Spencer’s mom expects him to win the Nobel Prize in physics or chemistry someday. Spencer himself has begun to have his doubts.
He’s a genius, according to his mother. According to his father too, sort of. When his father says so, it’s in the context of, “Okay, genius, knock off the dissertation and go cut the grass!” Or, “Get your genius apparatus off the kitchen table so I can figure out what’s wrong with my amplifier.”
His mom, Maureen Maguire Haggerty, admits to being a little pushy sometimes but insists she isn’t that way by nature. She was just a happy-go-lucky teenager when she dropped out of college to marry a struggling young musician who happened to be drop-dead gorgeous, and for years they lived large together, gig-to-gig and hand-to-mouth, until Spencer came along. If Spencer had been a normal baby who just slept and pooped all the time, Maureen Maguire Haggerty would have settled down to being a normal mother, whatever that was. Maybe even have more kids.
But from the first week, if not the first hour, Spencer was no ordinary baby. Everybody remarked on how attentive he was. “The nurses all said it looked exactly like you were thinking about them, the way you looked at things with your big blue eyes,” his mom likes to say. And of course, he talked early and walked early, knew all the letters of the alphabet by the time he was two, and could read (not recite) The Cat in the Hat before kindergarten.
Raising a genius became a full-time job for Maureen Maguire Haggerty, who bought classical music for him to listen to and Baby Einstein DVDs to watch and flashcards to look at. As soon as he was old enough, she started enrolling him in science clubs and summer enrichment programs. Now that he’s on the list for Space Camp, she is quietly checking out universities and scholarships.
Meanwhile his dad, Chuck Haggerty, the struggling musician, bought a house and half a music store. Running the store and teaching guitar and playing local gigs with his band, Whiplash, keeps him so busy he doesn’t have much to say about Spencer’s educational opportunities—except for the occasional, “Where we gonna get the money for that?” But in spite of his (sometimes) sarcastic comments, he agrees that Spencer is unusually bright and should be encouraged. “As long as we’re not too pushy. Let him enjoy being a kid.”
Spencer enjoys being a kid, but he mostly enjoys being a genius. Except lately, not so much.
“What are you doing for the science fair?” Igor asks him as they gather at the gazebo on the first day after winter break.
Igor is not what you’d call the academic type; normally he’d be asking everybody what they got for Christmas (Spencer got a NASA-rated telescope and an Ultra-Tetris game pack). So it’s funny, and a little disturbing, that the first thing out of Igor’s mouth this morning would be the very thing Spencer is starting to worry about. “Why?”
“’Cause I’m going to have the coolest project this year! I got the idea right after Christmas. I gotta scoop out the competition.” Igor is talking so fast his words pile up on the cold air in little puffs of steam.
“You mean ‘scope out.’ What’s your project?”
“It’s a secret. And I’m gonna do it all by myself with no help. So what’s yours?”
Igor’s as eager as a squirmy little puppy, so Spencer decides to tell him. Not that it’s a big secret: “Mouse maze.”
“Awesome! You mean, with real mice?”
“Duh. What’s the alternative—windup mice?”
“What are they supposed to do?”
“Run around in the maze—what else?” These questions are beginning to irritate him.
“Cool! I asked you first because you’re sure to have the best project. But it won’t beat mine.”
The bus arrives, a blob of yellow on the gray landscape, rolling to a stop in a cloud of exhaust. The Thompsons’ SUV pulls up at the same moment and ejects Bender from the backseat, but just as Mrs. Thompson steps on the accelerator, the STOP sign swings out from the side of the bus. She’s so frustrated she almost lays on her horn but taps it instead, making a peevish little toot. Bender moseys over to the bus, taking his time to join the end of the line.
Spencer observes the drama while waiting to board.
“They’re splitting up,” says Shelly to Miranda, directly behind him.
“What? Who?”
“Bender’s folks. Didn’t you notice the for sale sign in their yard? His dad moved out when they got back from Colorado.”
“How do you know?”
“Mrs. Thompson asked my mom to review her sales contracts, like Mr. Thompson used to do. It’ll be a little extra money since Mom quit her job. But not enough.” As he steps up into the bus, Spencer glances back to see Shelly make a face and nibble a fingernail.
Igor grabs a seat in front of Kaitlynn and immediately turns around to “scoop out” her science project. Jay boards last after dashing across the common. “Slept late,” he explains, settling in next to Spencer. “Winter break ought to last a month, like they do in college.”
