Green Algae and Bubble Gum Wars

by Annie Bryant

  A girl with long, straight red hair spun around and gave a little wave. Matt blinked. “Whoa!”

  Maeve stood there for a moment…a long moment. “Um, uh, ’sup?” she finally managed.

  “Good thing the female of the species is so much more advanced!” Isabel giggled to Avery.

  “I didn’t recognize you there for a second, Maeve. Wow, way to break down the hydrogen bonds in your hair’s cortex with ceramic plates and ionic technology!”

  “Actually, I just used a hair straightener.” Maeve ran her fingers through her smooth locks. She couldn’t believe how well her plan was going. Matt was obviously captivated by the new look—Maeve 2.0—the undated version. This is just how I would picture it if we were dating in, like, seven years or something. I would be shooting my first big movie—co-starring Caleb Tucker. Matt would be a world-famous doctor, getting out of the hospital after saving a baby’s life. We’d meet here, by the T stop at the Charles River, and he’d sing to me—

  “Well, we should get a move on,” Matt announced, clapping his hands together. “It’s already pretty crowded.” Maeve blinked her way back to reality, as Matt ushered the group in the right direction. “I’m glad you all came,” Matt was saying. “I have some very cool stuff to show you. Before you all head off to the workshops you signed up for, there’s an awesome street fair part of the festival that we can check out. There are some mind-blowing booths with stuff like robots you can control and the chemistry of food.”

  Isabel and Maeve exchanged looks—both girls were there for chemistry that had to do with hearts, not test tubes.

  “Wait till you guys see the phytoplankton exhibit. When you see algae under a microscope, well, let’s just say it’s a miracle how beautiful scum can be,” said Matt.

  Isabel perked up a little at that comment. She did love looking at beautiful things. That was how she got her artistic inspiration.

  “What about the tunnels?” asked Avery. “I definitely want to check out the other exhibits here, but Maeve told me there were tunnels, and I love tunnels. So…what’s the deal?”

  Matt chuckled. “When we’re finished up with the festival, I’ll take you on a guided tour of the tunnels. But for now, let’s hit the street fair. Then I’m going to take you to see my friend Bailey’s booth.” Maeve wondered if Bailey would be as adorable as Matt. She doubted that was even possible.

  “Welcome!” said a friendly volunteer, as the group approached the entrance. Maeve loved that the girl was rocking super-short, super-curly, dark brown hair.

  “Everyone’s with me,” Matt assured her. “We got special permission for this little guy.” He indicated Sam.

  “Sure, but the festivals are for girls in fifth to eighth grade,” she said, looking at Scott and Elena Maria. “Sorry, guys.”

  Matt rubbed the back of his head, thinking, then said to Scott and Elena Maria, “Well, you two wanted to check out the campus anyway, right? Why don’t you do that for a couple of hours and then meet us back here? Do you have a cell phone?”

  Elena Maria nodded while Scott stared at his shoes nervously. Meanwhile, Isabel was beaming. She slapped Avery a secret high five behind Elena Maria’s back. “Looks like they’ll just have to spend two hours exploring a beautiful college together,” she whispered to Avery, giggling.

  “If Scott can work up the nerve to look at something other than the ground!” Avery whispered back, shaking her head.

  “Okay, we’ll see you back here when the festival is over,” Matt instructed Elena Maria and Scott.

  “Catch you later!” the BSG called out, with big smiles, as they watched their romance project walk away.

  “All right, listen up, girls!” The volunteer got their attention. “Do you see the Sally Ride T-shirt I’m wearing? There are tons of other people in these T-shirts, just like me, and we’re all here to help you. So if you have questions or need directions, just ask someone in one of these T-shirts.”

  “Now let’s head in!” Matt exclaimed.

  When she got a good look at the street fair scene, Maeve couldn’t believe her eyes. At first, Maeve had had her doubts that the festival would be that cool an event. But now, she had to admit, it was totally looking like the happening place to be. There were girls everywhere, and all of them looked like they were having an absolute blast, running around with bags full of treasures and souvenirs they had collected from the various exhibits.

  “Hey! What in the name of Einstein are you guys doing here?”

