The Antidotes: Pollution Solution

By Patty Mechael

Just when a group of fifth-grade friends is returning to normal life and to school after a global pandemic, the waters of the Chesapeake Bay have become polluted by a plastic-eating bacteria experiment gone wrong-and both fish and kids are getting sick!

 

Izi, Gir, and their friends go to science club and discover a fishy cover-

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Story Press
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781954805255

Patty Mechael

Dr. Patricia (Patty) Mechael is a mom, writer, and public health specialist whose writing combines her passions for technology and science with a desire to inspire children. Patty has wrestled with difficult public health and societal issues, including the environment, responsible technology and AI, pandemic preparedness, and mental health. Patty holds a PhD in Public Health and Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Master of Health Science in International Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Book preview

the

Antidotes

POLLUTION SOLUTION

Patty Mechael

Washington, DC

Bold Story Press, Washington, DC 20016

www.boldstorypress.com

Copyright © 2022 by Patty Mechael

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. Requests for permission or further information should be submitted to [e-mail].

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First edition published October 2022

ISBN: 978-1-954805-24-8 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-954805-25-5 (e-book)

Text and cover design by KP Design

Cover illustration by Marie Poliak

Ebook Conversion by Beth Martin

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Words and Music by Robert Hazard

Copyright © 1979 Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC

All Rights Adminstered by Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC

424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219

International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC

To Gabriel and all young people everywhere.

Never believe that a few caring

people can’t change the world.

For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.

MARGARET MEAD

Contents

CHAPTER 1 Gir: Field Trip

CHAPTER 2 Izi: Back to School

CHAPTER 3 Gir: Daydream

CHAPTER 4 Izi: Science Club

CHAPTER 5 Gir: The Silent Killer

CHAPTER 6 Izi: The Land of Make-Believe

CHAPTER 7 Gir: Game Plan

CHAPTER 8 Izi: Izi Pop

CHAPTER 9 Gir: There’s No I in Team

CHAPTER 10 Izi: Playing Games

CHAPTER 11 Gir: Stealth Mode

CHAPTER 12 Izi: The Antidotes

CHAPTER 13 Gir: Flying Under the Radar

CHAPTER 14 Izi: The Great Disease Detectives

CHAPTER 15 Gir: Public Health

CHAPTER 16 Izi: Blast from the Past

CHAPTER 17 Gir: Parent Trap

CHAPTER 18 Izi: Two in One

CHAPTER 19 Gir: Like Father, Like Son

CHAPTER 20 Izi: Friends Again

CHAPTER 21 Gir: Back to School

CHAPTER 1

Field Trip

gir

Dad’s apartment is a maze piled high with boxes of water samples, petri dishes, microscope slides, and stacks of notebooks. It smells fishy. Not the kind of fish you eat. Nor the kind of fishy smell that’s been outside lately. It’s the way Dad’s home smells. Salty like the air way out in the ocean when a big wave crashes on deck during a big fish rescue.

After he moved out, Mom’s house lost the salty sea smell of Dad’s stuff.

Dad’s a marine biologist who studies how plastic is destroying sea creatures and their environment. A few times when I’ve gone to the lab with him, they opened the stomachs of dead fish. It was super gross. Blood and slimy guts mixed with plastic bottles and other garbage. Once there was a kid’s sock. Can you imagine eating a sock? I hope it was at least clean. Ew!

Today, the class trip is to his research vessel that is docked around the corner from his apartment. At least I don’t have to ride on the bus from school this morning with Suzie Sanders, class bully extraordinaire.

He gives a talk to my class every year. The last two years, he’s had to do it on the computer since we were all stuck at home. Dad usually gets excited the night before one of his presentations and used to practice in front of me and Mom a million times. He likes to ask me lots of questions, and it takes forever to finish. I don’t mind. I like talking to him. But not this time. Last night, he didn’t want to practice his presentation. He hovered quietly next to me for two hours after dinner while I did my homework at the long driftwood dining table. We’d built it together during the pandemic. His new apartment was completely empty without it.

This morning, he sits across from me. One hand is pulling through his long blond curls. The other pushes his fake eggs around his plate with a fork. I’ve always wondered if they are laid by fake chickens. Get it? Fake eggs? Fake chickens? They’re okay, but not as good as the real eggs at Mom’s house.

He breaks the silence and says, Today’s presentation and lab exercise will be about water quality. And then, nothing. Usually, I can’t get him to stop talking about his work.

I hope it’s not as boring as it sounds, I chirp, trying to get him to say more. He’d better make it interesting, the way he normally does, or else I’ll hear about it from Suzie for the rest of the year.

But nothing. Nada. Zip.

Over the fireplace, there’s a sign that says, A plastic ocean. We need a wave of change. My family has been plastic-free for my whole life—all ten years of it. But sometimes plastic sneaks into Mom’s place.

Never Dad’s, though.

And forget about Suzie. She’s always saying stuff like, My dad says that without plastic the economy would collapse.

I’m not sure what the economy collapsing even means. But it sounds serious.

Dad gets up and pushes his uneaten eggs onto my plate. He’s a big bear-like man who never says no to a second helping of food.

Hey! I haven’t finished mine yet, I protest.

He smiles a little and winks at me. It’s good protein. You’re a growing boy. I’m not very hungry this morning.

I finish all the eggs in silence and go to my room to get dressed for today’s class trip.

While I put on the same clothes I wore yesterday, I hear and feel the apartment shiver as Dad’s bear-like body thumps back and forth from his room to the living room to the kitchen back to the living room to the dining area back to his room. I peek outside my room and see him pulling at his reddish beard looking for something.

I ask, You okay, Papa Bear?

Yeah, bud. Can you give me my notebook back, please? he sighs, giving me the gimme signal with his hand. For once, I hope you are up to your old tricks, again.

