Chapter Four

The next morning before school, Mom and I quietly drop off the quesadilla on Diego’s doorstep. It’s still early, so we don’t want to knock on the door, just in case he is sleeping. We wrapped it safely in a glass food container and included a note welcoming him to the neighborhood signed by the three of us. Nick didn’t want to sign the note at first, until I told him Diego was wearing a Cubs baseball cap.

As we head back to the car, I turn to see Diego open the front door and grab the treat from his doorstep. He’s dressed in his work clothes. Once he reads the note, he waves to us.

“¡Muchas gracias!” he thanks us.

“¡De nada!” I shout you’re welcome from the car door.

On the way to school, Mom blasts salsa music, smiling and even shimmying to the beat. It’s only me and her in the car now that Nick is in high school. He gets a ride with his friend Jason since his school starts earlier than mine.

Mom plants a giant kiss on my cheek when we arrive at my school, Arlington Heights Elementary.

“Que tengas un buen día, mi estrella,” she says, telling me to have a great day.

I wipe the lipstick from my cheek. “You have the bestest day, Mamá,” I reply.

As I walk up to the school, I can feel itty-bitty butterflies fluttering in my stomach. I’ve always liked school, but it can be hard, too. Sometimes I feel like I stick out when all I want to do is hide like a hermit crab.

But now that I’m in fourth grade, I don’t feel quite as shy as I used to. That might be because I have class with my friends, but I think the real reason is that I have the best teacher this year.

“Hola, Ms. Benedetto,” I say when I enter the classroom. I hand her my completed homework.

Ms. Benedetto greets everyone with a warm smile, but she makes you feel like she’s only smiling for you.

“Buenos días, Stella,” she replies, looking up from her laptop.

Ms. Benedetto likes it when I speak Spanish. She even studied abroad in Spain during college. She says knowing two languages makes you smarter. It’s a relief to know that if I were to slip up and say a word in Spanish instead of English, she wouldn’t be upset with me.

For that reason and many more, Ms. Benedetto might be my all-time favorite teacher, or at least tied with Ms. Bell, my third-grade teacher.

“Howdy!” says Stanley, pulling out his chair. He sits next to me at our table of four. According to Stanley, everyone in Texas says howdy instead of hello, and even though he’s lived in Chicago for over a year now, he still greets people like a Texan. That’s one thing that makes Stanley a fun friend. He is never boring, because he has his own way of doing things.

“Did you finish your homework?” I ask, settling in at my desk.

Stanley nods. “I wrote my poem on outer space.” Stanley is as obsessed with space as I am with the oceans. In fact, today he’s wearing a new T-shirt with a picture of the solar system on it. He even went to NASA summer camp, where he became a junior explorer.

“I wrote mine on the oceans,” I reply.

I hear a guffaw.

“Could you be more predictable?” Ben Shaw says.

Ben is one of our other tablemates. Ben was in our class last year and knows about my ocean obsession. Ben has also been the class clown as long as I have known him, but this year, he is less funny and just plain mean. Like when Anna tripped over her shoelaces last week, he called her a klutz all day long.

“Haha, good one, Ben,” says Jeremy in between chuckles.

Jeremy is Ben’s friend and sits beside him at our table. He’s much quieter than Ben. That is, until Ben makes a joke. Then he falls over laughing and occasionally snorting.

Stanley and I roll our eyes.

The rest of the class trickles in before the bell rings. Jenny waves at me from the table next to mine. She’s seated next to her friend Anna and Anna’s best friend, Isabel. Chris Pollard makes up the fourth at their table. Chris used to hang out with Ben last year, but it seems like something’s changed between them.

Although Jenny and I might not be at the same table, it makes me happy to have Jenny back in my class again. I missed her a lot when we were in different classes last year. Now all I have to do is turn my head, and I can wave at my best friend. I also don’t have to worry about finding her at lunch, because we just walk to the cafeteria together. That’s simply amazing.

After the bell rings, Ms. Benedetto walks out in front of the class to go over the agenda. I notice she’s wearing her favorite pattern—animal print!—on her feet. Her shoes are zebra-print ballet flats. Ms. Benedetto loves animals. She’s even a vegetarian because she doesn’t want to harm a single one.

