Science Fair Read online

  “Absolutely,” said Tamara. “‘Packaging: The Deadly Killer in Your Home.’ You don’t think that’s a winner?”

  “I think,” said Toby, “you were better off with the bees.”

  NOTHING HAPPENED DURING detention except for Coach Herman Furman yelling at nobody in particular to keep it down.

  When detention finally ended, Toby slung his backpack over his shoulder and hurried down the near-empty hallway to the front door. He burst out into a spring afternoon of sunshine, humid air, and the thunk of aluminum bats from the ball field, where members of Hubble Middle’s baseball team—the Fighting Orbital Observatories, a.k.a the Foos—were practicing.

  Toby started to cross the parking lot, the shortest route to the mall. He’d gone five steps when he saw an ancient yellow AMC Gremlin—with two faces staring at him through the bug-stained windshield.

  Darth and the Wookiee.

  Toby froze for a moment, during which the Wookiee creaked open the passenger door and climbed out. For a big guy, he moved fast.

  Toby turned and ran. A voice behind him shouted “Wait!” But Toby kept running, straight onto the baseball infield.

  “Hey!” shouted a coach. “Off the field!”

  “Sorry!” shouted Toby, not slowing down. He sprinted past the infielders into the outfield. He glanced back over his shoulder: the Wookiee, not daring to chase him onto the field and draw the attention of the coaches, had veered right and was running behind the bleachers alongside the first-base line. The detour slowed him down; Toby had gained some time. He crossed the outfield and, with effort, clambered over a six-foot wooden fence into a backyard. As he dropped down the other side, he glanced back and saw that the Wookiee was well behind.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was that the yard contained a dog. A very, very large dog, wide and hairy, like a cross between a rottweiler and the Goodyear blimp. It was coming toward Toby, making an unpleasant sound deep in its throat, its lips pulled back to reveal two rows of drool-drenched daggers.

  “Nice doggy,” said Toby, although this was not his actual opinion of the Goodyear rottweiler. He backed up until he was pressed against the fence. He felt something behind him. The backpack.

  He quickly peeled it off and dug down into it until he found the hummus-and-onion sandwich his mom had packed him for lunch. He had not eaten it; it smelled like a dead llama. He yanked it out and heaved it, still wrapped in aluminum foil, toward the dog, who snatched it from the air with a terrifyingly loud clack of its teeth and gulped it down, foil and all.

  With the dog momentarily distracted, Toby slung the backpack onto his shoulder and turned, intending to vault the fence. He got his hands on top of it and was about to hoist himself over when he heard a snarl and felt himself being yanked violently backward by the shoulder strap, which was attached to his backpack, which was in the mouth of the dog, which apparently desired another tasty helping of hummus, onion, and aluminum foil.

  Toby wriggled out of the backpack and staggered to his feet. He got his hands on the top of the fence again and, with a desperate, fear-powered leap, hurled himself over it headfirst. At exactly that moment, three feet to Toby’s left, the Wookiee vaulted over the fence going the other way.

  “Hey!” shouted the Wookiee. He reached out to grab Toby but missed, his momentum carrying him over the fence. As Toby tumbled to the ground, he heard the dog snarl and the Wookiee scream—a surprisingly high-pitched sound coming from a human that size. Toby scrambled to his feet and sprinted along the fence, going several more yards before he finally reached the street.

  He turned and looked back. The Wookiee was scrambling back over the fence, using one arm to climb and the other to beat the dog with…

  Toby’s backpack.

  The Wookiee was over the fence now. Toby noted that his clothes were torn, and he was bleeding from his arms. This did not seem to have improved his mood. Seeing Toby, the Wookiee roared and began running, still holding the backpack. Toby turned, crossed the street, and ran down a driveway and into another backyard. He vaulted a low picket fence, crossed the connecting yard, and hurried out into the next street.

  He glanced back: the Wookiee was gaining.

