“That was before the Internet,” I reminded her. “I just don’t think it’s going to work having people mail money to T2. It needs to be easy for them to donate. Convenient.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “Like a place where kids hang out and could easily give a donation.”
I took another bite of my Mochi-Yogi, and kept thinking about it. Easy . . . convenient. “Rachel, that’s it!”
“What?” she said.
“Not what. Where! Where kids hang out!!!”
The line out the door had gotten even longer since we’d been eating our frozen yogurt.
“Kids hang out here!” I said. “We’ve already been here twice this week.”
“You’re right,” she said. “And these stores are everywhere. My cousin in Atlanta said there’s one down the street from her. And when my family went to New York, we saw one there, too.”
I told the store manager that I was trying to raise money for Dr. Lee’s research and asked if I could give them a jar to take donations. He said he’d do it as long as I mentioned on my website to drop the donations off there—which I was going to do anyway. He’d get more kids coming to his yogurt store, and I’d get closer to a cure!
Now if I could just get more people to see my video and more of the yogurt store locations to take donations.
When we got home, we went into the study and checked the number of views on my video from my mom’s computer. 230. “Sean already has more than 400 views on his desalination video with Courtney!”
“I bet it’s all his online gaming friends that think Courtney is hot,” Rachel said. “Maybe you should ask them to make a video for you.” She laughed.
“Maybe I should.”
“I was just kidding, Kaylin.”
But I wasn’t. I started typing a new message to Sean to tell him how I was trying to raise money for the research and see if he’d make a video. “I need all the help I can get,” I told Rachel when she saw what I was doing.
“When you’re done I’ll send your video to my ex-crushes to spread the word.”
“That could take hours,” I said, joking. Maybe not hours, but it could definitely take awhile. With all the ex-Rachel-crushes that had moved away, we’d be getting the word out all over the country.
As soon as I sent my message to Sean, I got up from the computer. “Your turn.”
While Rachel sent her messages out, I used my dad’s computer to check the FroYo4ever website to see where they had stores. There were over a thousand stores all over the country. I just needed to find out if they’d help me collect donations.
Hmmm . . . If I called a thousand stores . . . fifteen minutes for me to talk to the manager . . . so that would take fifteen thousand minutes . . . or since there are sixty minutes in an hour . . . divide by sixty . . . that’s 250 hours . . . Whoa, that’s a long time to be on the phone! But if Rachel calls half the stores then I can divide that by two . . . 125 hours . . . and there are twenty-four hours in a day, but I can’t be on the phone for twenty-four hours—the stores aren’t even open that long . . . five hours, we could probably spend five hours a day calling stores . . . so 125, divided by 5 . . . that’s 25 days.
“I almost forgot about Bobby in Ohio!” Rachel blurted out. “Remember Bobby Hyper? Should I send it to him? He’s soooo funny! I’m gonna do it.”
“Um, yeah. That’s great.” I just have to figure out how to get the FroYo4evers in Ohio to collect the donations without us having to spend 25 days calling them! Rachel loved to talk on the phone, but that was a lot even for Rachel.
If I could email all the stores . . . but the yogurt store website just had the addresses and phone numbers. I could mail them letters, but that would still take awhile. The videos were up now. People were ready to donate. I didn’t have awhile. The website had email addresses for jobs, customer service, franchise information, and then there was one for public relations. I remembered from Project Lettuce that public relations was all about getting the word out, like announcing new flavors, all so that more people will go to the stores.
But you know what else could get more people to go to FroYo4ever—if everyone was coming in to drop off their donations! I explained this all in my email to public relations. I just hoped they would agree to help me—and fast!
After I finished my letter, Rachel read off our list of ideas. I thought she was finished, but then she went back to one that we had crossed off earlier.
“You never told me why your parents wouldn’t help you set up an online account to collect donations? Just that they said no.”
I sighed. “But if we get more of the yogurt stores—”
“But what if we don’t?” she said. “And if someone’s parents want to use a credit card rather than drop off money or mail it in, it would make it easier.”
“I already asked my parents.”
“I just think you should ask again. What did they say, anyway?”
I figured it was better if she heard it from my parents directly, so Rachel and I went into the family room to talk to them.
“You know our concerns,” my dad reminded me.
“Yes, but Rachel wanted to hear, too.”
“I think that’s good,” my mom said. “I know you both have been working very hard trying to raise money for the vaccine research.”
Rachel sat quietly on the couch with her hands folded in her lap.
My mom took her time, like she was choosing her words carefully. “Kaylin, we love you the way you are. You have so many wonderful qualities—and it concerns us that you are so focused on this one part of you that you want to change.”
“But it’s my life. It’s my face.” I was trying not to whine or get too upset. I took a deep breath. Poised. “If I may have really found something that could work, why would you hold me back from that?”
“But this isn’t just you we’re talking about now, Kaylin,” my dad said. “We watched your video and your mother and I discussed it, and we have a real concern that you could be making other kids feel like their acne is a problem that needs to be cured—when maybe for some of them it’s just a part of their life and it doesn’t need to be this big problem you’ve made it out to be.”
