Jennifer squinted. “I see it,” she said. “But are you sure it’s math?”
“Absolutely,” said Adam. “That star on the left — that’s a calculator, plus a math review workbook and seven number-two pencils.”
They laughed, but not enough. Orion’s calculator reminded Adam about tabulating the bully results, and he got quiet again.
“Does church help?” he asked.
“Help?” said Jennifer. “Help what?”
“You know, having faith that things will turn out right?”
“You mean like the bully survey?” said Jennifer.
“Well, no. Well kind of, yeah. But just in general,” said Adam. “I guess I wonder if I’m missing something. We don’t go to church like you.”
“So you’re afraid God won’t help you?” said Jennifer. “Is that why you won’t let me resign? You think I’m better connected upstairs?”
Jennifer glanced Adam’s way and caught a small smile, then quickly looked at the stars again. It was the only way to talk about this.
“You make it sound like a joke,” he said. “I’m serious.”
“I know,” said Jennifer. “Do you believe in God?”
Adam took a while to answer. “I only see two explanations for this,” he said, pointing at the spectacular night sky. “Either it’s infinite — there’s always been matter, always will be. Or God got it started. But here’s the weird part I think about — either way, you need faith. I mean, you can explain what infinite is — anyone can memorize Devillio’s definition — but you can’t really comprehend it. You can’t get your brain around this thought that there’s no beginning to the universe, that it’s always been there. So I figure you get your pick: faith in infinity or faith in God.”
“You didn’t answer,” she said. “Which one?”
“I don’t know,” said Adam. “At night I believe in God, or at least I pray. Especially when I’m full of worries. It’s not like a real prayer. I don’t know any real prayers. I just made up this thing thanking God for all the good stuff in my life and asking Him to look after me and my parents and my grandpa Harold, who died. And then, I just . . . well . . . ask for help for whatever mess I’m in.”
“That last part,” said Jennifer. “That must be the longest part of the prayer.”
“You’re a riot,” said Adam.
“Sounds like a real prayer to me,” she said softly.
“Anyway,” Adam continued, “in the morning it feels like I have to get up and do it all by myself. I guess what I’m saying is since I mostly just pray at night when I’m scared and I’m asking for a favor and it’s just a made-up prayer and I don’t go to church —”
“Does it count?” said Jennifer.
“Yeah,” Adam whispered.
“I think so,” she said. “Our minister’s always saying that prayer is not just for Sundays, that coming to church is no guarantee you’ll get your name in the Good Book. He says it’s how you treat people day to day, with kindness and stuff. I personally can’t believe God would be so petty, like there was this one prayer everyone had to memorize and say every minute, or else they go to, you know, rhymes with Taco Bell. I’ve been to lots of churches and temples — there’s definitely not one prayer. But it always feels the same: there’s a power greater than us and we need help.”
“I agree with that,” said Adam.
“Actually,” said Jennifer, “the proper response is, ‘Amen, sister.’”
“I don’t think I’m that advanced,” said Adam.
“Tell me —” Jennifer began, but then screamed and so did Adam.
A blinding light was shining in their eyes. “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE, AS IF I DON’T KNOW?” bellowed a man’s voice. Somewhere behind the voice was the crackling of a police radio. It took Adam’s eyes a minute to adjust, and then he realized it was a flashlight. And the man shining it was wearing the official yellow all-seasons Windbreaker of a civic association security guard.
“Isn’t this cute?” the man said. “My favorite soap opera, Love in the Dunes. Either of you live here in River Path? Or is this a pleasure trip?”
Adam explained he lived down the street.
“You better head home, son,” the guard said. “You know you’re not supposed to be in the dunes after dark.”
Actually, Adam knew that was the kind of rule they made up when they couldn’t think of anything you did wrong.
“You want to tell me what was going on?” the security guard said. “So’s I can write my report. Or should I take a wild guess?”
“If you must know,” said Jennifer, dusting off grass and sand, “we were talking about religion.”
“Religion, oh that’s good,” the guard said. “I’ve caught lots of people in these dunes doing nooky-nooky, hanky-panky, and stinky-winky, but this is the first time anyone blamed religion.”
Adam’s dad dropped him off for the science fair a few minutes before seven A.M., the official set-up time. Already there was a long line of parents determined to get good display spots up front for their kids’ projects.
When Eddie the janitor unlocked the gym door, Adam was nearly trampled. One parent speared him in the ribs with a poster board, and as Adam doubled over in pain, another jabbed him in the back with a fluorescent light. Then Adam made the mistake of going to the boys’ room to see if he was bleeding. While he was gone, his project was moved to the far end of the table. “We needed an electric outlet for our project,” a dad said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Once the projects were set up, the day was spent waiting to be judged by a Harris teacher. All morning, Adam kept an eye on Devillio. The man was either on his cell or with some big-shot grown-up. Adam did not see him talk to a single kid until the Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser arrived. Then Devillio posed for the photographer in front of a bunch of test tubes, pretending to talk to students from the Big Four ethnic flavors.