  Toby sprinted across the street and plunged into a muddy slosh, a tangle of brambles and wild shrubs littered with trash. Just beyond lay the railroad tracks. Toby slogged through the mud, thorns scratching his arms, his new white Discount Warehouse sneakers sinking into the stink. He found firmer ground as he reached the railroad embankment. Behind him, he heard the Wookiee crashing through the brambles and cursing. He’d found the thorns, too.

  As he neared the top of the railroad embankment, Toby saw two things—one good and one bad. The good thing was, a freight train was coming. A long one. If he could get across the tracks, the train might block the Wookiee and enable Toby to get away. The bad thing was, sitting directly across the tracks was a police car with a policeman inside.

  * * *

  Unlike his fellow officers, Lucius Broyle didn’t mind Choo Choo Patrol. The assignment was to apprehend students who took the shortcut across the railroad tracks. Young people had done this for many generations; in fact, Officer Broyle had crossed these same tracks at this very spot many times in his own youth. Nobody had ever been hurt, but in recent years, track-crossing—like rock-throwing, tree-climbing, whittling, spitting, unsupervised play, and countless other things young people once did routinely—had been deemed too dangerous, and the Choo Choo Patrol had been instituted. It appealed to Officer Broyle because it mostly consisted of doing nothing. This gave him time to work on his secret hobby: knitting. At the moment he was in the middle of a very tricky section of a sweater pattern he’d found on a knitting blog called Needles on Fire.

  Toby weighed his options. The policeman hadn’t seen him yet; he seemed to be occupied with something in his lap. To Toby’s right, the train was very close. Behind him, the Wookiee was charging through the bushes. In a few seconds he’d be on the embankment, and Toby would be caught.

  The sound of the train broke Officer Broyle’s concentration. He looked up and saw a boy standing by the tracks on the other side.

  “Hey!” he shouted. He yanked the door handle and started to climb out, at the same time tossing the sweater aside, knowing that this action could very well cost him an entire row of critical stitches. “HEY!” he repeated, his voice drowned out by the train.

  The Wookiee, still holding Toby’s backpack, crashed through the bushes and up the embankment. He roared in rage: the train was rumbling past, blocking him from following the boy. He stood next to the tracks, his face only a few feet from the freight cars, ready to dash across as soon as the train passed. He waited impatiently until he saw the green caboose approaching and then finally passing him. As it did, he ran around behind it…directly into the arms of Officer Lucius Broyle.

  Toby, crouched in the bushes a few yards away, watched the Wookiee run into the policeman, the two of them almost falling over. There followed a heated exchange, in which the officer demanded to know where the boy was, while the Wookiee pointed out that he was clearly not a boy, and since when was it against the law to cross railroad tracks?

  While they argued, Toby crept through the bushes until he was far enough away to dart across the tracks unseen. He hurried down the other side of the embankment and up the street to the Looper Avenue overpass, a concrete bridge that spanned State Highway 9. He was halfway across when something yellow flashed in the corner of his eye: the Gremlin. He glanced over and found himself looking at Darth, who was driving very slowly, keeping pace with Toby’s trot, his passenger-side window cranked down. Toby looked back at the road and resumed trotting.

  “You owe me a refund,” said Darth, in a voice that Toby realized, with horror, actually sounded like Vader’s—deep and creepy. Toby took another glance and saw that the guy had some kind of black box, with a knob and switches, strapped to his mouth.

  “Do not,” Toby panted. The end of t
he overpass was only twenty yards ahead. Once clear, he could drop down the embankment and escape this lunatic.

  “The autograph is a fake,” said Darth.

  “No, it’s not,” panted Toby. “My father got that at the premiere. He saw Harrison Ford sign it, in person.”

  “Your father is a liar,” said Darth, jerking his head so angrily that he bumped the knob on his black box, changing the setting from Lord of the Dark Side to Chipmunk.

  “You owe me $2,038,” he said, sounding like Chip, or possibly Dale. Quickly he readjusted the knob back to Darth. “And you’re going to give it to me,” he said, “or you and your family will pay.”

  “But I can’t…” Toby said.

  “You WILL pay me!” said Darth, stomping on the accelerator, which, in the case of the Gremlin, mainly resulted in backfiring accompanied by a slight increase in speed. Toby stopped and caught his breath as he watched it disappear up the street.

