Parker Bell and the Science of Friendship

by Cynthia Platt

  As Ms. Garcia dismissed class, Aidan stopped kicking his brothers and walked over to Parker.

  “Are you doing the Triathlon?” he asked her.

  “Of course!” she replied as she packed up her backpack.

  “Who are you going to team up with?” Aidan asked her.

  Parker couldn’t believe she and Aidan were talking about the Science Triathlon. They never talked about anything, let alone school stuff.

  “I’m teaming with Cassie,” Parker told him, because of course she was. She always did. “Why?”

  “No reason,” Aidan said. Without another word, he turned to join his brothers, grabbing Jaidan in a headlock and popping his backpack over his shoulder. She watched him as he left the classroom with his fellow triplets. Parker wondered if he might have been looking for a partner for the Science Triathlon, but then she realized what a crazy idea that was. The Dempsey Triplets were never serious about anything, let alone totally voluntary science projects.

  Besides, she and Cassie were a dynamic duo. A team of two, now and always. They didn’t need Aidan or anyone else to help them do science.

  At least, Parker had thought that was the case. Then Cassie came over, dragging her backpack and Theo Zachary behind her.

  “Good news!” Cassie told Parker. “Theo wants to do the Science Triathlon too, so I told him he could be on our team.” Her best friend in the whole world smiled at Theo, and Parker suddenly felt like she’d eaten a whole box of Snodgrass’s crickets at once and they were dancing all the way down to her stomach.

  Cassie hadn’t even checked with her before asking Theo to be on their team. Parker couldn’t believe this was happening.

  Sure, she still got to be on a team with Cassie. But now she had to work with Theo, too. The dynamic, scientific duo was going to be a not-so-dynamic, not-so-scientific trio.

  Being an award-winning scientist like Jane and Mae seemed about as likely to happen as Parker’s bus traveling at light speed on the way to school.

  Chapter 3

  Coders’ Club Science

  As soon as the bell rang, everyone filed out of the classroom. Parker sighed and slung her Morph-Bots backpack over her shoulders. She wanted to be excited to work with someone new, but she just wasn’t. Parker and Cassie were complementary angles, just like they’d learned in math. Cassie was a whiz at remembering stuff and Parker hated memorization. Cassie liked to engineer things on the computer and Parker liked to engineer things in real life. Cassie wore skinny jeans and plaid shirts, while Parker always wore dresses. Cassie was always on time and Parker was always late.

  They were two angles that fit together perfectly.

  Theo would just get in the way.

  When Parker climbed onto the bus, Theo was in her and Cassie’s seat again. This time, Cassie was sitting in front of him, leafing through her Science Triathlon packet. As soon as Parker plunked down in the fifth seat on the left, Cassie knelt on the bus seat so she could talk to Parker and Theo at the same time. Cassie clearly didn’t have the same doubts about this whole situation that Parker had.

  “It says here that all the Science Bee questions will be about weather and climate,” she told them. “Do you guys want to come over to my house tomorrow to start studying for it?”

  “Yes!” Parker said. Going to Cassie’s house was almost as good as being at home, especially when her little sister, Mara, was there. Plus, Cassie’s mom was a mathematician, and Parker loved talking numbers with her. The only downside was the food. Unless Cassie’s jaddah had come over recently to fill the fridge with her delicious cooking, Cassie’s parents usually got take-out. Disappointingly, Cassie’s grandmother didn’t visit that often, despite Parker’s obsession with her biryani. But that wasn’t Cassie’s fault. Not everyone’s parents could cook the way Parker’s dad could.

  Besides, Cassie had all the fact books in the world in her room. It might not have been a Mad Science Lab, but there was a lot of good information, which was just what they needed to start preparing for the Science Bee.

  “Theo, can you let your mom know that you need to go to Cassie’s tomorrow?” Parker said.

  Theo turned the brightest color of red Parker had ever seen anyone turn.

  “Theo?” Cassie said in a much quieter voice than Parker had used. “Can you come?”

