Halfway Heroes, Page 2

  Chapter 2—Lab Tour

  “So?” Dariela plopped down into the seat beside Lydia, an expectant look on her face. It was enough to shake Lydia from her sleepy stupor.

  Lydia had been having such an enjoyable rest, too. Heaven knew how that was possible, what with the early hour the students had to wake and ready themselves to catch the bus. She figured they earned a little extra shut-eye on their way to school. The monotonous tone of the morning news anchor on the radio had been a wonderful channel to dreamland. But Dariela’s jolt had snatched Lydia away, leaving only the two of them awake on the bus as it traveled during its early morning run.

  “So?” Lydia said, yawning and stretching to loosen some kinks in her back. “So what?”

  “The form,” Dariela said. “The one I reminded you of yesterday. Did you get it signed? Please tell me you did, because I decided to go.”

  Lydia’s eyes popped open, and the blurry fog in the corners of her vision receded rapidly. She examined her hand. Traces of black marker stains, barely forming the two words she’d written prominently on it, mocked her. She dug through her backpack and produced a crumpled piece of paper, detailing the school trip and what it would entail. The line requesting parental signature was blank. Her heart sank.

  “Oh, no,” she said with a moan. She looked at her hand again, recalling her shower and how vigorously she’d scrubbed her hands. She silently scolded herself for forgetting and dropped the paper on her lap. “Great. Guess I can’t go.”

  As the bus arrived at the next stop, Dariela snatched the form and held up a pen. “Here, let me use your back,” she said, gesturing for Lydia to turn around. She did so and felt her friend dig the pen into her back, looping it around a couple of times.

  “What are you doing?” Lydia asked, craning her head over her shoulder.

  “Done,” Dariela said, proudly handing her the form back. “Not bad, if I do say so myself.”

  Lydia ran her eyes over the paper. She stopped when she noticed the blank space had been filled with cursive handwriting. It was scarily accurate to her mother’s own signature, right down to the oval left in the D’s corner. Lydia gaped at it. Dariela smirked and leaned over to admire her handiwork.

  “My pen’s not good for only drawing. I’ve had to do the same when I forgot to get my dad’s signature. Gotten pretty good at it,” she said, boasting and sticking out her chest. “Good thing your mom’s isn’t too hard to copy.”

  “Thanks,” Lydia said, sliding the form into her backpack and breathing a little easier.

  Someone tut-tutted from above. Lydia glanced up to find a mass of blond hair hanging down, brushing against her own darker hair. Smiling, blue-gray eyes leered at them. “Forgery, Ms. Mauer?” Mark said, wagging an accusing finger at Dariela, with a sly grin. “Maybe Ms. Retter would be interested to hear about that.”

  “Maybe you’d like to live today,” Dariela threatened. She held a hard-curled fist to Mark’s face, forcing him back into his seat. “Would you like that?”

  He nodded rapidly and she sat back down. She rolled her eyes when he tried to retain some of his dignity by kicking her seat, but Lydia held her friend’s arm down. The bus pulled in front of the school and circled around slowly to the rear. Lydia relaxed and caught snatches of the news over the loud exhaust.

  “The degenerative virus known as SN91 has been confirmed to be running rampant in Yemen,” an elderly news anchor said. “Spain has reached out for support, offering to help contain the virus. Unlike their European counterpart, no one responsible for its release has been identified. No group has claimed responsibility as of this moment, but reports are still coming in. A spokesperson for Rooke Pharmaceuticals says that the company has doubled their efforts in seeking a remedy after this recent attack.”

  Lydia was yanked from her rest when the bus jolted to a stop, its engine puttering idly with several other school buses at the school. She grumbled under her breath and stood up, shouldering her backpack and stumbling sleepily off the bus. The girls skipped their first class, heading to Retter’s room. When all their classmates had gathered together and all the consent forms had been collected, Retter and the chaperones loaded everyone onto the designated field trip buses.

  The ride to the outskirts of the city seemed short to Lydia. She and her classmates stepped off the bus after the chaperones. “Everyone! Gather ’round now! Gather ’round!” Retter said, corralling her classes on the pavement outside the bus. Already Retter’s face was haggard—more so than usual. Her frantic, worried eyes were trying, and failing, to keep track of every student, check every face, and count and recount everybody in case she miscounted. Lydia decided that Retter’s age really showed when she was out of the classroom.

  Thankfully for their teacher, one of the chaperones stepped up to assist her, proving that the flashy gentlemanly grin he sported wasn’t his only talent. “Everyone! Please calm down!” he said over the crowd, cupping his hands to his lips. “Please calm down and listen to Ms. Retter!”

