Brendan Buckley's Sixth-Grade Experiment

by Sundee T. Frazier

  “Thank you, Mr. Del Santos. Have a seat.”

  The boy marched to an empty chair, spun a one-eighty, did another salute, and sat. Definitely joking. More kids laughed, including Khal and me. Ms. Manley gave the class a sharp look and we all shut our mouths. She turned to Morgan. “And you are?”

  “Morgan,” she said quietly. She pointed to her name on Ms. Manley’s list.

  “Thank you, Miss Belcher.”

  “Belcher?” Khalfani practically shouted.

  Cordé Wilkins, who’d been known throughout our elementary school for his crazy-loud burps, must have seen his chance to establish a reputation at Eastmont. He let out the longest, juiciest belch I’d ever heard.

  “Ewwww!” Both girls and boys were grossed out.

  Khal waved his hand in front of his nose. “Man, Cordé! What’d you have for breakfast? Chili dogs?”

  When people laughed this time, I bit the side of my cheek. Morgan had turned about as pink as a flamingo.

  “That’s enough!” Ms. Manley commanded. She glared at Cordé. “Young man, I’m confident you don’t want to spend the first hour of your first day of middle school in the principal’s office. Am I right?”

  Cordé looked genuinely scared. I didn’t blame him. Ms. Manley wasn’t taking any mess.

  Welcome to middle school.

  Turned out Morgan and I not only shared the same homeroom, we also had our first two classes together—pre-algebra and computer keyboarding—and we were locker neighbors. She would have to have a last name that started with B. The first time I saw her getting things out of the locker next to mine, I hung back, waiting for her to leave.

  By the time third-period science rolled around and I still hadn’t talked to Morgan, I felt like a moldy sandwich—the guilt was eating at me like a fungus on bread. I tried to forget about it as I joked around with Khal on the way to Mr. Hammond’s class. Khal and I had gone to different elementary schools—we’d met at Tae Kwon Do—so he didn’t know Mr. H. “You’re really going to like him. His two favorite foods are chocolate and Coke.”

  My arms swung free and easy. I had my brand-new spiral-bound science notebook in my hand. And I was walking toward my favorite teacher’s class for my favorite subject with my best friend. Life couldn’t get any better than this.

  The science room door was closed. Black paper covered the window. A sign on the glass said LABORATORY OF MAD SCIENTIST HAMMOND. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK! A hand-drawn lightning bolt was electrocuting a stick-figure person—some poor sixth grader who hadn’t taken the proper precautions.

  Inside, several kids sat in pairs behind long tables, all facing the counter and whiteboard at the front of the room. Mr. Hammond had his back to the door, talking to someone. I was dying to talk to Mr. H, too, but I’m not the kind of person who goes up to people when they’re already speaking with someone else. Gladys would, but not me.

  Khal and I sat at an empty table. I opened my notebook, which was full of blank pages just waiting to be filled with observations, data, and sources. Tables, charts, and graphs. Questions, hypotheses, and conclusions.

  I wrote my name and “Mr. Hammond—3rd Period Science” on the first page. I had just started to write “Lab Notebook” when the person Mr. H had been talking to laughed. I already knew whose giggle it was, but I looked anyway. Morgan. A little bug of jealousy crawled up my neck. Don’t be stupid, I thought. Mr. Hammond was your teacher for a whole year. She just met him today.

  Morgan looked a lot happier than she had all morning. She had a big, goofy smile on her face. She came out from behind the counter and sat in the first row next to Aadesh Kapur, who everyone called Dash, because it sounded sort of like the second half of his first name but also because he had been the fastest kid in the fifth grade. He was also the brainiest. He and Morgan would get along well.

  The bell rang and a few more kids rushed in. Without saying a word, Mr. Hammond pulled out a green balloon and began blowing it up. He tied it off, then blew up a red one. It grew bigger and bigger.

  “Pop,” Jaivier Brown said, breaking the tense silence. A couple of girls giggled. I sat forward in my chair, eager to see what Mr. H would do next.

  “Morgan, would you assist me, please?”