  Theo didn’t say a word. He just nodded quickly and turned to look out the window.

  Parker took a deep breath. This was going to be bad. Really bad.

  * * *

  Things didn’t get better when Parker got to Cassie’s house the next day. Cassie’s mom let her in. “I think I might celebrate Pi Day early this year,” she said. “Maybe one of your dad’s apple pies will keep my students awake!”

  “How could anyone fall asleep in your calculus class?” Parker asked.

  “Not everyone likes math as much as you do,” Cassie’s mom replied. “When you’re in college, maybe you can take one of my courses.”

  That sounded like heaven to Parker. The only thing that could be better right now was some biryani, but there were no mouthwatering spicy smells coming from the kitchen. Which was too bad, because Parker could really go for some of Cassie’s jaddah’s yummy chicken and rice.

  When Parker went to Cassie’s room to help her BFF pick out the right trivia books for them to study, she discovered Theo was already there. He had a laptop open on his knees, and Cassie’s cat, Cleopatra, was curled up next to him.

  “Thanks for bringing my book back!” Cassie said, as Parker handed her BFF Lightning and Thunder and Hail—Oh My! Of course, Parker had borrowed it only because Cassie had kept telling her that she’d love it, even though it wasn’t really Parker’s thing. But Parker figured she would actually love it now that they needed it for the Science Bee.

  “The more books to study with, the better,” Parker said, as she grabbed another with 10,001 facts about the weather, as well as The Weather: Just the Facts! and another about hurricanes off Cassie’s shelf. Parker sat down under Cassie’s cartoon poster of Mario and the guy who created him, Shigeru Miyamoto.

  “These books are amazing!” Parker said. She and Cassie locked knuckles and made their fingers dance. “We are going to slay the Science Bee!”

  “We are,” Cassie agreed. “But that’s not all we have to help us study!”

  Since Parker had arrived at Cassie’s house, all Theo had done was look at his computer screen and pet the cat. He hadn’t said a single word other than “Hi” the whole time, not even to Cleopatra.

  Now he was grinning at Cassie, who grinned right back at him.

  “What do you mean?” Parker asked, feeling suddenly left out.

  “I’d already started to make an online trivia game in Coders’ Club, but I fixed it up to help us study!” Cassie said, opening her own laptop. “We answer science questions, and for each one we get right, we get a prize in the game.”

  “But don’t you know all the answers if you made the game?” Parker asked. “That will only help me and Theo, not you.”

  “My mom put all the questions in so I wouldn’t see the answers,” Cassie said. Then she smiled at Theo. “And Theo came over early to help me set up the game prizes,” she said. “He’s in the Coders’ Club too, remember? So now we can all play a game and get ready for the Science Bee!”

  Parker was kerflummoxed. She knew Theo had gotten to Cassie’s house before her, but she hadn’t realized that he’d gotten there early enough to help code a game.

  Cassie was looking at her expectantly, so Parker knew she had to say something. “That’s an awesome idea,” Parker told them. “Especially the prizes.”

  “Great! Then let’s start playing!”

  Cassie put her computer on Parker’s lap, then read the first trivia question out loud: “What do you call a hurricane in the Southern Hemisphere?”

  “T-Y-P-H-O-O-N?” Parker typed in the answer as she spoke.

  “No, a cyclone!” Cassie said. Parker was bummed she didn’t get a prize for
her first question, but it only made her want to get the next one right even more.

  “What do you call precipitation that forms as a liquid but freezes on the way down?” Parker read aloud from the laptop.

  S-L-E-E-T, she typed. Suddenly, the screen went bright yellow and the head of her most favorite Morph-Bot character appeared on the screen.

  “Ultra-Megabot!” Parker exclaimed. “This trivia game is amazing!”

  “I knew you’d like it,” Cassie said. “Every time you get a question right, you build another part of Ultra-Megabot.”

  Parker smiled, even though she knew you couldn’t build robots from the head down. You had to start with an internal engine, of course. She was about to tell Cassie that, but then decided it was more important to study for the Science Bee together. Plus, Cassie had picked rewards that were something Parker loved so much. She didn’t want her friend to think she didn’t like the game.