The STOP sign snaps, and immediately Mrs. Thompson dodges around the bus, gunning the motor. “Did you hear about Bender?” Spencer asks Jay.
“Hear what?”
“His mom and dad are splitting up.”
“Oh. Too bad. That must be why he’s been such a jerk lately.”
“What do you mean, lately?”
“Yeah.” Jay yawns again. “Good point. Hey, me and Poppy made our play-offs chart last night. You want to hear my picks?”
“Sure,” Spencer says, knowing he doesn’t have much choice. Every January, Jay and his grandfather draw up their projected Super Bowl play-off teams, with winners and point spreads. That means football talk for a whole month, or actually from mid-December to mid-February. Spencer puts up with it. Jay is in the middle of a long-winded comparison between the Patriots and the Giants when Bender yells from the back of the bus.
“HEY!” Heads turn to the back where he sits straight as a pencil. “We didn’t stop!”
It’s true—instead of slowing and turning on Farm Road 152, the bus barreled right by.
“What’s going on?” Bender demands.
“It’s not on the route anymore,” Mrs. B calls back.
“How come?”
“Is that any of your business?” The driver is keeping her eyes forward.
Bender slumps back in his seat, arms crossed and brow furrowed, as though thinking through one of his math problems. Meanwhile, a scuffling in the seat in front of Spencer earns a roar from Mrs. B.
“Sit DOWN, Igor!”
“Dang,” Igor mutters, shrinking back to his place in front of Kaitlynn. “Jay!” he hisses across the aisle. “Catch you later!”
“What’s he all excited about?” Jay asks Spencer.
“Science fair.”
“Dude.” Jay’s jaw creaks with another yawn. “Science fair’s not for weeks. Who’s thinking about it now?”
• • •
Spencer, that’s who. Science fair is a very big deal around his house, since he’s supposed to win the Nobel Prize someday. Ever since third grade, when his mom came down hard on his desire to build a plaster volcano (“No volcanoes. If you can’t do something original, don’t do anything.”), he’d come up with a bigger and better project every year. This year especially, because sixth-graders are eligible to go to the regional science fair in March and state in May. Then on to nationals in June. He’s aiming for state, though nationals would be fine with him too.
His project had sounded promising at first. “I’m going to build a mouse maze,” he told his mom early in October.
“Great. And what will you investigate with the maze?”
He hadn’t thought far beyond the basic idea, mostly because he just wanted to build a maze. Mazes were cool. “Um…test their memory.”
“Sounds good. How?”
He did some online research and discovered several nutritional supplements that were supposed to feed the frontal lobe—the section of the brain mostly responsible for memory. The most extravagant claims were for milk thistle, a substance he’d never heard of. But it was available at the local health food store.
So there was his plan: buy the mice, build the maze, run the trials, and keep careful records to determine if herbal supplements really had any effect on the critters’ memories. He should have started in November, but his mom signed him up for an interactive “Live Cam in Space” project that required a lot of prep, and his Youth Court duties took up way more time than he expected.
In December, his “normal kid” regulator kicked in: with Christmas and winter break, who wanted to worry about the science fair? After a little prodding from his mom, he purchased three pairs of mice in various colors, which he named Lucy and Linus, Albert and Marie, and George and Martha. He kept the sexes apart, or at least tried to, until he discovered George building a nest. So Georgina went into the ladies’ cage and Spencer kept the babies as alternates, even though two of them died tragically young.
The mice are the raw material for his experiment but don’t actually get down to business until the first weekend in January. “It’ll be awesome,” he tells Jay, who’s helping build the maze.
“I guess,” Jay says as he lets Lucy crawl over his hand. He’s supposed to be cutting corrugated cardboard strips. “These things feel creepy with their itty bitty paws.”
“Put it back. They shouldn’t be handled too much—it might interfere with the data.”
“‘Interfere with the data’? That’s so scientific, dude. Hey, what if you breed a superior race of mice that remember where you put your gym shoes? You could teach ’em to communicate and sell ’em in little cages so they could be carried right along with us and—argh! It pooped on me!”
“They do that a lot. Put it back, okay? No, not in the boys’ cage—the other one!”
“Stupid mice.” Jay returns Lucy to her cage, a converted aquarium with a screen wire top. “For little things, they sure do stink.”
“They eat all the time. So they poop all the time. That’s what my research has uncovered so far.”
