Owen Foote, Mighty Scientist

by Stephanie Greene

  Owen could still remember how it felt to file into that room. How cool the Wizards looked in their white lab coats. To him, they looked like real scientists. He had been dreaming about wearing one of those coats ever since. He didn't think he could bear it if he got into any other fourth-grade class.

  Like Mrs. Grady's class. Or Ms. Holt's.

  Mrs. Grady loved English. The kids read a lot of books and wrote one of their own. They even had a real author come for a visit. Ms. Holt's class put on a play every year. They sang and danced in front of the whole school.

  After Joseph was in a play at camp, he talked about maybe being in Ms. Holt's class. But Owen knew he could talk him out of it. Especially once they won a prize at the science fair and Mr. Wozniak picked them for his class.

  Owen folded his paper and put it in his pack. No way was he going to write a book. Or sing and dance in front of the whole school. He was going to talk about lizards in a white lab coat. Little kids in the lower grades were going to stare at him when he walked by.

  When the bell rang, he slung his pack over his shoulder and got into line behind Joseph. They started snaking their way toward the door.

  "We'd better get to work right away," Owen said.

  "Maybe we should go to the library and get a few books," said Joseph.

  "We don't need books. I've got tons of ideas."

  "I already know what I'm going to do," said Anthony. He squeezed into line in front of Joseph. "My father's going to help me analyze blood samples. We're going to take photographs of cells and everything."

  "You don't know anything about blood samples," Owen said. "That's your father's job."

  "So?"

  "You heard Mrs. McBride," Joseph said. "We're supposed to do something by ourselves."

  "I will," said Anthony. "My dad will watch."

  "Yeah, right," Owen said. "Come on, Joseph. We don't need our parents to do our project."

  He shouldered his way past Anthony and started down the hall.

  "What are you guys doing?" Anthony called.

  "We haven't decided yet," shouted Owen.

  It wasn't until he turned into his driveway that it came to him. He and Joseph didn't have to waste time thinking of an idea. Owen already had one. The greatest science project in the whole world was sitting in his bedroom.

  Chuck.

  Owen could see it all now. A blue ribbon on his project. Mr. Wozniak leading Owen under the rainbow into his room.

  Chuck sitting calmly on the shoulder of Owen's white lab coat while kindergarteners gazed at them with open mouths.

  White lab coats, here we come! Owen thought excitedly.

  He could hardly wait to tell Joseph.

  3. Lizard Talk

  "Hi, Mom."

  Owen flung his pack onto a chair and put his lunch box beside the sink. "We got an announcement about the science fair. It's in three weeks. Joseph's coming over so him and me can decide what project to do."

  "He and I," his mother corrected.

  "Right." Owen opened the refrigerator and pulled out the vegetable drawer. "Actually, I already thought of a great idea. Want to hear it?"

  "Don't you think you should talk it over with Joseph first?" said Mrs. Foote. "You are a team."

  "Good idea." Owen grabbed a handful of lettuce, shut the drawer with his foot, and let the door close.

  "How many times have I asked you not to use your feet?" said his mom.

  "About a million." Lydia brushed past Owen and stuck her pencil in the electric sharpener next to the phone. "Owen never listens to what you say," she yelled over the noise.

  "I just pushed it," Owen said.

  Lydia blew on the sharpened point and glared at the lettuce in Owen's hand. "What are you trying to do, starve that horrible thing to death?"

  "If you really want to know, one of the biggest reasons reptiles die is because of overfeeding," Owen said.

  "Even so, Lydia may have a point," said Mrs. Foote. "Chuck's getting kind of big. Don't you think you should give him a little more than that?"

  "Trust me, Mom. I know what I'm doing," Owen said. "He doesn't get any exercise. I don't want him to get fat."

  "Can a lizard get fat on lettuce?" said his mom.

  "Owen thinks that just because he eats like a bird, everybody else should, too," Lydia said. "That's why he's such a shrimp."

  "Lydia, that was uncalled for," said Mrs. Foote. "At least I'm not fat, like some people," said Owen.

  "At least I don't look like a skeleton."

