Free Brimstone by Rosemary Clement-Moore Page B

anticipation. “Have you brought me something interesting?”
    “Maybe.” I set the grocery sack on the lab bench and untied the handles. As the plastic bag opened, we both took a hasty step backward. A horrible odor escaped, like when you accidentally open something green and fuzzy from the very back of the fridge, only about fifty times worse.
    “Good God, girl!” Blackthorne blinked his watering eyes. “Did something die wearing these trousers?”
    “They didn’t smell that bad last night. Maybe the fumes built up in the closed bag.”
    “Possible.” The stench was dissipating slightly in the well-ventilated lab, but I felt sorry for the first-period class. Blackthorne put on a pair of gloves before he touched the denim. “Now, let’s see what you’ve brought me.”
    “Do you have a blacklight?”
    He pointed toward a cabinet where I found a handheld lamp. I turned off the overhead; even with the residual light from the windows, we could see the eerie phosphorescence under the ultraviolet glow. “I sat on something.”
    “Obviously.” He scratched his chin. “I’m loathe to think in what sort of seedy places you’ve been spending your time.”
    “Okay, that’s just … eiew.”
    “No Dumpster diving recently? Well, smells can be deceiving.”
    “There’s a test to figure out what that stuff is, right?”
    “Certainly. Gas chromatography.”
    “So can you work some
CSI
magic on those pants?”
    “Not here. This is a high school chemistry lab. I have difficulty getting money to buy paper towels.” Brow furrowed, he drummed his thumbs against the slate lab bench. “We could send it to Dr. Smyth at the university. She owes me a favor.”
    “Excellent!”
    “They may have to take a sample from your trousers, though.”
    “You mean cut a hole in them?” I really liked those jeans; they made my butt look great. Honestly, the sacrifices a detective has to make. “When do you think she can do it?”
    “I’ll take them to her after school. She’ll have to work it into her schedule, though.” He bundled the jeans back up, then put the grocery sack inside a small trash bag and tied it closed. I didn’t blame him for doubling up. I’d thought the stench was bad in my dream, but smelling it through my real, live nose was the difference between a cheap pair of headphones and a symphony orchestra of stink.
    “Hey, Professor Blackthorne.” I followed him to the chalkboard. “Is that what sulfur smells like?”
    Hexagon chemical bonds had his attention again. “Hmm? No, sulfur doesn’t have a smell.”
    “I thought it did. That whole ‘stench of brimstone’ thing.”
    “Burning sulfur gives off sulfur dioxide, which is probably what that phrase means. It’s noxious and extremely irritating to the lungs.” He added a few more notations to the diagram on the board. “Though you may be thinkingabout the thiols—the sulfhydryl group. They are quite odiferous. In fact, ethanethiol is added to natural gas so that leaks can be detected by the ‘rotten egg’ smell.”
    “So maybe that’s what’s on the jeans?”
    “Do you want to open them back up and take a whiff, or wait for the chromatograph?”
    “Um, no. I’ll wait for the test.”
    “As you wish.” I shouldered my backpack and started out. His voice stopped me at the door. “If you want my opinion, and not a scientific fact, I’d lay money that either putrescine or cadaverine will be in the mix.” He went back to writing, talking more to himself than to me. “Yes. I think I’ll make a bet with Dr. Smyth. See if the nose still knows.”
    Boy, I could have gone my whole life without knowing I’d gotten something named after a putrid cadaver on my butt. On the upside, though, I was no longer ambivalent about destroying those pants.

10
    i knew that my personal humiliation had a limited comedic lifespan, but I didn’t expect to have turned invisible before second period.
    “What’s up?” I asked Jennifer Fitzwilliam,