  The jealousy bug wormed around inside my chest.

  Morgan got that goofy smile on her face again and went to the front.

  “I need one more assistant. Brendan …”

  The jolt of hearing my name made my face tingle and my heart race. I jumped up and hurried forward like a contestant on Gladys’s favorite game show, The Price Is Right.

  Mr. H handed me the green balloon, to which he’d tied a string. He gave the red balloon, also on a string, to Morgan. “If you would be so kind as to rub these latex spheres on your heads.” He motioned to the balloons.

  I hesitated. Rub a balloon on my head? I knew what would happen if I did that. I’d have one giant Afro. But for Mr. H, I’d do it.

  We both started rubbing. Scritch, scritch, scritch. Morgan’s hair jumped up and stuck to the balloon. I could feel the static electricity building. By the time this was over, I would look like the electrocuted stick figure on Mr. H’s sign.

  “Now,” Mr. Hammond said, “hold your balloons by the strings and bring them near each other.”

  I didn’t want to have to get too close to Morgan—especially in front of the whole class—but again, for Mr. H and for the sake of science, I went along. We brought our balloons together. They separated, as if under a magic spell. Of course, it wasn’t magic. Just two negatively charged balloons repelling each other.

  Morgan leaned in and whispered, “Same charges repel.”

  “Yeah. I know,” I whispered back.

  “Now,” Mr. H said again, “watch this.” He put a piece of paper between the balloons. Swup. They glommed together.

  “Ooo, they’re kissing!” Cordé shouted out. I felt my face getting warm.

  Mr. H pulled out the paper and the balloons moved away from each other. “Uh-oh. Lovers’ quarrel,” Javier said. More giggles.

  “Can we get them to make up somehow?” Mr. Hammond asked. Did he have to play into all this mushy stuff? It was bad enough we had to talk about it in health.

  Lauren Dweck spoke up. “Use the paper again.”

  Mr. H slipped the paper between the balloons and they went right back to sucking face.

  “Can anyone give me a scientific explanation for what we’re witnessing here?”

  Morgan jumped in so fast I didn’t have a chance. “The balloons picked up electrons from our hair, giving them an overall negative charge. Like charges repel; therefore the balloons moved away from each other.”

  “Very good. And now?” Mr. H asked, looking down at the stuck-together balloons.

  “It looks to me like Brendan’s and Morgan’s balloons are attracted to each other!” Cordé said. Some of the guys laughed, including Kahl. I scowled at my best friend out of the corner of my eye. He’d better watch it.

  “Actually,” I said, “they’re attracted to the paper, which has a positive charge. Not to each other.”

  “That’s right, Brendan,” Mr. H said. “Opposite charges attract. Same charges repel. Hopefully, this was just a review for everyone, but if you didn’t know it before, you should learn it now. Let’s give our volunteers a round of applause.”

  Everyone clapped. I kept my eyes down and returned to my seat. Khal nudged my arm. I ignored him.

  Mr. Hammond went on to talk about how electrons move around and that’s where electricity comes from. I had to write like lightning, but I got it all down. By the time he was done, I felt all charged up, like a big rain cloud.

  “Now, I have a very important announcement to make,” Mr. H said. “This year, we have the opportunity to participate in an online science competition for middle school students. The theme is ‘Making the World Better.’ ”

  A science competition! Yes! I buzzed from head to toe.

  “There are divisions for sixth
-, seventh-, and eighth-grade teams, and each team must consist of at least two people.…”

  I bumped Khal’s elbow with mine.

  “Regional finalists will be chosen from across the United States.”

  Kids from all over the country? This was huge!

  “The winning team will receive a nice sum of money—”

  “Ka-ching,” Khal whispered. “Now we’re talking.”

  “—to enhance their school’s science program.”

  Khal groaned in disappointment.

  “They will also get to travel to an institute of higher learning to work with top scientists in the field of their project.”

  Whoa. Now, that would be cool!

  Mr. H smiled. “I believe we have some finalist potential in this room.” His eyes dared us to rise to the challenge. “Who knows? Maybe even a first-place team.”