  "Fatty."

  "Bony."

  "Stop. Both of you," said Mrs. Foote. "Lydia, didn't you tell me you had homework to do?"

  "That's right, take Owen's side," Lydia said. "You always do."

  "What's bugging her?" said Owen as Lydia's bedroom door slammed.

  "She's not in a very good mood right now," said his mom.

  "She's never in a very good mood," said Owen. "What's wrong with her this time?"

  His mom sighed. "Remember how she and Kate auditioned for the spring concert last week?"

  "Yeah."

  "Lydia found out today that Kate got in and she didn't."

  "So? Kate can sing and she can't," said Owen. "What's the big deal?"

  "Kate's her best friend," said Mrs. Foote. "Try to imagine how you'd feel if it happened to you and Joseph."

  "Me and Joseph?" Owen scoffed. "Boys don't get into dumb things like that."

  "Boys have feelings, too, you know," said his mom.

  "Not about dumb stuff like that, they don't." Owen headed for the stairs. "Send Joseph up when he comes, okay?"

  Lydia had her music on full blast. Owen considered pounding on her door as he went past but didn't. The last thing he needed was for her to come into his room to retaliate.

  He wanted to be alone to think.

  He shut his door and went over to the aquarium. Chuck was lying on his heat rock. When Owen lifted up the lid, Chuck darted across the sand and hid under the bridge Owen had made out of rocks.

  "Hi, Chuck," Owen said. "Dinnertime."

  He dropped the lettuce onto the sand. Chuck darted out, latched onto a piece, and dragged it back to his hiding place. He chomped away at it with short, jerky bites, like he was mad.

  Owen sat back and watched him. He had been trying to bond with Chuck for a few weeks now. He wasn't sure Chuck liked him yet.

  Bonding with the newts had been easy. Chuck was different. Nothing Owen did calmed him down. Owen tried talking in a soothing voice. Stroking Chuck's back. Fixing rocks for him to climb on. Picking him up.

  The picking him up part was the worst. All the books said that the more you handled a lizard, the more relaxed it became. That's the way it had been with Socrates and Plato.

  Not with Chuck.

  Every time Owen picked Chuck up, he thrashed his legs and whipped his tail back and forth. Owen put him back down, fast. He knew Chuck's tail couldn't hurt him, but it looked pretty threatening.

  The bigger Chuck got, the more threatening it looked.

  Taking care of him was harder than Owen had expected. He'd never admit it, but Chuck made him just a tiny bit nervous. He wasn't going to give up, though. Especially now, when there was so much riding on it.

  Chuck finished the lettuce and crawled back onto his heat rock.

  "Good boy, that's a good boy," Owen said softly. He reached in and ran his finger gently along Chuck's back. One time. Then another. And another.

  Chuck's eyes slid slowly shut. His body seemed to relax. Owen kept stroking his back. He talked in a low voice. Maybe Chuck was at least beginning to recognize his voice, he thought.

  Maybe using a certain tone of voice was the secret.

  Owen had looked through his books to see if there was a certain way of talking that calmed lizards down.

  "Lizard talk" or something.

  Owen sat back on his heels in amazement. That was it!

  Lizard talk. That could be their project. Maybe he and Joseph could prove you could
train a lizard to recognize different voices. Maybe Chuck could learn to eat when Owen talked to him. And lie down when Joseph talked to him.

  Maybe they could even get him to do tricks.

  The more Owen thought about it, the more excited he got. He jumped up to get a pencil and some paper just as his door opened.

  It was Joseph.

  "My mother said she can drive us to the library," he said. He sat down on the edge of Owen's bed. "Wow. Chuck's getting big."

  "He grew two inches already," Owen said. "Seven more and he'll be a foot."

  He was so excited he could hardly sit still.

  "I got the greatest idea, Joseph," he said as he lifted the lid. "It's so cool. Wait till you hear it."

  "Wait a minute, Owen," said Joseph. He slid back on the bed as Owen picked a squirming Chuck out of his aquarium. His eyes were glued to Chuck's thrashing legs. "If your idea is about Chuck, maybe I should work on something by myself."

