Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo by Greg Leitich Smith

Author:Greg Leitich Smith [Smith, Greg Leitich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: N/A
Published: 2013-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Elias

The Union of Students Concerned About Cruelty to Animals scattered before Goliath, which allowed the rest of us to get into the gym to set up our projects. The science fair was in the second biggest gym, the one the size of a couple basket-ball courts side-by-side and used mostly for volleyball and wrestling.

A twenty-foot-tall mural of Phlogiston, the Warrior Penguin, loomed over everything. There were about sixty projects, each getting about twelve square feet of display space. The projects would all be judged on appearance, execution, clarity, and methodology.

I was nervous, which sort of surprised me. Dad had forced me into doing the project but it had been — not fun, exactly — but better than I expected. And, there was the chance I’d win. A good chance, I thought, which would also really help my chem grade.

Because my dad and who-knows-how-many-other parents had refused to take on the job, Mr. Eden himself was to be the chief judge. His two sub-judges were from the advanced placement classes at the Peshtigo School’s College Preparatory High School Division. The guy was sort of skinny, with a beige sweater vest and matching trousers that made him look like a bratwurst with arms. The girl, on the other hand, wore faded overalls with a long-sleeve tie-dyed T-shirt, rose-tinted glasses, and carried a leather day planner over her shoulder like a weapon.

Shohei wasn’t there yet.

The pair of sub-judges were walking around with clipboards and asking Honoria pointed questions about her experimental procedure.

“Then,” Honoria said, “I tried to wean them from the beef hearts to the banana, exclusively.” She pointed to one of her photographs of the training. It was the one with the six blobs of banana resting in the tank gravel while the fish swam above.

She never had been able to persuade Spot and Fluffy to embrace vegetarianism.

“Why didn’t you simply stop feeding one of the piranhas altogether?” Mr. Eden asked, peering into the tank and tapping the glass.

“Yeah,” Bratwurst guy chimed in, “if they’d been hungry enough, they’d have eaten the banana.”

“First,” Honoria said, straightening to glare at the guy, “I was not about to starve Spot and Fluffy. Second: we already know that P. nattereri are omnivores. Third: I wasn’t trying to just get them to eat bananas, but to prefer bananas over meat.” She referred them back to her Statement of Inquiry, and then started talking something about limited sample sizes and replied to a question on whether her hypothesis was properly falsifiable.

“Why did you do it in the first place?” the girl asked. “Who cares whether piranhas want to eat bananas?”

I didn’t hear Honoria’s answer, because I’d just spotted Shohei at the end of the aisle.

“Sorry I’m late.” Shohei rushed up, carrying a length of poster board, his laptop computer slung over one shoulder, and a brown expandable file folder. “Can you help me get set up?”

“Sure,” I said, glancing up to see Mr. Eden lifting the lid off the tank. “Where are your plants?”

“Umm,” Shohei said, sort of grimacing, “about that.

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