Out of Her Element

Renee Carter arrives early at Whit's End to show Connie her new Imagination Station program, an adventure that lets riders meet Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Renee has poured hours into building it, hoping it will earn her extra credit in Eugene Meltsner's chemistry class, since she skipped class time to work on it and missed an important group lab. But Eugene turns her down. The program is impressive, he says, yet it would not be fair to let her substitute a project she enjoyed for the actual coursework, and the missed lab activity cannot be repeated. Her only chance to raise her grade is the final exam in one week, so Eugene recommends a tutor who knows the material thoroughly, though his teaching ability is untested.

Meanwhile, Jay Smouse strolls into Whit's End with a clipboard, revealing that he has been posting restaurant reviews on the food website Yowza under a made-up identity: a forty-year-old European food critic named Percival Montgomery. He has been schmoozing free meals out of restaurants all over town, and now he expects the same treatment from Connie. She tells him she will not trade free food for a good review, yet she lets him keep ordering on "Percy's tab," hoping to teach him a lesson about responsibility while maybe earning a nice write-up for Whit's End. Even as she says it, she suspects she may be the one who ends up learning the lesson, admitting that getting a high grade or good feedback is great, but getting it the right way is better.

Renee's tutor turns out to be Horus Nernst, an awkward, brilliant boy whose cheerful mother, Edie, keeps hovering nearby with cookies. Horus has turned his backyard into a study zone, joking, "Who said studying chemistry has to be boron?" He drills Renee on atomic numbers using a ping pong table he calls the Catalyst, though the lesson ends abruptly when he accidentally bounces a ball off her eye. Over the following days the sessions go wonderfully: mnemonic chants for chemical compounds, marshmallow-and-gumdrop models of covalent bonds, even a gift of a volumetric flask. Horus keeps slipping in compliments, and Renee, worried he might quit helping her if she discourages him, flatters him right back about how smart he is.

The day before the exam, a bouquet of flowers arrives at Whit's End for Renee, with a card from Horus hoping he has "earned high marks" from her. Connie declares it obvious that Horus has a crush, and Renee admits she saw the signs and even encouraged him a little because she needed his help. Connie insists Renee owes him honesty, and Jay, eavesdropping as usual, advises her to rip off the band-aid, but to build him up first, speaking as someone who has been rejected lots of times.

Renee finds Horus in the lab, where he is lifting fingerprints from a drinking glass for the Odyssey police using cyanoacrylates, the chemicals found in super glue. After some nervous compliments, she blurts out that she does not feel the same way he feels about her. Horus is baffled. He has no crush at all. The flowers and note were about his tutor evaluation form, because Eugene promised to recommend him as a teaching assistant if he did a good job. Each of them sheepishly confesses to buttering up the other for selfish reasons, and they agree to stay friends and shake on it. That is a mistake. The cyanoacrylate on Horus's hands reacts with the moisture on Renee's sweaty palms, and their hands are glued fast. "I wish I could, Renee, but I'm stuck on you," Horus admits. With the exam starting in minutes, Renee drags him across campus, where Jay spots them holding hands and, trying to pry them apart, grabs on and gets stuck too.

The three burst into the classroom just as Eugene is about to hand out the final. Eugene declares he cannot give a test to a student fused to two other people, especially her own tutor. Then inspiration strikes Renee: acetone, the solvent in nail polish remover, can break down the polymer. She borrows a bottle from her classmate Nikki Tedesco, whose ever-changing nail colors once inspired one of Renee's inventions, and frees Horus. But before releasing Jay, she refuses to pour a drop until he promises to pay the $56.82 he owes Whit's End. Eugene allows the standoff, noting there is no risk of Jay supplying any answers. Jay grumbles and gives in. Impressed, Eugene grants Renee partial credit for her missed lab, since she has just demonstrated the same core chemistry skills in front of the whole class, adding, "I believe Marie Curie would be proud."

Afterward, Renee finishes her Imagination Station program, adding the story of Marie Curie's portable X-ray machines that helped wounded soldiers in World War I, and Jay works out an installment plan for his bill. Eugene delivers Renee's exam score: 97 percent. Then comes the surprise. Connie learns that Renee was never in danger of failing at all; the test simply raised her A-minus to a solid A, protecting her perfect 4.0 average. As Renee heads off to treat Horus to a thank-you lunch, Eugene warns her away from a restaurant that just received a scathing Yowza review from a certain refined European gentleman named Percival Montgomery, and cannot understand why Connie and Renee burst out laughing.