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  At school, a lot of kids, the ones actively competing for the Excelsior Award, are flipping out, trying to excel at everything at once. Sports, clubs, activities, academics. They’re like cosmic dust. They’re all over the place.

  “The middle school science fair is February fourteenth!” Siraj reminds us one day at lunch, even though I don’t really need reminding. I’ve been thinking about what I might do for the fair ever since that first day, when Ms. Oliverio announced it. “That’s less than two weeks away! My heart is beating so fast….”

  “Chill,” suggests Kwame.

  “How can I? The science fair will do more to determine who wins the Excelsior Award than anything else this term!”

  Emily arches an eyebrow. “Explain your math.”

  “There’s only one grand prize winner at the science fair. There are three class presidents, one for every grade. There are several players on the basketball team. Many students maintain straight-A averages! Et cetera, et cetera.”

  Siraj draws a quick “>” in the air with his finger. “Therefore, the science fair is greater than all other Excelsior endeavors.”

  He makes a good point. We all nod and go back to eating our food. The dining hall at Chumley Prep is nothing like the cafeteria at my old middle school.

  It’s an enormous, open room with arches holding up the high ceiling. Lunch is done family-style, with servers bringing big trays loaded down with bowls and plates to the tables. It’s awesome. Especially the pasta! We’re talking spaghetti and meatballs, baked ziti, or gluten-free vegan lasagna.

  “I like lasagna,” says Tim. “It’s three different kinds of Italian dinners squished together in a layer cake with cheese frosting.”

  “But that’s vegan cheese, Timbo,” says Kwame. “The cheese isn’t cheese. It’s made out of yeast. Yeesh!”

  When all our plates are clean, Emily says, “Siraj’s logic is solid about the science fair. Winning that would definitely give one an edge in the Excelsior contest.”

  “Really?” I say.

  “Totally,” says Emily. “Think about it. The talent show isn’t until spring. That takes away Brooke Breckenridge and Ainsley Braden-Hammerschmidt’s prime opportunities to shine.”

  “Mine, too,” grouses Kwame.

  “Your stand-up routine was hysterical last year,” says Siraj.

  “Thanks.”

  “How about you, Tim?” I ask. “Were you in the talent show last year?”

  “No,” he mumbles, pushing his pasta around with his fork. “But I have a new trick. Piff-piff!”

  He holds a water bottle upside down and dramatically removes the cap. Water should gush out. It doesn’t.

  “Cool,” says Kwame. “How’d you do that, man?”

  Tim grins. “Very well, don’t you think?”

  And then he tells us that magicians never reveal their secrets. (Which is probably why he was so upset when he thought he’d accidentally revealed how the levitation trick was done, even though I didn’t see it.)

  “At least we don’t have to worry about Carter Kelso winning the Excelsior,” says Emily. “He might be an all-star quarterback, but it’s not doing him much good this winter.”

  “Which, once again, proves my point about the science fair,” says Siraj. “This is our big shot, guys. It’s like they designed the Excelsior for a Hibbleflitt!”

  “Hey,” I say, “maybe we should all do one superfantastic project. We’d be awesome together. Like shooting stars streaking across the night sky!”

  “Um, Piper, don’t those typically crash and burn?” says Kwame.

  “Okay. Bad example…”

  “I don’t want to do the science fair,” says Tim.

  “But you use physics in your magic tricks,” I tell him.

  “True. But I hate doing all that data-gathering and hypothesizing….”

  Siraj has a very serious look on his face. “As much as I would like to do a Vulcan mind meld with you all, it’s probably not our wisest move. Not this year. The Excelsior judges wouldn’t be able to determine who did what.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I say.

  “Game on!” says Emily. “In a competitive but not cutthroat or bloodthirsty way, of course.”

  We all shake hands and wish each other luck.

  Suddenly there’s an unbelievably loud metallic crash.

  We whip around in our seats.

  What we see isn’t pretty.

  Apparently, a server just tripped and dumped her entire tray.

  The server slipped on the slick mess. She landed on her butt in an orange sea of goop.

  Sloppy strands of stringy noodles are everywhere. I can still see a few rolling meatballs.

  The server has stray spaghetti in her hair.

  Most of the room applauds the tray drop because I believe that’s the officially required response in every school cafeteria and dining hall across America.

  The poor server stands up. Her white apron is smudged with tomato-sauce sludge. At her feet is a mushy, soggy, squidgy puddle of pasta.

  The bell rings. People start standing up. It’s time to head back to class.

  I count six cloth napkins at our table.

  The server needs every single one of them.

  I pluck them up.

  “What are you doing?” says Siraj.

  “She needs help.”

  “You’ll be late to class. The Excelsior judges could be watching.”

  “I know, but…”

  “Come on, you guys.”

  Tim hesitates for a second, but then he shuffles out of the dining hall, too.

  I dash over to where the server is wiping off her apron with her hands.

  “Here,” I say, giving her the stack of napkins.

  “Thanks.” She starts dabbing herself, cleaning her clothes, face, and hands.

