Brendan Buckley's Sixth-Grade Experiment Read online

  ALSO BY SUNDEE T. FRAZIER

  The Other Half of My Heart

  Brendan Buckley’s Universe and Everything In It

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Sundee T. Frazier

  Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Robert Papp

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Frazier, Sundee Tucker.

  Brendan Buckley’s sixth-grade experiment / Sundee T. Frazier.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: Brendan Buckley’s universe and everything in it.

  Summary: As biracial Brendan Buckley enters middle school, he deals with issues with his African American father, a new girl at school, and his changing friendship with his best friend.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89930-0

  [1. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 4. Science projects—Fiction. 5. Middle schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction.] 1. Title.

  PZ7.F8715Br 2012

  [Fic]—dc22 2011009377

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To Matt—

  for fifteen years of commitment,

  passion, partnership, and most

  definitely, fun

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  My green anole has no table manners. He munches crickets like my best friend, Khalfani, eats Pringles. Mouth wide open. Crunching them so hard and fast, they’re gone in no time flat. With Khal, it’s gross. But with my lizard, Einstein, it’s amazing. In fact, it may be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

  I’d watched Einstein chase and devour his food six times since I’d gotten him a couple of weeks before—a gift from my parents for my eleventh birthday—and it had been exciting every time. I’d recorded every single cricket he’d eaten in my brand-new green spiral notebook.

  Across the cover of the notebook, I’d written my anole’s name, EINSTEIN, and on the title page,

  The Life and Times of a Green Anole by Brendan S. Buckley

  I planned to record everything about keeping my new pet. I’d made sections for six categories and marked them with little sticky tabs I’d found in Mom’s desk: Feeding, Tank Temps (which I would be checking every day until I was sure I wasn’t accidentally going to roast or freeze him to death), Behavior, Other Observations, Research, and the most important one of all—Questions.

  Some people never ask questions. Maybe they’re afraid they’ll look dumb, or maybe they don’t think of things to ask. But not me. It’s like my brain is one big bowl of Rice Krispies and all my questions are the milk. It’s a constant snap, crackle, and pop up there.

  Mom encourages all my inquiries and investigations. But Dad has his limits. “Enough with the questions, Brendan,” he’ll say. But I can never stop asking questions. It’s just what scientists do.

  I sat on my bed and opened my notebook to the section titled Research. Here’s what I’d written down so far:

  • Anoles eat grubs, crickets, cockroaches, spiders, moths—any arthropod that will fit in their mouths. (Arthropod: any of a phylum—Arthropoda—of invertebrate animals, such as insects, arachnids, and crustaceans, that have a segmented body and jointed appendages.)

  • Don’t feed them anything bigger than one-half the size of their heads!

  • Insects caught in the wild may be accepted eagerly. (Cool! Try this out!)

  I created another bullet point for the information I hadn’t had time to record the night before. Dad may be the stricter parent, but when it comes to eating healthy food and sticking to bedtimes, Mom turns into the Enforcer. I wrote down what I had read on TheReptileZone.com, a site for herpetologists like me:

  • Green anoles turn brown when stressed. Causes of stress: temperature in tank too hot or cold; too much handling.

  Next, I flipped to the Feeding section and made my seventh entry: “Saturday, September 1, 8:00 a.m.” I’d learned from the man at the pet store that if you fed your anole at the same time every day, he’d start showing up early for the grub.

  I pulled out my cricket keeper from under the table we’d set up to hold the twenty-gallon tank. The tank was against the wall closest to the foot of my bed, next to the door. I stared into the plastic case at the few remaining crickets. They weren’t called pinheads for nothing. They were practically microscopic. “Sorry, guys, I’m back.”

  I felt a little bad for the insects. Their only reason for existing was to serve as lizard chow. But then again, that’s what the food chain is all about. The big guys eat the little guys. Then the even bigger guys come along and eat them. That’s life. Something has to die so something else can live.

  I slid out one of the black tubes from the keeper and shook several crickets into a plastic Baggie. I scooped up one spoonful of vitamin powder and dumped it in with the crickets. Then I shook the bag to coat them.

  “Mmm-hmm. Just like your Grampa Clem’s favorite, Shake ’n Bake!” my Grandma Gladys had said the first time she’d seen me feed Einstein. It had made me wish that Grampa Clem could have been there. He would have thought that watching a lizard eat crickets was one of the coolest things he’d ever seen, too.

  I had just lifted the wire-mesh top to dump in Einstein’s meal when I heard Grandpa Ed’s truck door slam in our driveway. He was there to pick me up for my first official rock expedition with the Puyallup Rock Club. A whole day in the mountains to dig for quartz crystals. We were even camping overnight!

