Mr. Foley took a step back in Nate’s direction, and for just a second Nate felt hope return. “The amazing thing is how they’re around us all the time, every minute of the day. We just don’t see them,” Nate said. “In fact, most people have no idea.”

Bob Foley looked up from his clipboard and straight at Nate’s chest, as if something had finally caught his attention.

“Chance,” he said, studying Nate’s name tag. “You’re from that family with the farm out on Bent Twig Road?”

“We have to sell it,” Junie said. “There’s going to be an auction.”

“Right,” Mr. Foley said. “I heard about that. My wife was thinking of checking it out.”

Then he was gone, off looking at someone’s fertilizer experiment.

A moment later it happened: A single spidery vein of light streaked through the cloud chamber like a shot from a ray gun.

The only problem was, nobody was there to see it but Junie and Nate.

For a moment Nate couldn’t speak. Then he said, “Huh. Did you catch that, J? Our cloud chamber. It works after all.”

“I knew it would,” Junie said, but there was no joy in her voice.

At two o’clock Mrs. Unger and the school principal stepped on the stage to say the judge had chosen the winners. “But let’s not forget,” she said, “that every single one of you is a winner just for completing these fabulous projects and making so many discoveries about the wonderful world of science.”

“Blah blah blah,” Junie whispered.

Buddy Thick won an honorable mention for his project called “Why Cows Chew Their Cud.” Third prize went to Jeannine Penney for her study, “Mr. Rogers’s Ability to Calm Down Children.” Second prize, Amelia Swanson, for “I Get a Charge out of Electricity.”

The first-prize winner, who would be going on to the state finals all the way to Butte, was Violet Landry, for her project titled “How Relative Humidity Affects Making Fudge.”

Mrs. Unger called Violet to the stage to receive her award and explain the project to the crowd.

“I chose this topic because I like candy and I particularly like eating fudge,” Violet said. “Also, this is the time of the year when the weather varies a lot. I wanted to see which days would be best for making candy.”

There was more, but Nate wasn’t listening. He could feel the hot grasp of his sister’s hand in his as they headed back to his table to pack up the cloud chamber. Somewhere in the room, he knew his mother and his grandparents were feeling bad for him. But all he could think of at the moment was Junie. He knelt down so he could look her in the eye. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was dumb to count on a stupid science fair to solve everything.”

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