  Maeve and the rest of the crew turned around. There was the AAJH seventh grade class president, Henry Yurt, wearing an over-sized T-shirt that read “My other car is a Proton Rocket.”

  “It’s the Yurtmeister!” Maeve cried. She loved running into friends from school outside of school…especially when she was with a super-cute older boy. She hoped Henry would take note and report this incident back to the rest of his guy friends in their class. “We’re here for the science festival, silly. That’s my friend Matt.” She pointed to Matt, who was looking at the next booth over. “He’s showing us around. He’s in college.”

  “How did you get in?” asked Katani, trying to bring the conversation away from Maeve-fantasyland and back to planet Earth. “I thought it was for girls only.”

  “My dad works here. He teaches zoology, and he helped organize this thing. Hey, wanna meet him? He’s right over there.” Henry Yurt pointed at a nearby booth.

  The Yurtmeister led the way over to a booth with a banner hanging above it that said, DO YOU BELONG IN A ZOO? It was obviously a popular booth, because girls were swarming around it, laughing and chatting. In the middle of the booth was a short man with carrot-colored hair. He was a little on the bald side and also a grownup, but otherwise he was the spitting image of Henry Yurt. Avery noted that, like her, both Henry and his dad were “vertically challenged”—Avery-code for “short.” But what really caught her attention was the tiny, furry creature sitting on Dr. Yurt’s shoulders.

  “And this little guy is on loan from the zoo, just for this special occasion,” explained Henry’s dad. “His name is Chewy.”

  “Like Chewbacca from Star Wars. Aaaaawesome!” exclaimed Sam. “Hey, Henry, your dad gets to take care of a monkey? That is so cool!” He gazed at Henry’s dad like he was a superhero.

  “That’s no monkey, Sam,” Avery corrected. “That little guy is a lemur. They’re super-special because they only live in Madagascar. But monkeys and lemurs are both primates.”

  “Good for you, little lady.” Yurt’s dad pointed at Avery.

  “Professor Yurtmeister! Duuuuude! You brought Chewy!” called a guy wearing a backwards baseball cap.

  “What’s up, my dawwwwgs?” Professor Yurt greeted his students.

  Charlotte had to stifle a giggle. She’d seen her own dad trying to be cool around his students and knew exactly what was up. She turned to Maeve and whispered, “No matter how ‘down with it’ parents think they are, it never works.”

  “Hey, there, Li’l Yurt!” The guy with the baseball cap grinned, bending down to give Henry’s hair a friendly rub. Avery always admired Henry’s confidence: for a little dude, he had the self-respect of someone six feet tall. He totally embraced the nickname and attention. In no time at all, he had a crowd of college students surrounding him and his father, cracking up at the father-son comedians.

  “You think we could get ‘Li’l Yurt’ to stick back at school?” asked Maeve.

  “Maaaaaybe. All I have to say is, Yurt plus Yurt is a dynamite combination!” Avery told Isabel. Suddenly, something behind Isabel caught her eye. “Check it out: Make your own slime!” Avery shouted. “Let’s go, Iz. It’s kinda like an art project.” The two girls took off to a nearby booth, which boasted that each girl could create her own custom made slime…with different colors and textures.

  Katani took one look at the slime stand and her face turned pale. “No way is any kind of slime juice getting near this scarf,” she vowed to Charlotte. “This material is 100
percent silk!”

  “Fine by me,” Maeve agreed, nervously brushing off her soft pink blazer.

  “And me. I do not have a good track record with slimy stuff,” Charlotte added. She scanned the scene around them and pointed at a booth. “Hey, look! A solar car display.”

  Sam started jumping up and down. “Solar cars are sweet, man!”

  He may be smart, but he probably doesn’t know what solar cars are. Maeve sniffed. She was miffed that Sam wasn’t paying any attention to her at all. Suddenly, Charlotte was his favorite person in the world.

  “That looks interesting,” Katani agreed. In Maeve’s opinion, electricity meant math, and math equaled total yawn-fest, but at least at the solar booth thingy she wouldn’t get any slime on her clothes.

