Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Erupts!

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  We looked at each other.

  “Mice,” we said at the same time.

  Mrs. Tuttle would be very impressed by how fast we had solved the mystery. But who would get the extra credit? I wondered. Aretha had gotten the idea about five seconds before I did, but we both found the evidence together. If I’d been the one to have the idea first, I would have shared the extra credit with Aretha.

  But now that Aretha hated my guts, I wasn’t so sure she would share extra credit with me.

  “Brilliant!” Mrs. Tuttle exclaimed when Aretha told her our findings. “Now all we have to do is set a humane trap, and we’ll send our little mouse friend back to the woods first thing in the morning. And I’ll mark down extra credit for Aretha right now.”

  I turned to go to my desk. I didn’t really need extra credit anyway, I told myself. But I guessed it would be nice to get a little credit.

  “Mrs. Tuttle,” Aretha said. “Mac should get half of the credit because he was half of the team who solved the mystery.”

  I looked at Aretha. She looked at me. She didn’t smile.

  I was pretty sure she still hated my guts.

  But that didn’t mean she wasn’t an honorable person.

  “Extra credit for you both!” Mrs. Tuttle exclaimed. “But who gets the frog?”

  “Aretha should get the frog, since she came up with the idea it might be a mouse first,” I said.

  “Fair enough,” said Mrs. Tuttle, and she tossed Aretha the yellow frog. Aretha pocketed it, then sat down.

  That afternoon Ben and I put the finishing touches on our science fair project. We had pretty much taken over Ben’s dining room. His mom didn’t care. She likes to eat on a tray while she’s watching TV. First, though, she puts on her pajamas and a pair of fuzzy pink slippers.

  Ben’s mom is not like other people’s moms.

  “If Aretha thinks she’s going to beat us, she’s got another think coming,” Ben said as he painted a stream of lava flowing down the volcano.

  “We don’t even know what she’s doing,” I pointed out. “She’s been very top secret about it. For all we know, she’s cloned her cat.”

  “Still wouldn’t be as cool as this baby,” Ben said.

  I had to admit, the volcano did look pretty cool. Even though it was just sitting there, it gave you the feeling it could erupt at any minute. And all the details of the stuff around it—the grass, the trees, the rocks—made you feel like you’d stepped through a time machine to a real place. A very small place, but still an actual real, live place.

  I reached into my backpack and handed Ben a piece of paper. “Here’s the checklist for everything you and your mom need to bring in the morning,” I told him. Ben’s mom drove a pickup truck. It was very handy for transporting science fair projects.

  Also, I have a bad habit of forgetting stuff. Like the time last summer my dad took me and my sister to the beach for a week and I forgot to pack my swim trunks.

  And my goggles and my Boogie board and my beach towel.

  Since then I’ve gotten pretty good at making lists, but it’s still a good idea to put somebody else in charge of checking them twice. Especially when the list is about something as important as the fourth-grade science fair.

  The funny thing is, my mom and Ben’s mom almost got in a fight over who would drive the project to school. My mom may be irritable, but she’ll drive you to school in a second if you’ve got a project. It’s because when she was a kid, this one time she had to carry this clay owl she made for homework on the school bus, and she tripped getting on. The owl’s beak got smushed and both wings flopped off. So she’s very sympathetic about getting stuff to school all in one piece. That’s why she called Ben’s mom a couple of days before the science fair and told her she would take our project.

  I was eating crackers on the couch on the other side of the room, but I could still hear Ben’s mom getting all upset on the phone because she’d gotten someone to work for her so she could take the project. My mom told me later she could tell how much Ben’s mom just wanted to do this one important thing for Ben.

  My mom can actually be a very understanding person when she feels like it.

  Ben took the list I’d handed to him and let it fall to the floor. I walked around the table and picked it up.

  “I’m serious, Ben,” I said. “Mrs. Tuttle says we only get fifteen minutes to set up our project. If we forget something, there won’t be time to run home to get it.”

  This time Ben took the paper and shoved it in his jeans pocket. “I won’t forget,” he promised, dipping a brush into a jar of green paint and touching up a tree.

  “Don’t forget,” I said.

  “I told you, I won’t,” Ben said.

  Scientifically speaking, I was pretty nervous that he would. So on my way out I taped another copy of the checklist to his fridge and one on the front door.

  When you’re dealing with artists, it’s a good thing to plan ahead.

  chapter thirteen

  The second I walked into the fourth-grade science fair, I had this feeling like maybe I was the dumbest person on the planet. Which is not a good feeling when you are planning to be a world-famous scientist one day.

  I had to walk from the entrance of the cafeteria all the way to the far back corner to get to my exhibit, so I got to look at all the different fourth-grade science fair projects. As soon as I saw an experiment about sulfurous water, I knew picking a research project over an experiment project had been a huge mistake on my part.

  Do you know what sulfur smells like? Like the worst thing in the world. Rotten-egg horrible. Supreme skunk stinkazoid.

  It smells great.

  When I thought about how I could have spent the last two weeks making stinky sulfur water in the bathtub, I felt terrible. I had gotten carried away about volcanoes when I saw what an artistic genius Ben was. Geniuses can be very persuasive people. That doesn’t make them the best people to choose your science fair topic, however.