“Cool. I didn’t know science could be so…”
“Interesting? Useful?”
“No…poopy.”
Spencer hadn’t realized how science could be so frustrating. Earlier projects from third, fourth, and fifth grade involved bread mold, sunflowers, and earthworms. They had also involved help from his mother, but both agreed he was going to do it on his own this year. That might have been the kind of resolution made to be broken, except that last fall, Chuck Haggerty bought out his partner to become sole owner of the music store, and Maureen Maguire Haggerty is really busy with bookkeeping and taxes. So whenever Spencer starts to ask her a project-related question, she shakes her head. “Uh-uh. It’s strictly hands-off this year, remember? Look it up or ask Mr. Betts.”
Mr. Betts is his science teacher but not much better than his mom when it comes to questions. He seldom gives a straight answer but makes suggestions about how you can find it out on your own, which is really helpful. Not.
So Spencer is on his own, even when Georgina croaks and Martha escapes and Lucy and Albert nibble holes in his cardboard maze because he left them in there too long. Or, worst of all, show no improvement in memory whatsoever, even when he ups the dosage or combines memory-boosting supplements. He keeps careful records on his laptop—except for the three days’ worth that he accidentally deleted and couldn’t get back. And that week he was sick with the flu. But no matter how he views the data, it still says the same thing. Which is nothing.
“Well, then,” his mother says after three weeks. “That’s your result. ‘Commonly marketed herbal supplements promoted as memory enhancers are shown to have no discernible effect on laboratory mice.’” She’s slicing beef for sukiyaki and can’t help looking disappointed because his project isn’t sexy enough to go to state.
“That’s not very interesting,” Spencer mutters.
“Except now you know what doesn’t work—”
“You know what?” his dad chimes in while crossing the kitchen from the garage. “I’ll bet most scientific research is boring as a box of rocks. Ninety percent, at least.”
“Don’t discourage him, Chuck—”
“I’m not. That’s just a fact. I’ll write a song about it; that’ll be interesting.”
What makes it worse is that his peers in the neighborhood—well, some of them…okay, two of them—are really getting into the fair this year. Igor still refuses to say what his project is, only that it’ll be the best ever. Hard to believe, because Igor went the volcano route in fourth grade and nothing before. This year, he’s not only entering, but he continues to be very interested in the competition.
“What are you doing?” he asks everybody on the bus, even the Brothers Calamity (who just laugh at him). When asked, Matthew shrugs, Kaitlynn cheerfully admits to making a volcano, Miranda’s has something to do with plants, and whatever Alice says is soon forgotten. Shelly gasps, “Science project?! My camp application is due in four weeks! I have to finish my demo CD!”
Jay is studying the salt-replacing effects of Gatorade, and Bender is making a shrunken head.
“Wow!” gasps Igor. “A real one?”
Bender snorts. “Why bother if it’s not real? I’ve been reading up on how they do it in South America.”
Igor is so excited he’s halfway over the seat. “So how do they do it in South America?”
“Sit down, Igor!” Mrs. B yells from the front.
“First,” says Bender, “you take off the head of the victim.”
Jay, who is sitting with Spencer across the aisle, joins the conversation. “But don’t you have to ask them if you can borrow it?”
“Whatever. Then you peel the skin from the skull and throw the skull away.”
Spencer is intrigued in spite of himself. “Why don’t you keep it?”
“Okay, you keep it if you want a nice pencil holder for your desk. But for the skin, first you boil it till it shrinks to about half-size, then turn it inside out and scrape all the flesh off and let it dry for at least a day. Then you sew the mouth and eyes closed and stuff it with hot rocks to make it shrink even more. After about three days—”
“Okay, okay,” Igor interrupts. “It’s not for real, right?”
“Of course it’s for real. That’s how they did it—do it.”
“But you’re not going to get a real head and—”
“I think beheading is against the law,” Spencer points out.
“Definitely,” Jay agrees.
“Uh-huh,” Bender says. “Ever hear of medical schools? And morgues?”
Of course, everybody hears about Bender’s project from Igor, and at least it steals interest from Spencer’s pathetic little mouse maze. He wishes he’d never even thought of the idea now—it’s totally lame. Or maybe if he’d started it sooner…but how could he, with track and extra credit reading in social studies and the glee club Christmas show? And by the way, how smart was that, to let the music teacher talk him into glee club as a way of “branching out”? During the second session of Youth Court this month, he got in a shouting match with one of the defendants and had to be suspended (“recused”) from the case by Mr. Pearsall, who later asked him if he was feeling stressed.
