BSC033 - Claudia and the Great Search - Martin, Ann M.

Chapter 1.

Click, click, click.

I watched the second hand on the clock in the front of my classroom work its way slowly around and around the dial. When the room was silent, as it was then, every time the hand on the clock jumped forward one second, it made a clicking sound.

It was a faithful old clock. You could depend on it. Every afternoon it clicked its way from 1:10 to 1:51, and when that second hand clicked over to the twelve at precisely 1:51, the bell rang - and I was released from the horrors of science class.

I absolutely can't stand science, especially biology, which was what we were studying. I couldn't keep all those terms straight - cell and nucleus, species and phylum and genus, RNA and DNA and who knows what else. You know what is really stupid? The word species. If you have two different kinds of animals or something, then you have two species. But if you have only one kind, then you still have a species. Why not a specie? Or a specy? You don't have two cats and one cats.

Oh, well.

Click, click, click.

We were supposed to be reading the instructions for an experiment we were going to perform in class that day. Now there's another stupid thing. Year after year, this same teacher makes his students perform the same experiments. Well, if the experiments have been done so many times before, how can they still be experiments? The teacher knows what is going to happen. I thought experimenting meant trying new things to see what would happen. We weren't experimenting at all. We were playacting.

But none of this really mattered. I, Claudia Kishi, was just biding my time. I was not going to have to perform the experiment that day. I was simply waiting for the clock to click to 1:20. Then I got to ... leave early! I couldn't wait.

Well, I couldn't wait to leave science class. I could wait for what I had to do after I left. What did I have to do? I had to go to an awards ceremony at which my older sister, Janine the Genius, was going to be given some big honor. As if she isn't always being awarded for something. Every time I turn around she's getting another certificate or prize, or she's made the honor roll or gotten straight A's again.