  I quickly closed the tank’s lid, set the supplement container on the mouth of the cricket Baggie so the little buggers wouldn’t get away, and headed for the door. “I got it!” I shouted. I took the stairs two at a time.

  “Did I miss breakfast?” Grandpa Ed held up a baby-food jar filled with wood shavings. “I brought Einstein a treat.”

  I took the jar and peered inside. “Mealworms! Thanks!” I closed the door.

  “And another batch of crickets for you.” He held up a container
full of pinheads hopping all over each other. “Well, I mean, for your lizard.”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard they taste pretty good fried, but I think I’ll let Einstein have them.” I smiled.

  Grandpa Ed chuckled.

  “And you didn’t miss anything. I was just about to feed him.”

  We met Dad at the top of the stairs, headed into the kitchen. He was in his police uniform already. The edges of his hairline and goatee looked as if they’d been created with an X-Acto knife. He smelled like his aftershave—like spicy pine trees. “Hello there, Ed. How you doing this morning?”

  “Couldn’t be better. Been looking forward to this time with my grandson for the last three weeks.” We smiled at each other.

  Dad stepped over to the coffeemaker. “Coffee for the road?”

  “Thanks, I’ve got some in the truck. Sorry you’re not able to join us. Would’ve been great to have you along.”

  I tugged on Grandpa Ed’s sleeve. “Come on, Grandpa. I’m trying to train Einstein to come out every morning at eight.” I didn’t feel like hearing Dad’s excuses for why he wasn’t coming as he’d said he would.

  Dad’s spoon clanked against the side of his travel mug. “Yeah, I thought it might work out, but then I got my first reading assignment. I’m not the quick study Brendan is.” He looked at me with a raised eyebrow and a half smile. I looked at my socked feet. “So while you’re hitting the mountainside, I’ll be hitting the books.”

  Dad had enrolled in a program to finish his bachelor’s degree. It was something he said Grampa Clem had been disappointed with him about—dropping out of college. Plus, he couldn’t advance any further in the police department without it.

  I tugged Grandpa Ed’s sleeve again.

  “Maybe another time, then,” Grandpa Ed said. He pulled his arm from my grasp and put his hand on my shoulder. He was trying to get me to be patient, but I didn’t have time for this.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Probably not was more like it.

  “I’m glad for you two to get some time together, though.” Dad screwed the lid on the coffee mug. He picked up his keys and wallet from the counter. “Have a good time, Brendan. See you tomorrow.” He ruffled my hair, which has looser curls and is never as neat as his.

  “Okay. Bye.” As soon as Dad was past us on the stairs, I pulled Grandpa Ed to my room at the end of the hall. Einstein was sitting near the front of the tank. “He’s waiting for his food,” I whispered. I didn’t want to scare him back into the fake ivy.

  I lifted the lid and shook the calcium-coated crickets in. The first one’s legs had barely touched the bark on the bottom of the tank before Einstein snatched it up. “Whoa!” Grandpa Ed said. “I’d say the feller was hungry.”

  The other crickets hopped away. Catching them would give Einstein a chance to get some exercise, after he finished the one clamped in his jaws. He munched and chewed, mouth opening wide between bites.

  “He needs some work on his table manners,” I said, thinking of Dad, who is a stickler about chewing with your mouth closed and not talking while you eat, something I sometimes find hard to do.

  Grandpa Ed chuckled. “Maybe so, but I don’t see it happening. Now, if you put a lady lizard in there …”

  “Nah. Einstein’s going to be a bachelor. He’ll be happier that way.”

  “You don’t think he’ll get lonely while you’re off at school all day?”

  “I researched it. Green anoles are more or less solitary in the wild. Plus, I was lucky even to get one anole. Mom had to work pretty hard to convince Dad.” Einstein had been cheap, but all his gear—not so much. There was the tank, of course, and then three different kinds of lamps, thermometers (for both the cool and warm sides of the tank), a hygrometer, fake plants, a couple of real plants, substrate to line the bottom (which has to be changed regularly)—even a trip to the reptile vet. The guy at the pet store recommended it since Einstein had been captured in the wild, just to make sure he was free of parasites and all that.

  Dad had complained when we’d gotten the vet’s bill in the mail. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Then he practically made me swear on Grampa Clem’s grave that I wouldn’t kill Einstein through neglect. “Ignorance is also no excuse. You’re smart. After all this money, you’d better figure out how to keep this animal alive.”

  The only thing we hadn’t bought was the big rock I’d found at the park and put in Einstein’s tank for a basking spot, which was where he was lying now, after having polished off a second cricket.