  “Thank you, Harold,” Retter said, graciously nodding to him. Dariela pushed and shoved through the students to Lydia’s side. Retter turned to her classes, taking on a stern tone as she addressed them. “Now, I want all of you to remember that we are guests at Rooke Pharmaceuticals today. While they have been kind enough to allow us to tour their biology laboratories, they will not tolerate any mischief. Neither will I.”

  “Oh, I’m scared,” Mark said, chortling somewhere behind Lydia with his friends. “What’s she going to do? Beat us with her cane?”

  “That means,” Retter continued, directing her gaze toward Mark, “that if I find out that anyone has entered an area they shouldn’t, has left their field trip buddy, or, so help me, coated the floor with soap again to make people fall, they will receive detention. Detention at the very least, I might add.” She cast a knowing glance at Lydia and Dariela, before delivering the same look to others in the crowd.

  “I told her that wasn’t me,” Dariela said, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. “That’s Mark’s style to open up the school year with a sad prank like that.”

  “Yeah. You’d use Vaseline,” Lydia said. “Slicker and harder to see.”

  “Now you’re talking!”

  Retter retrieved a piece of paper from the pocket of her maroon blazer and adjusted her glasses. “When I call out your names, pair up with your partner. Afterward, you will be assigned a chaperone. Baker and Jennings, pair up. Locke and Reeds.”

  While she drolled on, Lydia crossed her fingers, hoping that she and Dariela would be together. Unfortunately, when Retter finally called Lydia’s name, she found herself as Mark’s buddy. Dariela had been assigned to Richard, a high-strung boy who, Lydia was sure, wouldn’t be able to move if he was any tenser. Mark lamented his pairing as much as Lydia did and complained loudly about it.

  “Some day this is turning out to be,” he said, crossing his arms and glaring at her.

  “I’m not any happier about it than you are,” Lydia said. “But if you won’t bother me, I won’t bother you. Deal?”

  He eyed her up and down, and nodded stiffly. Then he turned to talk with Bruce while Retter finished reading off the names. When the groups were divvied up among the chaperones, Lydia found that she was in the same group as Dariela, so Lydia and Dariela were able to stay close together. They followed the mass group into the foyer.

  “What’s with the camera?” Dariela asked, pointing at a black bag slung over Lydia’s shoulder. It was her personal camera, a treasured device that she’d saved for with every bit of income earned from chores, odd jobs, and birthday money for over a year. Lydia took it out of the padded bag and assembled it. “The school paper ask you to take pictures again?”

  “Yeah,” Lydia said, checking the focus button. She snapped a test picture. “Guess they ran out of stories. They’re so persistent. But this is the last one I’m agreeing to do until they put me on the paper, or pay me, or something.”

  The entire gro
up was greeted by a middle-aged man waiting for them in the foyer.

  “Hello,” he said, sporting the largest artificial smile that Lydia had ever seen. “I’m Peter and I’ll be your guide at Rooke Pharmaceuticals today.” He’d certainly dressed the part of the friendly guide, ready to dole out information. His nametag was pinned with a sense of pride on his bright-blue jacket, and Lydia noticed that he’d taken time to carefully pleat his slacks. She’d barely ironed her white shirt and jeans that morning and was very sure that Dariela hadn’t even bothered, choosing to throw on whatever clothes were around and allow her black-hooded jacket to cover up the mess.

  “I see a lot of faces out there, ready to learn about the wonders of biology,” Peter continued, leaning in too close for comfort, Lydia thought, to the poor people up front.

  “Five seconds and I already don’t like this guy,” Dariela whispered. Lydia privately agreed, but she continued to listen anyway.

  “We are leading the pack in biological research, whether in discovering new medications to combat disease or in understanding the delicate intricacies of the human body. We are constantly shooting for the stars and beyond by delving into the inner chambers of ourselves,” he said, laughing. Peter swept his arms to an open pair of sliding glass doors behind him. He led the group through them and into the expansive lobby.

  The room instantly made Lydia feel very small, like she was a cell in an actual human bloodstream. Strangely enough, there was a model blood cell in the center with a directory printed in white on a black background. A few of the people on the ground floor were dressed similarly to Peter. Others, like the security guards positioned at certain doors and hallways, wore gunmetal gray. At the top of the spiral staircase nearby, she saw only a few men and women in white coats, who she assumed were scientists. The lobby split the entire inner area in half, as if the actual labs on the sides were buildings within buildings, with a few glass-covered hallways connecting one side to the other on the second floor. Two large columns stood like dark stalks in the middle, fooling people into thinking they were holding up the entire roof. Each column housed large elevators.

  Peter guided everyone to a reception desk, where they were handed company pamphlets. “This includes a map of the top and bottom floors,” Peter said, still grinning from ear to ear. Lydia wondered if his mouth might stretch far enough to connect at the back of his head. “There’s also a short history of the company, but I’ll be going very in-depth on our tour. Now, everyone, this way.”

