bigger. You know. To help with the sizeograph or whatever.”
“Goddammit, Ishmael.”
In front of us, a patch of dry grass burst into flame. Ishmael and I rushed over and frantically stomped the fire out. I was so focused, I didn’t see my parents running through the field toward us. It wasn’t until I heard their shouts that I looked up and saw their horrified expressions.
My father immediately joined the fire stomp. My mother gaped at the hole, one hand pressed to her chest. Across the field, I saw my sister, Maggie (Magdalene Hofstadt, age thirteen), also making her way over to us.
By the time the fire—and the smaller fires it spawned—were extinguished, I was panting from exertion. My brother and father were hardly winded.
As I watched, Father’s expression shifted from concern to rage. “What the hell happened here?”
“Vic—” Mother began.
“No,” Father stopped her. “I want to hear what the boys have to say.”
My heart sank. I was going to get my lab taken away. After the mishap last May, I was warned I was on my last chance before losing all out-of-school science privileges. (The mishap involved the FCC contacting my parents regarding unlicensed radio broadcasts coming from our house—I’d been attempting to communicate with the International Space Station.)
“Let me see if they’re okay first,” Mother replied.
“They look fine to me,” Maggie said, joining the rest of us. She nonchalantly pulled her brown ponytail through the back of her baseball cap, but there was no denying the gleam in her eyes. She was enjoying the spectacle.
Mother fussed over me, grabbing my chin and moving my face from side to side, as if making sure everything was still in place.
“Mother, really. I’m okay,” I said, ducking away.
“Someone better start talking,” Father ordered.
I opened my mouth to plead my case, but my brother beat me to it.
“We don’t know what happened!”
Father crossed his arms, covering the Pittsburgh Pirates logo stretched across his chest. “You don’t know?”
“Right,” Ishmael confirmed.
“There’s a hole the size of a pickup truck in our field, and you don’t know how it got here?” (Later measurements showed the crater to have a radius of approximately 2.5 meters.)
“Well, see, we were in Gideon’s lab doing, you know, science. And then there was this sound. Out of nowhere, boom! So we ran outside and…” Ishmael gestured toward the crater. “I think it came from the sky.”
Mother gasped. Father narrowed his eyes. I silently pleaded for my brother to stop talking because I doubted there was even a 5 percent chance my parents would believe a mystery object had fallen from the sky.
“It came from the sky,” Father repeated evenly.
“Right,” Ishmael agreed.
“What came from the sky? I don’t see anything here but a hole.”
“Maybe it was, you know…” Ishmael floundered.
I wanted to make the situation go away. I needed to make the situation go away. Which meant, unfortunately, assisting my brother. I looked at my parents and said, “A meteor. It could have been a meteor.”
“Yeah, a meteor! It must have, like, fallen from the sky and exploded itself or something. That can happen with meteors, right?”
Technically, yes.
But before I could share that information, I saw a sight even more alarming than the crater: the chief of police walking across the field toward us.
Interview
Ishmael: When I saw Chief Kaufman I totally freaked, because, like, how did she even get there so fast? And I kept looking at you for—
Interviewer: Do you remember what we talked about? About pretending I wasn’t there?
Ishmael: But you were there, dude. It’s super weird to pretend you weren’t.
Interviewer: Ishmael. This is supposed to be impartial. If the readers of this account know the person conducting interviews was intimately involved in the situation, they’ll think the data is compromised.
Ishmael: But isn’t it compromised?
Interviewer: Please just do this my way.
Ishmael: Also, can you not use the word “intimate”? It sounds sexual, which is pretty awkward.
Interviewer: It has nothing to do with sex. Intimate means close. I was closely involved with the situation.
Ishmael: Then why can’t you just say closely? Why do you have to make it weird?
Interviewer: Ishmael!
Ishmael: Okay, fine. Whatever. Should I start over?
Interviewer: Just pick up where you left off.
Ishmael: There’s no reason to get upset, dude. Anyway, as I was saying… What was I saying? Oh yeah, I saw Chief Kaufman and was like, “Whoa, did you teleport here?” Then I realized she’d come over to see Dad and it was just, like, majorly bad timing that she got there during the explosion. I guess I wouldn’t have said something fell from the sky if I’d known the police were gonna get involved, but by that time it was too late to take it back. But, I mean…it wasn’t that bad of an excuse, was it?