  I opened the container of mealworms and plucked one out. It wriggled in my fingers. I dropped it near the rock. “Here you go, Einstein. Dessert on Grandpa Ed. See you tomorrow.”

  He lifted his long, thin snout in the air as if sniffing the new presence in his tank. His white-spotted pink throat fan shot out from his bright lime-colored body, warning other anoles to stay away. This was his territory, his grub. Of course, he didn’t have to worry. There was no one there but him. He would learn soon enough. I just hoped he would be happy in his new home. And that I wouldn’t accidentally kill him.

  I recorded the crickets and the mealworm in my notebook, misted the tank with purified water from the spray bottle Mom had given me, then put away the feeding stuff and grabbed my backpack. On my way out the door, I reached up to the shelf above Einstein’s tank, where I kept the rock and mineral collection I’d started this summer. I touched the glass-lidded wood box Grandpa Ed had made me for my birthday. Inside sat the chunk of Ellensburg Blue agate that we’d found on our last expedition—a secret outing that had almost gotten Grandpa Ed killed.

  Bring me luck, I thought. I wanted to come home with something big. Something impressive. Something that might even make Dad regret skipping the trip.

  After I’d reminded Mom about all the things she needed to do for Einstein while I was gone (“Turn on the nocturnal heat lamp at night, check and record tank temps, mist the leaves, and put in a piece of apple to keep any leftovers alive—anoles only eat live prey”), finally, finally, we were going!

  I’d been counting down since my birthday, and now, after twelve days, eight hours, and twenty-eight minutes, there we were, sitting in the cab of Grandpa Ed’s truck with our camping gear and rock-hounding tools in back, waving goodbye to Mom.

  Patches Junior ran circles in the bed of the truck. He jumped up with his paws on the cab’s rear window, barked, and then lay down for the ride, safe under the camper shell.

  “Have fun, Bren!” Mom called. She was still in her robe and her hair was smooshed up on one side from sleeping on it, but that’s a good thing about my mom—she doesn’t spend hours making her hair and face look perfect, like some moms. She’d rather be outside playing ball, or watch me do Tae Kwon Do, or hear about my latest experiment. “And be careful!” she shouted as we drove off.

  Mom didn’t need to tell me to have fun—or to be careful, for that matter. On our last expedition, the secret one, not only had Grandpa Ed almost died, I’d smashed up his truck trying to find help. The hood’s been fixed, but let’s just say I won’t be driving anything—not even one of those motorized chairs at Gladys’s senior living community—until I’m legal.

  This time, though, there were no secrets. Mom was happy I was going, which was a big turnaround from the previous month, when she had forbidden me even to see my grandpa, her dad. I had discovered him at a rock show the month before that, after not knowing him my whole life (he and Mom hadn’t been speaking). But everyone had made up since then. Everything was good. The only thing that could have been better was if Dad had been with us, heading toward the mountains.

  I’d called my bud Khal to see if he wanted to go instead.

  “And risk getting eaten by a cougar or sweating to death—for a few rocks? No thanks, man.” He said he’d be thinking of me from the safety and comfort of his air-conditioned bedroom while he dug virtual tunnels in Mario World.

  Summers had been getting hotter in the Pacific Northwest over the pa
st few years. I’d done some research on the whole global warming thing, and I was convinced from the data it was real.

  As we zoomed along Highway 18 toward the Cascades and Snoqualmie Pass, I refocused on being with my grandpa, doing something we both liked to do—hunt for rocks. Sitting there next to Grandpa Ed, I thought about Grampa Clem again, which I still did kind of a lot. I supposed the hurt of him dying wasn’t as deep as it had been a few months before. It helped that I’d found Grandpa Ed. Although he could never replace Grampa Clem, he was fun to be with, and he gave me that same safe feeling Grampa Clem had. That feeling that you’re not just a twig getting blown around by the wind, but a branch that belongs to a big tree that stands tall and proud and has been standing tall and proud for a long, long time.

  Grandpa Ed handed me a map. Not a normal street map with freeways and town names. This one showed rivers and trails and elevations marked with different colors. “A geological survey map,” he said. “We’ll be right here.” He tapped a section of the grid with his finger. I scanned the map, trying to figure it out, but it was all new to me.

  It didn’t really matter. We would get there eventually, and when we did, I was going to dig up some huge quartz crystals!

  But first, I had to dig for some food. My stomach felt like a giant sinkhole—something I’d read about on the Internet recently. Sinkholes forms when underground water dissolves subterranean rock until the surface land has no support and collapses. During the Civil War, a sinkhole in Kentucky swallowed up three Confederate soldiers! I wasn’t that hungry, but I could eat.

  I plowed through the bag of snacks Mom had packed. “Want one?” I asked, holding up an energy bar.