She watched him go. Allrighty, then, it's a date. A chemistry date. Yay. She

wiped her sweating palms on her pants, breathed in some air, and pushed her shake away. Yay.

* * *

Kate set her purse down on Peter's desk at the front of the chemistry classroom.

She looked around at the rows of black Formica tables, each with their own sink

and chrome gas nozzles. She sniffed. The air smelled acrid, like sulfur and things long since burned. She wrinkled her nose. She preferred the thick waxy smell of

paints and paper in the art room down the hall.

“So this is where you spend most of your time?”

Peter was at a bookshelf near the window putting away some books. “Most

of it. I've got an office down the hall, but I'd rather hang out here. Easier for students to find me.”

Kate walked around his desk, touching the various knick-knacks on it.

Models of molecules, small homemade trophies with cryptic sayings on them.

Probably inside jokes from students. She joined him at the shelf, scanning the titles. Organic Chemistry Study Guide. Quantum Chemistry and Molecular Interactions. Wow. Real pager-turners.

“Thanks again for being willing to help,” she said.

He pulled out a folder and walked around the desk to his chair. “No problem.

Beats grading papers.” He moved back to his desk and opened a drawer. “Sorry I

couldn't help more the other night.”

She looked up, remembering that night. “No, that's okay.” She spied an

official-looking paper on the corner of his desk under a folder and two books.

Spirograph swirls around the border of parchment paper. She pulled it out from

under the books and read it: Board of Education of Iowa confers on Peter Hargrave Clark Science Teacher of the Year.

She cocked her head at him. “This is your award?”

He looked up, then down again. “Yup.”

“Why don't you have it in a frame. It'll get all wrinkled here.”

“I'll get to it sometime.”

She opened her mouth to say more, then stopped. Instead, she put the paper

down neatly on his desk and returned to scanning his bookshelf. A weathered spine of a book with a photo of a hand holding a beaker of pink liquid caught her

eye.

She pulled it out. “Isn't this our old chem book?”

Peter looked up from his desk, then back down. “It is. Bring back

memories?”

Kate hefted the book. “Yes. Of back pain.” Science books were always so heavy. She didn't remember much about chemistry, but she sure remembered how her back ached every day she had to haul this thing home in her backpack.

She opened it. On the inside cover was scrawled “Peter Clark” and under it

“SuperChemGuy” with stars drawn around it. She smiled. “So, Super Chem

Guy, do you ever get out? I mean, away from town? Surely there must be some

incredibly exciting chemistry conventions you get to go to or something.”

Peter looked up, then chuckled. “Oh, yeah. Pretty much every other weekend

there's a wild convention for high school chemistry teachers in Vegas.

Champagne in beakers, dancing girls, the whole deal. And SuperChemGuy was

just my old AOL account name.”

She bit her lip, thinking. “I think mine was ArtGurlForever or something dumb like that.”

“ArtGurlsRule.”

She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. She reached to put the book back

on the shelf. A few loose notes dropped from under its back cover onto the floor.

Kate picked them up, scanning them. “Ooo! Love notes!”

“What?” He got up and came around the desk. “Those are probably just old

chem quizzes.” He tried to take them from her, but she turned before he could,

keeping them out of reach as she unfolded one, scribbled pen on notebook paper.

“Dear Marve l,” she read, “I must protest the use of ammonia as a re-agent in the latest issue of Spider-Man, Number 167. Also, the common reaction of the burning of butane would be to produce a blue flame, not a pink one as is shown in panel five on page twelve.” She laughed. “Oh my gosh…I'm sorry, Peter, but you were such a geek.”

“Yeah, well, says the girl who painted a My Little Pony mural on her wall and then talked to it every night.”