Free The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty

with a spring sticking out of the top. Ms. Fairchild goes to help them, but Mrs. Carmichael holds up her hand.
    “It’s not heavy,” she says. “I just didn’t want Traci to drop it after so much work. She’s been a slave to this thing for the last month.” When they have moved the metal thing to the ledge by the window, she turns to Traci, says, “Bye, sugar,” and leaves.
    “What is it?” Ray Watley asks.
    “It’s a seismograph,” Traci says, pushing her braids behind her shoulders. She waits until Ms. Fairchild is looking and then flips a switch. A roll of paper from an adding machine revolves slowly, letting out paper at one end, which Traci holds with one hand. Now you can see that the spring has a pen attached to the end of it, positioned so it makes one long, straight line on the paper. Traci’s blue-gray eyes watch ours.
    “Now jump,” she says, pointing at Libby. Libby jumps, her braids that are supposed to be just like Traci’s but aren’t really flying up behind her. There is a small wave in the line, a tiny bump.
    It’s impossible not to say “ahhh,” though I try not to. Traci smiles. “Now three people jump, and it’ll get bigger.” Three people jump. She shows us the paper.
    “Yours is the best,” Brad Browning tells her. No one says anything, but already, I know it’s true. Traci will get to meet Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan will get to meet Traci.
    Star says she wants to make her volcano go off now, and Ms. Fairchild says fine, as long as it doesn’t really explode the way a volcano would. They are usually enemies. Star goes to her backpack and takes out a bottle of vinegar, red food coloring, and a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda. She pours a little of each in, one at a time, through a funnel into the mouth of the clay mud thing that is supposed to look like a volcano but doesn’t at all. We stand in a circle around it, waiting. Nothing comes out, and she has to keep adding more. Finally, there is a small, oozing trickle of red.
    “That’s gross,” Ray Watley says. “It looks like blood.”
    “More will come out,” she says. “Just wait.”
    While we are waiting, Traci turns to look at my plants and the yellow triptych on the windowsill. Her eyes move slowly over the words, and I try not to watch. I’m embarrassed by it now, how crooked it is, how small.
    “Is that yours?” she asks.
    I nod, watching her carefully.
    “It’s nice,” she says, and turns back around.
    Star finally pours the rest of the bottle of vinegar into the volcano. When she does this, there is a crackling sound beneath, like aluminum foil being shaken, and then finally the mixture comes back out again in red blobs, rolling down the clay mound onto the cookie sheet, dripping onto the floor.
    “It’s like throw up!” Ray yells. He’s very happy about this. “It’s like blood and puke!”
    Ms. Fairchild clears her throat and claps her hands twice. “That’s enough. That’s enough,” she says, reaching for the paper towels. She makes us go back to our seats, warning us not to step in the lava from Star’s volcano, which really does look like blood and maybe throw up. When she finishes with the paper towels, she stands at the front of the room, unsmiling, her hands on her hips.
    “I have to say I’m a little disappointed. When I gave you this assignment in March, I clearly explained the rules. Only two people actually brought in a triptych the way you were supposed to.”
    Traci looks down at her lap, trying not to smile.
    “And while Traci’s is very impressive, I’m afraid only Evelyn’s follows the procedure outlined in the rules for the Kansas State Science Fair. You have to have an experiment. You have to have a hypothesis, an objective, a method, observations, and a conclusion. You have to follow directions.” She crosses her arms, her black eyebrows pushed down low. “Sometimes I don’t think you children listen to me at all.”
    No one says anything. Her dark eyes rest on