Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed! (12 page)

On the bus home after school, I came up with three reasons Ben didn't seem very excited about everyone liking his speech so much.

The third reason seemed pretty unlikely to me. So did the first reason, since Ben never acts like he cares all that much about what people think of him.
And the second reason was dumb, even for Ben.

So, scientifically speaking, I had no idea what was wrong with him.

When I got home, I checked my mold first thing, even before checking in with Sarah Fortemeyer, Teenage Girl Space Alien. It was just too exciting knowing there was a room full of slime mold in the house to worry about following the rules. Every great scientist has to go his own way, even if that means missing out on valuable fingernail polish viewing time.

We all have to make sacrifices in the name of science.

I have always loved my room. So far in my life I've lived in three houses, and in each house my room has been the best place for me to be. My latest room is the best room ever, especially since my mom
has thrown up her hands and said I could decorate it any way I want to. In my last room my mom did this whole sailboat and teddy bear theme, and even though I was only six at the time, I knew it was dumb to have little teddy bears in sailor suits all over my wallpaper. I knew it was even dumber to have matching pajamas, but fortunately, I had a growth spurt and my mom couldn't find the same pajamas in a bigger size.

Now my walls are covered with posters. I have three solar system posters, one periodical table poster, which is all the chemical elements known to humankind in one simple-to-read chart, and a five-foot-tall poster of Albert Einstein with his hair sticking out all over the place. Everywhere I look, I find something awesome to look at. Not to mention
that there are snacks, books, crumbs, and little messes everywhere.

And now there is mold.

I have never been so happy in my life.

I checked on my molds and took notes. The mold terrarium was looking pretty steamy, and inside the Cheerios had already started to wilt. No mold yet, but I figured it would only take a day or two more before it was a wonderland of mold spores in there. And while it would take another couple of weeks before my slime molds began growing, the yellow slime mold Ben and I had captured in the wild looked very happy in its new environment, which was a plastic bag on top of my bookshelf.

I thought about cleaning off my desk and my dresser so I could spread my mold samples out a little bit, but it was
clearly a job that would take at least two hours, maybe a week. I decided to call Ben instead and give him a mold update.

When he answered the phone, he still sounded unhappy.

“I don't get it,” I said. “All you've been talking about for a whole week is winning this election. And now that it looks like you actually might do it, you're acting like your pet hamster died or something.”

“I had a pet hamster once,” Ben said. “It didn't die, though. It escaped.”

“Did you get another one?”

“No, I just waited for the first one to come back. In fact, I'm still waiting.”

“Where did you live when your hamster escaped?” I asked.

“Seattle,” Ben said. “But they say animals sometimes track down their owners, even when their owners have moved
hundreds, even thousands, of miles away.”

Yeah, dogs maybe. One cat out of a million. But a hamster?

I don't think so.

“So, did you call your dad to tell him what a great job you and Aretha did today?” I asked, keeping my hamster thoughts to myself.

“Nope,” Ben said. “There's nothing to tell him about. I've decided to drop out of the race.”

I couldn't believe it. “Are you crazy? You could win it, Ben. People thought your speech was really cool.”

“No, they thought Aretha was really cool,” Ben said. “I think she's really cool too. And she's smart and organized, just like your speech said. She ought to be president, not me. She'd be the best one out of everybody.”

“But what about your dad coming to visit you if you win? What about pay-per-view movies and pizza?”

“There's pizza in Seattle,” Ben said. “I'll just go visit him there, same as always.”

I didn't know what to say. It wasn't like Ben to be so, well, reasonable. I mean, Aretha
would
make a great president. And he and his dad could definitely order pizza and watch movies in Seattle.

Still, it's hard to see somebody's dream die, even if the dream was sort of dumb to begin with.

“Hey, some of our mold's starting to grow,” I said, trying to cheer him up. “The stuff growing on the bread is this really interesting shade of blue. Sort of like a scab.”

“Scabs are gray, or else purple,” Ben said. “I've never seen a blue scab in my life.”

“Imagine mixing the purple and gray,” I told him. “That's the sort of blue I'm talking about.”

“Yeah, I can sort of see what you're saying,” Ben said, and by the way his voice sounded, I could tell he could see it in his head. That is one of the good things about having an artistic genius for your best friend. They're very good at imagining stuff.

“You want to hear about the mold terrarium?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Ben said. He was starting to sound a little happier. “Is the tomato totally grossazoid or what?”

If you ever have to cheer somebody up, try talking to them about mold.

Scientifically speaking, it works 100 percent of the time.

It turns out that Mrs. Wanda Patino, principal of Woodbrook Elementary School, is not a big fan of mold.

“In the basement of my school?” she said after I'd given her my Amazing Mold presentation, complete with illustrations and fun facts. “You want to grow mold in the basement of my school?”

“Well, it's kind of everybody's school,” I pointed out. “And Mr. Reid said it would be okay.”

“You want to grow mold in the basement of my school?” she asked again.

Scientifically speaking, this conversation was starting to get a little boring.

“It's a science project,” I told her. “It's educational. It's probably the most educational thing any kid will do in this school all year. And our school would be the only school around for miles with its own mold museum. You might win an award for Most Scientific Principal or something.”

Mrs. Patino just shook her head. I could tell I was not doing a very good job of convincing her of the wonderful-ness of mold.

“Mac, I'm impressed by your initiative here,” she said after about two more minutes of head shaking. “But there are health codes we have to think about.
Under the wrong conditions mold can be a very dangerous thing.”

“You're thinking about a different kind of mold,” I insisted. “The kind that gets inside buildings and makes people sick. That's not the kind of mold I'm growing. Most of the molds I'm growing are slime molds. And they're all in covered containers.”

“I'm sorry, Mac,” Mrs. Patino said. She stood up and walked around to the front of her desk. “But I think I'd have a hard time convincing the school superintendent that your mold museum was anything but a health hazard.”

I knew there wasn't any use in arguing anymore. You can always tell with adults. When they're finished with a topic once and for all, they get this little smile on their face like,
I win, and no
offense, but there's nothing you can do about it, so now I'm going to go eat some disgusting snack like green olives with pimentos stuck in them, if you don't mind.