No Ordinary Science Fair

The room just smelled like science to me. After storing chemicals for decades, there was a powerful smell. I liked to try to sort out the smells. There was something that tingled my nostrils. That must have been acid. I remembered smelling vinegar right out of the bottle. All the chemicals for Chemistry, the formaldehyde from glass containers of brains and frogs. A cabinet of geology specimens had its own smells. My nose recognized old wood from the cabinets and the distinct smell of old books and papers. There was a stack of old yellowing newspapers on one shelf. I found the smell of the room interesting. Most kids were more likely to describe it as gross, disgusting, or needs a good cleaning. The wall that ran between the classroom doors was old wood paneling with two doors that only went up to about four feet from the floor. One time, when I was in the room getting supplies for Mr. Nolan, I couldn’t resist carefully pulling the wooden knobs on the doors to see what was in there. Those doors had keyholes similar but a little larger than the ones on the cabinets. They must have been locked because they wouldn’t open. Darn! I had asked Mrs. Fitzsimmons what was in there. “I have no idea. I suppose that’s just where the electric and gas lines run,” she speculated. “I know the gas to these rooms is shut off now, but back when this was the high school, they used Bunsen burners in the lab. I’ve never looked inside. I don’t even know if anybody still has keys. I sure don’t. In the twelve years I have been using this room I have never seen anyone open those doors.” I remembered why I went in there. I walked over to the shelf where I had put my notebook the afternoon before. I casually picked it up and glanced at it. There wouldn’t be anything to look at because Mrs. Fitzsimmons had already told all her classes she didn’t have a chance to look at them. “What the …?” I thought. “Mrs. Fitzsimmons told us she didn’t have time to look at these. What’s this?” I saw a sticky note peeking out slightly from the side of the notebook. Some of my teachers had put comments on assignments on sticky notes. The refrigerator at home was usually covered with them. Mrs. Fitsimmons and Mr. Nolan never used them. This one was that tan color. I had heard people call that color buff, but I had no idea why. I opened my notebook to the page with the first note. When I did that, I noticed there was another note sticking out from another page. I looked at the note. The writing was not careful, but very readable. It was written with a blue fine felt-tip pen. “Interesting question. You need to tighten up your methodology. No way to accurately measure the amount of paste on each brush.” “Who the heck wrote this?” I wondered. “This is too weird.” With the note mystery, the room seemed even more like some corner of Hogwarts. “Yup, this is weird,” I thought Then I saw a second note. It was on the page I’d started notes on the background and review of literature. I hadn’t gotten too far. “Make sure you do a good job on this section,” read the second note. I was confused. Mrs. Fitzsimmons said she hadn’t done anything with the projects. I’d seen plenty of her writing, and was pretty sure that there was no way she had written these notes. I didn’t think the handwriting looked like a kid’s. Even if it was, nobody in my classes wrote like that. Maybe someone was punking me, but I didn’t think any kids would have been in here. Standing there, I could think of explanations, but none of them seemed very likely.