The Science Fair

Imani had been working on her volcano for three weeks.

Not two weeks. Not almost three weeks. Exactly three weeks, because she had marked every single day on the calendar hanging above her desk with a big purple star sticker.

Twenty-one purple stars.

The volcano was beautiful. She had built it from papier-mâché and painted it to look like a real mountain, with tiny green trees glued along the base and little gray rocks she'd collected from the backyard pressed into the sides. At the very top was a crater — a perfect little cup where the baking soda would go. And when she added the vinegar mixed with red food coloring and just a tiny squirt of dish soap — that was her secret ingredient, the dish soap, because it made the lava extra foamy — the whole thing would ERUPT.

She had practiced the eruption four times in the garage.

Every single time: perfect.

"This is going to be the best volcano the science fair has ever seen," Imani told her little brother, Davis, who was sitting on the garage steps eating a granola bar.

"It's just a volcano," Davis said, because he was five and didn't understand anything.

"It's not just a volcano," Imani said. "It's a chemical reaction. When the acetic acid in the vinegar meets the sodium bicarbonate in the baking soda, it creates carbon dioxide gas, and THAT is what makes the —"

"Can I poke it?"

"No, you may NOT poke it."

The morning of the science fair, Imani woke up before her alarm. She put on her favorite outfit — her yellow shirt with the sunflower on it and her overalls with the deep pockets. She carefully loaded the volcano into a cardboard box lined with old towels, and her mom carried it to the car like it was a birthday cake.

The school gym was already buzzing when they arrived. Tables were set up in long rows with white tablecloths, and kids were arranging their projects everywhere. Marcus Wheeler had a display about magnets. Sofia Reyes had grown three bean plants in different kinds of light. Tommy Park had built something with batteries and wires that was supposed to make a little fan spin, but the fan wasn't spinning yet, and Tommy's dad was reading the instructions very carefully.

Imani found her assigned table — number fourteen — and her mom set the box down gently.

"You got this, baby," her mom said, kissing the top of her head. "I'll be back at ten for the presentations. I am so proud of you."

Imani nodded. She felt like a real scientist. She reached into the box, gripped the base of the volcano with both hands, and lifted.

Later, she would try to figure out what happened. Maybe the box shifted. Maybe her fingers slipped. Maybe the towels bunched up in a weird way. She would never know for sure.

What she knew was this: the volcano tilted, and then the volcano was not in her hands anymore, and then there was a terrible, awful, no-good CRASH.

The volcano hit the gym floor and broke into five pieces.

For a moment, everything went silent — at least it felt that way. Then the sounds of the gym came rushing back, and Imani just stood there, looking down at three weeks of work scattered across the floor like a jigsaw puzzle that nobody would ever want to solve.

The little green trees had popped off. The gray rocks from her backyard had rolled under the table. The crater — her perfect little crater — had cracked right down the middle.

Imani's eyes filled up fast and hot.

She knelt down and tried to push two pieces together, but they wouldn't stay. The papier-mâché was crumpled along the broken edges. Paint had chipped off in ugly white patches.

"Oh no," Sofia said from the next table. "Oh, Imani."

Mrs. Patterson, who was organizing the fair, came rushing over. She crouched down beside Imani and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Sweetheart, are you okay?"

Imani shook her head, because she did not trust her voice.

"Do you want to call your mom?"

Imani thought about it. She imagined her mom coming back, and the quiet car ride home, and the broken volcano sitting in the recycling bin, and all twenty-one purple stars on her calendar meaning nothing.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Can I have some tape?" she whispered.

Mrs. Patterson brought her a whole roll of masking tape. Sofia brought her a glue stick. Marcus Wheeler, who had finished setting up his magnet display, came over and held pieces together while Imani taped them.

It took almost an hour.

When she was done, the volcano looked... well, it looked like a volcano that had been dropped on the floor and taped back together. The pieces didn't line up perfectly. There were gaps where you could see the newspaper underneath the paint. One whole section leaned slightly to the left, like the mountain was tired. Tape crisscrossed the surface in long, messy strips.

It was not beautiful anymore.

Imani set it on the table and stood back and looked at it, and her chin wobbled, but she pressed her lips together tight.

She pulled her note cards out of her deep overall pockets. They were a little crumpled, but she could still read them. She had written her whole presentation in her best handwriting — what a chemical reaction was, why the lava foamed, what carbon dioxide gas did when it had nowhere to go but up.

She straightened the cards and set them next to the volcano.

Then she arranged her bottle of vinegar and her box of baking soda and her little bottle of red food coloring and her secret-ingredient dish soap in a neat row.

She was ready. Or something close to ready.

At ten o'clock, the parents and judges came in. Imani saw her mom walk through the gym doors and scan the room and find table fourteen and — she saw it. Her mom's face changed, just a little, when she noticed the tape and the cracks. But then her mom smiled and gave her a thumbs-up from across the gym.

The judges moved table by table. They watched Tommy's fan finally spin. Tommy pumped his fist in the air. They measured Sofia's bean plants. They tested Marcus's magnets.

Then they arrived at table fourteen.

Imani took a breath so deep she felt it all the way down in her shoes.

"My name is Imani Williams," she said, "and my project is about chemical reactions."

Her voice came out a little shaky at first. She looked down at her note cards.

"A chemical reaction is when two or more substances combine to make something totally new. Today I'm going to demonstrate an acid-base reaction using vinegar and baking soda."

She looked up. The judges were listening — really listening. One of them smiled at her.

"I built this volcano to show how the reaction works." She paused. She looked at her volcano with all its tape and crooked edges and chipped paint. "I dropped it this morning. So it doesn't look the way it's supposed to. But the science inside is exactly the same."

She scooped baking soda into the cracked crater. She added three drops of red food coloring. She added one squirt of dish soap — her secret ingredient.

Then she picked up the vinegar.

"When I pour this in," she said, and her voice was steady now, "the acetic acid will react with the sodium bicarbonate, and it will create carbon dioxide gas. The gas builds up and pushes the mixture out of the crater. The dish soap makes it extra foamy so it looks like real lava."

She poured.

For one terrible second, nothing happened, and Imani thought maybe the crack in the crater had made a leak, maybe the whole thing was ruined, maybe —

FOOOOOOM.

Red, foamy lava came bubbling up out of the top, spilling over the cracked edges, rolling down the taped-together sides of the mountain in thick, spectacular rivers. It poured through the gaps in the papier-mâché. It oozed over the masking tape. It pooled around the little green trees that she'd stuck back on with the glue stick.

It was the biggest, foamiest eruption she had ever gotten.

The judges' eyes went wide. A few parents started clapping. Davis, who had come with her mom, shouted, "WHOA, IMANI!" so loud that the whole gym heard.

And Imani — standing behind her broken, taped-up, leaning, cracked, absolutely imperfect volcano — grinned so big her cheeks hurt.

She looked down at her note cards one more time, even though she didn't need them anymore.

"That," she said, "is a chemical reaction."

The judges wrote something on their clipboards. One of them leaned forward and said, "That was an excellent presentation, Imani."

She didn't win first place. Sofia's bean plants won first place, and honestly, those bean plants were really impressive.

But Imani won a blue ribbon for "Outstanding Presentation," and Mrs. Patterson told her it was the best explanation of a chemical reaction she'd heard in eleven years of science fairs.

That night, Imani taped the blue ribbon right on the calendar, covering up a whole row of purple stars.

She thought it looked just right.