  The second reason I felt so dumb was that some people had done really smart projects. Projects that made volcanoes and dinosaurs look like stupid, little-kid stuff. Joe Smelts and Will Rajhaheed had rigged up a doorbell system with a battery, a switch, some wire, and a buzzer. Everybody was lined up to push the button, like they’d never rung a doorbell before. It was just cool to see one that someone you knew had built.

  One of the coolest projects I saw was a tape recorder that had been taken apart so you could see how it worked. This kid had pulled out the tape heads so he could run a strip of cassette tape across them using his hand. He was recording people’s voices and then playing them back, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes backward, which sounded supremely weird.

  You would think, with computers and the other technology we have today, hearing your voice on an old cassette player wouldn’t be so fascinating, but it was.

  Walking across the cafeteria and looking at these projects, I had two billion ideas for other scientifically brilliant projects. Which made the fact I’d done a research project on volcanoes even harder to live with.

  The last thing that made me feel dumb was when I saw Aretha’s project. This was easy to see because her table was set up right next to mine.

  Aretha and Roland had set up a spy laboratory.

  They had made three kinds of invisible ink for writing spy notes—lemon juice, baking soda, and cornstarch.

  They had written a secret code and built a decoder device that fit onto a wristwatch.

  They’d made spy binoculars out of paper towel rolls and magnifying glasses.

  On the wall behind them were posters telling you about all the scientific facts of their spy lab. Like how magnifying glasses work and the recipes for invisible ink and the chemical reactions that make each ink work.

  On the table they had samples of invisible ink for people to try.

  They were the hit of the fourth-grade science fair.

  It could have been me.

  If I were
n’t allergic to girls, I could have been a science star.

  Instead I was just some dumb kid who still played with dinosaurs.

  chapter fourteen

  I was almost ready to go throw myself into a vat of day-old spaghetti sauce in the cafeteria’s kitchen, when something caught my eye.

  It was the most awesome volcano I’d ever seen. And maybe it wasn’t a real volcano, but it sure looked like it could be real, if volcanoes were only ever two feet tall.

  I’d seen that volcano before; in fact, I’d seen it every day for the last week. But somehow it looked different at the science fair.

  For the first time I saw how other people would see it.

  It was a genius volcano.

  “Do you think the ankylosaurus is in the right place?” Ben asked when he saw me. “Or is it too close to the volcano? It might gross people out if the ankylosaurus bites the big one when the volcano explodes.”

  “Erupts,” I told him for the zillionth time. “Volcanoes don’t explode, they erupt.”

  “Whatever,” Ben said, adjusting the dinosaur’s position. “I just don’t want to get personally blamed for the extinction of the dinosaur.”

  There are two parts to the science fair. The first part is where people walk around and look at all the projects. The second part is when the judges walk around. When the judges walk around, both people on the team have to be seated at their table to tell the judges about their project.

  This year’s judges were the school principal, Mrs. Patino; the sixth-grade science teacher, Mr. Marks; and the school nurse, Mr. Martinez.

  Me and Ben were waiting until the judges got to our table to erupt our volcano. We felt this would give our project a little extra oomph. When the judges were three tables away, I reached under the table for our eruption supplies—baking soda, vinegar, and dishwashing liquid for extra eruption action.

  It was all there. Except for the vinegar.

  “Where’s the vinegar?” I asked Ben. I stuck my head under the table for a second look.

  “It’s down there,” Ben said. He sounded a little unsure, though.

  “Did you check it off the checklist?”

  “Of course I checked it off the checklist. Why wouldn’t I check it off the checklist?”

  This time he sounded very unsure.

  I sat back up. “Because you forgot to check the checklist?”

  “I guess that could be one reason,” Ben agreed. “But boy, doesn’t this volcano look great?”

  That’s when Aretha leaned over from the spy lab. “Is there a problem over here, boys?”

  She sounded sort of happy about the idea, if you want to know the truth.

  “We’re fine,” I told her.

  “I forgot the vinegar,” Ben told her. “I meant to check the checklist, but I sort of slept late this morning. It was pretty crazy just getting everything over here on time.”

  “No vinegar, no eruption, am I right?” Aretha asked. I thought I saw a smile behind her serious expression. This was probably the best thing that had happened to her all day.

  “You’re right,” I said glumly.

  The judges were one table away. We were doomed.

  Aretha turned to Roland. “Hand me some lemon juice.”

  Roland handed her a big green bottle of lemon juice. Aretha handed it to me.

  “I don’t know if it will work as well as vinegar, but it should have some reaction with the baking soda. Just use a ton.”

  “Do you have enough?” I asked her.

  “I was the one in charge of bringing our supplies,” she told me.

  That meant they had enough.

  “Okay, guys, tell us what you’ve got here,” Mrs. Patino said, standing in front of our table.

  So we told her. We told her about volcanoes, and we told her about the time period when dinosaurs and volcanoes coexisted, and we told her about the Ring of Fire.

  Well, mostly I told her. Ben mostly moved the dinosaurs around to make it seem like a live-action science project.

