The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,23

it into my pocket. There’s a knock on the door and a “Hellloooooo?” It’s Traci and Mrs. Carmichael, holding a rectangular-shaped wooden object between them. Mrs. Carmichael is wearing a sweater tied around her shoulders again, a red one that matches the belt on her pants, and she smiles at Ms. Fairchild, making a face like Traci’s project is too heavy for them to even carry. Ms. Fairchild knows Mrs. Carmichael because she’s in the PTA and because when there’s a holiday, she brings cupcakes for our class.

Ms. Fairchild moves across the room quickly and helps them stand the wooden thing on one end, and then you can see it really is a triptych, made out of wood, five or six times the size of mine, not crooked. There are actual hinges in between the panels, the kind you would see on a door. It still smells like sawdust. I try to imagine Traci working in the garage of her redbrick house, with a chain saw or some other large tool, cutting away at the wood, plastic goggles pulled down over her face.

“Very impressive,” Ms. Fairchild says.

Mrs. Carmichael smiles at Traci. “That’s just part one. We’ve got to go back for part two.”

While they are gone, the rest of us stand around, looking at Traci’s triptych. She has used large amounts of red glitter and glue to write SEISMOGRAPHS AND EARTHQUAKES across the top. Below, she has written what seismographs do and what a Richter scale is. There are color pictures of the aftermaths of famous earthquakes—San Francisco, Italy. Underneath each picture is the number that particular earthquake got on the Richter scale.

It’s impressive enough on its own. We are all still looking at it when Traci and Mrs. Carmichael come back in, carrying something metal between them with a spring sticking out of the top. Ms. Fairchild goes to help them, but Mrs. Carmichael holds up her hand.

“It’s not heavy,” she says. “I just didn’t want Traci to drop it after so much work. She’s been a slave to this thing for the last month.” When they have moved the metal thing to the ledge by the window, she turns to Traci, says, “Bye, sugar,” and leaves.

“What is it?” Ray Watley asks.

“It’s a seismograph,” Traci says, pushing her braids behind her shoulders. She waits until Ms. Fairchild is looking and then flips a switch. A roll of paper from an adding machine revolves slowly, letting out paper at one end, which Traci holds with one hand. Now you can see that the spring has a pen attached to the end of it, positioned so it makes one long, straight line on the paper. Traci’s blue-gray eyes watch ours.

“Now jump,” she says, pointing at Libby. Libby jumps, her braids that are supposed to be just like Traci’s but aren’t really flying up behind her. There is a small wave in the line, a tiny bump.

It’s impossible not to say “ahhh,” though I try not to. Traci smiles. “Now three people jump, and it’ll get bigger.” Three people jump. She shows us the paper.

“Yours is the best,” Brad Browning tells her. No one says anything, but already, I know it’s true. Traci will get to meet Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan will get to meet Traci.

Star says she wants to make her volcano go off now, and Ms. Fairchild says fine, as long as it doesn’t really explode the way a volcano would. They are usually enemies. Star goes to her backpack and takes out a bottle of vinegar, red food coloring, and a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda. She pours a little of each in, one at a time, through a funnel into the mouth of the clay mud thing that is supposed to look like a volcano but doesn’t at all. We stand in a circle around it, waiting. Nothing comes out, and she has to keep adding more. Finally, there is a small, oozing trickle of red.

“That’s gross,” Ray Watley says. “It looks like blood.”

“More will come out,” she says. “Just wait.”

While we are waiting, Traci turns to look at my plants and the yellow triptych on the windowsill. Her eyes move slowly over the words, and I try not to watch. I’m embarrassed by it now, how crooked it is, how small.

“Is that yours?” she asks.

I nod, watching her carefully.

“It’s nice,” she says, and turns back around.

Star finally pours the rest of the bottle of vinegar into the volcano. When she does this, there is a