Van de Graaff -- fiction by Oola Breen-Ryan

Ms. Sterling is talking about plasma, the fourth state of matter. Rosie had never learned about plasma until today, even though she went through at least two states of matter chapters in elementary school science. It was always solids, liquids, and gas, never anything else. Ice to water to mist.

It’s always the most conventional things that are taught, Rosie thinks. She didn’t know that there were more than 5 senses until a few years ago, because she had only learned about the easily definable ones before. Vocab words are given simple, straightforward definitions to eliminate as much confusion as possible. People had told her that she could be either straight or a lesbian, not pan or bi, like she started to realize she was in seventh grade. Everyone talks about depression like it’s an easy, cut-and-paste thing, but hers is a blurry cloud of charcoal with no borders or clean lines. People talk about reasons for mental illness like they can be neatly listed. Rosie still can’t figure out even one reason why the cloud of charcoal lives inside her, but it does.

“Plasma is 99% of what we know in this universe,” Ms. Sterling says. “Think of it as electrified gas. You can find it in cosmic bodies and lightning, but it also makes up more than half of our blood. We are made of lightning, if you really think about it.”

Rosie writes this down on her otherwise blank sheet of paper. There’s something comforting in that the same material that makes lightning and stars also flows through her veins.

Ms. Sterling lets Rosie’s class out early—it’s supposed to start snowing in an hour, and so the principal has called an early dismissal. Rosie heads downstairs to her locker, throws on her coat and a scarf, and waits outside as the first snowflakes begin to fall.

It’s a flurry. The snow blankets everything, leaving no room for the houses or cars to breathe. But it’s pretty. The structures keep up a nice facade, looking more like a Christmas card by the minute. From the outside, they look beautiful and wintery. Rosie wonders how the cars and houses really feel.

“I’m going to ask out Jonathan,” Maribelle declares.

Maribelle and Rosie have been friends since third grade, when Rosie went up to her and told her that she liked her chocolates. (Clarification: she was thinking of a chocolate shop in New York City called Maribella’s that had absolutely no correlation to her 8-year-old classmate.) Instead of questioning it, though, Maribelle told Rosie that she liked her overalls, and they became friends. Rosie has been moral support for Maribelle throughout all of her endeavors—starting a soap company (unsuccessful), running a fifth-grade underground matchmaking business (which worked until the teacher shut it down), creating a school newspaper (still running), and, now, asking out her crush.

They’re sitting in Maribelle’s room, watching the snow fall and listening to Christmas music even though it’s the middle of February. School was cancelled for the rest of the week—there’s least two feet of it on the ground, and more coming. Maribelle lives pretty close to Rosie, so she walked to her house this morning and they’ve been drinking cocoa and talking since. Rosie doesn’t want to, but what choice does she have?

“Go for it,” Rosie says. Normally, she would elaborate, but her feelings are murky and grey today and she just wants to lie down and not do anything for the rest of the month. When she’s around other people, the self-doubting thoughts and inevitable tears usually leave her alone, but exhaustion still takes over. She doesn't have enough energy to talk about this, or really anything right now.

Rosie has been thinking a lot about plasma. Plasma is in space, in electronics, even in small amounts in our bodies, and yet we don’t always think about it. But it’s always there. There’s no way of escaping it forever, but we can put it out of our minds and let it do its job in the corners, even when we know it’s not truly in the corners, it’s taking up almost all of our universe and we’re just a minuscule part of that.

In fact, we almost never notice it. And just when we think we’ve completely forgotten about plasma, then it shows up in lightning and the brightness overwhelms us and we can’t escape it, just watch as it takes up our whole sky. And then it lasts, the bright flashes of light leaving an imprint on our eyelids.

Rosie knows there’s a metaphor in there, but she’s too scared to admit how accurately it describes the internal workings of her pain.

“Rosie?” Maribelle asks. “Hello?”

“Ugh, sorry,” Rosie says. “I got no sleep last night. Did I tell you about that dream?”

“No,” Maribelle says.

“It was insane,” Rosie gushes. When Rosie talks about inconsequential things, she can almost ignore the plasma burning through her.

Ms. Sterling brings out something called a Van de Graaff generator the next day. It’s just a round, metal ball on a stick, but there’s something strangely powerful-feeling about it.

Ms. Sterling rubs a smaller metal ball on a rod against the Van de Graaff, and little blue and white sparks shoot out, crackling like tiny lightening bolts.

“This is a safe way to observe plasma first-hand,” she says. “Cool, right?” Ms. Sterling plugs it into an outlet and the motor inside the stick starts to whir. She lets the eighth graders step on a plastic milk crate and put their hand to the generator.

One kid fist-bumps another from on top of the milk crate, and a flash of bright blue skips between them, barely noticeable. The other kid jumps and rubs his knuckles. “That’s visible energy transfer in action,” Ms. Sterling says, laughing. “Wait, Steven, are you okay?” Steven is, thankfully, okay, but there’s a small, red mark on his hand from the shock.