By old tricks he means taking his old books and notebooks to my room to read after he goes to sleep.

Nope, sorry. I’ve been too busy playing one of Leo’s new games and trying to keep up with Olu on social. I sort of wish I had taken it, so I could give it to him. It’s important? I ask.

Very. It has my research from my last trip in it, he answers and changes the subject. Never mind my notebook. Did you finish your homework? Do you need help with anything before we walk over to the marina?

Dad, what do you mean? Are you feeling okay? You watched me finish my homework last night. I stretch my arm up and press the back of my hand to his forehead the way Mom does to see if I have a fever.

Dad pauses and half smiles. Naw, bud, I’m feeling fine. Let me just go check one more place.

Did you save it on your computer? I ask. I know the answer. But I ask, anyway.

No, I didn’t. You know how much I hate computers, he says.

It’s one of the things he and Mom fought about while trying to take turns with remote learning. He says he’s old school. Pencil and paper. He really doesn’t like computers. He only uses them when he needs to work with me on my schoolwork. Mom’s the opposite. She loves technology.

I put my stuff for school in my backpack. I’m ready when you are. Why do we have to go back to school after the field trip? Why can’t I just stay at work with you? I ask.

The field trip will only take a couple of hours. What happened to ‘I can’t wait to go back to school. I never want to miss another day!’? he asks, pulling me in for a hug. He buries his face into my mop of curls and kisses me on the head. You would think that Dad would smell like fish because everything else around him smells like fish, but he doesn’t. He smells like a beachy campfire—saltwater mixed in with his sandalwood cologne. At least, that’s how Mom used to describe it.

I know, but lately Suzie’s been up to her old tricks. Couldn’t we do a special father–son half day?

I know the answer, but I ask anyway on the chance that he might surprise me and say, Yes.

You just want to get out of school. Not today, kiddo, but maybe when the weather is warmer, I can talk to your mudder about taking a day off. Hearing him say mother that way reminds me that he was born in Denmark.

We walk ten minutes to the marina where his research boat is docked. I’ve been spending time aboard it since I was a baby. It’s why we moved to Maryland. It used to look a lot bigger. Dad says it feels smaller because I’m getting taller.

By the time we arrive at the lab on the research boat, my class is already there waiting for the field trip to begin.

I try to sneak into the lab without Suzie noticing but hit my head against the hatch.

Ow!

It’s hard to sneak past anyone in our class since I’m a whole foot taller than the next tallest kid. On top of that—literally on top of that—I have two inches of crazy dark brown curls. Get it? On top of that? And now, I’m the only 10-year-old boy in my class who has two homes and basically two of everything else.

I don’t think my dad remembers what a room full of twenty-three kids looks like because barely everyone in my class can fit inside Lab 6.

Girgis Orenson-Gobrial, this is such a treat! We haven’t been out on a real field trip in years. It’s very kind of your father to arrange this for us. It fits in nicely with our science unit on changes in weather patterns. Ms. Densen likes calling each of us by our full names. Mine is the worst—Dad’s Danish last name in the middle of two Egyptian names that work in America—Girgis for George and Gobrial for Gabriel. Everyone calls me Gir, pronounced geeee-ar, like the gears on a bike.

Everyone except for Suzie Sanders, who calls me Gog the frog and Gog the dog and all sorts of other Gogs.

Ooh, Gog, did you bump your head. Did it hurt?! she screeches as her curly red hair whips around. She gives me the side eye. Suzie’s been annoying since first grade. You would think she would stop by the fifth grade. But no.

Suzie looks me up and down with her bright green eyes over her pink glasses as I try to sneak myself past her.

Are those the same clothes you were wearing yesterday? And pee-yew! What is that smell? Is that you, Gog, or one of your dad’s fish with the plastic in its stomach?

There’s been a strange smell coming from the Chesapeake Bay lately. It smells especially bad today, like the time Leo and I had a farting contest and made my bedroom stink for a month. I won, of course.

Before I can say anything, Olu turns around and says, "Whatever that smell is, it’s making my nose crinkle in a way that will not look good on my video channel."

Olu is the class drama king and the school’s social media star. Today he’s wearing a bright green sweatshirt with the Nigerian flag on it, red jeans, and bright blue sneakers. Those three colors should never be worn together, but he pulls it off. He finds any way to bring color, dance, and jazz hands into everything. And because he’s Olu, it works.

Once I make it to the lab table, I shrink myself as much as I can—which is impossible.

The lab table is crowded with lots of glass beakers and containers. They’re filled with liquids in different shades of grey, blue, and clear. Everything’s bolted onto the table, so things don’t tip or fly all over the place in rough waters.

I’m pressed up against the lab table packed in tight between Leo and Olu. After years of trying to stay as far apart from all other human beings during the pandemic, it feels so weird to be this close to other people. Even my friends.

Hey, Gir, coming in from your dad’s house again? Leo stands on his tippy toes and whispers into my shoulder.

Mhmm, you know how it is when he comes back from one of his long trips. Can I share your lunch with you again? I’m so embarrassed. Thank goodness vegan eggs lasted for six months in Dad’s fridge during his trip without going bad. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had any breakfast.

I had my m-m-m-mom pack a double lunch today, just in case, Leo answers. His face is a shade of yellow green I have never seen before.

You’re the best! I punch him in the arm.

Leo’s been my best friend since the first grade.

I l-l-l-love field trips, but this b-b-b-oat is making me a little woozy, Leo says, holding onto the railing along the lab table. Everyone sways back and forth trying to get their balance as a large wake hits the research boat hard. Only a big or fast ship in the marina could cause this kind of a rocking motion.

Leo’s what I call an indoor kid. I can never talk him into going out for a bike ride or