  I grinned. Winning the top prize in a national science competition … No touchdown, no matter how impressive, could even come near that.

  Log Entry—Tuesday, September 4

  I’m officially an Eastmont Eagle! I made it through my first day, no problem. No wedgies, no having my pants ripped off, no getting eaten alive like one of Einstein’s pinhead crickets. The older kids didn’t even seem to notice we were there.

  I like switching teachers for every class. It’s like we’re in high school. And they treat us like we’re older, too. We’re going to have a lot more homework. I’ve never heard the word responsible used so much in one day.

  Observation: Girls in middle school smell a lot more perfume-y than girls in elementary.

  That Friday I was still researching ideas for science projects. Mr. Hammond had given us two weeks to come up with our proposals. He would pair us up based on common interest and leave it to us to choose between our two proposals or come up with a third idea. Khalfani and I had agreed: No matter what, we would be partners.

  I sat at my computer, rubbing my almost-pinky-sized quartz between my fingers. I’d discovered it and a few of the other fragments next to a pile of folded laundry on my desk when I’d gotten home from the first day of school. Mom had probably seen them in my garbage can and couldn’t just leave them there. Oh well, I’d thought. I’ll keep them for now. I could replace them with bigger ones later.

  I turned my attention back to my assignment. I wanted my experiment to be focused on something big, something that really mattered. I’d know I’d found the right project idea when I got the Jitters—that tingling, twitching, electrical-storm feeling in my body that came on whenever I had a whole bunch of questions about something.

  Another half hour of browsing the Internet passed, and I still hadn’t come up with a single idea—nothing that lit the flame in my Bunsen burner, anyway.

  I went to find Dad. Maybe he’d play a few rounds of Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 with me. I’d already finished my homework from that day, spent some time observing Einstein, and practiced my hyung for Tae Kwon Do. I needed to come up with a proposal, and playing video games sometimes sparked good ideas in my brain.

  Hey … maybe there was a science experiment in that. If I researched the connection between playing video games and getting good ideas, I’d have to play Mario hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times. That wouldn’t be too bad—for the sake of science, of course.

  Dad sat at his desk in the basement, hunched over a book. He’d turned an unfinished side room into his study. It was dark everywhere except for the small desk lamp and the glow of the computer’s wiggly neon screen saver that reminded me of Proterozoic amoebas swimming around in dark, uninhabited ocean waters.

  I knocked on the hollow wooden door to get his attention. He glanced my way but went right back to his book. His square jaw worked a piece of gum. “Hey, buddy, what’s up?”

  “Do you want to play Nintendo?”

  “Done with your homework already?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Teachers go easy this first week?”

  “Actually, they gave us a ton of work. I think they wanted to make sure we know we’re not in elementary school anymore.”

  “Mmm.” Dad wrote on a yellow legal pad next to his book.

  “So, do you want to play?”

  “Can’t right now. My ton of work is still a ton.” He turned to the computer and opened a blank document. “Later. Promise.”

  If Dad said Promise, I knew he was good for it. Problem was, when was later? He’d been using that word so often in the last couple of weeks I could have charted its frequency on a line graph.

  By nine o’clock, when Dad still hadn’t appeared, I got ready for bed, said good night to Mom, and gave Einstein’s tank one last squirt. Einstein crawled out from the ivy along one of the jungle vines I’d attached to the side of the tank. I stared into his black dot of an eye, which looked like a blob of extra ink from a ballpoint pen. It sat in the center of a round ridge of skin like a bull’s-eye. The skin under his eye was tinged light blue. I recorded these things in the Other Observations section of my green notebook. In the Questions section I wrote, “Do all green anoles have a patch of light blue under their eyes? Why?”

  Einstein lapped at water droplets on an overhanging leaf, then darted into the shadows.

  “Good night, boy.”

  A glint from the shelf caught my eye. I put down my notebook and picked up my specimen of slate. I’d found it this summer and decided it would be for Grampa Clem, because it was black and thin like he was, but also because it was sedimentary—rock that had been formed under pressure, just like black people in the United States.