Adam was judged after lunch. The man’s name card said Mr. Buchanan. The only thing Adam knew about him was he coached lacrosse and looked it. He had a buzz cut and muscles that stuck out of his short-sleeved shirt, and he moved like a man who was used to knocking over people.
Adam tried sticking in as much grown-up language as possible as he explained his project, so everything would sound highly scientific. He talked about the constancy of the slope correlating adult support and student achievement. He described the clustering of results and how he’d calculated each cluster for both mean and average. He talked about the size of his survey sample and the margin of error.
Occasionally he glanced at Mr. Buchanan. The teacher seemed to be asleep standing up. The man kept saying, “I see,” and “interesting,” but Adam noticed that he wasn’t saying them in the right places.
Mr. Buchanan was holding a stack of judging forms, each in triplicate; about half appeared to be filled out. Several had an H written on top, which Adam figured probably meant honors student.
The teacher picked up Adam’s research paper and leafed through it in seconds, which either meant he was the fastest reader on earth or he was checking to make sure there were words on every page.
“So,” he finally said, “what you’re saying — when parents support children academically, the kids do better. Is that it?”
“Basically,” said Adam.
“And the less parent support, the lower the academic performance?”
“Yes,” said Adam.
“OK,” said Mr. Buchanan. “I get it. Seems pretty sensible. Good job.”
“Um,” said Adam, “do you understand —”
“I got it,” said Mr. Buchanan. “I particularly like the margin of error analysis. That’s real honors work. I’ve got to keep moving. Still have a bunch . . .”
“But —”
“Look,” Mr. Buchanan said. “I’m only supposed to spend four minutes per project. It’s not fair if you . . .”
The man was walking away, and Adam went hurrying after him. “Do you know what this is about?” Ada
m pleaded, waving his paper. “The science fair. The Harris science fair.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Buchanan. “It’s all about the science fair and the glory of going on to the county fair. But you’re not the only one who wants to win. Every honors student —”
“No!” said Adam. “My project is about this science fair. About kids getting help on projects for this science fair.”
The teacher froze. He leaned forward until his face was right in Adam’s. “This is about Harris parents doing their kids’ projects?” he whispered.
Adam nodded.
“You’re kidding.”
The teacher grabbed Adam by the arm and dragged him back to his display. He studied the project board as if he’d never seen it before. He opened Adam’s report and actually read it. He kept saying, “unbelievable,” “amazing,” and this time, Adam noticed, he was saying it in the right places.
“This really will do well at the county fair,” Mr. Buchanan said. “I could see it going to the states. I imagine it’ll bring big changes around here. Mr. Devillio approved this?”
Adam nodded. “He checked the abstract. The only thing he said was change the font.”
“Wonderful,” said Mr. Buchanan. “I give Mr. Devillio credit. Most people in his position would not be so open-minded. Great job. I’ve never seen such an original project.”
In the evening, the gym was open for the hour before the awards ceremony so family members could see the projects. Adam hated this part even more than the early morning setting-up riots. It was a zoo. There was so little time, and since every middle-school kid did a project, tons of family members showed up, clogging the center aisles.
Adam tried to see his friends’ displays, including Jennifer’s, but got exhausted battling the swirling masses and wandered over to the far aisles in the back of the gym. They were almost empty. A lot of the displays looked weak, and some weren’t even real science projects — there was no experiment or hypothesis that was tested. Adam noticed a crooked coat-hanger atom with Styrofoam balls and a DNA double helix made from elbow macaroni that didn’t stand up.
Two boys Adam recognized from gym class were going down the far aisle, joking loudly about how bad those projects were.
Adam’s first impulse was to make a nasty crack, but then he got a better idea. He’d make the jerks famous. He pulled out a pen and the science fair program to use for taking notes.
“Excuse me,” Adam said, “I’m doing a little story on the fair for the Slash. Mind if I ask a few questions?”
“Whoa, rad,” said one. “We going to be on TV?”
“Almost,” said Adam. He didn’t have to ask their names. They wrote them down, they were so anxious to be quoted.
Adam explained he’d overheard them joking about the projects in the far aisle. He asked if they thought it was hard for kids who didn’t get help from parents.
“Nah, they’re just slack,” said the boy. “They don’t care.”
“They blow it off,” said the other. “They know they suck.”
Adam nodded and wrote fast.
“You going to put that in the paper?” said one.
“Rad,” said the other. “First time on MTV. I like it.”
Adam thanked them and walked away. It would make a nice paragraph — the bad feelings caused by an unfair fair. He was making sure he could read the quotes when a grown-up he didn’t know started talking to him.
“Every time I see you, you’re making notes,” she said.
It was a mom, and she looked familiar, but Adam couldn’t place her.
“You don’t remember?” she said. “You interviewed me at the board meeting a few months ago.”
Outraged Single Mother! The one who was so angry about homework and parents doing kids’ science projects.
What timing. Adam mentioned he’d tried phoning her but when she never called back, he figured she was mad and gave up.
“No,” she said. “Not mad. Just crazy busy. It’s my fault. Raising three kids and a full-time job in the city — it’s a lot. So what are you doing over here in science fair ghetto? You seem like a front-row center kid.”
