Green Algae and Bubble Gum Wars (16 page)

“Well, I first wanted to congratulate you on all the work you've done in developing your product. I think it's wonderful that you are thinking about the chemical content in commercial gum and concerned with producing environmentally-friendly products. And of course the science department was thrilled to see a student really take a cause in the community and make it her own.”

“Uh, thank you,” Avery answered nervously.

“That being said,” Mr. Moore began.

Oh, no! Here it comes…the gum wars are out of control and now he's going to want me to kill my project.

“I was going over your project packet that was due yesterday. I see that you've done some good research on how trees are important to the environment because they absorb CO
₂
, but you're missing one piece of the puzzle in order to evaluate the total potential environment impact of the factory. Why don't you look into what the factory's carbon emissions will be?”

“Carbon emissions?” Avery repeated, vaguely remembering Betsy Fitzgerald saying something about that. And now that she thought of it, didn't Katani mention that term, too? “Is that like greenhouse gases and stuff? I know a little bit about that…”

“It is,” Mr. Moore replied. “What do you know about the carbon cycle?”

“Uh…I know it's bad.”

Mr. Moore shook his head. “Actually, the carbon cycle itself isn't a bad thing. It's a perfectly natural process for the Earth. Sort of like breathing. The ocean absorbs and releases carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and plants take in and release carbon dioxide as they grow, which helps keep the whole system in balance. Things only get bad when more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere than the plants and the ocean can absorb. The carbon dioxide lets heat from the sun pass through it, but then it doesn't let the heat get back out. That extra heat can cause trouble for the climate of the whole Earth.”

“How does that happen? How does extra carbon dioxide get up there?” Avery was captivated by what Mr. Moore was saying.

“Well, people create a lot of carbon dioxide when they burn fossil fuels for energy. So, for example, if this gum factory uses a lot of energy from fossil fuels, it could be responsible for sending a lot of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. People call the carbon dioxide that's released the ‘carbon emission,' and how much carbon dioxide the factory is responsible for is its ‘carbon footprint.'” Mr. Moore paused and looked seriously at Avery. “Why don't you call their office and see if they have any information? Most companies have brochures they send out to local citizens.”

“Okay,” Avery breathed. She knew her fun with gum had been too good to be true. “Is that…” She paused. “…all, Mr. Moore?”

He looked up. “Yes, that's all. I'm sorry, Avery. It seems that we find ourselves in a rather sticky situation.” He chuckled at his little joke and then went back to work.

Avery slung her bag over her shoulder and tried to swallow her smile as she sauntered out the door.
That was a close one!
she thought to herself.
And all this carbon stuff sounds more complicated than I thought.

As she walked, or in Avery's case, practically skipped down the hall, visions of a huge, hairy carbon footprint caused her to laugh out loud. Unfortunately, QOM #1, Anna, was just coming out of the girl's room. When she saw Avery laughing she twirled her finger by the side of her head and rolled her eyes.

“Trying out for a cartoon series, Anna?” Avery quipped as she ran by. No QOM could get the better of her!

O
kay, Charlotte. Indian, Chinese, or Thai?” asked Mr. Ramsey. He popped into Charlotte's bedroom with a handful of takeout menus.

Charlotte looked at her dad like he was crazy. “Dad, this is an official
BSG sleepover
, remember?”

Mr. Ramsey nodded. “Pizza. Gosh, I don't know why I even bother to ask anymore! You girls have pizza on the brain!” Marty yipped happily in the corner, jumped out of his bed, and ran around in a series of figure eights around Charlotte and her dad. Marty got just as excited for BSG sleepovers as Charlotte did, and he got extra excited for pizza.

Charlotte laughed at Marty's antics and scooped him up into a cuddle. “Just make sure there's no onions or garlic on the pizza, 'kay Dad?” Charlotte reminded him. “Looks like Marty wants to share, and those things can be poisonous for dogs!”

“I wouldn't forget, Char,” her dad assured her. Just then the doorbell rang.

“Yikes!” Charlotte cried. “I can't believe it's five o'clock already! I still haven't cleaned up my science fair project from in the Tower. Can you get the door, Dad?”

Charlotte usually made a point of keeping her schoolwork very neat—particularly where sleepovers were concerned. She'd been working on her project all day with Nick and Chelsea Briggs. But when Chelsea left to go take pictures of a local crafts fair for the
Sentinel
, Charlotte and Nick had gotten caught up talking, laughing, and watching episodes of “Jungle Bloopers,” their favorite nature exploration show, and she'd totally lost track of time. The truth was, she wished she could've hung out with Nick more.

When Charlotte raced upstairs to put away her supplies so the mess wouldn't give away what she and Nick and Chelsea were planning, she had no idea where to begin. “Roorooo!” Marty sang behind her. He skipped over to her palette of wet paint and showed off for Charlotte with one of his trademark rolls. He popped up and his normally grey and white patchy fur was covered in blue.

“Marty! You weren't supposed to come up here yet!” Charlotte groaned. “Daaad!”

“Hey, it's blue dog!” giggled Maeve. She stood in the doorway with Avery, Isabel, and Katani in the stairway behind her.