  “I’ll grab a mop,” I say. I see one resting in a rolling bucket.

  It’s near a table where Ainsley and her royal court are leisurely finishing up their salads. (They must never worry about being late to class.)

  “That’s Piper Milly,” I hear Ainsley say. “She’s quite good at cleaning up messes. She’ll even scoop your dog’s poop.”

  The girls giggle. I ignore them. I push the mop bucket back to the pasta disaster zone.

  “We’ll take it from here,” says the server, who’s with one of the school’s janitors.

  Behind me, I hear Ainsley and her friends snickering.

  I look over my shoulder.

  They’re all pointing at me.

  Because I have a strand of spaghetti stuck to the heel of my shoe. I step on it with my other shoe to pull it off, the way I do when the same thing happens in a bathroom with an overeager roll of toilet paper.

  Now I’m kind of hopping and skipping across the dining hall floor.

  Ainsley and her gang applaud me. In fact, they give me a standing ovation.

  And I didn’t even drop anything.

  In science class the next morning, Ms. Oliverio reminds us about the details for the upcoming science fair.

  I love science fairs. At my old school, I did a project about propulsion using two-liter soda bottles, some pipe, and Nerf-ish foam rockets. The harder you stomped on the plastic bottle, the more thrust you generated, and the farther the foam-tipped rocket flew. Nellie DuMont Frissé would’ve been proud.

  This year, I want to do something even cooler.

  “You only have ten more days,” Ms. Oliverio reminds us. “And don’t forget—I’m looking for something absolutely amazing from each and every one of you.”

  I glance at the science fair rules, which I tucked into my binder way back in January. It’s the usual stuff about forming a hypothesis, doing research, using math, and following proper experimental proc
edures. I can do that.

  That night, after I take Mister Pugsly for a walk and finish all my homework, I try to narrow down my science project ideas.

  I hit on a favorite right away. Nellie DuMont Frissé has a famous quote (I forgot who said it first) that she repeats all the time: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

  I take her advice.

  I’ll do something about the moon.

  I go to YouTube, seeking even more inspiration. Good thing she has her own channel. I’ve seen (and memorized) most of the videos about the stars and being an astronaut, so I check out one called “The Man in the Moon.”

  It’s fascinating.

  Here in America, when we look at the moon, the dark parts form a face. But in Europe, people interpret those darker lunar maria (or seas) and the lighter highlands to be a man carrying a load on his back (like that poor nanny at Chumley every morning). The man is accompanied by a small dog.

  Other cultures see the moon rabbit, a sort of sideways floppy-eared critter with its hind legs crossed. One man in the moon that people see is actually a woman with a ponytail, smiling and looking off into space.

  It makes me think about how things can look different depending on where or even how you’re looking at them. When Hannah and I were looking at the Chumley kids before I actually knew any, I thought they’d all be the same. Snobby. Now I know that some are really nice. It’s like I’m seeing the bunny rabbit in the moon instead of the man. I’m looking at the same image but differently.

  I wonder if there is some way I can turn the many faces of the moon into a science project.

  It’s a little after eight o’clock on a brisk, crisp night in February, so it’s already dark and the stars have started coming out to play. We don’t live near a big city, so there’s very little light pollution.

  I can clearly see the Man in the Moon surrounded by all those craters created eons ago by a bombardment of meteoroids. I realize that what makes the moon so spectacularly beautiful from down here on Earth might look ugly, jagged, and scarred up close.

  That’s when a pretty cool science fair idea hits me.

  Just like all those meteoroids that hit the moon!

  I know from years of planetarium visits that craters on the moon were caused by asteroids and meteoroids crashing into the lunar surface, especially when the moon was very, very young.

  For my science project, I’m going to make a model of the moon’s surface and perform an experiment to infer how the moon’s impact craters were formed.

  “Are you going to use a big foam ball?” asks Tim.

  It’s fourth period. We both have independent study time. We’re hanging out in the media center.

  “Nope,” I say. “I’m going to fill the bottom of an aquarium with, like, two inches of flour for the moon’s inner crust.”

  “Your fish may not like that.”

  “Tim, I don’t have fish.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “Actually, I could use an aluminum pan. That’d be cheaper. I could make more moons….”

  I start sketching my experiment on a sheet of paper.

  “Then I’ll sprinkle in some cocoa powder. Just a thin layer. That’ll be the outer crust of the moon.”

  “And then you bake it?”

  “No, Tim. Then I start dropping marbles at varying heights, to show how speed affects the size of the craters. I’ll also use different-sized marbles. That’ll demonstrate how the mass of the object slamming into the moon could also affect the size and shape of the impact crater. And the cocoa powder? If it works the way I think it will, it’ll spray out—just like what happened on the moon.”

  “You should video it!” says Tim. “In super slo-mo.”

  “That’s a great idea! And on my trifold panels, I could display photos of real moon craters next to photos of the craters I make in my lab to show how similar they look.”

  “You have a lab?”

  “It’s like your magician’s lair.”

  “Oh. You mean your garage?”

