Junie didn’t fully understand the difference between sparks from the watch face and the real thing, but she understood it was an important distinction.

“Star particles are everywhere,” Nate explained. “There’s no such thing as a place that doesn’t have any. Plus, I saved our biggest hunk of dry ice for tomorrow, bigger than we used when we were trying it out in the shed.”

The truth was, Nate had been troubled about not picking up real star particles too, but seeing Junie’s anxiousness, he downplayed it. “And anyway, it’s not the end of the world if we don’t get to see star particles. We’ll still have the sparks from the watch face to show the judges. That’s like our insurance policy.”

“So you’re going to win, for sure?” she said. “Because I already have my outfit all planned for when we go to Butte.”

“Nobody can say for sure what’s going to happen tomorrow,” he told her. “But I wouldn’t worry too much.”

Even though he didn’t want to say so to Junie, Nate had seen the other projects at school, and to him, it seemed clear: Nobody’s was half as cool as the cloud chamber.

On Saturday, Nate woke to rain—and to Junie bouncing on his bed. She had put on “Good Day Sunshine” from Revolver, and she was wearing her cowboy boots and the dress with the built-in petticoat that she’d worn for her birthday party. She’d even made pin curls with bobby pins in her hair.

“Hurry, you better get dressed,” she told Nate. “We only have a couple hours till the judging starts.”

It was a good thing they had the science fair to think about. Otherwise, they’d be spending all their time being sad about their house.

The day before, after Nate had finished his poster and his report was completely typed, he had gone out to the barn and climbed up to his favorite spot, the hayloft. The last of the cattle had been hauled away in the morning. The sweet smell of hay and manure still hung in the air, but the silence was all new. He’d always thought of the barn as a quiet place-somewhere he could go to think, where the sound of his father’s whistling carried like birdsong on the breeze. But with Sophia and Gert, their two last milkers, gone, he realized that there had always been a music to the barn: the sound of cattle breathing and snorting; the slap of their tails against the sides of the stalls; the stomp of a foot now and then; and the wonderful, soothing lowing sound they made—nothing like moo, really.