  The girls and Sam walked over to the booth, where a girl with white-blonde hair was explaining what the big block sitting next to her was: a hydrogen cell that could power a car. “That’s the H in H2O,” she told them. “Hydrogen is like the most abundant gas in the universe. In a process called fusion, two hydrogen atoms combine to form one helium atom, releasing energy as radiation. And best of all, enviro-fans—it’s totally nonpolluting. Right now, it’s expensive, but there are smart folks working on a hydrogen car that’s more affordable.

  “And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for!” The girl whipped a black silk scarf off a small, shiny model sports car. The crowd oohed and ahhhed as the car drove around and around in a circle.

  “This car is a hydromobile,” the blonde girl explained.

  “Gotta love the style,” Maeve whispered to Katani and Charlotte.

  “You know,” Charlotte began, “my dad promised that if we buy a new car in a few months it will be a hybrid—a combo of electric and gas engines. I don’t want to be driving a gas guzzler.”

  “A pink car,” Maeve added and sighed. “All cars should be pink.”

  “Hey, what’s that big crowd over there for?” asked Katani.

  Indeed, a huge mass had formed at the booth beside them, and at the front Charlotte noticed something that nearly made her eyes pop out of her head. “You guys, it’s—it’s about stars! Meet a real live astronaut! I gotta—”

  And with that, she was off, with Sam in tow. “I want to meet a real live astronaut too!” he shouted.

  “C’mon, c’mon!” She laughed, eager to have her pint-sized partner in crime by her side.

  “Take care of Sam!” Maeve shouted after Charlotte. Charlotte gave her a thumbs up as she swung Sam’s hand into the air.

  Maeve and Katani could barely keep up as Charlotte and Sam made their way through the crowd with the type of frenzy the girls had only seen Avery use during an intense game of basketball.

  “A real astronaut!” Even Maeve was excited.

  Katani read the sign more closely. “Maeve, that’s not just any astronaut…that’s Sally Ride herself—the first American woman to go into space!”

  Maeve looked excitedly at Katani. “Should we follow?”

  Katani shivered. “Girl, are you kidding me? Take a look at that monster line. I say we stay right here and wait for Charlotte to do her thing.”

  Maeve’s eyes twinkled. “Or…head on over to our workshop? Matt said we’d get to make bracelets based on our DNA…whatever that is.”

  Katani checked her wristwatch and smiled. “Yep, it’s almost time for the workshop to start. Let’s go! FYI, DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. It’s basically your genes.”

  Maeve stared at Katani. Her friends were so smart. She started feeling like a loser-brain when all of a sudden she remembered that Thursday afternoon she’d gotten all her math problems correct. That made her stand a little taller as the girls strolled over to the volunteer holding a sign for their workshop.

  On the other side of the festival, Avery and Isabel were in a workshop that had them totally captivated by phytoplankton. Another college student, or as Avery insisted on calling her, “Genius MIT professor,” was showing a captivated group all about how phytoplankton was crucial to the health of the ocean and how someday algae might even be a source of energy.

  “I cannot believe that something that looks like pond scum can actually be a source for energy!” Avery remarked. “Just amazing.”

  After the workshop, Isabel wanted to know more. “I just can’t believe how interesting these plants are under a microscope,” said Isabel, her mind already ticking with how she could illustrate phytoplankton in her sketchbook.

  “Excuse me, Professor Sullivan,” Isabel started, reading the workshop leader’s last name off her nametag.

  “Actually, I’m just a grad student,” the woman said with a kind laugh. “I hope I’ll be Professor Sullivan one day! But for now, Emily is fine.”

  Isabel blushed. “Would I maybe be able to take some pamphlets with me about the um…phytoplankton?”

  Emily laughed cheerfully. “Well, of course. That’s what they’re there for.” Isabel began stuffing her (and Avery’s) arms with all the free info she could find about phytoplankton.

  Meanwhile, Matt had his hands full trying to collect the BSG.

  “Katani! Maeve!” he huffed. “Great—I found you.” Matt jogged over to the girls, who were proudly admiring their handcrafted DNA bracelets. Next to him were a grinning Sam and an excited-looking Charlotte Ramsey.

  “You guys are not going to believe this.” She held up her journalism notebook. “I was almost late for my workshop, but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get this. Right here, smack on the front page. Look!”

