9 The Sweet Spot

CHAPTER NINE The Sweet Spot Matter (noun). Anything that takes up space, which means it has mass. It can be a solid, liquid, or gas. That means the air in a balloon is matter, the water that comes out of your kitchen sink is matter, and you're matter, too. I PULLED A LARGE and very plump strawberry out of a wicker box on a shelf above my bed. Liam charged into my bedroom. His eyes grew big. "Can I eat it? Yum!" "Sorry, but it's not real." "Aw, man." His little shoulders sagged. "It sure looks real." "It's real in that it's made out of matter. But you can't eat this strawberry because it's wax." "Like a candle?" asked Liam regretfully. "Yup! It was a birthday candle Birdie made for me, but it was so pretty I never asked Mom or Dad to light it." If it had been an actual strawberry, it would have decomposed like the orange in Phoenix's experiment. Luckily, it was art. Birdie

gave it to me when I turned eight. She makes me something every year: a heart made out of yarn and Popsicle sticks, a hand-knitted scarf, a purple friendship bracelet. Each birthday present is awesome, and I kept all of them in my wicker box in my bedroom where Dribble, our dog, can't get to them. But the wax strawberry might be the cutest. I loved the green stem and the little black wax seeds. "I can use this as part of my STEM project." "Are you going to melt it?" asked Liam. "No way." I shuddered, thinking about it all drippy and melty. "It's going to be part of my Rube Goldberg machine, just like in that Dr. Caroline video. Only I'm going to use lots of branches of science." My fingers brushed over the smooth cool surface of the strawberry. "Maybe the strawberry will plop into a cup and cause—" "A flood?" I laughed. "Something really awesome will definitely happen. You can count on it!"