When it’s Rosie’s turn, she closes her eyes and lets the electricity run through her. Every hair on her body is standing up, and she can hear her hand that isn’t touching the Van de Graaf crackling. She feels powerful. Nobody can even come near her without being zapped, and she likes it—it’s like being covered in armor. The generator itself is buzzing, hinting at shock or electrocution, but all she feels is a tingling fuzziness because of the milk crate and the oxymoronic strength of plastic. She feels safe, and protected, and like nothing can hurt her, her own emotions included.

There’s something isolating about the Van de Graaff. Nobody can step anywhere near her. She has everything she needs right here. The feelings almost can’t get to her. She likes it.

She likes the idea that something that can cause so much harm can be changed into a shield and turned on its head. She likes wielding this unnecessary power.

She is electricity, she is untouchable, she is one with the forgotten state of matter.

Rosie is about to head outside for dismissal when Mr. Jennings, the school guidance counselor, runs up to her. “Rosie, hi!” he says in that fake way only school guidance counselors can. “Do you mind if I talk to you for a few minutes?”

“Of course not,” Rosie says. She does mind, but Mr. Jennings is an expert at wielding the rhetorical question, and she knows if she says “yes, I do mind”, he’ll read into it and use it to prove whatever point he’s already trying to prove.

She follows Mr. Jennings down the hallway to his office. It’s your stereotypical therapist’s office—horribly punny posters everywhere you look, one of those giant beanbag chairs, a box of tissues. Rosie feels like she’s stepped inside a movie.

“Your teachers are worried about you,” Mr. Jennings says, sitting down. He gestures toward the beanbag, and Rosie sinks into it. “It seems like over the past year, you’ve stopped contributing to class discussions all together, and your grades are falling behind. Is everything alright at home? Or at school? Is there conflict with your friends? Please, you can tell me anything.”

Rosie starts to feel a sob catching in her throat, so she doesn’t say anything. Mr. Jennings doesn’t know it, but he’s just rubbed chili pepper flakes into her tear glands.

Because that’s the thing. Rosie knows that she has no good reason to feel this way. Her family is amazing, she has a great best friend, she’s never been bullied. As far as reasons for overwhelming sadness go, she doesn’t even have one. She hasn’t experienced any grief, unless you count her great-aunt’s death seven years ago, and she barely knew her, anyway. So why does she feel this way? She’s been given every opportunity in the world, but she still can’t fully enjoy it, and for what reason?

“You can tell me anything,” Mr. Jennings repeats.

Every time Rosie feels deprived of energy or nihilistic or self-loathing or unexplainably sad or angry at the world, she asks herself why and can never answer. And she hates this about her emotions, because this question makes her feel worse, then it goes around in a circle, and soon she can’t even get out of bed. She hates this freaking vicious cycle with all of her being. Hate doesn’t help calm down the big emotions, either.

Rosie doesn’t say anything, silence having seized up her whole body, Mr. Jennings sighs. “I’m going to find your parents at the dismissal area,” he says. “They’re probably wondering where you are, and I want to talk to them some more. Rosie, I would love it if you could open up to someone about this. You’re clearly going through something.” He pauses. “Stay here, and I’ll be back in a few minutes with your parents. Maybe we can all have a big discussion about this.”

Rosie gives Mr. Jennings a tight-lipped smile, scared that tears are going to burst through at any moment.

Everyone always asks Rosie’s parents about how they decided on her name. Rosie doesn’t have any relatives with the same name, and her cousins are all named after great aunts or grandparents.

She loves how she was named after Rosie the Riveter. It makes her seem strong and resilient, even when she doesn’t feel that way. Plus, the original Rosie the Riveter has been an easy and pretty self-explanatory Halloween costume the past few years.

When someone calls her name, she feels powerful and in control of her story, even when she spirals out inside. She likes how something as simple as five letters can do that.

The science lab is unlocked. Rosie steps through the empty classroom and maneuvers around empty desks, lab tables, and Ms. Sterling’s desk. A frog preserved in formaldehyde stares at her unnervingly. Rosie wonders how it would feel to float in formaldehyde. Obviously, the frog doesn’t know, either—he’s dead and has been for some time. But the chemical would flood all parts of you, taking over, getting into your eyes and mouth and nose, and irritating your skin, and soon, all you would know would be the formaldehyde. Rosie shudders at the thought. Miserable, she thinks. That dead frog must be miserable.

The back half of the room is cloaked in darkness, so she turns on her phone flashlight and shines it around. There, on a table in the far corner of the room, is the Van de Graaff.

Rosie plugs it into one of the outlets and pulls out the plastic milk crate the class was using earlier. She sets it on the ground and curls up on it, bringing the generator to the ground, too. She flicks it on.

Making sure she’s positioned safely on the milk crate, Rosie brings her hand to the generator and lets the buzzing electricity protect her from the shadows.

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Oola Breen-Ryan is a 14-year-old from Bridgeport, CT, who loves to write about adoration, oddities, and obsession. She has previously been published in her school literary magazine (Pen & Paper), Stone Soup, and National Geographic Kids.