Yes, Maya. You read that right. Jordana threw up all over my sneakers.

My new sneakers.

My white sneakers.

My new white sneakers that were no longer white but were now covered in streaks of purply blue. There were also splashes on my shirt and on my shorts. I am not going to go into too much detail about the grossness of what it looked and felt like, but you should know that however you are imagining the situation, it was worse.

There was screaming, and not just by me.

By the time the bus doors opened, I could barely breathe, the smell was so bad.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Jordana said as she stumbled off the bus.

“It’s fine,” I said, even though it was not fine. My shoes were ruined, and I smelled disgusting. And what was I supposed to wear all day?

Ms. Brock and Ms. Hoffman were acting calm, as if kids puking on other kids was an everyday occurrence. “Lucy, I’m sorry, but we’ll figure something out,” said Ms. Hoffman. “Do you have anything to change into?”

“Um, no,” I said. Why would I bring backup clothes for a school trip? “Can I call my dad? Maybe he could get me a T-shirt or something from the gift shop.”

Ms. Brock bit her lip, then said, “I think that would be too much of a disruption. If this happened to any other kid in the class, we’d have to solve the problem ourselves.”

But I wasn’t any other kid in the class! Why was she so out to get me?

“I have an idea,” Ms. Hoffman said. “I brought my gym bag with me …”

And so that was how I ended up wearing a baggy EAGLE HILL ELEMENTARY ROCKS! T-shirt and rolled-up yoga pants to our field trip, while my cute outfit sat at the bottom of a plastic bag in my backpack, covered in yogurt vomit.

*  *  *

After I tried unsuccessfully to scrub my sneakers clean in the bathroom, Olive waved me over to where the other kids were gathered in the museum lobby. Ms. Hoffman and Ms. Brock were handing out sheets of paper and pencils.

“It’s time for our scavenger hunt. One sheet per team,” said Ms. Hoffman. “Use the museum exhibits on the first floor to help you. When you think you’ve found the answer, write the exhibit label number next to the question. We’ll all meet in the final location. After the scavenger hunt, we’ll have our dino dig contest and then we’ll finish on the top floor for the gems presentation!”

I couldn’t stop smelling myself. Hopefully to everyone else, the stench of blueberry throw-up wasn’t as strong as it was for me.

“Ew, you smell like garbage!” shouted Gabe Hicks.

Olive growled at him and pulled me away from the group.

“Ignore him,” she said. “Let’s focus.”

“Right. Focus. Okay, this should be a breeze,” I said, looking down at the paper. “I’ve been coming to this place since I was a baby.”

I read the first question out loud.

“This scaly giant terrorized Texas during the Cretaceous. That’s easy! It has to be Mosasaurus.”

Olive flipped her paper over to look at the back. “Are you sure? What about that dinosaur that looks like a T. rex?”

I shook my head. “You mean Acrocanthosaurus? Nope. Mosasaurus belongs to the Squamata order, which means ‘scaly.’ And it was a way deadlier predator than Acro.”

“Well, you’re the museum expert, I guess,” Olive said quietly.

“Exactly! Follow me!”

I led the way to the back of the museum, where the Texas Under the Sea exhibit was tucked away. We were the only ones there. That was a good sign—it meant we were the only ones on the right track.

I smiled as we stepped into the hall. The exhibit is an imagined scene from when Texas was covered by water. Most kids like the big dinosaur gallery best, with its bones and robotic dinosaur babies popping out of eggs. Texas Under the Sea is the oldest exhibit, so there aren’t any moving parts or touch screens. Most visitors skip it altogether. It is my favorite place in the whole museum.

“When I was little and had to come with Dad during the week, he’d take me down here and let me play while he worked on his laptop.” I pointed to the fabric kelp forest. “I used to take naps right there!”

“Aw, so sweet,” Olive said.

Blue light from the overhead projectors rippled over my face and arms. “Look at me—I’m swimming!”

We made our way around the sea fan replicas, through a pod of plaster squid hanging from the ceiling, to where the mosasaur was.

I stopped in my tracks. Ms. Brock stood gazing up at the gigantic swimming reptile.

“What is she doing here?” I whispered.

“She’s a chaperone!” Olive whispered back.

I frowned and craned my neck to read the exhibit label, hoping Ms. Brock wouldn’t see me, but she turned around.

“Oh! Lucy, you need to leave this hall. I probably shouldn’t—”

My cheeks burned. She couldn’t tell me where I was allowed to go. This was my special place!

“Just writing down the answer real quick,” I said, scribbling furiously. Then I grabbed Olive’s sleeve. “Got it! Come on, Olive. Let’s ‘leave this hall’ immediately.”

“Lucy!” called Ms. Brock.

But I scuttled out of there with Olive before Ms. Brock could tell us to use our “walking feet” or “inside voices.” I didn’t need someone to tell me how to behave in my own museum.

Olive and I rushed around, getting the next answer and the next. Well, I got the answers. Olive was less helpful.

“Lucy, are you sure it’s not—”

“I got this, come on!”

Clearly, the questions had been written to confuse the reader. But since I knew the museum so well, I could see through those tricks. In every hall we visited, we were the only kids there so we had to be the first ones to get things right.

“We are going to win!” I said as we rushed to find Ms. Hoffman in the Native Trees of the North Central Plains hall. I was feeling so great that I could almost ignore the smell wafting up from my shoes.

