Eye-Hand Coordination

The foreign exchange student was my lab partner. God, but it figured. She was in two of my classes and didn't speak English, as far as I could tell. And I wasn't precisely a shining star in Chemistry. I liked basketball. And swimming. And anything that didn't require either math or steadiness of hand.

Her name was Katya, and she was from Russia or Belarus or Bulgaria or something. Some people thought she was from Germany, but her accent didn't quite match up. She swiveled every so slightly to either side on the lab stool, looking absentmindedly pleased; if she wasn't in my Honors Chem class, I might have thought that she was a little stupid. But I guessed she was just sort of lonely, and had to take it where she could get it.

I chewed on my pen as the labs were handed out. Awkward.



The other groups started getting their kits, and rinsing their Erlenmeyer flasks and getting ready to heat the water for the crystallization part of the lab. Katya, either working from the illustrations or the pictures on the instruction packet, measured out the right amount of water and started heating it on a hot plate. I cut up the strip of magnesium and got out the crucible.

Of course, the whole steadiness-of-hand thing coming into play, I was about to set everything up on the Bunsen burner--which Katya had lit when I was cutting up the magnesium-- when I dropped the crucible, the fifteen-dollar crucible. Quicker than I would have thought, especially reading in a language she didn't understand, Katya caught the ceramic dish, though the magnesium still scattered all over the floor.

I ducked down to gather it up, hiding from the stern glare of Mr. Krayler. "Your eye-hand coordination is not so good," Katya murmured. I looked up at her in surprise, not bothering to correct the backwards saying.

"You speak English!" I exclaimed, perhaps a but too loudly, surprised.

Katya raised a bemused eyebrow. "Yes," she stated flatly. "Of course I speak English." And then she smiled. It was a pretty, pale sort of smile. She was a pretty, pale sort of girl.

When she reached down to take the slivers of silver magnesium, her fingers brushed mine.

Chemistry. Huh.