She said, “On page seven? Well, it says I have to get my project idea approved? Before I start working on it? Well, what if I want to start working on it today? Like, after school today? And tonight?” Mrs. Snavin smiled. “I think you’d better wait until you talk with your mom or dad before you begin, Marsha. And don’t worry. There will be plenty of time.”
You see that? How Mrs. Snavin said “there will be plenty of time”? And how she said “don’t worry”? That’s because Mrs. Snavin didn’t get it. She didn’t understand how know-it-alls have to get the right answer. Or about how they always have to be first. Or how they always worry.
Pete Morris still had his hand up. So Mrs. Snavin called on him.
Pete’s a science kid. He knows every kind of bug there is. Even their fancy names, and which bug is related to which other bug, and what they eat and how long they live. Pete’s really smart.
Pete said, “I think insects would be a good science fair topic. Because I have a lot of different bugs. Bugs are my hobby. And rocks, too. And also worms and plants. And sometimes different kinds of monkeys. So, is it okay to have your science fair project and your hobby be the same thing?”
Mrs. Snavin said, “That’s a good question, Pete, and the answer is yes. But I still think you all need to talk to your moms or dads, and they can help you decide what’s best for you to do. Now, that’s all the time we have for this today.”
Then it was quiet reading time, so we all put the science fair stuff away and got out our library books.
Except I didn’t. And neither did Marsha. She put the science fair papers down in her lap where she could keep reading them.
And I didn’t even bother to look over at Kevin. I knew he was still thinking about the science fair, too.
And me? I kept the papers out on my desk. That way I could look down at them under my library book. I needed to get to work. Maybe I could go to the library after lunch. Then I could get a head start.
Because I wanted to be the first. And the best. I wanted to win.
And I didn’t just want to win. I had to win.
I had to be know-it-all number one.
CHAPTER FOUR
Hunters
By lunchtime, I had read everything about the science fair. Twice. I was ready to work.
So I waited until just before lunch. I waited until Mrs. Snavin was alone at her desk. Then I went up and asked for a library pass for after lunch. And I kind of whispered. And when she gave me the pass, I hid it in my hand.
But Marsha saw it anyway. Because Marsha was watching me like a cat watches a hamster. And right away, she jumped up and rushed over to the teacher’s desk. She said, “Mrs. Snavin? A library pass? Could I have one, too?”
Except Marsha didn’t whisper. So three seconds later, Kevin also had a library pass.
Because that’s the way it is, and you have to get used to it. Know-it-alls are usually copycats, too.
After lunch, the library was like a know-it-all convention. All the smart kids were there. Plus all the kids who thought they were smart. Plus all the kids who wanted everyone else to think they were smart. Plus me.
We were all there. Everyone wanted a head start. Everyone wanted to win.
The only good thing was that not all the kids there were in third grade. Besides me and Marsha and Kevin, there were only three other third graders.
And Pete Morris wasn’t one of them. I looked out the window and I saw Pete. He was out by the bushes near the fence. He was bending over. He was looking at one of the branches.
But my best friend, Willie, was in the library. His real name is Phil, but his last name is Willis, so everyone calls him Willie, even his teachers. Willie’s third-grade teacher was Mrs. Frule.
When Willie saw me, he smiled and came over to my table. “Hey,” he said, “isn’t it great? I mean about the computer? I would love to have that thing in my room. Got any good ideas yet? I think I might try to build a bridge or something like that, you know? Something big. How about you? What do you want to do?”
But all I said was, “Listen, Willie, I’ve got to get to work now, okay?”
“Sure,” said Willie, “but I thought maybe we could be partners. We could make something totally… you know, like, totally… total.”
Willie was great at starting sentences. Finishing them was the hard part.
I shook my head. “Won’t work, Willie. What if what we make wins first prize? Then what?”
Willie looked at me like I was nuts. “Then we’ll have this cool computer, that’s what. We can keep it at your house some of the time, and at my house some of the time. It’ll be great!”
I shook my head again. “I don’t think so, Willie. I think we better just do our own stuff.”
Willie shrugged. “Okay. But if I win, I’ll still let you use my computer sometimes, okay?”
I smiled and said, “Sure. That’ll be great.”
But inside, to myself, I said, You? Win the science fair? Forget about it, Willie. That grand prize is mine.
Which was not very nice. But when you have to get the right answer, and you have to get it first, and you have to win, then you don’t have as much time to be nice anymore.
When Willie walked away, I looked at the papers about the science fair again. There was a part that said you couldn’t make a project that used fire or acid. For electricity, you could only use batteries. And you couldn’t use chemicals that might explode or make smoke.
Those rules knocked a lot of fun stuff off the list.
In the booklet it said there would be five judges. So I tried to think like a science fair judge. But I got tired of that. It was hard enough to think like a third grader.
I grabbed my papers and went over to a computer that was hooked up to the Internet. I sat down, clicked on “search,” and then typed in “science fair projects.”