“Class, now that we’re a bit more adjusted to being back at school and all the permission slips are signed, we’re going to start an exciting way to learn science for the rest of the year. We’ll be doing weekly labs.”

I sit up tall and whisper to myself, “Yes, finally!”

Labs are definitely on my list of dreams for fourth grade. It fits nicely in the “big projects” section. Now if I can only get a ribbon or trophy for the labs, that would check a second item off my list.

She continues, “The idea is, we will work on projects or experiments built by your hands. Sometimes you might even need to problem solve to come up with unique solutions!”

Stanley and I look at each other.

“This is just like my summer camp,” he whispers as I nod in agreement.

We both made our own exciting projects at our camps over the summer. I made an enrichment toy for a dolphin to play with at the Shedd Aquarium summer camp, while Stanley made a robot at his NASA camp.

Ms. Benedetto explains, “For starters, I want you to select a partner at your table. This will be your partner till the end of the first six weeks.”

Without hesitation, Stanley and I decide to work together, while Ben and Jeremy pair up.

“Our first project is an edible project. We’ll be learning about plants and geology through creating a soil model,” says Ms. Benedetto.

“Ugh, does this mean we’re going to eat real soil?” Isabel asks.

Anna says, “My dog, Scout, eats soil. I don’t think it looks delicious.”

Ms. Benedetto laughs. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

As Ms. Benedetto demonstrates the different levels of soil on the whiteboard, we take careful notes. Then Ms. Benedetto drops off all the materials at each table, including rubber gloves.

“Scientists must keep their stations free of contamination,” she remarks.

As I put on my gloves, I squirm just imagining what gross things I might have to touch.

“You all may begin,” Ms. Benedetto says when she gets back to the front of the classroom. Then she adds, “Watch out for the red buckets. They have worms in them.”

I take a deep breath and peek inside the red bucket on the table between me and Stanley. I let out a sigh of relief when I see gummy worms, not real ones!

Stanley picks up the bucket. He asks, “Stella, would you ever eat a worm?”

“Maybe,” I reply, staring at my red-and-green gummy worm. Then I add, “The grasshoppers I had in Mexico were surprisingly delicious.”

I’m not lying either! The grasshoppers we had were called chapulines. We ate them with tortillas and avocado.

“Hmmm … I guess I’d give it a shot, then,” Stanley says, and then sticks a gummy worm into his mouth. He jiggles it with his fingers before he chomps down on it. Then he grins wide.

“Ew…,” I say, grimacing. “Not a live one, though.”

“No eating your materials until I say so,” announces Ms. Benedetto.

“Sorry!” Stanley replies.

Then we both burst into a giggle.

Ben rolls his eyes at us. “You guys are weird.”

“Why do you say that?” I demand. I can feel myself turning a little roja with anger, but Stanley shrugs it off. He is like a water-skipper bug. He lets rude comments glide beneath him like water.

“Weird is fun.” Stanley crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue. Then he nudges me. “Right, Stella?”

I nod, feeling much better. I try making the same face, but I can’t. I just keep laughing too much at Stanley’s silly expression.

Ms. Benedetto looks over at us and motions for us to be quiet. I mouth “Sorry” to her and zip my mouth shut.

“Whatever,” Ben mutters with a devious, sharklike smile.

The way Ben is acting is making me nervous, but I can’t pinpoint why. I even catch him whispering to Jeremy while looking at us. Fortunately, we have our project to worry about. We silently continue working on our individual soil models from the bottom up. We use chocolate morsels for the bedrock, chocolate pudding for the subsoil, chocolate wafers for the soil, and green-dyed coconut for the grass. Finally, we each place a gummy worm on top of our little jars.

By the time we finish our model, I couldn’t care less about what Ben said. That’s because Ms. Benedetto hands us each a spoon (reusable, of course!) and announces, “Good job, class! Time to ‘take a sample.’”

She pauses and looks at us. Our eyes must be as big as our sugary models. “This means one to two bites only,” she says. “You can have the rest at home with your parents.”

We take a couple of bites, and I make two conclusions using my skills of deduction. First, I’ve observed that learning about science can be delicious. Second, I have a hunch that Ben Shaw is up to no good.