  They entered the right-hand building through large double doors. Peter spun on his heels and paced backward to face them as they continued to walk. “Here at Rooke Pharmaceuticals we are committed to providing the highest quality in medicine.”

  He halted in front of a framed photograph. Its faded color made it look dated, resembling an oil painting rather than an actual photograph. In the center was a middle-aged gentleman, his thin lips curving into a kind smile, which accentuated the forming wrinkles around his jowls and hid his beady, black eyes. He had a distinguished touch of gray about his temple and was staring straight back at Lydia, as if studying her.

  “May I present our founder, Mr. Leonard Rooke,” Peter said, waving his arm at the photo. “Decades ago, Mr. Rooke resigned from his position at the local hospital and earned a degree in Business Management to add to his impressive MD. Studying business practices and taking advice from the best, Mr. Rooke opened his own pharmaceutical company right here in pleasant Golden Springs, when it was only a budding town. He was dedicated to providing medicine at lower costs than the competitors of the time. A kindhearted but shrewd businessman, Mr. Rooke eventually expanded his company’s reach into all aspects of medicine. That includes, but is not limited to, research, manufacturing, and outpatient clinics. He gave so much to this community, and helped expand Golden Springs into the city it is today by providing jobs and giving many donations. As he always said, ‘We are meant to help others first, ourselves last.’ ”

  Peter began walking backward, facing the group and maintaining eye contact. “As you can tell, the company name doesn’t even begin to cover what we encompass today. But it reminds us of our origin. Although Mr. Rooke retired long ago and has withdrawn into seclusion, we keep his memory, drive, and spirit alive.”

  On Lydia’s right, she saw a room with crystal-clear glass walls that stretched to the tall ceiling. Workers walked back and forth between lab tables. They were covered in plastic eyewear, long gowns, and gloves. Some carried trays of pink, blue, green, or transparent liquid bubbling in beakers. A few stopped in their work to wave at Peter and the classes. Lydia lifted her camera and took a couple of quick pictures.

  “We don’t do much manufacturing in this facility today, like in the past,” Peter explained. “We’ve reallocated that task to our factories spread out across the country. Or sometimes to our facilities in other sections of the world. Here we focus on research and testing. Right now, our top lab personnel are delving into the inner workings of the human body. Specifically, what its limits can be pushed to.”

  “What does that mean?” Mark asked, an edge of irritability to his voice.

  “We. .. ll,” Peter said, drawing out the word. He looked from side to side and leaned in close, like he was deciding to tell a secret that he shouldn’t. “What they do in there,” he said in a hushed voice, “is to experiment in various areas of human biology in many exciting ways. Like muscle growth, increasing bone strength to withstand shock damage, or trying to recover and increase hearing loss.”

  At the mention of “muscle growth,” Mark looked at his own flabby arms. Lydia saw him flex slightly when Peter continued their walk, pointing out another research area. Dariela walked up behind Mark and muttered in his ear. “Forget it. Even science can’t help your muscles. Or lack thereof.”

  “And it can’t stop you from looking masculine,” Mark said. Lydia held Dariela’s arm back before she could hit him, as they entered another area.

  “Just ignore him,” Lydia said, walking beside her. “He’s a lying jerk. Besides, don’t do anything while Retter’s watching.”

  Their teacher had stayed at the rear of the group, watching everyone very closely. Her frown would’ve been menacing if she herself hadn’t seemed like she was barely making it through the tour. Lydia decided that Retter was definitely not one for school field trips.

  “If you look over to your left, you’ll see more testing,” Peter said. Lydia gazed into another large room and saw several lab technicians watching others dressed in athletic attire running on treadmills or doing some other form of exercise. The white coats were nodding to one another, scribbling on clipboards while Lydia captured some photos.

  “In this next room, our hardworking men and women are researching blood diseases,” Peter said, throwing his arm to the right. Most lab personnel in the room hovered over microscopes, finely adjusting them. Every once in a while they would tear their eyes away to write something and then glue themselves right back to staring through the lenses.

  “We’re always searching for new ways to combat diseases, which you’ll see upstairs. But here, and there,” he said, waving his hand in opposite directions, “our scientists pour their heart and soul and brains into finding the elusive cures for Hepatitis B and C, HIV, and many others.”

  “But B already has a vaccine,” Dariela pointed out.

  “What a quick girl you are!” Peter exclaimed, patting the top of her head. Lydia nearly burst out laughing at the deadly glare Dariela aimed at Peter, although he seemed not to notice. “Yes, there is. But we want to find a way to cure those who have already contracted it, rather than just to prevent it.” He paused, his goofy grin countered only by her chilling frown, before he continued leading everyone to the end of the hall.

  “If he does that again, I’ll break his arm,” Dariela promised.