Page 10 of The Naughty Professor
By the time I wrestled the mower back into the shed, my arms were trembling and my shirt clung damp to my back.I kicked off the boots, tugged on my regular shoes, and yanked the mask down.The moment it cleared my face, I sneezed so hard I nearly toppled into the doorframe.
“Yeah, I’m the real picture of health,” I muttered, grabbing the gas can and shutting the shed door with a bang.
I hurried up the back steps and into the kitchen, where the cool air and the smell of casserole hit me at once.The space was tiny—yellowed linoleum floor, cabinets painted robin’s egg blue in the ‘70s, a single round table tucked into the corner.Grandma was waiting with a can of beer already in hand.
“Here,” she said, pressing it toward me like it was communion wine.
“I shouldn’t.I’m going to the gym later.”
Her mouth dropped open like I’d just told her I was joining the circus.“The gym?You’ve never been to the gym in your life, and you don’t need to go.”
Before I could answer, she disappeared down the hall.I heard a drawer slide open, some rummaging, and then she reappeared with a couple of photographs.
“You’re the spitting image of Leon, the handsomest man in the neighborhood.”
I stared at the photo.My father was leaning against a car in a sharp suit, grin easy, posture perfect.He had movie star looks—square jaw, dark hair, eyes that seemed to catch the light.In the other picture, he was in uniform, playing baseball for the Richmond Squirrels.The Squirrels were a minor league team, and the New York Mets had offered him a spot right before the accident.
I looked nothing like him.Not the jaw, not the hair, not the smile.Everything about him screamed ease, charm, athleticism.Everything about me screamed… not that.
“I don’t see it,” I said, and Grandma put the pictures aside.
“That’s because you don’t want to.”She plucked the beer from my hand, popped it open, and poured it into a glass.“Mowing the grass was more than enough exercise for you.Sit.”
I obeyed, dropping into one of the creaky chairs while she slid a steaming plate of casserole in front of me.It was a crime scene of noodles, peas, and something suspiciously crunchy on top.
“Oh, before I forget,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron.“Another one of your magazines arrived in the mail yesterday.”
“Really?Thought I’d gotten most of that switched over to my house already.”
She disappeared into the other room again and came back not with one, but four.The glossy covers gleamed under the kitchen light.
Chemical Horizons.
“I tried to read one,” Grandma said, shaking her head.“But ooh, all those strange numbers and words.Looked like gibberish to me.”
I smiled faintly and flipped through the stack.Then one cover stopped me cold.Bold letters ran across the top:New Compound Discovered: Dramatic Changes in Brain Chemistry Observed.
My chest tightened.I opened the magazine and skimmed the article, half-listening as Grandma chattered about Mrs.Richardson’s roses blooming late this year.
The formulas were familiar, almost insultingly simple.Nerve conduction modifiers, neurotransmitter regulators, all combined into a structure that clicked together in my head like puzzle pieces.
Then I hit the case study.A woman, speechless since childhood trauma in war-torn Syria, had undergone treatment.Within days, she was transformed: outgoing, fashionable, vibrant.She’d fallen in love with the scientist’s assistant, of all people, and married him.The article described it as a miracle.
“Grandma,” I interrupted, unable to keep it to myself.“Listen to this—this chemist figured out a way to literally change someone’s personality.A woman who hadn’t spoken since she was a child—she became this whole other person.Confident, happy, married.Isn’t that incredible?”
Grandma frowned, setting down her glass.“People should be happy just being themselves.Messing around with your brain like that ain’t healthy.You start tugging on the strings of who you are, you don’t know what’ll unravel.”
I wanted to argue, but my eyes had already drifted back to the page.My pulse kicked up as I scanned the next section.
After six months of her new life, the woman had deteriorated.Worse than before.She’d reverted not only to silence but to total immobility.The words were clinical, detached, but the meaning was brutal: at twenty-eight, she was living in a nursing home, unable to speak or move, her miracle burned out.
The casserole in front of me suddenly smelled less like food and more like ashes.
I traced the half-finished formula printed in the magazine, my finger following the jagged lines and letters.They’d never publish the whole thing—academic journals always gave you just enough to whet your appetite, never enough to replicate the work.But even the fragments fascinated me.
The structure was crude, a scaffolding that worked but looked like it had been hammered together in the dark.I could see the gaps, the shortcuts, the missed opportunities.What if someone smarter, more careful, improved on it?What if I could take this chemist’s shaky miracle and refine it into something that actually lasted?
My chest thudded with a rhythm I hadn’t felt in years.