In two seconds, I got a message. It said 206,996 Web pages matched with my search! And the first ten links were on the screen.
So I clicked on a link that said “Science Fair Helper.” Sounded like the right stuff. And it was. It had some good things, so I clicked on a second link. And that second link had some good ideas, too. And so did the third link, and the fourth, and the fifth.
Then it hit me—there was probably a good idea on every page, all 206,996 of them! But I didn’t need 200,000 ideas. I just needed one. I needed my idea.
I felt something. Behind me. I turned around real quick, and guess what? It was Kevin Young. He had come up right behind me and he was staring at the screen. My screen.
“Hey!” I said. “What are you doing, Kevin?”
Kevin shrugged. “Nothing.”
I said, “Then go do nothing somewhere else.”
Kevin had red hair, and his face was freckled, and his eyes were this real pale blue. And he didn’t blink much.
Kevin stuck out his chin and said, “I can be anywhere I want to in the library. And you know, it’s against the rules to copy a project from the Internet.”
And from around the end of some shelves, suddenly Marsha was standing there next to Kevin. She nodded her head so her ponytail bobbed up and down. “That’s right, what Kevin said? About copying? How it’s, like, cheating?”
It was hard not to get mad. Real mad.
But all I said was, “What? Do you think I’m stupid? I know not to cheat. Just mind your own business, both of you. You know what things look like right now? It looks like you two are copying ideas from me, that’s what it looks like.”
They left, and I was still pretty mad.
But when I thought about it later, I felt better… about Kevin and Marsha watching out for me, I mean. I was something they weren’t so sure about. It made me feel good because if they were worried about me, that meant I was worth worrying about.
Jake Drake was something those know-it-alls didn’t know about, and they both knew it.
CHAPTER FIVE
K-I-A/D-I-A
That night after dinner I told my mom and
dad about the science fair. We were having ice cream for dessert. Mom and I had chocolate, and Dad and Abby had vanilla and strawberry. Abby’s my little sister. She’s two years younger than I am. So back then, when I was in third grade, Abby was a first grader.
I handed the science fair booklet to my dad. Right away he flipped through it. He looked at each page for about two seconds.
He said, “Okay… yeah… that makes sense… this is good… fine. Great, Jake. This’ll be a lot of fun.”
Then he ripped the permission slip off the back page. He signed his name and handed his pen to me. “Just sign on the line, Jake… there you go. Now we’re all set. So what do you think? You want to make a rocket? Or maybe a volcano? Those are a lot of fun. Or maybe a model of a planet? I always loved making Saturn, you know? The one with all the rings? That’s a great project.”
Meanwhile, my mom started reading the booklet. Carefully.
Abby wasn’t doing anything except stirring her ice cream around and around in her bowl.
Mom said, “My goodness! Jim, did you see that there’s a prize for first place?”
“Well, of course… well, sure,” Dad said. “There’s always a prize for first place. When I won my seventh-grade science fair, I got a nice trophy. But I think my sister threw it out when I went to college.”
My mom winked at me. Then she said to Dad, “Okay. You know there’s a prize. But do you know what the prize is?”
My dad said, “Well… no, I mean, not exactly. But I know there’s a prize, so we’ll try to win it—right, Jakey? Like with a rocket, something really exciting. The judges love exciting projects.”
Mom had flipped to another page. She looked sideways at me and said, “Jake, why don’t you tell your dad why you will not be making a rocket for the science fair.”
I said, “That’s because on page three it says I can’t make anything that burns, or smokes, or explodes.”
Dad said, “Well… there are other kinds of rockets… like the kind that use water power. You know, a water rocket? So, we could still make a rocket.”
Mom laughed and said, “That sounds like something a K-I-A/D-I-A might say.”
I said, “What’s that mean… K-I-A/D-I-A?”
Abby looked up from her ice-cream soup. She said, “I know. It means Know-It-All/Do-It-All. Mommy told me.”
And I remembered that I had heard Mom say that before.
One time Dad wouldn’t read about how to put a new bicycle together. Mom said he was being a K-I-A/D-I-A.
And when we got a new garage door opener, it broke because Dad hooked the motor on backwards. He didn’t read the instructions. When that happened, Mom said, “Dear, sometimes I wish you weren’t such a K-I-A/D-I-A.”
Or when my dad wouldn’t stop and ask for directions when we were lost in the car? I heard Mom say, “Don’t be a K-I-A/D-I-A.”
Mom handed the booklet back to Dad, and he started reading.
I said, “You know the prize? It’s amazing, Dad. If I win first prize, I get a Bluntium Twelve computer! From Wonky’s Super Computer Store.”
Dad said, “A whole system? A Bluntium Twelve?”
“Yeah,” I said, “and a year of free Internet service, too!”
Dad whistled.
And then Abby tried to whistle, too. But instead, some melted ice cream drooled down her chin.
Dad looked at the booklet again. He said, “Well, I guess we had better get right to work on this, eh, Jake?”