Adam explained about his own project and how he’d actually documented that kids who got the most help from their parents got the best scores. “I’m doing a news story on it, too,” he said. “For the Slash.”
“Well, thank you,” she said. “I’ve been saying that for years and no one will listen.”
This was great; it wasn’t often you got your whole story reported in one aisle. He asked if he could take notes.
“Are you kidding?” she said. “I wrote this all out in a letter to the superintendent. Be my guest.”
“What did he say?” Adam asked.
“Oh, he bounced me down to some first deputy something or other, who bounced me to — I can’t remember. I had a meeting with some Bleepin idiot.”
“Dr. Bleepin?” said Adam. “A real kid person?”
“That’s him,” she said.
Outraged Single Mother told Bleepin that a science fair was a wonderful thing, but the projects should be done in class, with help from teachers, so everyone had the same chance.
“My oldest is in college now,” she told Adam, “and when she was at Harris, they did the projects in class. It worked well.”
“Really?” said Adam. “Why’d they stop?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Bleepin blamed the state testing.” Dr. Bleepin told Outraged Single Mother that in the last ten years, the politicians had imposed state tests that dictated what teachers had to cover, practically paragraph by paragraph, cramming in so much to be memorized, there was no time to have kids do projects in school. “Bleepin said they had no choice; it was either do the projects at home or end the fair. What I do know?” she continued, gesturing around the gym. “This is not right. It is wrong to publicly humiliate children this way.”
She led Adam along the back aisle, stopping in the far corner of the gym. “This is not for your article,” she said. “Strictly off the charts.” It was her son’s project. It was supposed to show how an aquifer worked, and there was one part Adam found particularly smart. While an aquifer had to be pointing downhill for gravity to carry the water, the display showed how small sections could actually go uphill. The kid had used mathematical formulas to calculate the angle and distance a section could point uphill and still permit the aquifer to function.
His model, however, was shaky. The aquifer was made of toilet-paper rolls sliced in half, along with shower-curtain hooks held together by tinfoil, Scotch tape, and Play-Doh. In several spots, it was falling down.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I told him how proud I am. But he knows. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel as a mom? Like I failed. Like I couldn’t give him what the center-aisle kids got. He sees it’s not fair and that’s a lesson you hate a kid to learn too early.”
She turned away. Adam was getting this bad feeling that something personal and embarrassing was about to happen. But when Outraged Single Mother looked back, she was smiling. “You know the old saying,” she said. “‘Don’t cry for me, Argentina.’ You write that the news from the Harris science fair is not all bad. You tell your readers that life is no fifty-yard dash; it’s a marathon. We lost this time, but there’s a ways to go. As a mom, you pray this won’t make them so angry they get bitter — just angry enough to get even.”
Sitting in the auditorium, waiting for the awards, Adam felt like a million bucks. He’d pulled it off. Never had one of his investigations gone so smoothly. He’d come a long way since that day Devillio yelled at him. Adam had finished all his interviews, and they were on the record. His research had shown beyond a doubt that parents were doing the top projects. In a matter of minutes, he was going to win a top award. Even Mr. Buchanan had said that his was the most original project he’d ever seen. There were going to be big changes around here. Adam wasn’t even worried about interviewing Devillio for the story. What’s the worst the
man could say? Claim he didn’t know parents were helping? Big deal. Adam would print it. Readers would see the truth. An award-winning project says it all.
The ceremony was the same every year. Mr. Devillio welcomed everyone and introduced all the dignitaries, including school board members, the principal, and the Harris science teachers. Then he spoke on the illustrious history of the fair and the richly rewarding value of research.
It was nearly eight thirty when they were ready to announce the awards. There were two major groups. The first kids called to the stage were the silver medalists. These were the twenty-five who scored 90 to 94 on their projects.
They were to be followed by the gold medalists, who scored 95 and above and would go on to the county competition.
The only worry for a top student like Adam was if he had somehow messed up and gotten a 94 and so would win only a silver. Adam was sure that was not going to be a problem, but you could never be totally sure. He was a little tense until all twenty-five silver medalists had been announced and his name was not called.
He’d done it.
“And now,” said Mr. Devillio, “the gold medalists. Everyone, of course, is a winner at the fair. You don’t have to win a medal. Just taking part . . .”
Adam couldn’t believe the way adults lied. How did they do it without blinking? They must spend hours practicing lies in front of the mirror.
As Adam waited, it occurred to him that he probably was the only one in the Top 25 who’d done the project himself. It was a proud feeling.
Adam’s parents sat in the back, where most of the adults were. Adam was near the front with friends. As their names were called, the rest of the kids in the row leaned back in their chairs so the winners could squeeze by and hurry to the stage. Jennifer beamed when it was her turn, and she hurried past him and up the stage steps, shaking Devillio’s hand and taking her gold medal. Adam was going to try not to smile. He didn’t want to look too show-offy. Still, he didn’t blame Jennifer; it was hard holding it in.
Adam Canfield, Watch Your Back! Page 14
