Ultraviolet Catastrophe(2)
Author: Jamie Grey

I sighed and stared at the phone beside my bed. I hadn’t talked to Dad in over a month. He’d been away on some sort of top-secret research trip to Japan, and before that, he had been busy at work. Talking to his daughter had never exactly been a priority. Why would he choose now, of all days, to call?

A sudden lump formed in my throat. Even worse, what exactly was I supposed to say to him? About Mom? The gun? Or that weird flash of knowledge I’d had?

It wasn’t the first time that had happened either. A few months ago, while I was taking a math test, all the answers had popped into my head without even having to work at them. It had freaked me out, but I thought it was a fluke. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

I pushed aside all of that, took a deep breath, and picked up the phone. “Hey, Dad.”

“Lexie, honey, how are you?”

His warm, familiar voice made me miss him even more than I usually did, but I kept my voice emotionless. “Fine. How was your trip?”

“It went really well. I think Quantum Technologies is going to be opening a new branch in Tokyo.”

My stomach clenched, and I clutched the phone in my suddenly sweaty fist. “Are they sending you over to open it?”

Dad let out a surprised laugh. “Oh, no, that’ll be someone else’s job. I just went to scope out the location and talk to some of their scientists.”

I forced my hand to relax. I barely saw Dad now; it wouldn’t really matter if he moved to Japan. Much. “Cool. So, um, what’s up?”

“I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine.” Mostly. If I didn’t think too hard about what had happened today. Oh my god. Was that what he was calling about? Had Mom said something? But that was unlikely. She never talked to Dad if she could help it.

“Your mom said you’d been having some headaches lately. Are you still taking your ADHD meds?”

Well, evidently she’d told him something. “Yeah, of course. It’s nothing — I’m sure it’s just the heat.”

“Just make sure to tell your mom if they get worse, okay? I worry about you.”

I frowned at the mouthpiece. Mom had basically said the same thing earlier when she explained about the gun. My skin erupted in goosebumps. “Why are you guys so worried about me all of a sudden?”

Dad paused and then said softly, “We’re your parents. It’s what we do.”

“Not like this. It’s like you guys are watching for something. What — am I suddenly going to develop magical powers?”

“Of course not. There’s no such thing as magic.”

I rolled my eyes. “It was a joke, Dad.” Sometimes I wondered if the job description for rocket scientists had a no-sense-of-humor requirement. “Just forget it. It doesn’t matter. I’m fine.”

Another awkward pause stretched between us. “So how’s that little project of ours going?”

I gritted my teeth. The “little project” wasn’t so little, especially after he’d abandoned me to work on it alone. “It’s just fine. No thanks to you.”

“Sweetie, I’m sorry. You know how crazy it gets here at QT.”

“You just dumped some circuit boards and project plans on my desk six months ago and expected me to take care of it. Well, you know what? I did. The quantum sensor is up and running, I attached the thermometer to the heat sink, and it’s ready to start reading the gamma-ray spectra of nuclear materials. If I had access to any. Look at me — I’m a freaking genius.”

Dad cleared his throat uncomfortably. “What did you do about the infrared sensitivity?”

“I redesigned the bolometer to measure the electromagnetic radiation.”

“Wow. I’m impressed. That’s really advanced work.”

And I’d figured it all out on my own. When he’d suggested the project, I’d thought finally we might have something to work through together. Something in common. Obviously, I’d been wrong.

I didn’t bother to respond, and Dad finally cleared his throat before saying, “So I was thinking you could visit me and try the sensor out in my lab. I’d love for us to spend some time together. I haven’t seen you in months.”

Whose fault is that? I bit back my angry response. I’d learned a long time ago that the drama wasn’t worth it. “We’ll see. I have plans with some friends next weekend. And then school starts up again in a few weeks.”

“Honey, I think — ”

“Was there anything else? Mom’s calling me for dinner.”

The line between us practically throbbed with hurt feelings, but finally, he said, “No, that’s all I had.”

“Well, glad you’re home from Japan. Talk to you later.”

“Love you, sweetie.”

“Bye, Dad.”

I clicked the phone off and threw it down on the bed. He couldn’t be bothered to visit more than twice a year. How dare he try to guilt me into feeling bad about our lack of relationship?

My head throbbed even worse than usual, and I rubbed at my temples. It was seriously none of Dad’s business if I’d been having headaches. He’d lost the right to care when he left us ten years ago. He meant well, but Mom and I were just fine on our own.

Maybe I’d ask if she’d let me learn how to shoot her gun.

2

Mom usually worked late on Thursdays at the lab where she was in charge of a team of theoretical physicists. They had a staff meeting that ran until six, so I was playing with the new computer board Dad had sent me. It was only credit-card-sized, but he’d thought it would be a great way to help me learn programming. I was pretty good at science, but computers…not so much.

I plugged in the power source and felt the panel start to vibrate. It had been a week since the gun incident, and I’d brought it up over and over, but Mom kept shutting me down. I’d poked in her closet, dug through her desk. Nothing. Not even a scrap of information. So I’d finally had no choice but to drop it.

Hopefully, we could get back to normal now. I hated how pale she looked lately, the dark smudges under her eyes. I hated even more that she was keeping something from me.

I pushed the SD card into the slot on my laptop and opened the directions on how to format the operating system for the tiny computer. A zap sliced through my brain again, and the room spun. I grabbed the edge of my desk and squeezed my eyes shut, but a second later, I already knew all the steps I needed. The instructions popped into my head, almost like I was seeing them on the screen.