  Maeve leaned in and read slowly, “‘Dear Charlotte. Reach for the stars. Sally K. Ride.’ Whoa…you got Sally Ride’s autograph?” In Maeve’s world, anyone who was worthy of an autograph meant serious celebrity. She couldn’t help feeling a tad jealous, although before today she honestly had no idea who Sally Ride was. Now she knew that she was someone very important.

  “It’s more than an autograph. It’s called astro-encouragement. I’m definitely adding Sally Ride to my role model list—right next to Miss Pierce!” Miss Pierce, Charlotte’s landlady who lived in the first floor apartment of the house they shared, was an astronomer who had worked on the design of the Hubble Space Telescope. She and Charlotte shared a passion for space and stars. “Sally Ride thinks that if I really wanted, I could be an astronaut someday, too!”

  Maeve giggled. “If becoming a world-famous writer doesn’t work out.”

  Katani shrugged and slung an arm around Charlotte’s shoulder. “Hey, who knows…maybe she’ll do both!”

  Matt looked around anxiously and ran his fingers through his hair. “Four down, two to go…” he murmured through clenched teeth. “Where could your buddies be?”

  “Well,” Katani said thoughtfully, “I do know that Avery was pretty excited about seeing more environmental stuff.”

  Matt clapped his hands. “Okay—follow me.”

  Maeve wished Matt would be a little more concerned with getting some romantic alone time with her instead of always trying to locate the group, but she knew her brave tutor was only being his usual responsible self. Just being with him made Maeve feel more responsible, too. As they walked along, she offered her hand to her little brother. “Want to hold my hand, Sam?” she asked sweetly.

  “Nope. Dad said Charlotte’s my babysitter today, remember?” He stuck out his tongue at Maeve and slipped his hand into Charlotte’s, pulling her ahead.

  Maeve couldn’t believe it. First Matt practically ignored her, and now she was being ditched by…her little brother?!

  CHAPTER 5

  Tunnel Mayhem

  I love Matt’s shirt. Don’t you just love his shirt?” Maeve whispered to Katani, admiring her tutor’s trendy maroon and yellow striped tee.

  “It’s cool, I guess.”

  “And what about his eyes? Don’t you just love Matt’s eyes? I could look at them for hours.” Maeve swooned quietly, as they trailed behind him through the crowd.

  Katani frowned. “His eyes might
be fascinating, but his jeans are kind of boring, don’t you think? They’re just straight-leg, double-pocket, non-pleated, stone-washed jeans. Pretty ordinary, really.”

  Maeve knew Katani was right, but she rushed to Matt’s defense anyway. “I know, but on him they just look so…so…uncommonly dreamy.”

  “I think you’re the one who’s dreaming,” Charlotte said.

  “Ha ha,” Maeve replied. “You guys just don’t know what it’s like to be…oh never mind.”

  They didn’t mind. Maeve’s mega crushes changed at least once a month; her friends had gotten used to it. They didn’t doubt that Maeve was serious about her feelings…she just had, well, a lot of feelings.

  Matt finally stopped in front of a booth that had a big, covered aquarium with a heat lamp shining on it like the sun. It was sort of a mini greenhouse, overflowing with lush, beautiful flowers in every color of the rainbow. Tiny purple buds and green leaves grew over the edge like a jungle curtain. Leading the exhibit was a tall girl with tortoise-shell glasses, freckles, and long brown hair worn half up in a messy bun. She had on a loose, flowing skirt, a silky light green shirt, a single beaded necklace, and a jean jacket.

  Matt ran right up to the girl and swallowed her up in a big bear hug. “Everyone…I want you to meet my friend.”

  “Hi, girls. I’m Bailey.”

  Maeve gulped. Bailey? Why had she thought that Bailey was a boy? For a split second she wondered if maybe Bailey was more than a friend. But then she shook that thought away. Bailey was cute enough and everything, but she definitely didn’t have Maeve’s chic sense of style and glamour. No. No way would this girl be Matt’s type.

  “Bailey and I met last summer in our environmental biology class,” Matt explained. “I took a class at MIT, and guess who was my lab partner?”