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“Wait!” Nadia
shouted to her friend, thinking quickly. “Just wait there for me! One second!”
“Where are you going—?” Taina started, but it was already too late. Nadia had already hit the button on her glove and had shrunk so quickly it was impossible to make out the rest of Taina’s words in the midst of the storm.
Play in the rain. That’s what Maria’s list had said. If Taina wasn’t going to play with her, she would find a way to have fun herself. Nadia was certain this wasn’t what Maria had in mind when she wrote the list, but, well—science is all about adaptation.
Nadia shot forward on her wings, dodging raindrops the size of buildings left and right—before aiming directly for one.
Secretly? She had always wanted to try this.
NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!
Rain is made of water.
Imagine if I just stopped there? You’re welcome! I’m a genius!
No, I would never do that to you.
Okay, I would do that to you, but I’m not doing that to you right now.
So, rain is made of water. But water is made of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, which is why it is referred to in some circles (chemistry circles) as H2O. The water molecule looks like a little elbow joint, with oxygen at its center and hydrogen branching off to each side (like the letter “L”). The oxygen molecule holds a negative charge and the hydrogen molecules hold a positive charge. Opposites attract, so we get our H2O. Those positive and negative charges attract that H2O molecule to other H2O molecules and voilà—we get water.
But these electrostatic hydrogen bonds are not very strong. The force holding them together creates water’s surface tension—but that tension can be overcome by force, like sticking your finger into a glass of water or diving into a lake. But that surface tension also means that objects with a greater density than water can still float on top of it. We measure surface tension in a unit of force called “dynes.”* (Water’s surface tension at 25 degrees Celsius is seventy-two dynes per centimeter.) Hit water with something that has fewer than seventy-two dynes, and it shouldn’t break through the surface of the water.
Like, say, a human who has shrunk to less than a centimeter and has shunted their excess mass into the Microverse. For instance. Just throwing that one out there.
* No relation, though Janet Van Dyne is also a unit of force.
Nadia tucked her arms into her sides and zoomed toward a particularly juicy-looking raindrop slowly making its way toward the earth. Well, slowly to Nadia; normal rain speed to everyone else. Before she could blast right through it, she slowed her wing beats.
If she did this too fast, it wouldn’t work. If her feet were too small, it wouldn’t work. If she timed it incorrectly, it wouldn’t work.
But she was wasting time wondering if it would work instead of finding that out firsthand. Steeling herself, Nadia took a deep breath and flew forward, directly at the raindrop.
She hit the surface of the drop with her right foot, and she ran. Left foot then right foot then left foot and she looked down and—
It was working! It was actually working! She wasn’t just playing in the rain.
She was playing on the rain.
Nadia laughed, the sound echoing inside her helmet as she ran across the surface of the water. She leapt off the surface of her drop and onto another one, across and over to another, and another, and another, playing hopscotch (something she had only seen on television) with the rain. She couldn’t help but think of those lizards and insects who could do the same thing.*
Nadia ran and ran before she let herself dive directly into the last raindrop, swimming through it and out the other side. Then she dropped to the ground and popped back up to her usual size—where she found Taina had waited for her, after all.
“You good?” Taina called.
Nadia paused. She tilted her face up to the sky and held her arms out to the sides, letting the rain cascade down her visor. With each drop, Nadia heard the answer to Tai’s question.
Yes yes yes. Yesyesyesyesyes better than ever why would you even ask and—
No.
No no no. No nonononononononono—
Nadia shut her eyes and listened harder. She’d checked another item off Maria’s list, and completed a lifelong goal of her own in the process. She felt closer to her mother than ever.
Or did she? Maria wasn’t here. She would never be here. No matter how many items Nadia completed on Maria’s list, she would never be doing any of them with Maria. She couldn’t talk to Maria about them afterward or know if Maria would have loved them or if she would have been horrified to learn that her own daughter was a pint-size Super Hero or if that would have made her day, actually—
