PROMPT:  By @ya  (Young Adult)  You've worked hard all your life to look good, but beyond your etiquette and manners, you have a secret life.

Dedicated to Paulo Coelho

Giles looked at the potatoes I was carrying. "You seriously want to add those?"

"These are high in potassium, which I think our formula needs. I also grew them myself." I hesitated saying the next part, but my gut was telling me I was on the right track. "I was really careful to have good intentions during every step of cultivating them."

As expected, Giles raised his eyebrows.

The door opened and Rosemarie and Pedro burst through. "What did we miss?"

Giles crossed his arms over his chest. "Abby was just telling me how her good wishes have supercharged these potatoes."

I shrank before their disbelieving eyes. "Come on! We're trying to make gold here. Don't you think having pure intentions will make a difference?"

"To potatoes?" Rosemarie asked incredulously.

"To all the ingredients."

I sat down heavily on a stool and gazed around at the bottles and bunsen burners and various experiment detritus that littered the laboratory we used in the basement of the Order of Global Alchemist's eastern seaboard headquarters.

Tight on cash after tuition fees, books and living expenses, most of the ingredients we'd had to procure through not-so-honest means. Something that weighed heavily on my mind and heart.

We were trying to make gold because we had sworn an oath to use whatever we made to make the world better. Nancy was currently on a mission to recruit an economics major to help us with that, but the four of us in this room were the current scientists tasked with the burden of mixing and brewing.

Burden. That resonated uncomfortably within me. Working to improve the world shouldn't be regarded as a chore.

I should feel honoured that I was given this genius IQ and that this secret society was offering a way to apply it to a good end.

"I think I've watched Good Will Hunting too many times," I grumbled and rubbed at my eyes.

As my three companions gathered around the brew Pedro'd been steeping for days, I closed my eyes and held the potatoes, just feeling them. The lightness in my chest was probably my imagination. It didn't make empirical sense that a potato could affect me like that.

But what if it could?

Clearing a space on a bench, I taped off my work area and wrote my name on the wall chalkboard to mark it as mine.

I'd source everything myself. From noble means - whatever they were. My hands stilled as I contemplated. I'd better do some reading up on values because the thought they were part of the formula to make gold made me feel like I was glowing from the inside.

It sounded nuts, and the others would laugh, but I'd take it to change the world.

Inspired by Paulo Coelho's book The Alchemist

WORD COUNT: 500 words