Atomic Anna by Rachel Barenbaum

Author:Rachel Barenbaum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2022-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

One week after the competition, Raisa hurried to get dressed for school while thunder clapped and lightning exploded so bright it made her room look like it was under a spotlight. The circuit boards and transistors, capacitors and diodes on her desk, parts for her cable boxes, glittered. “Electromagnetic waves,” Raisa said to herself, thinking about Maxwell. They were everywhere. Light itself was an electromagnetic phenomenon, streams of photons. And those streams were everywhere, in every inch of space: radio waves, X-rays, gamma waves. Raisa already knew how to build radios and cable boxes. From the library books she’d found, she realized she could use those skills and build a radio telescope to study waves coming from planets, stars, comets, and more. That was the idea that came to her on the expressway when she saw those satellite dishes. She could build a radio telescope. It would be small, but that’s how all good experiments started. Raisa was going to figure out what that old woman was trying to say.

In the kitchen, Baba and Pop-Pop had herring, yogurt, and orange juice on the table. Baba stood at the counter nodding her head in time with the bells ringing on the radio. She had taped the program from the math competition to the refrigerator. Daniel must have given it to her. Raisa kissed her grandmother. “Can I do your hair now?” Raisa asked, wanting to be close.

“Not today. I’m tired. Eat.” Baba pointed to the table. “I’ll sit with you.”

Raisa nodded and grabbed the orange juice, put it back in the refrigerator. She couldn’t stand seeing it on the table. It made her think of Mama. “Stop buying this,” she said as she slammed the fridge door. “I’ve asked so many times.”

“I know, but you have to talk about her. Your mama loves you.”

“Then why doesn’t she write?”

“She sends comic books. That’s her way of writing.”

“Comic books are for kids,” Raisa said.

After she ate, Raisa went for the door, checked her bangs, and made her way toward the bus stop. She found Daniel waiting under the graffiti-riddled plastic shelter. He usually rode the later bus, liked getting to school right when it started, not early like Raisa. Rain balanced on the ends of his brown hair. His jacket and boots were soaked.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I thought I’d come early to talk about this afternoon. Radio Shack, right?” She nodded. The bus pulled up, and they jumped out of the way of the puddle it sliced and then got on, slid their tokens into the machine. They sat in seats across from each other.

“What do you want at Radio Shack? What’s your plan?”

“Will you please speak English?”

“We’re still in our neighborhood.” He pointed through the window to the bagel store.

She continued in Russian because she had learned that week that no matter how good his English sounded, he wasn’t comfortable in the language. “I’m going to build a radio telescope,” she said. “I need the parts to build it. You were right.

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