11 Catching Time

CHAPTER ELEVEN CATCHING TIME FRIDAY AT SCHOOL, we painted nine Styrofoam balls to look like the planets of our solar system. But that was just our pretend project. Obviously, our real project was about fireflies. We just didn't know if it would work. So we did a fake project at school. We worked on the actual project at home. After dinner, just when it started to get dark,

Simon and Rosie came to my house. We went out to my backyard. We caught as many fireflies as we could. You can collect a LOT of fireflies in a whole hour. And we got a ton. We each had a mason jar with a wet cotton ball inside. That's where we put the fireflies when we caught them. Simon collected the most. At 7:30, my mom called to us from the back door. It was time to go to the science fair. Simon, Rosie, and I climbed into the back seat of our car. Their parents were going to meet us at the school. "What do you have in your backpacks?" my dad asked us from the front seat.

"Just some final supplies for our project," I answered quickly. Simon's backpack was stuffed with most of the clear soda bottle tubes. Mine was jammed with a couple of the tubes and three jars full of fireflies. And Rosie's backpack held the rest of the tubes and all the magnifying glasses. "You still don't want to tell us what it is?" Mom asked. "Not really," I said. "It's a surprise." "Okay," Dad said and smiled at me in the rearview mirror. "No problem."

After we parked, Mom and Dad headed toward the school right away. But we didn't. "Aren't you guys coming?" Mom asked. "We have to, umm, go over our presentation one last time," I said. "Makes sense," responded Dad. "We'll meet you in your classroom." I nodded. And we waited for them to go inside. We got really lucky then because no other cars pulled into the parking lot. We sprinted across the playground, heading straight to the greenhouse. The glass door was unlocked—just as Rosie had left it. And we got to work. There was just enough light for us to see. A couple of fireflies escaped on the first few holes,

but after that we got pretty good at it. "I don't know, you guys," Rosie said doubtfully when we were done. "I think this might have been a bad idea.

1. I PUT ABOUT TEN FIREFLIES IN EACH HOLE. 2. ROSIE COVERED THE HOLES-AND THE FIREFLIES IN THE HOLES- REAL FAST WITH THE MAGNIFYING GLASSES. 3. SIMON STOOD A CLEAR TUBE ABOVE EACH HOLE.