He’ll probably get a good grade on the science project, as well as encouraging remarks and reminders—lots of them—that research is one part inspiration and nine parts perspiration. Also that Thomas Edison tried, like, three thousand six hundred seventy-two different filaments before he came up with the one for his incandescent lightbulb. But still, boring as a box of rocks, as his dad says, even though some girls will think the mice are cute.
“There’s always next year!” his mom says brightly.
But actually, science fair is only a symptom of the real problem.
The real problem is Spencer is starting to think he’s not genius material after all. Only smart enough to get into the gifted and talented program where, instead of math drills and spelling tests, you do group projects and enrichment circles (which are really easier but that’s a secret nobody tells).
His doubts began with the physics camp in St. Louis last summer. It was a little over his head, but that was only to be expected since most of the participants were one or two grades above him. One of the speakers was an astronomer from McDonald Observatory who took them to the Science Center Planetarium and talked about supernovas and black holes. To tell the truth, Spencer couldn’t follow a lot of it, but the parts he did understand sounded really cool. The guy kept mentioning this book: A Brief History of Time.
So when Spencer got back from camp, he checked out the book from the library. It’s by this guy Stephen Hawking, a physicist with ALS. That’s a disease that twisted his body so he looks like a pretzel. But ALS didn’t affect his brain.
Chapter One was okay, but Spencer read Chapter Two twice and felt even dumber the second time. Of course, he was only twelve and lacked a few basic concepts (as his mom said) so he returned the book to the library and forgot about it…
Until the morning he passes Matthew on the bus and happens to notice he’s reading a book and immediately recognizes the cover because Stephen Hawking is hard to mistake: A Brief History of Time.
He stops so abruptly Jay runs into him. “Hey!”
Spencer is staring, which he knows is rude but he can’t help it. “Do you get that book?” he blurts out.
Matthew looks up, startled. “Huh?”
“That book. Do you understand it?”
“Yeah…mostly.”
“Move it, dude,” Jay says behind him. Spencer moves, but it’s like he’s sleepwalking.
Matthew understands! Matthew and Stephen Hawking are homies! Matthew the weird, the silent, is just possibly a genius. Don’t they say Einstein was kind of a weird kid too?
“What’s up with you?” Jay asks. “You mad at somebody?”
“No.” But actually, yes.
It bothers him so much that that afternoon, after the bus has emptied and its passengers are scattering, Spencer catches up to Matthew at the bend of Courtney Circle, where Meadow Lane runs to a cul-de-sac.
“So,” Spencer says, panting, “are you doing a science project on that book or what?”
Matthew glances around like he’s looking for an escape. “Why?”
“I just want to know. Because…because I read it last summer.” Stupid, he thinks. If Matthew asks him anything about it, he’s dead in the water.
“I’m interested,” Matthew says, and after a pause, “Is that okay?”
“Sure it is. I just wondered if you were doing anything with it.”
Matthew’s expression changes from irritated to cornered again. “What if I am?”
“Nothing! I just—” Spencer has to stop. What does he just, after all? “Well, are you?”
“Only if my mother makes me,” says Matthew. “Bye.” He stalks away toward his house on the south side of the cul-de-sac. Spencer lingers a moment, telling himself to chill.
But Rude Shock Number Two awaits him at home: Marie, one of the mice in his control group, has expired. In other words, croaked. She’s lying in a corner of the cage with her tiny claws curled up while Lucy sniffs around interestedly, like she might take a nibble. “I can’t believe this! Do real scientists go through mice this fast?”
“I’m sure they do.” His mother, drawn from her desk by his cry of dismay, shakes her head in sympathy. “Dozens of them. Maybe you should have started a month earlier and set up a breeding operation in the garage so you’d have all the mice you needed. But hindsight’s 20/20.”
“It was a stupid idea. I wish I’d never even thought of it.”
“It was a good idea, Spencer. It just needed a little more setup time.”
“I was busy.”
“You were too busy. I was afraid you’d get overcommitted with Youth Court and glee club, and it looks like you did. Next year, you’ll have to set some priorities and—”
“I don’t want to do this next year. I don’t want to do anything!”
“Come on, sweetie. Every scientist has setbacks. Genius is one part inspiration and—”
“I’m not a genius!” Spencer throws his jacket, which catches the mouse cage by one corner and knocks the lid askew. Then he picks up the maze and slams it on the table top, jarring some of the walls loose.