See that? How my dad said “we”? He said, “. . . We had better get right to work.…”
That “we” got me worried. This was supposed to be my science fair. Right in the science fair booklet it said that kids had to do their own work.
And then I thought, What if Dad thinks he’s going to get a new computer when my project wins first prize?
Kids like Kevin and Marsha? I knew they were going to be a problem. I was ready for that.
But what if your dad is a K-I-A—and a D-I-A, too?
How do you tell your own dad to keep hands off? And that you don’t want to share your new computer with anyone—not even him?
On this science fair project, there was only room for one K-I-A.
And that was me.
CHAPTER SIX
What to Do
After dessert, I took the science fair booklet to my room. It had some ideas about choosing what to do.
The rules said I had to use the scientific method. Which works like this:
First you look around the world and see something interesting. That’s called observation.
After you look around, you ask a question about something. That part’s called the question. Which makes sense.
Then you make a guess about the answer. When you do a science fair project, your guess is called a hypothesis. But it’s still a guess.
Then you plan out some trials to test and see if your guess is right or wrong. That part is called the method.
Then you do your testing, and you write down what you find out. That’s called the result.
And then you have to tell if your guess was right or wrong. That’s called the conclusion.
But I was stuck way back at the beginning. I was having trouble with the question part. So I kept reading and the science fair booklet said:
Try filling in these blanks to make a question you want to explore:
What is the effect of ________________ on _________________ ?”
And then it gave two examples:
What is the effect of dishwasher soap on grass seedlings ?
What is the effect of total darkness on how much gerbils sleep ?
So I tried filling in some words of my own.
What is the effect of sawdust on the taste of a vanilla milkshake ?
What is the effect of a dead cockroach on Abby’s pillow at bedtime ?
What is the effect of a red hot pepper on Willie’s peanut butter sandwich ?
I liked my questions.
And after you ask a question, you have to make a guess. So I gave that a try too:
—Sawdust would make a vanilla milkshake taste like… plywood?
—A dead cockroach on Abby’s pillow at bedtime would… cause loud screams and a lot of yelling, and make me be grounded with no TV or computer games for three weeks.
—And a red hot pepper on Willie’s peanut butter sandwich would… make Willie jump up from his chair, drink six cartons of chocolate milk, and then throw up all over the cafeteria.
Pretty good guesses.
But I had to stop messing around.
So I lay down on my bed and looked at the ceiling. My ceiling has all these swirls and ridges. It’s like looking at clouds. Sometimes I can see all kinds of stuff up there. But that night I didn’t see anything. Just a big white blank.
Deciding what to do for a science fair is hard. It’s hard because what you really have to do is choose what not to do.
Because you could do anything. You could do millions of different things.
Except you can only do one thing.
So after you choose all the stuff not to do, then you look at what’s left over. And that’s what you do.
I got up and went over to my dresser and opened the top drawer. It’s my junk drawer. That’s what my mom calls it because it all looks like junk to her.
And then I got an idea. Maybe I could find an idea by looking at my junk. All of it.
So I grabbed my notebook from my backpack. I opened it to an empty page. I found a pencil. Then I looked into my junk drawer and I started making a list.
7 paper clips
3 big paper clips
9 old batteries
1 twisty pencil sharpener
1 orange golf ball
1 toenail clippers
2 wooden yo–yos
1 plastic yo–yo with no string
13 rubber bands
4 Hot Wheels
18 baseball cards
6 of Willie’s basketball cards
3 pens<
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29 colored pencils
7 keys that I don’t know what they fit
17 crayons
9 marbles
1 plastic magnifying glass
2 mini–superballs
half a pair of dice
1 piece of chain from a broken lamp
1 little lock, no key
1 red magnet shaped like a horseshoe
1 broken glow–in–the–dark watch
1 mini Frisbee
37 pennies
1 empty Altoids tin with 1 Canadian quarter
1 roll of thin wire
1 red stamp pad
1 fingernail file
1 plastic ruler
1 Mickey Mouse PEZ holder
1 pink eraser
1 white eraser
1 fishing bobber
1 piece of a radio antenna
1 cracked candy cane
6 pen caps
1 film container with 43 blue beads
2 computer disks
3 mini–screwdrivers
1 mini–stapler
1 broken snail shell
1 plastic ring from a gum ball machine
3 red plastic pushpins
1 flashlight, doesn’t work
4 short pencils, no erasers
1 roll of Scotch tape
3 butterscotch Life Savers
1 chain dog collar
3 rusty bolts
1 plastic bottle of white glue
1 Hacky Sack with a hole, blue beads leaking out
3 gray stones
2 pieces of green glass from the beach
1 pair of scissors with orange handles
1 mini Etch–A–Sketch on a key ring
1 eye off my old toy cat Fluffy
4 Star Wars action figures
1 broken camera
3 suction cups off of Garfield’s paws
1 small, brown glass bottle
1 white shoelace
3 little seashells from Florida
1 round mirror from Mom’s makeup