  "Are you joking? We always work together," Owen said. "See? There's nothing to it." He put Chuck in the palm of his hand and stroked his back firmly. Calm down, Chuck, he pleaded silently. Please. For once, calm down.

  "You just have to keep a firm grip on him," he said. "If you pet his back long enough, he stops kicking."

  "No, thanks." Joseph crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't want to get salmonella."

  "See? He's calming down already," said Owen. He felt a rush of gratitude for the way Chuck had suddenly relaxed. He was lying quietly in Owen's hand. The sides of his stomach were billowing gently in and out, in and out.

  He was staring straight ahead. It looked as if he was waiting for something.

  Owen felt giddy with relief. "I told you, there's nothing to it."

  Then what Chuck was waiting for arrived.

  His sides suddenly ballooned out, his body gave a convulsive shake, and he pooped. A warm, slippery, greenish-black poop with white stuff at one end slid out onto Owen's hand.

  Owen stared at it in disbelief.

  This was not the dry, harmless poop he scooped out of Plato's and Socrates' cage. This was disgusting. And it was sitting on his hand.

  "Gross!" Joseph shouted. He jumped up off the bed and ran to the other side of the room. "That stuff is riddled with germs!"

  Owen dumped Chuck back into his aquarium and shook his hand. The poop slid onto the rug at his feet. He grabbed a Kleenex and scrubbed his hand as hard as he could.

  The trick was not to think about it. He wanted to shout and yell and dunk his hand in sulfuric acid. But he knew he had to stay calm.

  He couldn't let Joseph knew how grossed out he was.

  Joseph was plastered up against the wall as if he was expecting the poop to attack him. Owen looked at him and shrugged. "It's no big deal," he lied.

  "Oh, yes, it is," said Joseph. His voice was trembling. "Don't you ever ask me to touch that lizard again. I mean it. That's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen."

  "Okay, okay. Calm down."

  Owen grabbed another Kleenex and a small plastic bag and crouched down. Chuck's little surprise didn't look any better the second time

  around. Owen took a deep breath and grabbed it.

  When he felt its squishy softness under his fingers, he almost shrieked. Instead, he stuffed the poop into the bag and held it away from his body with the tips of his fingers.

  "I'll be right back," he said.

  He bolted past Joseph and down the hall to the bathroom. He slammed the door and threw the bag into the trash. Then he put his hand under the faucet and turned the hot water on, full blast.

  He couldn't believe how grossed out he was. He'd thought he could take anything that had to do with lizards. But a wet poop?

  Owen didn't think he could bear it if Chuck did that to him again.

  He stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. Maybe Joseph wasn't the only one who never wanted to pick Chuck up. Owen wasn't sure he wanted to, either. But he couldn't worry about it now. He had more pressing problems.

  Like the science fair. If he and Joseph were still going to win, they had to come up with another idea.

  And fast.

  4. "Eureka!"

  "What are you doing?" said Joseph.

  Owen looked up from the floor of the garage. He was lying on his side with his knees pulled up to his chest. A length of thin wire was wound around his left wrist and his left ankle. The end of the wire was attached to a nine-volt battery.

  There was a pile of nails on the floor next to his head.

  "I'm trying to turn myself into a human battery," he said, "but it's not working."

  He lowered his head until the tip of his nose touched the top of the pile. Then he lifted it up slowly, hoping to drag a few of the nails along with him.

  The end of his nose remained empty.

  "Darn!" Owen sat up and started to unwind the wire from around his leg. "I thought maybe it would work. I bet they've never seen a human battery at the science fair before."

  "It sounds more like something you'd see at a carnival," Joseph said. "Like the one last summer where we saw the Smallest Horse in the World."

  "You mean the normal-sized pony they put in a pit so we were taller than it."

  "It looked pretty small." Joseph knelt down to help Owen put the nails back into their box. "Maybe the nails are too heavy," he said.

  "I tried paper clips," said Owen. "That didn't work, either."

  "You probably need a lot more power than a nine-volt battery."

