Call It Chemistry

Golden Grove Series Book 1

D.J. Van Oss

Copyright (C) 2019 D.J. Van Oss

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Cover Mint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the

product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

Chapter One

Twelve Years Ago

Golden Grove High

The day of the Nitrovex Scholarship Fair was clear, bright, and perfect. An omen

if there ever was one.

Katie was doing a few last-minute checks on her project to make sure it sparkled. She didn't want to take any chances on something being out of balance.

The judging was starting in only thirty minutes, and everything needed to be perfect if she was going to win.

She stepped back, put her hands on her hips and smiled.

Perfect and unavoidably grand. Her entry was a large mobile made of intricate glass pieces, each turning on its own gleaming silver wire. The slightest breeze moved the pieces like multicolored snowflakes in slow motion. It was brave, it was bold, it was her masterpiece. If she said so herself.

She stole a glance at Peter, one table over, bent over and fiddling with some

tube on his project. His wavy black hair flopped over his blue eyes, and her heart did a flip, sticking the landing. She sighed. Steady.

She scanned the room, eying the other entries. It was the usual. Kenny Terpstra and his Tesla coil, which she was pretty sure his dad had built for him

for their sixth-grade science fair. Looked like Ronny Sharp had taken some tadpoles from the creek, stuck them in his sister's blue wading pool and called it

“The Miracle of Life.” Down the row, Lisa Banks was trying to coerce some white mice through a maze, but they seemed more interested in crawling up her

arm.

Katie grinned internally. The competition was thin this year. So much the better for her.

She had given up trying to convince her parents that art was her passion. But

today was her best chance to show them she could make more than something they would stick on the refrigerator door or display on the back of a dusty bookshelf.

The annual Nitrovex Scholarship Fair was the brightest hope for many of Golden Grove's seniors who wanted to go to college. Funded by John Wells, the

always upbeat founder of the local chemical plant where Katie's parents were

chemical engineers, first prize was such a big gift that for some students it determined where you could afford to go to college.

That wasn't as true for Katie. Her parents were happy to send her to pretty

much any decent school. As long as it wasn't the Mason School of Art in Chicago that she'd had her eye on since eighth grade. No, that wouldn't be

“practical” and she needed to think about a “career.”

She had begged them to the point where they had finally given her one hope.

If she won the Nitrovex scholarship for her art project, they'd pay the difference.

She could already see herself in Chicago next fall, immersed in a world of endless creativity along with hundreds of other students just like her, laughing, sharing ideas. No more condescending comments like, “That's nice, but what do

you really want to do with your life?” They would understand there.

She already knew she was going to start calling herself “Kate.” She might even cut her hair short, like Audrey Tautou in Amélie.

But first, she had to win.

She went back to her work, admiring the glint of the fragile glass as it slowly

rotated. Even under the stark, buzzing fluorescent lights of the noisy gym, her mobile was beautiful. Just think what it would look like in a real art gallery.

The local yokels might not get it, but Mr. Wells's wife, Mary, who she knew

was an art connoisseur, would be sure to recognize her talent. And she was a judge this year.

And it was high time a project of culture and refinement got noticed. Who cared about the sex lives of tadpoles or a catapult made from Popsicle sticks that could chuck an orange across a room?

The only downside was that Peter had a project in the running, too. And if