Breakthrough (6 page)

Luke and I planned to enter our projects into our first nonregional science fair, the International Sustainable World (Energy, Engineering, and Environmental) Project Olympiad (or I-SWEEEP) in Houston, Texas. Now that I had developed the confidence I needed with my public speaking, I thought this time would be easier, but I also knew the competition would be a lot stiffer.

I-SWEEEP was one of the largest environmental science fair competitions in the world, with 1,655 student scientists from 71 countries competing against one another. The stage at I-SWEEEP was bigger than anything I had ever seen in Maryland. And the competition was just unbelievable.

It was my first time at a national award ceremony, and I wasn't
focused as much on winning because I didn't think I had a chance. My goal was to soak everything in and hopefully use that knowledge in future projects. It was clear that everything at I-SWEEEP was on a higher level—from the sophistication of the projects to the way the students presented their ideas.

At the fair, I walked the convention hall to check out the other projects, when I saw that a small crowd had gathered around one of the displays. Once I began reading the scientist's board, I was absolutely speechless: she had discovered a new way to detect land mines using sound waves.

I stood there staring in disbelief.

“Hi, I'm Marian Bechtel,” the young girl said as she extended her hand to me.

I wanted to know everything. My first question—how?

Marian said she had met a group of international scientists working on a device that used holographic radar to detect buried land mines, and had become inspired by their work. She had been playing the piano when she noticed that the strings on a nearby banjo resonated when she played certain notes or chords. This gave her an idea—she realized that using acoustic or seismic waves to excite a buried land mine could allow for their detection.

“I was able to combine my newfound passion for humanitarian de-mining with my love of music,” she said.

Next to her display was a simple prototype of an acoustic
detection device she had created out of the frame of a scrap-metal detector.

Hearing her story made me feel inspired. When it came time to present my idea to the judges, I was on my game. I still had that index card with my brother's tips. I didn't try impressing the judges with big words. Instead, I kept my presentation understandable and interesting.

Like at my local science fair, there were a bunch of different special categories along with an overall winner. I was just happy to be there. When the judges announced that I had finished first place in the nation for middle school, I screamed—not so much out of joy, but out of total shock. It was an unbelievable honor to have my project be recognized nationally in my age group.

However, the biggest news of all was that Luke finished first overall, which meant that he had earned a spot to compete in the Holy Grail of science fairs—the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (or ISEF).

Me and Luke with our I-SWEEEP awards

When my parents told me I was going to accompany him to San Jose, California, where the event was being hosted, I ran around the kitchen island in frantic circles, making everyone, including myself, dizzy.

I arrived at ISEF as his guest and was surprised to see it was nothing like my local science fair, with a mixed assortment of sort-of-good and sort-of-bad projects, or even like I-SWEEEP. ISEF was the best of the best. These kids all had superior projects, and they were passionate, articulate, and brilliant. In a word, they were all perfect.

I got to spend almost a whole week hanging out with these older and wiser kids, and I was totally starstruck. I went up and down the aisles of the science fair like a little kid in a candy shop, asking everyone about their projects. ISEF made these cool cards for each scientist. Each had a picture on one side and a short bio on the back, and I collected the cards of all the finalists and studied them intensely.

How did Luke do at ISEF? Let's just say he won $96,000 in prizes. I'd never felt more in awe of my brother.

The last day of the competition, I was sitting in the audience as Amy Chyao, who was only sixteen years old, walked up to the stage to accept the competition's top prize, the Gordon E. Moore Award, for her amazing experiment that used light energy to activate a drug that kills cancer.

As soon as I returned home to Crownsville, I went online to learn
more about Amy Chyao and all the wonderful things she was doing. Her story was even more inspiring than I could have ever imagined.

During her freshman and sophomore years in high school, Amy taught herself chemistry. Then she applied what she had learned to improve photodynamic therapy, the process of treating superficial skin cancers with light. Photodynamic therapy has been around a long time, but it can be used only on cancers that are close to the skin's surface. However, by taking semiconducting nanoparticles, which are just tiny particles that conduct electricity, and exposing them to certain wavelengths of light, Amy figured out that she could generate a form of oxygen that proves deadly to cancer cells. Once these nanoparticles are injected, they travel through the bloodstream or stay localized in tumor sites. The particles Amy developed allow doctors to use targeted light therapy to penetrate even deeper into the body, creating the possibility of treating a wider variety of cancers beneath the skin.

All this from a kid not a whole lot older than I was.

She was brilliant, bold, and, above all, dripping with creativity. All the things that I wanted to be. I began to think to myself—what if I worked really hard? What if I learned and thought like these incredible kids? Maybe one day I could go to ISEF too. Maybe one day I could do something that made a difference in the world like my new hero, Amy Chyao.

I began to daydream about my science future.

After winning the top prize for middle schoolers at I-SWEEEP, I expected to be greeted like a conquering hero upon my return to school, maybe not by Damien, but by the rest of the students.

I was wrong.

The more my science star was rising, the more I noticed a change in the attitude of a lot of my classmates. At first, I thought it was just in my head. But I began to realize it was a lot more than that. In my hypercompetitive school, resentment over my success was beginning to boil over.

It seemed like overnight everything had changed. When I won an award for the first time in sixth grade, the kids at school seemed happy for me. But now, whenever I spoke about science fairs, I noticed that something seemed to change in the way the other kids looked at me. Instead of sharing in my joy, they seemed angry. I could hear kids whispering about me as I walked down the hall. I could see the smirks and grins out of the corner of my eye.