  He started walking, considering his plight. He had two maniacs chasing him; one of them had his backpack. The only way to get rid of the maniacs was to pay them a ton of money, and the only way to get that was to win the science fair. And he had no project yet. And his new white sneakers were dark brown and smelled like a toilet. Other than that, things were going great.

  Toby reached the end of the overpass, turned down the embankment, and began trudging toward the mall.

  WANDERING OAKS MALL was considered to be one of the three or four most upscale malls in the Bethesda, Maryland, area. It had all of the major high-end department stores, including a Bergstram’s, a Wentmickler’s, a Plock & Hingle, a Frempner’s, a Winkle & Curd, and a Storkbutters. Surrounding these retail giants were hundreds of smaller stores selling hundreds of thousands of upscale products that nobody actually needed. There was a store that sold just corkscrews (it was called Just Corkscrews) and two stores devoted entirely to fragrant little soaps shaped like animals.

  Almost all of these stores were clean, brightly lit, and welcoming, with attractive, ever-changing merchandise displays. The lone exception was the Science Nook. It was at the far end of the highest concourse, and it violated many of the Wandering Oaks tenant rules. It was open at odd hours, and some days it did not open at all. It was dimly lit and often emitted strange sounds and odors. The display window contained a bizarre collection of apparently random objects—a snorkel mask, a toilet plunger, a Hello Kitty vanity mirror, a spatula, and many deceased insects. The proprietor and sole staff member was a man named Neal Sternabite, who was never seen without sunglasses, and whose hair appeared to have been styled by crazed squirrels.

  The store attracted little business; its customer base consisted of eccentric experimenters and science enthusiasts, many of them as odd as Sternabite himself. He tolerated the regulars but was generally rude to unsuspecting shoppers who wandered in. He disliked answering what he considered to be stupid questions—this meant most questions—and he routinely ordered shoppers who annoyed him to leave the store. He once threw his lunch (the number-six lunch platter from the House of China restaurant in the Wandering Oaks food court) at a man who attempted to return what he claimed was a defective circuit board.

  “The BOARD is not defective,” yelled Sternabite, as the man ran from the store with kung pao chicken dripping down his shirt. “YOU are defective!”

  Many people wondered how the Science Nook was allowed to remain at Wandering Oaks. In fact, the mall had tried to evict Sternabite several years earlier. The mall manager, a man named Dwight Craven, delivered the eviction letter to Sternabite personally. Sternabite read it, then handed it back to Craven and said, “You don’t want to do that.”

  “Yes, I do,” said Craven.

  “All right,” said Sternabite. Immediately the electricity went out in Wandering Oaks Mall. All the concourses and stores went dark; the air-conditioning system shut down; all the stores’ computer screens went blank. Even the phones stopped working.

  Except in the Science Nook. The lights stayed on there.

  Craven looked out at the suddenly dark mall, heard the shouts of alarm from shoppers and the cries of fear from children. He turned back to Sternabite.

  “What did you do?” he said.

  “How could I do anything?” said Sternabite. “I’m standing here talking to you.”

  “We’re not finished,” said Craven, walking quickly from the store to deal with the emergency.

  “No,” said Sternabite, “we’re not.”

  For the rest of that day, and all of the next day, engineers for the electric and telephone companies tried to restore power to the mall. They checked every connection and ran every test; the found nothing wrong. Yet the mall—except for the Science Nook—remained dark.

  “We’ve never seen anything like this,” one of the engineers told Craven. “It’s almost like there’s some kind of…force field in the mall, interfering with the grid. But of course that’s impossible.”

  “Of course,” said Craven.

  On the third powerless day, with the mall stores losing small fortunes and threatening large lawsuits, Craven went to the Science Nook, where he found Sternabite sitting behind the counter, sunglasses on, reading a Stephen King novel.

  “Turn the electricity back on,” said Craven.

  “How can I do that?” said Sternabite.

  “I don’t know,” said Craven. “But if you do, I’ll tear up the eviction letter.”