  “Theo likes Morph-Bots too,” Cassie told her. “So I thought this would be fun for both of you!”

  Or Cassie had made the game so Theo would love the prizes too. It was nice of Cassie to think of Theo, of course. But Parker had been much happier with the idea of Cassie thinking only about her.

  Parker knew she should say something polite in response to this news, but she didn’t want to. She looked down at the laptop to avoid having to reply. The next question had her stumped, though. “Does anyone know what type of cloud hail forms in?”

  Cassie shrugged. Her mom had put in some really hard questions!

  Then a very quiet voice came from the general direction of the cat. It wasn’t Cleopatra talking, though. It was Theo. Somehow it might have been less shocking if the cat had answered.

  “Cumulonimbus,” he almost whispered. It looked like he was telling the answer to the cat.

  It was so surprising to hear Theo talk that Parker didn’t know what to say.

  Finally, she asked him how to spell it. As soon as she typed in the letters, Ultra-Megabot’s neck and middle section appeared. Still not how to build a robot, Parker thought. But she pushed that thought aside and turned to consider Theo for a minute.

  Parker still did not want to share Cassie with Theo. But maybe he wouldn’t be such dead weight on their team after all.

  Chapter 4

  Molecules Have a Party

  On the day of the Science Bee, Cassie looked fierce in her I Know 10,001 Facts About Everything T-shirt. Parker looked fierce in her red dress with the asymmetrical skirt.

  After school, as the Science Bee was starting, Theo looked miserable.

  His face was as red as Parker’s dress and he kept looking down at the floor. Then he started biting his nails.

  “We’re doomed,” Parker whispered to Cassie.

  Her BFF shrugged. “It’ll be okay,” she said. “He’s just nervous. Plus, I studied hard for this.”

  “Me too,” Parker said. Even though she usually hated gaming and memorizing facts, she’d been using Cassie and Theo’s game constantly to prep for the Science Bee.

  She wanted to win science glory in the Triathlon! It wouldn’t be like winning a Nobel Prize, but it would still take her one step closer to being like Jane and Mae.

  Parker really wanted to be like Jane and Mae.

  What’s more, she wanted to beat the Dempsey Triplets, who’d surprised everyone by showing up after school for the Science Bee. Parker looked over at them. Braidan and Jaidan were making fart noises with their hands, but Aidan was reading a notebook instead of goofing off.

  How the Dempsey Triplets thought they were going to win a Science Bee was a puzzle, but having them there made Parker start to feel nervous too.

  She took a deep breath and held out her hand to Cassie. They locked knuckles and danced their fingers. Parker saw that Theo was watching. Never once, in the whole history of the handshake, had Parker or Cassie asked anyone else to do it.

  Until that moment, when Parker’s very best friend in the world held out her hand to Theo. They locked knuckles, but Theo didn’t dance his fingers at all.

  Parker wanted to be happy that Cassie had made a new friend. She really did.

  But mostly she wasn’t.

  So, when Cassie nudged her, it took Parker a second to figure out that Cassie wanted her to do their handshake with Theo too. Parker took a deep breath and held her hand out to him so he could do the secret handshake with her.

  She ended up bumping his hand and startling him. Theo’s hand dropped to his side and he made a funny face. Grandma Bell always said if you made a face like that, it might stick. Parker knew scientifically that wasn’t possible. But she still wished Theo wasn’t making that face at her.

  “Sorry,” Parker muttered, dropping her own hand.

  Each team had to sit together. Ms. Garcia had them move their desks into a circle, but Theo kept his desk a little ways apart from Parker’s and Cassie’s.

  Whatever hope Parker had had for Theo as a teammate was gone. He didn’t even want to sit with them. Or do the handshake with her. She and Cassie were perfect partners. Theo was just dead weight.

  * * *

  Fortunately, the first round of questions for the Science Bee was easy-peasy: Animals and Climate. At least, the questions were easy for Parker and Cassie. They made it to the next round without Theo’s help.

