Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It Read Free

had seventy-eight days to attend. My summer plan to become a rock collector was about to get under way. “Can I go check that out?” I asked.
    “Be my guest. I’ll come get you when I’m done”—she raised one eyebrow and smiled slyly—“and we’ll go over to Kandy Kingdom.”
    “Take your time,” I yelled over my shoulder.
    I jogged to a group of tables in a circle around the mall’s fountain, inhaling the smell of Super Mall cinnamon rolls. I walked up to a lady’s table first. All her stones had been made into jewelry—rings, bracelets, necklaces.
    The lady wore a long, transparent crystal around her neck. The pointy end attached to the chain had been covered in silver so that it looked like it was wearing a hat. A purple stone had been fixed to the front of the crystal. She reached up and touched the necklace. “Do you like it?”
    I nodded. “Is it quartz?” Mr. Hammond had taught us about quartz. The most common mineral in the Earth’s crust. It came in many colors, but it was all the same thing.
    “You know your stuff,” she said.
    “We learned about rocks in school this year—for science. It was pretty interesting.”
    “Maybe you’d like to come on a rock dig with us sometime. We go out a lot during the summer months.”
    “Really?”
    “Sure. Let me introduce you to Ed. He’s our club president.”
    Perfect.
    The woman led me to a table where a man was bent over, straightening his rows of rocks—dozens and dozens of rocks, in every color imaginable. Each specimen rested on a puff of cotton in its own white box. Blue veins crisscrossed the tops of the man’s hands like Dad’s road map; brown spots made them look kind of dirty.
    “Ed, this young man is interested in the rock club.”
    The man looked up. His orangish white hair was slicked back from his pink face. His hooked nose reminded me of a parrot’s beak.
    “What can I do you for?” he asked. The woman saw she had a customer and hurried to her table.
    I turned to the man, not sure what to say.
    “Are you interested in minerals?” he asked.
    “I’m a scientist. I’m interested in just about everything.”
    “A scientist, eh? Important people, those scientists.” He picked up one of his samples and held it out to me. “You might find this one particularly interesting, then.” He set the rectangular crystal in my palm.
    “What is it?”
    “Calcite.”
    “But it’s clear. The calcite I’ve seen was more like the color of your hair.”
    “That right?” He ran his hand through the wave above his forehead. “Well, color may be a mineral’s easiest property to identify, but it can also be the most misleading.” He laid a flyer for the mall exhibit on the table. “Set the calcite on one of those words on the paper.”
    I put it down. When I looked through the rock, the words split. It was like seeing double.
    “Cool. How much is it?”
    “Five bucks. It’s pretty common stuff. But that one’s special because of the double refraction. It’ll be a nice addition to your collection.”
    I picked it up and looked through it at the man. It didn’t make him split exactly, just made him blurry. “I don’t have a collection—yet.”
    “Never too late to start. How old are you—eleven, twelve?”
    I lowered the stone. “Ten, but I’ll be eleven in August.”
    “Tall for your age, aren’t you?”
    “I guess. I take after my dad. Or so people tell me.” I looked down the rows of boxes, taking in all his samples. “You’ve got a lot of rocks.”
    “Minerals,” he said. “Been collecting ’em fifty years.”
    My eyes opened wide.
    “Didn’t start till I was fifteen. So see, if you start now, you’ll have a jump on me.” He turned his back and dug through a box for something.
    “If you start what?” Gladys came up. The massage-machine line must have been too long.
    “Gladys, look!” I held up the calcite. “I’m going to have my own collection!”
    The man turned around with a green paper in his