I was glad I brought Rachel down to hear it firsthand. She wasn’t saying anything, just soaking it all in. But I knew she must’ve understood how frustrated I felt. “My parents think I should be organizing an acne celebration day.”
My mom shook her head. “That’s not what we said.”
“I’m not trying to make people feel bad. I didn’t even say for sure that the vaccine would work.”
“Well, that’s another thing,” my dad said. “We’re concerned about the disappointment. What if it doesn’t work?”
“Or even worse,” my mom added. “What if people got hurt along the way—like have some sort of bad reaction while they are testing the vaccine? It’s just so risky, honey.”
“I know mom, but I think it’s worth it. Everyone can choose for themselves. Nobody has to give money. And if it works, nobody has to have it. But let us choose for ourselves.” The answer was still no. They wouldn’t help me set up online donations.
But that’s when I thought of the perfect name for my project to raise a million dollars for the next phase of research . . . Project LetUs.
I couldn’t wait to tell Charlie about the yogurt store plan. Jenna and Maron could usually talk on the phone right before dinner. There were strict phone rules at band camp.
A little after five, I tried to call Charlie. But it went straight to voicemail.
And I tried again at 5:15, 5:25, 5:40—I just really wanted to talk to him. I even tried calling Jenna and Maron to see if they knew what he was up to, but I couldn’t reach them either.
Finally, five minutes before six, my phone rang.
“I’m sooo sorry,” he said. “Rehearsal ran way long, and now I’ve only got a second.”
I could hear a bunch of people in the background. And then some girl
saying, “Charlie, we’re going to be late for dinner.” Ugh!
I knew it wasn’t his fault. Jenna said band camp was always super busy. But there was no way I could tell Charlie everything I wanted to in just a few minutes. And what I wanted to tell him most of all was how much I missed him and wanted to see him. But I wasn’t about to do that with some girl standing there with him.
“It’ll be nice to see you when you’re back,” I said.
“Well, I hope I’ll see you before then,” he said. “You’re going to come to the final Band Camp Showdown on Friday night, aren’t you?”
Obviously, yes! It’s the only thing that had been on my mind besides Project LetUs. Rachel and I had been planning to go anyway to see Jenna and Maron, but it was still nice of him to invite me.
I told him I’d be there. I couldn’t wait to see him.
The next morning, I woke up to a much-earlier-than-normal phone call from Rachel.
“Sean made a video!” she said.
“I can’t believe he made it so fast. Maybe he felt bad about being so lame at the beach.”
“Maybe they felt bad,” she said. “Courtney’s in it, too.”
But if Courtney could get more people to donate then I was glad she was in it.
Until I actually watched it!!!
twenty
PLAY
“We have something really important to talk about today,” Courtney said. “You might remember our video about the Human Microbiome Project—and this is partly related. When scientists were studying skin they realized that the type of acne bacteria was different for people who had acne compared to people who didn’t have it. And some other scientists started trying to figure out how to create a vaccine for a specific type of acne bacteria. And now they think they’ve figured it out.”
“You know how they did this?” Courtney continued. “You probably don’t, so I’ll tell you. Actually, I’ll show you. See this.” She held up one of the pictures from Dr. Lee’s research paper in front of the video camera. “This is a mouse’s ear with acne. I know, it’s gross. But it’s also kind of sad. Because mice don’t get acne. Not on their own, anyway. The scientist had to give the mouse acne in order to test the vaccine.”
“But it did work,” Sean added. “The mouse doesn’t have acne anymore.”
“The mouse is dead, Sean.”
“Well, mice don’t live that long—usually in the wild it’s like under two years,” he said. “This mouse probably had a pretty good life. Except for the acne in its ear—it might’ve been a little self-conscious about that, since mice don’t get acne, like you said.”
“I’m trying to be serious,” Courtney said. “I just think it’s wrong. I know Kaylin wanted us to make this video and she wants people to give money to help with the next phase of research, but I just thought people should know about this.”
“Fine,” he said. “Now they know, and people can decide for themselves if they think it’s right or wrong. Ultimately it’s humans that are going to be part of the testing—so would you still have a problem with it then? What if it could really work?”
Courtney sighed and tugged at the end of her hair.
“I hope it does work,” she said, “after everything that poor mouse went through.”
“Testing the vaccine to make sure it’s safe is a really important part of this kind of research. And this could help millions of people if it worked. I’m definitely going to give a dollar,” Sean said. “Actually, I’m going to give ten dollars. And I hope at least ten of my friends will do the same. Especially you, Cameron.”
After the video ended I looked through the comments, and the first ones I read were about the picture of the mouse’s ear. I wished those people could see past that and understand that it was an important part of making sure the vaccine would work and making it safe to test on people.
I thought about asking Sean to take down the video because of what Courtney said. But as I read through more of the comments, other people mentioned having a hard time with their skin or having an older brother or a cousin who had really bad breakouts and they wanted to know how to send their ten dollars. They must not’ve seen the T2 address in the description for Sean’s video. And I hadn’t heard back from the yogurt store yet. I really needed a way to have online donations, but there was no way to do that without my parents’ help.