“Spencer! What’s gotten into you?” his mother yells. “Stop that right now! It’s not like you have all the time in the world to put it back together.”
“Who says I’m putting it back together?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I am not entering this inane project!”
“Yes, you are!” She throws herself between him and his maze, her red hair blazing. Along with the rest of her. Though he’s tall enough now for them to see eye to eye, she more than matches his determination. “I did not raise a quitter!” She’s practically screaming. “This was your idea, and what you start, you finish!”
This is more excitement than the mice have seen in all their short, experimental lives and much more than Spencer wants. After realizing he can’t punch his mom, he unclenches his fists. “Okay. Okay. I’ll finish the stupid project, but I’ll probably get a C on it, and I don’t even care.”
“Don’t use that snarky tone with me, young man. Go to your room!”
She hasn’t sent him to his room since he was ten. He rolls his eyes as he goes, and an hour later, he refuses to come out for dinner. “Fine!” snaps his mom, flouncing away from the door. The soles of her Nikes, which must have picked up something sticky in the kitchen, squelch angrily down the hall. Spencer tunes them out as he lies on his bed, staring up at the phosphorescent stars he and his mom stuck on the ceiling years ago.
Reputations are hard to lose once you have one. For instance, everybody labels Bender as a bully, not without reason. But Bender also has an amazing number sense that people don’t see because they’re not looking for it. Or Igor is supposed to be dumb because his grades are poor as dirt. But he can strategize with the best, as Spencer knows from playing World at War with (and losing to) him. And Jay’s the typical average student, but since his grandfather taught him to play chess, he’s won two school tournaments and beats Spencer three times out of four.
“Everybody is smart in their own way,” his mom likes to say, even though she obviously thinks his way is the best: letter-, number-, book-smart. Straight-A-smart. But not genius-smart. In fact, genius probably has nothing to do with the kind of smart Spencer is. How much longer can he get away with it?
A knock comes about seven o’clock. “What?” Spencer says.
“What yourself?” says the voice outside.
Spencer sighs, sitting up on the bed. “Come in, Dad.”
The doorknob turns and his father glides in, one hand gripping the neck of an acoustic guitar—a Martin, not top of the line, but close. He closes the door behind him. “So what’s the drama queen scene around here?”
“Didn’t Mom tell you?”
“Well, yeah—if you want to call it ‘telling.’ With all the dashes and exclamation marks and hah!—hah!—” Here his dad imitates perfectly the sharp, angry sighs Mom uses for punctuation when she’s upset. “With all that, I’m not sure I got the whole story.”
Spencer has to smile, a little. “You probably got most of it.”
His dad ambles across the carpet and sinks down on the bed. Chuck Haggerty is still good-looking, as dads go—Shelly, who takes guitar lessons from him, once told Spencer his dad was hot. Which is not a word that should apply to a parent, but that’s just Shelly. Chuck tosses a lock of wavy brown hair out of his eyes with a sideways jerk. “Mind if I tune while we talk?” Spencer shrugs, and his dad plays a soft chord, frowning at the sour tone. Tightening one of the keys, he asks, “So what’s the deal, genius?”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Whoa, man.” (Twannnng! goes a string.) “What’s the matter, pushed your hot button? You find somebody smarter than you?”
Spencer is so startled he answers honestly. “Uh, yeah. Maybe.”
His father nods, plucking the opening bass riff from “Heartbreak Hotel.” “Right. Word of wisdom from your old man: get over it.”
Spencer swallows. “That’s three words.”
“Who’s counting? Listen, I was just a few years older than you when I decided I was going to play the greatest guitar since Jimi Hendrix.”
“Who?”
Chuck shakes his head. “Kids today. You’re talkin’ guitar hero?” He hunches over the Martin, and his right hand swoops down on the strings, ripping out a series of chords. “That was Jimi. My one ambition: good as him. Or better, that would be okay too.”
“Is there some kind of…Jimmy Henderson Guitar Olympics you could compete in?”
“Hendrix. As a matter of fact, there is. The annual Hendrix Last Man Standing Play-offs in Seattle. Jimi’s hometown.”
Sometimes Spencer suspects his dad is making stuff up. “Let me guess. You were not the last man standing.”
