Brendan Buckley's Sixth-Grade Experiment Read Free Page B

use all my Tae Kwon Do balancing skills to keep from sliding down the rocky slope.
    My grandpa, the expedition leader, had shown me where to dig and how to move the sand and pebbles through the quarter-inch screen. Quartz fragments littered the ground, but so far I’d only found a couple worth keeping—one about three-quarters the size of my pinky; the other, half the size of that.
    I set the screen on the ground, took off my baseball cap, and swiped my forehead with my arm. Panning for crystals was about as slow going as fishing, but with waymore work involved! I had never broken a sweat sitting on the pier with Grampa Clem.
    Grandpa Ed handed me the flask. I took a swig of water. He pointed to some rock outcroppings. “Granite,” he said. “You’re looking at the Snoqualmie Batholith right there—a huge igneous rock formation, mostly underground. We can see it thanks to erosion and uplift.”
    Morgan piped up from where she balanced nearby, still shaking her screen. “My dad and I read about that. The batholith was formed in the late Oligocene epoch, twenty-eight
million
years ago! It’s teeming with minerals.”
    I’d read the same thing, preparing for our trip.
    â€œAbsolutely right!” Grandpa Ed winked at her. “That girl of yours is sharp as a tack, John. Sharp as a tack.”
    I pulled my cap down low on my head and went back to digging. So she’d read a few things. What was so sharp about that?
    â€œDon’t I know it.” Morgan’s dad leaned on the end of his shovel. “Keeps her mom and me on our toes, that’s for sure.”
    I grabbed my screen and started sifting. I was determined to find something big. Something Grandpa Ed would say was a real find. Something I could take home and show Dad.
    A glint in the dirt caught my eye. I swiped at the topsoil, uncovering a rounded whitish rock almost as bigas a baseball. Sparkly flecks on the rock gleamed, even in the shadows. Was it some kind of mica? Could it be muscovite?
    â€œGrandpa! I think I found something!” I held up the rock. He stepped over and took the specimen.
    â€œHmmm … yes.”
    â€œIs it muscovite?” Excitement built in my chest.
    Grandpa Ed turned the rock over in his hand. “This right here is what we’d call … a throw-it-at-your-cat rock.” He and a few of the guys standing nearby laughed. He plopped the dumb thing back into my palm. I glanced around, feeling as hot as if the granite around us were still magma and not hardened rock. Morgan kneeled with her back to us, intently shaking her screen. She didn’t appear to have heard the joke.
    â€œSorry, kiddo.” Grandpa Ed thumped my back. “Keep looking.”
    A few minutes later, Morgan cried out, “Look at this!” She held up a large chunk of something. It didn’t look like much. Probably just a big dirt clod around a few tiny crystals.
    Grandpa Ed hiked over to where she stood. I stayed put. I could see fine from where I was, and I was sure what I’d see would be the clump breaking up in Grandpa Ed’s hands.
Too bad
, I’d say.
Better luck next time
.
    â€œMind if I take a look?” Grandpa Ed took the dried-mud-covered whatever it was and knocked off as much dirt as he could. He spit on it a few times and rubbed itagainst his shirt. He held it up again. “Well, how about that? You found yourself a
real
beaut!”
    A couple of men and one of the women digging and sifting nearby stopped their work to see what Grandpa Ed was making such a big deal about.
    I inched over, still not believing the clump of crystals could be as big as it looked. Grandpa Ed pointed to the large center crystal. Its end was purple-tinged. “Looky here.”
    â€œIs that
amethyst
?” Morgan asked. She sounded in awe of her own find.
    No way
, I thought.
    â€œYou bet,” Grandpa Ed said.
    Morgan’s and my eyes opened wide at the same