  "Yeah, but then I'd electrocute myself." Owen got up off the floor and bunched the wire into a tight ball.

  "Maybe we should forget the human part," Joseph said. "We could use other materials like water and wood and—"

  "That's boring," Owen said impatiently. "Every one does stuff like that. There'll probably be about ten volcanoes and a hundred solar systems."

  He tossed the tangle of wire back on the shelf in disgust.

  He and Joseph had been trying for days to think of a good idea. All they'd come up with were boring projects anyone could do. Joseph thought some of them were fine.

  Owen didn't.

  Their project needed to prove something, he thought restlessly. He looked around the garage. It needed to involve something alive. Something that would make it special. More than just looking up facts and writing them down. Or drawing pictures and pasting them onto a presentation board.

  His eyes swept over the tools and gardening stuff and bicycles littering the garage. They stopped on the pile of fishing gear next to his dad's workbench.

  Wait a minute.

  Owen gazed at the small white container with holes in the side. His bait bucket. It was sitting next to the gray bucket he and his dad used for fishing.

  It was the same bucket Owen used every spring when he went down to the swamp.

  "That's it!" he shouted, rushing toward it. "I can't believe I didn't think of it before!"

  "Think of what?" said Joseph.

  "The swamp. I bet there are millions of them." Owen grabbed the gray bucket off the pile and held it out to Joseph.

  "Millions of what?" said Joseph.

  "Frog eggs," Owen said. He grabbed a white net off a hook. "The swamp at the back of Mrs. Gold's property is full of them this time of year, remember? Come on."

  He ran out of the garage and around the side of the house. They had a little less than two weeks, he thought as he led the way across the lawn. The peepers had been going crazy for the past week. Owen heard them every night when he got into bed.

  If the eggs were far enough along, they'd hatch into tadpoles in a few days.

  Then what?

  "Remember how many we hatched last year?" he said over his shoulder as they cut into the woods. "We must have had a million of them. It's perfect."

  "We can draw a diagram of their growth cycle," said Joseph, "and explain the stages and everything."

  "That's baby stuff," Owen said as they went past his tree fort at a full trot. "You read wh
at Mr. Wozniak wrote. A really good experiment has to have a hypothesis. You have to set up a question and then find the answer."

  "He didn't say we had to," panted Joseph. The bucket was banging against his leg as he hurried to keep up. "He said we could. Most kids won't have one."

  "That's why we have to." Owen veered off the path to the right and began pushing his way through a tangle of bushes. Prickers tore at his shirt. Honeysuckle vine wound itself around his ankles. He let a branch snap back and heard Joseph say, "Ouch."

  "Sorry," Owen said. He didn't stop or turn around.

  Usually, he went more slowly. He knew Joseph had a hard time with the vines. And he always held the branch so it wouldn't snap back and hit the person behind him. But Owen didn't have time for any of that now. He had to get to the swamp and see if they had a science project.

  Let them be there, he pleaded silently as he broke through into the clearing. Please let them be there. He narrowed his eyes and scanned the swamp in front of him.

  It was dotted with rotting tree trunks and fallen trees. The beaver lodge he and Joseph had walked out to when the swamp was frozen was bigger than ever. Chewed trees that looked like pencils lined the bank.

  In the early spring when the peepers were mating, the sound was deafening. Today it was quiet. Owen was searching the surface of the stagnant water when Joseph came crashing out onto the bank behind him. He doubled over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

  "Do you see any?" he said breathlessly.

  Owen shook his head. Maybe they were too late. Maybe the snakes and turtles had eaten them all. He turned toward the plop! a frog made as it leapt off the bank into the water to his left.

  That's when he saw it. A mass of cloudy jelly dotted with tiny black specks. It was wedged between a rock and a stick beneath the surface of the water.

  "Eureka!" Owen shouted.

  He twirled around and punched Joseph on the shoulder. This must have been what Lewis and Clark felt like when they saw the ocean, he thought excitedly. Or maybe Ben Franklin when he discovered electricity.

  "You get the water," he told Joseph. "I'll snag it with the net."

  "Maybe we should go home and get our boots first," said Joseph.