No matter how many times I told myself I was being paranoid, the evidence kept piling up. During the third week of seventh grade, I walked into the cafeteria, sat my tray down at a table, and watched everyone sitting at the table get up and move. They offered no explanation. They just didn't want to be near me. I felt invisible, like a ghost that people knew was around but didn't want to acknowledge.

Humiliated and wanting to avoid another horrible experience
like that, I decided to skip lunch altogether. After the fourth-period bell rang, I followed all the other kids toward the cafeteria, then at the last second made a beeline straight to the boys' bathroom. There I darted into the handicapped stall, locking the door behind me. Once safely inside, I sat on the toilet lid, unpacked my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and, using the toilet-paper dispenser as a lunch tray, ate my lunch quickly and quietly. Whenever anyone came to actually use the bathroom, it got particularly uncomfortable. I'd lift my feet up and stop chewing until they had finished their business.

My appearance didn't help. Remember that kid in middle school who had big, thick glasses, wore braces, and was always raising his hand in class? Yeah, that was me. To go along with those characteristics, I also had an unfortunate tendency to get sudden nosebleeds that seemed to happen at the worst-possible times. The small class size was a problem too. Being stuck with the same twenty-four kids for all three years of middle school meant that once you formed your reputation, it was impossible to wash off, no matter how hard you scrubbed.

I thought that changing my style might help. I decided my shaggy hair was so nineties. My mom drove me to our local hair stylist. I asked her for a trendy new look. She gave me a bowl haircut. That haircut earned me the new nickname “Coconut Head.” It didn't exactly make sense, considering nothing about my haircut resembled a coconut, but my classmates didn't seem to care. Whenever
someone so much as uttered the word
coconut
, laughter always followed.

Jake had moved. Sam had moved. Logan wasn't talking to me. I was utterly alone. I was also beginning to confront my sexuality. I couldn't ignore all the signs anymore—I knew I was gay. Still, I remained determined to at least try to pretend that I was the same as everyone else. Part of me still held out hope that maybe all these strange feelings would just go away.

For many reasons, this seemed like the best course of action. First, there was the built-in gay-hater lingo, which had become an embedded part of middle school vocabulary. In case you didn't know, in the kid edition of the dictionary, the word
gay
is a synonym for weird, uncool, cowardly, or essentially anything that sucks in the world.

If someone is acting stupid, they are “being totally gay.”

If someone lacks courage, they are told, “Dude, stop being gay.”

If someone likes the wrong music—yup, you guessed it, that is “so gay.” So as you could imagine, coming out as literally gay didn't seem like the best option for twelve-year-old Jack.

Even though I had tried to hide it, it was becoming increasingly clear to everyone at school that I was gay. They now had the perfect weapon to berate and taunt me.

By the midpoint of my seventh-grade year, it seemed my family and Uncle Ted were the only ones who still thought I was straight.
Every day after school I came home, took a seat at the kitchen table, and tried to lose myself in the world of math and science. I kept my pain to myself. I still didn't feel comfortable talking about my personal problems, in part because I didn't fully understand them.

It felt like a breath of fresh air when I saw Uncle Ted. He was always so positive. He could tell something was on my mind but didn't want to press me. Instead, he looked down at my paper and shook his head.

“How's it going, Jack?” he asked.

“Well, I'm struggling with square numbers,” I said.

“There is a better way,” he said as he picked up my pencil. It was another mental math shortcut. This one was even better than the long-division one. Uncle Ted patiently showed me how to work through the problems.

“Jack,” he said to me before walking away, “whatever is going on at school, remember that it can be easy to lose yourself, but always try to remember who you are. No one can touch you unless you let them.”

It wouldn't be long before his advice was put to the test.

My classmates decided that they needed to bring my differences out into the open. I was waiting along with the rest of my class for my music teacher to come and open the doors, when eight or nine boys surrounded me in a circle.

“What's up, dork?” one kid from the cool clique called out.

Yes, they were talking to me. Of course they were talking to me. I tried to act like I didn't hear it, but that only made the voices louder.

“What are you going to do, loser?”

“Are you going to cry?”

I looked around for the teacher. She was late. The hecklers had an audience and they were prepared to put on a show.

“You know that you aren't going to amount to anything, right, loser?”

It was unprovoked. My only crime was standing outside class quietly. I felt my face turn beet red. I tried to smile. I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything.

Where is the teacher!?! Where is the teacher!?!

I lowered my head and waited. I knew the teacher would be there any second. Any second.

The circle tightened.

“Are you going to cry, fag?”

I could now feel the hot breath of their words hitting me. I avoided eye contact. Now I wished I really was invisible. Now I wished there was a hole I could jump into to disappear. Instead the voices kept coming faster and faster.

The teacher will be here any minute. Just hang in there one more minute.

The circle closed in on me. One of the boys pushed me. Hard. I dropped to the floor in one direction. My books flew in another. Of
course, that's when my nose started bleeding.

I looked up at my classmates. There was blood on my hands, my books, my clothes, the floor. The whole class was laughing really hard.

“You think you're all that? Look at you now!” I heard one of them taunt as I scurried back to my only safe haven, the handicapped stall in the boys' bathroom. I sat on the seat behind the latched door and cried into my hands. I cried a long time.