  Two of the six teams weren’t so lucky.

  That meant four teams were left for round two: All About the Water Cycle.

  The first few questions weren’t that hard if you’d studied. Which Parker and Cassie had. But so had the three girls on the team next to them. Parker recognized them from Mr. Tanner’s class, though she didn’t know their names. They gave the right answer without even hesitating.

  Then it was the Dempsey Triplets’ turn.

  “Name five main forms of precipitation,” Ms. Garcia asked.

  While Braidan and Jaidan had stopped making fart noises, they definitely didn’t look like they knew the answer.

  “Rain, drizzle, snow, sleet, and hail,” Aidan said.

  “Correct!” Ms. Garcia said. The Dempsey Triplets high-fived.

  Parker was kerflummoxed. Had Aidan really just answered that hard Science Bee question correctly?

  Next, a team of three boys from Ms. Chang’s class went down on a question about what happens to water when a teakettle boils. Parker wasn’t sure whether they didn’t know the answer or didn’t know what a teakettle was. Either way, they were out. They looked so embarrassed that Parker felt bad for them.

  That left just three teams for the start of the next round: Parker and Cassie and Theo, the three girls from Mr. Tanner’s class, and the Dempsey Triplets.

  Parker and her crew aced their next question about how water molecules behave as a solid, liquid, and gas.

  “When water freezes, the molecules clump together,” Cassie said.

  “And when they’re liquid, they move around and bounce off each other,” Parker added.

  They looked at Theo to see if he was going to answer the part about gas molecules.

  He bit his nails instead.

  This made Parker mad because she knew he had the answer. He’d gotten it right in the trivia game when they had practiced at Cassie’s house.

  Still, he didn’t say a word.

  “And when water’s a gas, the molecules move all over the place like they’re having a party,” Parker said.

  “Good work!” Ms. Garcia said.

  Then she asked the team of girls what kind of clouds produce hail. It was the same question Theo had gotten right at Cassie’s house! It seemed these girls didn’t know the answer, though. They looked at one another and shrugged.

  One of them finally guessed, “Cumulus?”

  Ms. Garcia shook her head. “Sorry, girls,” she said. Then she turned to the group. “Do either of the other teams know the answer?”

  Parker nudged Theo, trying to get him to respond before the Dempseys figured out the answer. It was his big moment to shine, after all. But T
heo didn’t seem to want to shine. He got even redder and hunched his tall self down really low in his seat.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Cassie said to him with a smile. She called out, “Cumulonimbus!”

  With a big grin, Ms. Garcia said, “That’s correct!” before moving on to the next question.

  “How has the amount of water on our planet changed over time?” she asked the Dempseys.

  There was no way these boys had the answer to this one, Parker thought. But she was wrong.

  “There’s always been the same amount of water,” Aidan said.

  “Which means that the water we drink now used to be dinosaur pee!” Jaidan added.

  Most of the other kids snickered, but Parker didn’t. How did Aidan know that answer? Something weird was going on. He was always goofing off in class. Had he been secretly paying attention?

  As she sat wondering, Parker’s team got a question about ice turning directly into a gas, which Cassie answered correctly. Parker knew the process was sublimation, but she was too distracted to speak up.

  Could the Dempsey Triplets actually win the Science Bee?

  Ms. Garcia lobbed another question at the brothers. “What percent of the earth’s water is freshwater?”

  This was a hard one. The kind of question you had to have really studied for to get right. And it seemed like only one of the triplets had done any studying.

  The Dempsey Triplets got in a huddle and mumbled until Aidan finally shook his head and said, “Twenty-five percent is freshwater?”

  But that wasn’t the right answer. Parker knew it wasn’t. She’d answered this trivia question in the video game and won Ultra-Megabot’s left leg with it.

  The Dempsey Triplets were out, but Parker’s team still had to answer this correctly to officially win. Ms. Garcia barely had a chance to read the question again to her team before Parker blurted out, “Three percent is freshwater!”