Do I Need Safety Goggles For This?

[Jonathan Lee]

Gender-fluidity was something strange, especially with an unpredictable power like gender shifting. In the middle of the night, Jonathan woke up to stiffness and discomfort in their arms and legs and the need to eat immediately. That was normal, in swap between female and male forms - the side effects were hardly side effects anymore with how common a shift was. Regardless of the shift back to their male form, they didn't feel like "Jonathan; dude" - no, they felt like something else entirely. The non-binary feeling they occasionally got where they felt as if, that day, they didn't fall into any neat category of "boy" or "girl." Today, they were "Jonathan" but insisted on the pronoun of they. It confused some people, using that to describe someone who looked clearly like a boy or girl, when they said they had that specific pronoun preference, but most adjusted. Today was that kind of day.

Today was a "they" kind of day.

Ah, science. The worst class ever. Jonathan has always struggled with lab sciences. Well, not struggled; they have never struggled with much academically. They did feel like science was not their strongest suit though. Maybe it was the initial concepts they weren't getting; maybe they just didn't like the Clorox-covered formaldehyde-y smell of any science room. Jonathan's mind didn't seem to "think" scientifically. Their brain liked to plug and chug through formulas like in Algebra, not ponder over what could be or what is and definitely not experiment with definitely dangerous and potentially lethal substances to create  a chemical reaction. They still somehow maintained better-than-decent grades in the class; perhaps it amounted to how they sort of-kind of buttered the teacher up. They often offered to help grade and file papers and always said "good morning!" to the teacher and was as respectful as possible, raising their hand and all that. Jonathan hoped for the best when it came to slightly more lenient grading due to those things.

Today, Jonathan and their new lab partner, Jackson - Jonathan has seen Jackson around the school on the regular and had, really, only heard good things but has never really known him - were staying after class to clean the room from the lab. Jackson so far has proved to be the responsible and intelligent type. He was really nice too and really easy to work with. This made it much easier of a class for them, as Jackson was always willing to help them with their work when they were confused or frustrated. Jackson was a'ight. The fact that he was willing to stay back with them to help out in the pick-up.

The teacher had left the room leaving the two of them completely alone wiping down the tables and resetting all the lab equipment. Jonathan wiped the inside of a beaker with a dry cloth - they had already reset a couple of the stations for the class tomorrow with the proper equipment and glassware and wiped down a couple of the black desktops. Jonathan and Jackson were working mostly in silence; Jonathan wasn't one to initiate small talk, but something had to be done. It was too quiet, and all they could hear was the squeaking of the spotless clear material in their hands. "... Thanks for staying back with me, Jackson. I really appreciate it. It takes way less time to clean this place up with someone helping out."

[Deleted]

Jackson didn’t understand what was so hard about cleaning up after yourself.  Yes, Jackson’s room was a mess all by itself, but even so, his grams made sure to instill within him much better manners towards others than what his peers seemed to have.  In a public space, if you make a mess, clean it.  It wasn’t rocket science, after all, though considering how absent the practice was at the end of almost every chemistry class, Jackson was positive that his classmates thought it was. 
 
It was no matter, honestly, just an overall annoyance.  His classmates falling short on their end gave Jackson the chance to pick it up and possibly get the extra credit points he wanted to bump his high B to a low A with.  He was confident that the instructor would give him the points.  The instructor knew how dedicated Jackson was to school(even if he disliked it) and how difficult recent events have made it for Jackson and in keeping up with his schoolwork.  They had to give him a break, right?
 
Aside from that, it was therapeutic, in a way.  Jackson had a lot of bullshit going on in his life that he’d rather not think about and wanted to advertise even less, so doing something familiar and very much in tune with how he wanted to be and how he wanted others to see him – that is, as a good person, a smart person, a helpful person and one whom others could depend on.  He could picture it now, even as he wiped down the blacktop with a rough paper towel and sanitizer.   Jackson would finish this job.  He(and his lab partner, Jonathan was his name, right?) would leave the lab looking so beautiful and pristine that tomorrow the teacher would call them out on their hard work and say that the rest of them needed to follow their example.  Maybe they’d be seen as a duo of suck-up, goody-two-shoes….but that was better than being seen as stupid and lazy, like the rest of them. 
 
Jonathan was alright, he supposed.  He twitched his eye slightly as the other boy dried the glassware with a paper towel.  Was he stupid or something? Everyone knew(not really everyone) that you always let glassware air dry upside down either on a drying rack or a paper towel.  Doing it the way Jonathan was would contaminate the inside of the beaker.  While that shouldn’t be a problem, since you always prepped your materials with solution anyway prior to using them in an experiment, high school students were dumb enough to forget that.  Whatever, it was their loss if their results were messed up because of it.  Jackson smiled and decided not to say anything.  “It’s no problem, someone has to do it, y’know? And it may as well be us!”  Jackson chuckled and did a three point shot of his used paper towel into the trashcan in the corner of the room.  It went in.  Score!  Jackson pumped both fists into the air in victory. 
 
He turned back to Jonathan, an expression of ease on his face along with his smile.  “We make a pretty good team, y’know? You and I, I mean.”  He laughed, tearing off another strip of paper towel to take to the next blacktop.  Ugh, what were those stains? he thought, making a sneer of disgust that came and went so quickly, one might have to be looking for it to notice.  He squirt the sanitizer across the desk and started to wipe it down.