“Buddy, I didn’t even get to Seattle.” Absently, Chuck strums a series of bluesy chords. “Bunch of us got together in Des Moines to put a purse together for the winner to go to the big show. All-night jam in the Rough House Club, winner by acclamation. I came in third. In Des Moines.” His fingers still strumming, his eyes go somewhere else.
“That’s tough,” Spencer says after a minute.
The faraway eyes return. “That’s life, buddy. Win some, lose some.” (Ta da! sing the strings.) “And there’s always compensation. Like you.” Chuck Haggerty reaches forward, claps a hand on Spencer’s head, and tousles his red hair, something he hasn’t done since Spencer was maybe nine. “Hey, now I’ve got her tuned, you want to take her for a ride?” He means the guitar.
“I don’t think so. Not now—”
“Yes, now. Music hath charms, y’know. To soothe the savage beast.”
Chuck hands over the instrument, and Spencer has to take it. Sighing, he plays a G chord. Then plays it again, note by note. “The C string sounds a little off.”
“Good ear.” His dad nods. “See if you can get it back on.” Spencer tightens the key, plucking the string continuously until it sounds right to him. “That’s it. Now wing off.”
Spencer plays a succession of C, G, and D—all the chords he knows. He plays them again in a different order, then allows his dad to show him an easy fingering pattern for stepping between the chords. It’s kind of fun, actually.
“Cool!” says Chuck. “Let me grab the Gib, and we’ll jam.” The Gib is his prize Gibson that only he is allowed to play.
Spencer quickly hands over the guitar. “Not now, Dad. I’ve got a big algebra test tomorrow, and I’m so behind I’ll probably have to study for it.”
“Yeah…okay.” Chuck takes the instrument reluctantly, remembering what he came in for. “And this science fair thing? Think you ought to finish what you start ’n’ all that?”
“Yeah. I’ll finish it.”
“Rockin’.” His dad socks him gently on the shoulder before standing up. “Next year? Do something without mice. They stink, man. And remember we still love ya, even if you don’t turn out to be a boy wonder.”
Spencer kind of smiles as his dad shuts the door behind him, but he doesn’t feel much better. It isn’t his mother’s standards he’s trying to meet, not anymore. It’s his own.
• • •
“There!” exclaims his mom. “I don’t know about you, but I think it looks very professional!”
Once they’ve set it up in the junior high gym, his project looks better than he thought it would. His display board catches the eye in a way that distracts from how boring the results are. He’s also made a little booklet with biographies of all the mice—some details invented—including epitaphs for the ones who had died in the line of duty. (“Cute!” his mother says. “Imaginative—the judges’ll like that.”) The maze occupies the space in front of the display board, with a fresh coat of spray paint to disguise the patched holes. Tomorrow he’ll bring his two best-performing mice and run them through as part of his presentation.
This might not be so bad after all.
The other exhibits are mostly run-of-the-mill. Bender has not come through with a shrunken head—no surprise. Igor’s supersecret project turns out to be a display board about snakes. Spencer doesn’t take time to read it; though neat enough, he doesn’t expect it to win more than a participation ribbon. Alice’s project makes him pause—it’s about spinal cord injuries and how they affect the motor skills of victims, especially with walking. She used a naked Ken doll, its back discreetly turned to the passersby, to show the connection of nerves and muscles in the lower spine. She also made a booklet of rehab exercises. He takes a minute to thumb through the booklet with its carefully drawn pictures and handwriting that slopes downward on the page. Behind him, passing kids snigger at Ken’s plastic butt.
Spencer sees a few more projects likely to win first and second-place ribbons, but his chances of winning best of show, and maybe going on to regionals, are looking pretty good.
On the way out, they meet Matthew and his mother coming in. With a box and a display board. Instantly, Spencer feels his confidence take a dive from a thirty-foot tower without a bungee cord.
“Hi, Camille,” says his mom. “So Matthew has a project this year?”
“Just barely,” replies Ms. Tupper. “He finished it less than an hour ago. And if it weren’t for my being an obnoxious nag about it, we wouldn’t be here at all.”
“I know the feeling,” Maureen Maguire Haggerty says, and Spencer grimaces. It’s the first time he’s felt any kinship with Matthew—mother trouble—though Matthew’s face doesn’t show anything.
“What’s your project on?” he asks.
Matthew looks up in that quick, defensive way he has, as though startled anyone would notice him. “Physics.”
“Better go,” his mom says. “We’ll barely have time to set up as it is.”