Gabe and Martin ran in just after us. Ha! We beat them! Even if they got all the answers right, we’d get more points since we were first.

But as Ms. Hoffman checked off our paper, her frown grew deeper and deeper. Uh-oh. When she handed it back, I couldn’t believe it.

“We got six questions wrong?” I cried, my stomach sinking.

Gabe and Martin barely held in their snickering as Ms. Hoffman handed their paper back. They had gotten every question right.

“It’s fine,” I told Olive through gritted teeth, even though I did not feel fine.

“We would have done well if you had listened to me,” said Olive. She flattened her lips and crossed her arms.

“Wait. You’re mad at me? Anyone could have made those mistakes!”

“No, not anyone,” said Olive. “That was a total Lucy move!”

What was that supposed to mean?

Once the other kids came in, Ms. Hoffman clapped her hands to get our attention. “All right, on to the mock dino dig! Follow me!”

“Hey, Lucer,” said Martin, making an L shape with his fingers while Gabe snickered. “I thought your dad worked here. Shouldn’t you know stuff about this place?”

I fumed. I would show them.

*  *  *

And I did show them. I showed them how spectacularly I could fail.

“But, Ms. Hoffman, that’s not fair,” I said, pointing to the replica bones that Gabe and Martin had uncovered at the dino dig. “A pterosaur femur and a woolly mammoth skull would never be buried in the same layer of sediment. Whoever set up this dig made serious errors!”

“Lucy …”

“We deserve a redo! Also, no one found the Torosaurus horn yet, so—”

“Oh, stop,” said Olive, throwing her shovel down in frustration.

“What’s wrong?” I asked my best friend. “Don’t you want to win?”

“You don’t get it,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“You’re not exactly being the best partner,” I told her.

“Fine, then maybe we shouldn’t be partners on anything anymore,” she said.

I stared at her in shock.

Ms. Hoffman clapped her hands again. “It’s time to head to the Hall of Gems, where we will be given a very special presentation.” She looked at me and winked. “And I hear that we may even have a special presenter.”

I smiled and tried to ignore Olive, who was glaring at me.

I didn’t know what Olive’s problem was, but now wasn’t the time to get into it.

I was about to have my big moment with Dad.

The Hall of Gems is my second-favorite place in the museum. It’s very dark, with special spotlights on the gemstones that make them glow like they’re on fire. Everywhere you look there are sparkling rubies, amethysts, geodes, and shards of brightly colored crystals. My classmates let out a long “ooooooh” when we got inside. I couldn’t wait until they saw our demo.

Dad was there in the middle of the hall, standing behind a table with a velvet tablecloth and a bunch of different boxes set out on top.

“Welcome, Eagles, to the Hall of Gems,” he said with his warm smile. “Before I begin, can I get a volunteer from the audience?”

Everyone’s hands shot up, but Dad pointed to me.

“Let’s have this young lady, right here,” he said.

I smiled and stepped up to the table.

He looked quizzically at my new outfit and raised an eyebrow. “What happened?”

“Long story,” I whispered.

He nodded and turned back to the presentation. “Inside these boxes,” he told the class, “I have some of our museum’s most special gems. The ones that we don’t usually let the public see.”

The kids all gasped as Dad opened the first box.

“The first one is a rare cat’s-eye emerald. All of our gems today start out as simple crystals of basic elements. All it takes to turn them into these gorgeous objects is a little pressure and a lot of time.” He nodded at me. “Madam assistant, would you please take this precious gem around so everyone in our audience can get a closer look?”

I nodded and held the box out, showing each of my classmates. I felt very special to be the only kid who got to hold the gems.

I made sure to hold the box as far away from Gabe Hicks as possible.

Then I showed the next specimens: the Grimhurst Amethyst, the Edwardian Crystal, even a shard of amber with a real extinct species of dragonfly trapped inside.

Shivani Bhasin, one of the girls in my class, said, “Mr., uh, Dr. Usathorn, are we going to get to see a diamond today?”

“Everyone always asks about diamonds,” Dad said. “And yes, we do have one here today. The first diamonds were discovered in India over two thousand years ago.”

Dad reached for the last box on the table, a purple box, and opened it. The diamond was the size of a walnut.

“Diamonds have become symbols of marriage. Of promises. Of weddings. The first time one was used was in the fourteen hundreds, actually, when …” His eyes locked on Ms. Brock, and he fell silent. Then, very slowly, his face lit up.

“… when the Archduke of Austria proposed marriage,” he continued. Then he nodded to himself. “You know what? I think I’ll need an assistant for this part, too …”

I stepped forward, but then he added, “… Ms. Brock, could you help me, please?”

I froze. Ms. Brock suddenly went as pale as fluorite. She gulped and stepped forward to join Dad at the table.

“This diamond is very, very valuable,” he said. “It’s not mine to keep or give away. But while beautiful and rare, it cannot compare in beauty or rarity to the person who is standing before me today …”

What?

And then it happened.

Dad got down on one knee.

I gasped. Everyone gasped.

“It usually takes a little pressure and a lot of time to figure out what you want in life. But sometimes you have to just seize the moment. Karina Brock, will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?”

No. No way. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

My father was proposing to Ms. Brock?!

Here?!

In front of everyone?!

My eyes filled with tears.

Then I turned around, broke into a run, and sprinted out of the hall.