  “Yep. Dad says he’ll park in the driveway for the next two weeks.”

  “That’s very considerate of him,” says Tim.

  “So,” I ask, “what are you working on? Any new tricks up your sleeve?”

  He opens up his spiral notebook. There’s a sketch of a long box with a woman’s head and feet sticking out of either end.

  “I’m going to saw a lady in half,” he says.

  “Oh. Did you change your mind about the science fair?”

  “No. I’m still skipping that. This will be for the spring talent show.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Do you need a lab assistant?” Tim asks. “For your science experiment?”

  “Thanks. But I should be able to handle it.”

  “How about the videoing? My phone has a pretty incredible slo-mo video camera.”

  And the camera in my phone is broken.

  “Thanks! That would actually be awesome!”

  “But you have to help me do my magic act when the spring talent show rolls around. Deal?”

  “Deal!” I say with a smile.

  “Great. I look forward to sawing you in half.”

  WHO DO I WANT TO BE?

  Okay. I’ve finally figured this out. I want to be Nellie DuMont Frissé. Maybe not the astronaut part. I sometimes get carsick, so I don’t think I’d do well in zero gravity. But I want to be someone smart who makes science fun, which makes kids like me want to learn more about it. Nellie’s also someone who pushed beyond the limits others tried to place on her. I’d like to do more limit-pushing. With science, anything is possible-even stuff that, once upon a time, everybody said was impossible. Walk on the moon? Impossible, until it wasn’t. Be a female astronaut? Not gonna happen, until it did. So, that’s who I want to be: Nellie DuMont Frissé!

  In no time at all, after a ton of data-gathering and number-crunching, the big day, February 14, arrives.

  Sure, some people call it Valentine’s Day. For me and my friends, it’s just Science Fair Day. No frilly cards or heart-shaped boxes of chocolates required.

  I have all my research written up in cool charts and graphics. I have the side-by-side crater photos. I even have Tim’s iPad (he let me borrow it) running a loop of awesome slow-motion clips of marbles hitting the dusty flour—making craters and flinging cocoa spray out in all directions.

  I’m also going to set up a fresh flour/cocoa pan and let science fair–goers drop marbles to make their own craters.

  Tim loved that idea. “It’s interactive!” he said. “And you can use my marble-shooter robot! My mother picked it up for me when she and my father were on a trip to Japan. It’s an alien robot from outer space! People can shoot a high-velocity marble at the cake pan without having to stand on a ladder.”

  I told Tim I wasn’t sure I needed the robot.

  He said it would give my exhibit “pizzazz.”

  I said I still wasn’t sure.

  Tim looked really sad.

  So, yes, I’m adding a marble-shooting robot from outer space to my science project. For pizzazz.

  “Good luck, kiddo,” says Dad when we hit the parking lot and unload my exhibit. Dad helps me stack my science fair stuff onto a rickety rolling cart. “I’ll check out the exhibits as soon as I’m done with my classes.”

  “We’re in the gym.”

  “Perfect.” He takes off for the PAC just as Ainsley Braden-Hammerschmidt’s ginormous SUV pulls up.

  The driver uses a remote to open the rear hatch and unloads Ainsley’s display.

  “Do you have your notecards for your speech to the judges?” asks Ainsley’s mother.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Then crush it!”

  “Every day in every way.�
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  The driver lugs Ainsley’s science project up the steps for her.

  I have to bang our old wheelie cart up the steps, one at a time. I sort of wish Dad had given me a hand. Guess he was eager to go tinkle the ivories on his (gasp) Steinway grand. That nanny who carries more cargo than a pack mule has it worse than me. She’s balancing six backpacks while simultaneously tugging a rolling suitcase.

  “Do you need help?” I ask.

  “Thank you,” she says. “But your hands are full.”

  “Not as full as yours!”

  I take three backpacks. I sling one over my shoulders, loop two more over my arms, and still have a free hand to drag my wheelie cart.

  I haul my stuff to the gymnasium and find my assigned spot. It’s right between Siraj and Ainsley.

  “This is it, Piper,” says Siraj. “The big day.”

  “Yeah. Where’s Emily?”

  “Over there,” says Siraj. “We both arrived super early this morning. Neither of us could sleep last night.”

  I see that his exhibit is all set up and ready to go.

  And, as it turns out, we’re both playing with marbles.

  Siraj has some sort of slanted triangular array of pegs where you pour marbles in the top and they make their random way down to bins on the bottom—bouncing right or left with every peg they hit.

  “It’s a quincunx for probability distribution analysis,” says Siraj. “Since there is an equal chance of a marble bouncing left or right at each peg, the marble stacks in the bins below will, on average, form the classic bell-shaped curve of normal distribution.”

  “Fantastic,” I say.

  I dump a tub of marbles into the top. They do not end up in the “classic” bell-shaped curve Siraj and I were expecting. In fact, a few of them wind up at the far edges of the quincunx’s bottom rack.

  “That’ll happen,” says Siraj. “Sometimes.”

  I give him a quick tour of my crater creation exhibit.