“Oh! You're here already!” Charlotte exclaimed, scooping Marty into her arms with a paint-smeared sheet. “Uhh…can you guys hang out downstairs for a second? Just one little second!” As the BSG waited impatiently on the old,
ladder-like stairs leading up the Tower, Charlotte went into overdrive mode, using her free hand—the one not cradling a wiggly dog, football-style—to drape more old sheets over everything she and Chelsea and Nick had been working on. She didn't want her super-secret project revealed until their big presentation at the science fair.

“Okay!” she called after a frantic minute. “You guys can come up now!” The rest of the BSG trooped into the room. “This is a first! Never in the history of BSG sleepovers have you all showed up at the same time. Usually…” Charlotte glanced at Maeve with a sly smile, “…at least one of you guys is running late.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Char,” said Maeve, collapsing into the lime green swivel chair, “but today we had a romance emergency.”

“Romance emergency?” Mr. Ramsey repeated, appearing at the top of the stairs. “Is that like when you choke on a heart-shaped chocolate? Ooh, or cut your finger on a red rose's thorn…?”

Charlotte's lip curled in humiliation. “
Dad,
can you please
not
?”

“I know, I know. I am to go away, is it?” Mr. Ramsey said in his goofiest voice. The girls looked at one another and laughed. It was so easy to get embarrassed at whatever your own parents said in front of your friends, even if your friends thought it was hilarious.

“Just ignore me, girls,” Mr. Ramsey said. “I'm here for the dog…who looks like a Smurf.”

“He got blued.” Avery giggled.

“All right, I'll get this little rascal cleaned up. You ladies
deal with your…” Mr. Ramsey winked at Charlotte, “…emergency.”

“So what's the emergency?” Charlotte asked. Around her, Katani and Isabel had been furiously gathering scraps of paper that Charlotte missed in her quick clean-up and depositing art supplies into their proper containers, while Avery and Maeve—who were utterly useless when it came to matters of cleaning—set up the lemonade, courtesy of Scott Madden.

“Well, I heard it from Maeve,” said Katani.

“After Avery called me for some Queen of Romance advice,” Maeve added.

“Because Isabel and I soooo can't do this alone anymore,” concluded Avery.

Charlotte, confused, shook her head. “Do what? What's going on?”

Isabel took a deep breath and blurted, “Elena Maria dumped Jimmy.”

Charlotte threw her arms into the air and screamed, “
Finally!
” Surprised, she covered her mouth. “Was that mean?”

Maeve grinned mischievously. “Maybe…but that's
exactly
what I said too!”

“Well, this is great news,” Avery chirped. “Now that Elena is single, she and Scott can date, open a restaurant together, fall in love, get married, and we can all eat brownies and live happily ever after!” She attacked the plate of homemade brownies Isabel and Maeve had baked together.

Katani shook her head. “Girl, you are too funny.”

Charlotte nodded in agreement. “The writer in me was totally digging that story. Anyway, what's the emergency?”

“It's weird,” started Isabel. “Ever since the break up with Jimmy, Elena's been moping around the house.” Her voice dropped. “She didn't even want to go to the mall with her best friend, Cammy…and they do
everything
together. Scott called last night, and get this—she told me to take a message. She said she was too upset to talk to anyone. I don't know what to do! I mean, she doesn't even like Jimmy anymore. So what's her problem?”

“Well, what does Scott think?” asked Charlotte. As a journalist, she always knew the important questions to ask.

Avery looked grave. “Now that Elena Maria and Jimmy are over but Elena won't talk to Scott on the phone, Scott thinks that she just doesn't like him. I've never seen him so bummed. He's been in the kitchen all day…that's what he does when he's depressed…cooks.”

“How can he not know that she's totally into him?” Katani pondered, chewing thoughtfully on a brownie.

“Sometimes boys just don't get the message, no matter how cute your outfit is,” Maeve said wisely.

“Iz? She does like him, right?” Avery probed.

Isabel shrugged and looked at the floor. “I, uh…I don't know.”

Charlotte tapped her chin with her pencil. “You don't know…or you can't
say
?”

Isabel glanced at the ceiling and mumbled, “Um, well…”

“Hah!” Avery jumped up and down. “I knew it! She
does
like Scott.”

Isabel pretended to zip her lips and throw away the key.

“Okay, okay, be that way. But if we can get those two together in the same room…,” Avery began.

“It'll be happily ever after!” Charlotte jumped in.

“But how are we going to get them together? Elena's hardly speaking to anyone,” Isabel complained.

“You know,” Maeve said, looking around at Charlotte's research materials, “I think I just came up with a brilliant idea.”

“Spill, girlfriend!” Katani commanded.

“What about the science fair?” Maeve suggested. “Since you guys are both going to be presenting your projects,” she said, looking at Avery and Isabel, “you're going to need a little family support, right? Like from your beloved siblings?”

Avery and Isabel looked at each other. “Perfect!” they shouted, high fiving.

“I am a matchmaking genius,” Maeve gushed. “And speaking of matchmaking at the science fair,” she went on, “What's all this?” She waved her hand around Charlotte's gallery of posters, then sniffed the air dramatically. “And why do I smell traces of Nick Montoya in here?”