  And then, when we were done telling the judges all the many interesting facts about volcanoes, I dumped half a box of baking soda and half a bottle of dishwashing liquid into the volcano. Some of the stuff didn’t actually make it all the way into the volcano, but I pretended like I’d done that on purpose.

  Then I poured on the lemon juice.

  And waited.

  I poured some more

  And waited.

  Okay, so our science project was a bust. I looked down at my feet.

  My scientific career at Woodbrook Elementary School was over.

  And then it happened.

  Our volcano erupted.

  All around us people started clapping and whistling. Including the judges.

  Including Aretha Timmons.

  chapter fifteen

  Our volcano didn’t win first place in the fourth-grade science fair.

  It didn’t win second or third place either.

  It did win an honorable mention, along with five other projects.

  Ben wore the honorable-mention ribbon pinned to his shirt to school the next day. “It’s the first ribbon I ever won,” he said when I told him it wasn’t like an Olympic medal or anything.

  “Didn’t you ever win a prize for your art?” I told him.

  Ben looked sad. “No, I told you, I’m not really allowed to be an artist. Art’s for girls.”

  Just then a pencil popped down so hard on Ben’s desk I thought it was going to pop straight through to the other side.

  “You talk too much about what’s for girls and what’s for boys and which side is smarter and a whole bunch of other stupid stuff,” Aretha said, glaring at Ben. “Girls can do anything they want, and boys can do anything they want.”

  Ben’s face brightened. “Maybe I could be a scientific artist. Like somebody who illustrates science books for schools or something.”

  “Who says you can’t be a regular, everyday sort of artist?” Aretha asked.

  “My dad.”

  Aretha shook her head. “You know what my dad says? When it’s time to sign up for the band in sixth grade, I can only play flute or clarinet. You know what instrument I’m going to play?”

  “Flute or clarinet?” Ben said.

  “No, I’m going to play the trombone,” Aretha told him. “Because I am a natural born trombone player, just like Mac here is a natural born scientist and you are a natural born artist.”

  “But what about your dad?” Ben asked.

  Aretha folded her arms across her chest. “He will have to learn to live with it.”

  Ben looked as if making your dad learn to live with something was a new idea to him.

  He looked as if it was an idea he liked.

  “Anyway,” Aretha said, sitting down in her desk. “I already have a great idea for next year’s science fair. But I’ll need your help. Both of you.”

  Did I mention that Aretha and Roland won second place in the fourth-grade science fair? The tape recorder kid got first prize.

  “Here’s a folder for you and one for you,” she said, handing me and Ben each a red binder. “Inside you’ll find some notes I made last night at the dinner table. You should ignore the spaghetti sauce stains.”

  At lunch Ben, Aretha, and I all sat together and talked about scientific stuff and comic-book stuff and compared allergies. Ben, it turns out, is allergic to poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac, which he found out at camp last summer. Aretha is allergic to eggs, so she has spent a lot of her spare time inventing egg-free cookie recipes.

  When I told them my list of everything I’m allergic to, I left off the part about girls. Aretha didn’t believe that it was possible to be allergic to purple. Ben pulled a purple pen out of his backpack and drew a picture of Derek the Destroyer on my arm. Little red spots popped up all around it.

  “See, I’m not kidding,” I said. “I really am allergic to purple.”

  “It’s all in your head, Mac,” Aretha said. “That
’s the only explanation.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  And then my arm started itching really, really bad. But Ben wouldn’t let me scratch it because he didn’t want me to mess up his picture, and Aretha wouldn’t let me scratch it because she wanted to take some scientific notes about my hives.

  I would never get in the way of somebody taking scientific notes. So I sat there a long time, until I thought my arm might fall off from the itchiness.

  In case you were wondering, it didn’t. But it might next time.

  Which, you have to admit, would be sort of cool.

  Scientifically speaking.

  MAC’S SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS

  A VERY SIMPLE VOLCANO

  What you’ll need:

  2-liter soda bottle ¼ cup dishwashing liquid about 6 drops of red food coloring ¼ cup baking soda ½ cup vinegar or lemon juice

  How to do it:

  Set the bottle in a roasting pan. Pour in the dishwashing liquid, food coloring, baking soda (you could use a funnel to pour on the baking soda, if you’ve got one handy), and vinegar. Then stand back and wait for your volcano to erupt!

  Note: If the lava isn’t actually making its way out of the bottle, pour in some water to get it flowing.

  So what happened?

  When you mix baking powder and vinegar, you create carbon dioxide, the same gas you’ll find in a real, live volcano. The gas bubbles build up in the bottle and force out the soapy lava mix.

  MICROWAVE MARSHMALLOW ROAST

  What you’ll need:

  2 jumbo-size mahshmallows a paper plate a microwave oven

  How to do it:

  Place the marhshmallows on the paper plate, and place the plate in the microwave with the help of a grown-up. Nuke the marshmallows for thirty seconds on high and watch as the marshmallows grow humongous. Remove the marshmallows and let them cool before touching them. Notice that as they cool, they start to deflate. They get really hard and yucky. You definitely don’t want to eat them.