  I sat on my bed, loosely grasping the rock. It was barely heavier than a penny. Not at all like the solid presence of Grampa Clem as we sat on the bench outside his and Gladys’s apartment, talking about how I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. He had told me about George Washington Carver—“that man knew about a whole lot more than just peanuts”—and Vivien Thomas, “a black man who taught the nation’s top heart surgeons how to do their jobs, back when a black man couldn’t even urinate in the same spot as a white man.”

  So you go on and be a scientist, Grampa Clem had said that day on the bench. You’d be joining a long line of our people who made life-changing discoveries. Made this world a better place, they did. He put his hand on my knee. And you’ll make it better yet.

  I still didn’t have a proposal for the science competition, but I went to sleep with Grampa Clem’s voice in my ears and a little reminder of him in my hand.

  At Oscar’s house that weekend, Khal, Oscar, and I loaded up our Super Soakers and ran around Oscar’s house trying to drench each other. It was a warm day, but not exactly hot. I never stopped moving, because when I did I got goose bumps the size of geodes. Still, I couldn’t shake Khalfani. He’d blasted me pretty good a few times.

  When Khal went for a refill, I pulled Oscar into a bush at the opposite side of his house from the spigot. Oscar’s T-shirt was soaked and water dripped from his hair and face. It was hard to tell what was from the water guns and what was sweat, but clearly, Khal was dominating us both. It was time to team up.

  “We’ll ambush him,” I said. “You go around back. I’ll go around front. As soon as the water is off, attack!” We had a rule that you couldn’t squirt someone in the middle of a refill.

  Oscar nodded. We crept from our hiding place, nozzles pointed up. I had barely gotten around the corner of the house when I heard Oscar yelling. His voice was getting louder. “Ahhhhhh!”

  I looked back just in time to see him ram into me. We both fell to the ground. Khal stood over us, pumping his soaker mercilessly.

  I jumped up and stood my ground, shooting at Khal even as a spray of water pummeled my face and chest. When Oscar finally got to his feet, it was two against one, but Khal wouldn’t back down. We all just kept screaming and pumping until our soakers were empty.

  When the water was gone, we dropped our guns to our sides and looked at each other. “I think we’re all dead,” Oscar said. We laughed
then.

  “What I am is hungry,” Khal said. “You got something we can eat?”

  “Cheese crunchies,” Oscar said with a shrug.

  “Sounds good to me,” Khal said. We followed Oscar inside, took off our shoes, and headed to his bedroom, which was a total disaster zone. Oscar got us each a towel.

  I was glad Mom had made me bring along some extra clothes when she saw me leaving the house with my water gun. I stripped off my wet pants, then pushed aside an empty Doritos bag, a bunch of game discs, and an army of Pokémon figures so I could sit on the bed to pull on my dry ones. Khal borrowed some of Oscar’s clothes. They were kind of baggy, but they worked.

  We went to the kitchen and sat at the table while Oscar got the bag of cheese puffs and some Cokes from the fridge. “Thanks,” I said.

  Khal already had his pop can open and was chugging it down. “Yeah, thanks,” he said, coming up for air. He swiped at his lips with the back of his hand. “I needed that.”

  “Do either of you have any ideas for the science competition yet?” I asked.

  Khal let out a big belch. “Maybe we could research the connection between carbonation and burping.”

  “What is there to research?” I asked. “You drink a carbonated beverage and then you burp.”

  “Yeah, but how soon after you start drinking and at what rate? And do some sodas make you burp more than others?” Khal raised his eyebrows, like, Huh? What about that? He tipped back his can and drank some more.

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” Oscar said. “You’d get to drink lots of pop for your research.”

  “Exactly.” Khal grinned. “I could get Cordé Wilkins to be my partner.”

  “Or your subject,” I said. We all laughed. “Hey, I thought we were going to be partners.”

  “Just joking.” Khal popped a cheese crunchy in his mouth. “So, what do you propose we do, Mr. Science?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said.

  “Brendan ‘Ask a Million Questions’ Buckley doesn’t have a research idea? I thought you’d be halfway done with our experiment by now.”