Islands of the Black Moon

Chapter 1 Five years later . . . It all started the day of the science fair. I was really psyched because I was hoping to win first prize. Last year I made a lemon battery by sticking pennies and paper clips into three lemons and hooking up some wires, and then wham, those lemons generated enough voltage to light up a very small lightbulb. It was pretty cool. But Peter Peterson, the principal's son and my archrival, beat me. He made singing glasses by putting different amounts of water in a bunch of glasses, rubbing vinegar around the edges, and creating notes. He played the school song, and even though one of his glasses broke, he still won. But this year I was really hoping to beat him. When I got to school, I went straight to the auditorium where everybody was setting up their projects. It looked like the usual--spiderweb tracings, diagrams of molecules, ant farms. I was so busy checking out the competition, I bumped right into someone. "Excuse you, da Gama," sneered Peter Peterson, his squinty brown eyes fixed on my shopping bag. "Your project in the bag?" Before I could answer, he continued. "Well, don't get your hopes up, because my project is gonna blow yours away." Then he laughed as if he had said the funniest thing. "For real." "Whatever," I replied as if I couldn't care less. "If you don't mind, I've got things to do." I pushed past him to my table, where Sarah Jane Baker was peering glumly at her ant farm. "What's the matter, Sarah Jane?" I asked. "Look, Lila," she said, pointing. Her farm was littered with dead bodies, and the ants had done almost no tunneling. She obviously hadn't realized that red and black ants do not get along. I was trying to think of something to say to cheer her up when Peter Peterson showed up at our table and began setting up. Just my luck. As I took my project out of the shopping bag, I watched Peterson out of the corner of my eye. Actually, his project did look pretty good. He'd made a volcano out of clay and chicken wire, with a toilet-paper tube stuck in the middle. "You don't stand a chance against me with that," Peterson said, giving my project a nasty grin that revealed the railroad tracks in his mouth. "We'll see," I said sweetly, as if I couldn't be bothered. "By the way, Peterson, make sure you add the vinegar to the baking soda real slowly. Otherwise you're gonna have a real mess on your hands." "Shut up, da Gama," Peterson snapped. "I don't need help from some dumb girl." "You can't say I didn't warn you," I retorted with a shrug. But inside I was fuming. How dare he call me a dumb girl? "May I have your attention, please?" said Mr. Peterson, the principal, tapping on the microphone. "I can see you've all done some fine work. So let the science fair begin, and may the best man win." Mrs. Cole, our homeroom teacher, tapped Mr. Peterson on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear. "I mean," said Mr. Peterson with a huge, phony smile, "may the best person win!" Like father, like son, I thought, watching as the judges began to thread their way among the tables. I gave my project one last look. It was a telescope I'd made out of two pieces of rolled-up black cardboard, one inside the other. I had fitted a convex lens on one end, the kind of lens that curves outward like the outside of a spoon. I had put another convex lens on the other end. What was tricky was adjusting the lengths of the tubes to make an image come into focus. Next to the telescope was the report I'd written about Galileo Galilei. He's the Italian astronomer who perfected the telescope way back in 1609. He used one concave lens, though, plus a convex one. In case you're interested, concave is the opposite oFarber, Erica is the author of 'Islands of the Black Moon' with ISBN 9780440417064 and ISBN 0440417066.