With a round of “see you’s,” they part company. “Well,” says Mom, once they’re out of earshot, “I didn’t notice any competition, did you?”
Spencer shakes his head, but now he’s not too sure.
• • •
Loading the bus next morning takes longer than usual because of extra baggage—all the bits and pieces of projects that didn’t get set up the night before, especially among the littles. Also, it’s stuffed animal day for the kindergartners, meaning an argument between Mrs. B and Igor’s little brother Al over whether his giant gorilla should be allowed to take up a whole seat. “Okay,” she finally allows. “But if the bus is full on the way home, the gorilla stays behind. Comprende?”
Spencer brings Lucy and Linus, his best runners, in a small plastic cage. Kaitlynn thinks they’re adorable. “Please, can I hold them?”
“Sure.” He doesn’t care if she takes them home, once they’ve done their run for the judges. He never wants to see another mouse. “Just don’t open the cage.”
“Of course not!”
“Did you see my project last night?” Igor asks eagerly. “What do you think?”
“Um, looks nice.”
“Wait’ll the judging comes up.” Igor hugs his backpack. “Just wait.”
“O-kaay.”
“Everybody sit down!” Mrs. B yells. “Bender, are you staying there?”
Bender, who is three seats from the back instead of his usual rear-most position, just nods. While taking a seat beside Jay, Spencer notices a little smile on Bender’s face and wonders what he’s up to. Shelly and Miranda are two seats in front of him and Jay, Igor just behind Bender, Kaitlynn in the middle of the bus, Matthew in the second seat from the back, as usual. Spencer eyes Matthew before sitting down: no apparent extra equipment for his project. Get a grip, he tells himself. Just because Matthew was reading that book one time doesn’t mean squat. He could have lied about understanding it. And a project about “physics” could be anything, like a solar system model made of Styrofoam balls.
Alice boards last and takes a seat by herself, just in front of Kaitlynn. “Want to see some adorable mice?” Kaitlynn asks her.
“Don’t open that cage!” Mrs. B calls back.
“I’m not!”
The bus pulls away from the subdivision, rolls down Farm Road 216, pauses at the corner, and pulls out on the highway.
“Attention, people! I have another service project,” Shelly announces.
“You’re moving to Alaska?” Bender asks. “As a public service?”
Shelly ignores him. “It’s a canned food drive. Tomorrow I’m going—”
“We’re going,” Miranda corrects her.
“Miranda and I are going around the neighborhood with a bag for each house. Put any canned goods you can spare in the bag, and we’ll be back to pick them up on—”
Bender takes something out of his backpack—something a little smaller than a baseball. “Here, catch!” he calls, throwing it in Shelly’s direction.
At that point, all heck breaks loose.
She catches the object, turns it, and screams, throwing it back without aiming. It lands on Igor’s lap.
Igor jumps up, spilling his backpack to the floor. “A shrunken head!” he yells. “Bender made a SHRUNKEN HEAD!” He kicks the object behind him, where it rolls in front of Matthew, who jumps up with a strangled cry and kicks the head down the aisle.
“WHAT THE SAM HILL IS GOING ON BACK THERE?!” yells Mrs. B. Except she doesn’t exactly say Sam Hill.
“Bender did it!” Shelly screams. “He threw that thing at me!”
“It’s a shrunken head!” Igor yells over her.
“No, it’s not!” Bender shouted. “It’s just a—”
“Bender! You are in big trouble—”
Kaitlynn lets loose with an absolutely every-hair-on-your-arm-raising scream: “SNAKE! There’s a snake on the floor! I saw it!”
It should be illegal to yell such a thing on a school bus. But it’s apparently true—little kids are now screaming, “Snake! Snake!” and climbing up on their seats. And Igor is shouting, “Don’t hurt her! She’s mine—don’t stomp her, please!”
Spencer seems to be the only one sitting still. Jay is on his feet, peering ahead, shouting “Where? Where?” Almost everybody is shouting by now, except Mrs. B. Spencer notices the bus turning right and bumping down the familiar half-mile of Farm Road 152. Just like old times, the bus pulls even with the shed then backs into the crossroads. Mrs. B jerks the gearshift, swings the door lever, and charges down the aisle. She grabs Alice by the upper arm and pulls her back toward the front, yelling, “Everybody off! Now! Except you, Igor. And Bender. You two stay and catch the snake.”
“Can I stay too?” Jay asks.