I printed out the comments and brought them with me to breakfast, hoping that my parents would reconsider setting up the online donation account for me.
“Kaylin, how are you going to feel if the vaccine doesn’t work?” my dad asked. “Your dermatologist said acne is multi-factorial—so a vaccine might only solve part of the problem and there could still be other challenges.”
“But it would still be progress. If the vaccine doesn’t work, that’s part of the solution, too. Figuring out what doesn’t work can get scientists closer to what will work,” I explained. “Plus, by the time a vaccine would be ready, I might’ve grown out of my acne, anyway. This isn’t just for me, it’s for everyone who’s had to go through this—so that one day maybe people won’t have to.”
They finally agreed to help me set up the online donations account.
Rachel came over on Friday, to help me work on the Project LetUs donation website before we went to the Band Camp Showdown.
“I knew the online donations would help,” she said. “We’re up to $700. After just 7 days. . . . That’s $100 a day! So let’s see . . . for a million dollars.” I looked over her shoulder at the math problem she was writing down.
$700 / 7 days = $100 per day
$1,000,000 / $100 per day = 10,000 days
10,000 days / 365 days in a year =
“That can’t be right,” Rachel said. “It means it would take us more than 27 years to raise the money, if we kept getting an average of $100 per day.”
“It’s right.” I just hadn’t reached enough people yet. “How many views is my video up to?”
“830,” she said. “And Sean has over a thousand but I think some of that is because of everything Courtney said. Which might not be a good thing.”
It was too soon to be discouraged. But I knew we’d need to find more ways to get the message out to people we didn’t know. “Charlie, Jenna and Maron said they would tell everyone at band camp.” Hopefully, that would help.
“Yeah, I’m excited to see them tonight,” she said.
“Me, too.”
Rachel stared at me smiling. “You really like him, don’t you?
twenty-one
It had been almost two weeks since I had seen Charlie. I knew he was going to be really busy at band camp. The drum majors were responsible for choosing the all-bands field show song, making up the formations that everyone had to learn and being in charge of all the rehearsals. Charlie didn’t tell me anything about the field show—just that he couldn’t wait for me to see it.
I couldn’t wait to see him. And now that band camp would be over, I hoped I could see him a lot more. I had visions of the last weeks of summer being filled with burger lunches, beach trips and drum lessons—and, of course, getting a million dollars for T2. Was I crazy to think this could be possible?
Rachel and I sat eagerly in the bleachers. Jenna was easy to spot, standing behind the chimes, where the field ends and the track begins. Maron was a little harder to find because the rest of the musicians were huddled together in small groups spaced all around the field.
“Go Jenna!” Rachel shouted and waved so Jenna would know where we were.
“Ladies and Gentleman,” the announcer’s deep voice bellowed through the sound system, “thank you for joining us for the Band Camp Showdown. As always, we’ll begin with the all-bands performance and I’d like to introduce the ten drum majors from the participating high schools.”
They each ran onto the field, and I pointed Charlie out as he climbed up the ladder to his conductor’s platform.
The announcer continued, “Tonight’s performance was inspired
by the idea that if we each gave ten dollars for something important and asked ten friends to do the same, just think of what could be possible. And now, presenting . . . The Power of Ten.”
Rachel looked at me, stunned.
I got an indescribable feeling inside, like my insides were spinning, in total surprise that Charlie and the other drum majors would make a field show about Project LetUs. Now I knew why he had made such a big deal about me coming to see it.
The show started with one lone base drummer standing in the middle of the field. He marched up to a group of ten drummers, and they played along with him, then spread out from their clump each marching towards another group of musicians. One of the drummers marched down the fifty yard line toward the pit percussionists, including Jenna, who joined in as soon as the drummer got close to them.
Gradually, ten by ten, musicians would join in the song until everyone was playing—over a thousand players on the field performing in intricate formations like ten interconnected rings, morphing into the number ten, morphing into a ten with five zeros on the end . . . 1000000 . . . one million.
And then they marched in the $1,000,000 formation towards the part of the track where the pit percussionists were playing, while an electric guitarist performed a solo. Our band didn’t have any electric guitars so I knew it was someone from another school. He kept looking up at Charlie conducting and then he stepped to the side of his guitar case that was open with a sign taped in it: Project LetUs Donations.
His solo ended and then he reached in his pocket and tossed money into the guitar case and then kept walking towards some of the other pit players where he played until the song ended.
The entire stadium was full of people cheering as the announcer said, “That was The Power of Ten and we’ll be clearing the field now for our first individual high school band performances. Band members please go to your assigned sections in the bleachers after you exit the field.”
“There’s Maron,” Rachel said. The band members continued marching towards the track where they’d ultimately pass the pit percussionists and then exit the stadium. But as I watched, I realized that they were each stopping by the open guitar case and tossing in money on their way out.
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