“You do
not
!” Charlotte whacked Maeve lightly with a pillow.

Maeve giggled. “All right, all right, you got me. I saw his name on the corner of your poster. I saw Chelsea's name too, but it's way more fun to tease you about Nick.”

“Well,” Charlotte answered primly, “you know that I am doing my project with Chelsea and Nick. But we agreed to keep the project a secret until the science fair. If something doesn't work, there's a lot of pressure when three people's grades are riding on it.”

“Can you give me a clue?” begged Maeve.

Charlotte shook her head. “My lips are sealed.”

“Argh, this is sooo stressing me out!” Avery griped. “I still have all this research to do and you're practically done. Hey, Char, mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Charlotte nodded. She loved being the knowledgeable one. “Go for it.”

Maeve prodded Katani and Isabel with a concerned glance. “Hey, while you guys do that, we're going to go have a dinner consultation with your dad. Last sleepover he thought that pizza with mushrooms and clams would be interesting.”

“That was a huge mistake!” Katani agreed. She headed out the door, followed closely by Maeve and Isabel.

Avery scurried to the corner to grab a pad of paper and began. “So, Char, what do you know about carbon emissions and stuff?”

Charlotte thought for a minute. “You know what, Avery? You should probably just go online to find this stuff out. That's what Nick and Chelsea and I did when we were researching—oops!” Charlotte clapped both her hands over her mouth. “I almost told you what we're doing! Avery, are all these questions some kind of undercover plot to figure out our secret project? Because it's
not
going to work.”

Avery giggled. “
No
, it's not a secret plot. Cross my heart. I actually just really need some help with the research,” she admitted.

“Okay,” Charlotte answered thoughtfully. “Here's what I did. First, I wrote down a brainstorm list of all the different questions I had. Then, I went online and checked out some books from the library and tried to figure out the answers.
Then
, I called in the expert—Miss Pierce, in my case. But she
didn't just tell me the answers right off—she gave me lots of inspiration and helped me figure out stuff for myself, which is way better because I feel like I really understand it now, you know?”

Avery nodded. “So I guess I need to do my own research on carbon emissions…even if it's totally not as fun as making loads of gum!” Avery sighed.

Charlotte nodded. “Yup. But if it helps…you can totally borrow this book. And here's one of the websites I used…I don't think this will give away
too
much about my project,” she said, scribbling a Web address on a scrap of paper. “Promise you'll do the research to get all the facts from now on.”

Avery spat on her hand and offered it to Charlotte. “Deal.”

Charlotte looked horrified and answered, “No way I'm shaking that thing. Come on. Let's go get some dinner.”

Substitute Sisters

After one large cheese and one large pepperoni pizza had been fully devoured by the BSG, Mr. Ramsey, and a newly washed Marty-man, the girls laid out their sleeping bags around a crackling fire in the Ramseys' living room.

“Do you remember our very first sleepover? It was right in this exact spot!” Avery reminisced.

“And we all hated each other!” Katani added.

“I still can't believe that,” Isabel remarked. She had come to Abigail Adams Junior High a few weeks after school started. By that time Charlotte, Avery, Maeve, and Katani had already started the BSG—and totally got along just fine.

“We have definitely done a lot of growing up since then,” noted Charlotte.

“Yes!” Maeve exclaimed, shooting upright in her sleeping bag. “Especially lately.”

“What do you mean?” asked Katani.

Maeve blushed. “I don't know. I feel like I understand this whole boy-girl-romance thing more…”

Isabel grinned. “But weren't you already ‘the expert' on that?”

“Well, now I'm a super-expert!” Maeve laughed. “I've come to understand that crushes can get a little over-the-top. And in other ways too…” She eyed her friends and jutted her chin out conspiratorially. “If you know what I mean.”

Confused, the BSG looked at each other. “Not really,” Avery replied bluntly.

“Like…” Maeve's voice dropped to a hush. “Wearing certain things that you didn't, ahem, need to wear before….”

Katani shook her head, and as she did her beaded braids clattered. “You lost me, and I'm supposed to be the expert on who-wears-what around here.”

“You know…
bras
!” Maeve finally blurted. The girls stared back at her blank-faced, making Maeve wish the floor would open up and swallow her.

“Yeah? What about them?” Avery asked.

Maeve swallowed and took a deep breath. “I, uh…okay, big confession here…I sort of got one this week. My first one.” She looked around at her friends' faces again. She half-expected them to crack up at her but instead they just looked interested.

“Ooo, what's it look like?” Katani asked excitedly. “Did you get one with ribbons? I love those!”

“Well, actually I got two,” Maeve explained, slowly getting more excited as she spoke. “One is like a beigy color—and the other one is pink! But really light pink. They have a tiny bit of lace on the straps, and a little bow in front.”

“Girl, your taste there was so right. Ribbon decoration is
so
this season,” Katani assured her, nodding seriously. Thinking about the bras from Kgirl's straightforward fashion perspective made Maeve feel a whole lot more comfortable. Fashion talk she could handle.