“Everybody! Don’t argue with me!” Mrs. B has pushed Alice through the door—Spencer is wondering why start with her, unless Mrs. B thought the girl was too quiet and inconspicuous to even move on her own—and now the driver is practically shoving the hysterical littles after Alice, one by one. Snakes are cold-blooded, Spencer remembers, and would head for the heat, like somebody’s pant leg. That thought makes him want to get someplace cold, really quick.
Jay is grumbling behind him, “I’ll bet I’m the best snake catcher on this bus.”
Meanwhile Igor moans, “She’s harmless! Don’t step on her, please.” The girls are pale as marshmallows but at least they’re quiet, even Kaitlynn.
Evacuating a bus on a January morning, with shreds of gray cloud spitting snow, turns out not to be fun. The littles huddle together in the bus shed, guarded by Mrs. B, who keeps yelling at them to “Stay right here! Don’t wander off! Right here!” Spencer, Jay, and the girls are closer to the bus door, where Jay keeps trying to see in.
“Don’t even think about it, Jay!” Mrs. B calls.
“Think about what? Dude,” he mutters, “I just want to know what’s going on.” They can hear the thump of feet inside and the muffled voices of the two boys shouting at each other: “I see her!” “Get over by the emergency window—no, the other one!”
“Hey, Shelly,” says Jay, “you want to see what Bender threw at you?” He takes it out of his jacket, a roundish object on a string. One side of it is covered with coarse black hair that turns out to be a patch of fake fur. The other side looks somewhat like a face, with a piggish nose and black beans for eyes, one of which has fallen out.
“It’s just a dried-up apple,” Jay says.
“That is so lame,” Shelly sniffs.
“Bender might get expelled for this,” says Miranda.
“Igor should too,” says Shelly. “Who’s insane enough to bring a live snake on a bus?”
Kaitlynn still hasn’t said a thing. When Alice asks her, “What kind of snake is it?” she just stares.
“Where’s Matthew?” shouts Mrs. B.
“I’ll look,” Spencer volunteers. Earlier he noticed Matthew wandering to the back of the shed, so he follows. Coming around the corner, he sees the other boy bending to pick up something from the ground. Spencer notices lines that look like bike tracks in the sandy soil. Or like two bikes running parallel. Or like a wheelchair? Curious.
“What’s that?” he asks as Matthew studies the object he picked up.
Matthew jerks in surprise. “I don’t know. Some kind of belt buckle or…I don’t know.” Reluctantly, he holds it out: a rectangular piece of pewter-colored metal with an eagle on it, wings spread as though ready to take flight.
“Might be valuable,” Spencer says.
“Maybe.” Matthew sticks it in his jacket pocket.
“You might be stealing,” Spencer says, more pointedly.
“Finders keepers. I guess.”
“So…” Spencer awkwardly gets around to what he really wants to know. “Did you set up your project in time?” Matthew nods in reply, his eyes on the ground. “What’s it about? Besides ‘physics’?”
“Black holes.”
“Really?” Spencer feels his stomach tightening. “What about them?”
Matthew glances around, like he hopes for an alternate universe to open up nearby. Why can’t he ever just look at anybody? “Like…equations based on general relativity and a computer model of what it would take to turn our sun into a black hole.”
Spencer opens his mouth to say something totally fake like, “Sounds cool,” when a shout from the bus breaks off the conversation.
They run around the shed. Two boys are standing in the open doorway of the bus. Igor holds a rippling orange-and-gold corn snake by the neck. If a snake can be said to have a neck. “See? She’s nice. Her name’s Cornelia, and my stepdad got her for Christmas. She’s the best part of my science project, and I was going to show and tell about her during the judging today. Only my backpack fell over when Shelly threw that head at me and—”
“I didn’t throw it at you!” Shelly sputters.
“Hey, Spence,” Bender says. “Sorry about the little rodent.” He holds out a clenched fist, from which something is swinging by the tail: Lucy, who appears to be deceased, stiff little legs splayed like a tick’s. “At least we rescued it before Cornelia got her jaws on it. The other one got away.”
All at once, Kaitlynn starts talking again. “I just opened the cage to pet them, one time, then I closed it again, only I guess it wasn’t closed all the way, because when I saw that snake, I jumped and the mouse cage hit the floor and I’m really sorry because now your project is ruined and….”
Spencer’s reaction surprises everybody, most of all himself. He laughs. In fact, he laughs so hard his legs can’t hold him up anymore, and he collapses on the rough gravel road.