  “You could write another letter,” said Sternabite.

  “I promise I won’t,” said Craven.

  “You’d better not,” said Sternabite.

  And the lights came back on.

  Craven turned and looked, blinking, at his once-again brilliant mall. He turned back and looked at Sternabite, who had not, as far as Craven could tell, moved a muscle. Without a word, Craven walked quickly out of the Science Nook. He had never gone back in.

  So the Science Nook stayed in business, serving its small, weird clientele. But once a year, at science-fair time, business improved as students from Hubble Middle showed up, lured by the rumor that the Science Nook sold things that were unavailable elsewhere—things that could be used to make a science-fair project that the judges would notice.

  On this particular afternoon, the first students to arrive were Micah, who was carrying a Tupperware container, and Tamara. When they arrived, the Science Nook appeared to be empty. They looked around the store for a minute, but there was little to see other than cardboard boxes scattered around the floor, some empty, some containing electrical components, and one filled with what appeared to be eggplants. Also, in a back corner of the store on a battered wooden cabinet, was a large stuffed owl.

  “Do you think he’s here?” said Micah.

  “He must be,” said Tamara. “The store’s open.”

  “Maybe he’s in the back,” said Micah. He wandered over to the counter and saw a row of four buttons.

  “There’s some buttons here,” he said. “Maybe one’s a buzzer.”

  “Try it,” said Tamara.

  Micah pushed a button. Nothing happened. He pushed another. Nothing. He pushed a third. Instantly there was a loud BANG, as one of the eggplants exploded, sending eggplant innards all over the store, some clinging to the walls and ceiling. The rest of the eggplants were hurled out of the now-destroyed box and landed all around the store. As Tamara and Micah stood frozen, a door opened, and Sternabite came out of the back room.

  “I’m sorry!” said Micah. “I didn’t know…”

  “Which button did you push?” said Sternabite.

  “Th…this one,” said Micah, pointing.

  Sternabite looked at the button, nodded, and said, “Good.”

  There was a pause of about thirty seconds, during which nobody said anything. Finally, Micah realized that there was going to be no further discussion of the exploding eggplant. He said, “I need a magnet.”

  “What for?” said Sternabite.

  “To levitate a frog,” said Micah.

&
nbsp; If Sternabite found this unusual, he gave no indication. “Hubble science fair?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Micah.

  “Did you bring the frog?” said Sternabite.

  “In here,” said Micah, setting the Tupperware container on the counter. “His name is Fester.”

  Sternabite removed the lid and looked at Fester. “Hmm,” he said, more to Fester than to Micah.

  “Do you have a magnet that’ll work?” said Micah.

  “I can sell you the magnet for forty dollars,” said Sternabite. “That’s not the problem.”

  “What’s the problem?” said Micah.

  “Power supply,” said Sternabite. “You only get 110 AC in the Hubble gym. You need more than that. A lot more.”

  “So he can’t do his project?” said Tamara, brushing eggplant innards from her hair.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Sternabite. He turned to Toby. “Come back tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got an old cold-fusion reactor I can lend you. Weighs about two pounds, supplies 150,000 watts.”

  “Cold fusion?” said Micah. “I thought that was impossible.”

  Sternabite snorted. “It is impossible,” he said, “for morons.”

  “But is it safe?” said Tamara. “All those watts?”

  “He should be fine,” said Sternabite, looking at Fester.

  “I meant,” said Tamara, “is it safe for people.”

  Sternabite thought about it. “Probably,” he said.

  Tamara was about to ask another question when from behind her came the distinctively whiny voice of Harmonee Prescott, saying, “What are they doing here?”

  Tamara and Micah turned to see Harmonee, Jason Niles, Haley Hess, and The Ferret entering the store. “Yeah,” said Haley, frowning. “What are you doing here?”

  “They’re leaving,” said Jason Niles, looming over Micah. “Aren’t you, Mucus?”

  Micah quickly resealed Fester’s container, turned to Sternabite, and said, “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “Right,” said Sternabite, his eyes on the ME kids. Micah and Tamara headed for the door.