The teen inventor always looked forward to Fencing. It was the last class of the day, and more importantly Toby, and Christopher too, took the class with her. When she got there however, she saw not only her two close friends, but Gloria as well. She was standing by the foils talking to Diego Martinez and Mark McGovern, the biggest bully in the freshman class. Once the class had donned their jackets, gloves, and masks; and picked up their foils, they faced off against one another. As usual, Astrid was paired with Bud Collins.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said, as they sparred.

“Sure. It’s not about Gloria, is it?”

“Do you know if anyone has asked Valerie to the Junior Prom?”

“No, I don’t. I would think that she’s waiting for you to ask, since you went to the Spring Fling together.”

“Well, that didn’t go all that well,” he replied.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was trying to compliment her, but I think the opposite kind of came out of my mouth. She didn’t speak much after that.”

“What did you say?”

“I just said she should get her photograph taken…”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Astrid.

“… with one of those fuzzy lenses.”

“Oh, yeah. Well I could see where that could go wrong.”

“I tried to fix it, but it just got worse.”

“Well, I’m sure she’s forgotten all about it.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Bud, hopefully.

“Not a chance,” said Astrid.

“All right everyone,” called Mr. Chevalier. “Time to pair up for some serious fencing.”

Astrid knew the ranking chart without looking. She was sixth in the class, right behind Christopher. That meant that they were usually, as in so much of their academic lives, competing against one another. Toby was ranked number one. When she looked up at the display screen above at the weapons rack though, she wasn’t paired with Christopher. The students weren’t matched by ranking at all. They were paired up alphabetically. And that meant that she was paired with her cousin Gloria.

“What the heck is this?” she wondered.

“I decided that today we should have a change,” said Mr. Chevalier, his Austrian accent becoming more pronounced. “Some of us are in need of a little challenge.”

“All right nerd,” said Gloria, taking her position in front of Astrid. “Time to feel my steel. En Garde!”

At the end of the day, the gang met near the monorail station.

“It wasn’t the most lopsided match I’ve ever seen,” said Christopher.

“Of course not,” replied Astrid. “We were perfectly matched. She was the pin and I was the pin cushion.”

“I honestly thought you would do better,” Toby told Astrid. “I’ve seen you fence much better than that. You need to stop letting Gloria intimidate you. You’re better than she is.”

“At least your match wasn’t as lopsided as Toby’s,” said Christopher.

Toby hung his head.

“I feel so bad about that. I like Bud, you know?”

“What did you do to Bud?” demanded Valerie.

“He crushed him like a bug,” said Christopher. “I thought he was going to cry.”

“I’d better go see if he’s okay,” she said, getting up and looking around.

“I tried to let him score,” continued Toby, as she walked away. “I all but stepped into his thrust, but he just wouldn’t touch me.”

“I guess some days you just can’t lose,” Astrid told him. “No matter how hard you try.”

“That might be a Toby Bundersmith problem,” said Austin. “But it has never been an Austin Tretower problem.”

“Come on, Astrid,” said Christopher. “It’s our turn to clean the school this week.”

The next morning, showered and dressed in her school uniform, Astrid found her parents in the breakfast room eating waffles. Her father got up from the table and intercepted her with a big embrace. He was a tall, handsome man, with just a touch of grey hair at his temples.

“Astrid, I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you,” he said.

“Same here,” she replied. “But I had a great time in Cartagena.”

“I bet you did. Fortunately you had no trouble on your trip.” He spoke with emphasis and nodded his head conspiratorially toward Mrs. Maxxim.”

“Nothing, as long as you consider air-to-air missiles and sharks nothing,” said Mrs. Maxxim, setting a plate down at the table for her daughter.

Kate Maxxim was a tall, blond woman. Though it was still early, she was already dressed in a sharp blue business suit, her hair and makeup looking like something out of a fashion magazine.

“I’m not really hungry, Mom.”

“Eat one waffle,” her mother ordered.

Astrid ate quickly as her father filled her in on the production of several new products, the most important of which, as far as the girl inventor was concerned, were the components for her undersea dome. Before she knew it, she had finished her waffle.

“All right, got to go,” she called back as she dashed out of the room.

“Learn stuff!” called her father.

If her mother said anything, it was lost in the sound of her rushing out the front door.

At the point where their two yards joined, Toby waited for her. As always, he was neatly dressed, and his hair was brushed with his brown bangs hanging down lazily above his eyes. His backpack was on the ground by his feet as he adjusted his tie.

“Back to the salt mine,” he said. “I was just getting used to going without a tie.”

“Here, let me,” said Astrid, sliding the tie’s knot into just the right position. “I kind of like wearing a tie.”

“Well, girls look better in them than boys do.”

“I suspect you think girls look better in just about everything,” she said.

“I do,” he agreed. “I really do.”

“Come on, Romeo. We’re going to be late.”

“You know that’s actually a misnomer,” he said, as they walked the carefully cultivated sidewalk, shaded by overhanging trees. “Romeo wasn’t smooth at all. He was kind of goofy, really.”

“See? And you thought you wouldn’t like Renaissance Literature.”

“Oh, I like Shakespeare.” He stopped, and placing one hand on his chest, lifted the other into the air. “But soft. What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Astrid is the sun. Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon, already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she.”

“You better not have been looking in my window,” she said with a sly smile.

“Don’t be silly. Your room doesn’t even have a window. Besides, you’re supposed to be more impressed.”

“Oh, should I swoon?” Astrid placed the back of her hand over her forehead. “Oh Romeo, Romeo. Where for art thou Romeo? What’s the next line?”

“I didn’t memorize the girl parts.”

Astrid laughed.

“Seriously,” said Toby, suddenly looking nervous. “Wouldst thou venture forth with me unto the Junior Prom?”

“That’s still more than a month away,” Astrid pointed out.

“You told me not to wait until the last minute.”

“I did, didn’t I? Of course I will go to the Prom with you.”

“Thanks,” said Toby, suddenly not nervous at all.

Shark!

Denise Brown tapped frantically on her friend Astrid’s shoulder to get her attention. Astrid Maxxim’s focus, like the focus of her underwater camera, was fixed on the bright orange starfish, which rested on the top of the coral outcropping as if waiting for its picture to be taken. Astrid snapped a photo before turning to see what was agitating her dive partner. Denise pointed at the shark, and then to make sure that she was getting the message across, made a fin with her hand and put it on top of her head. Astrid held up her fingers about an inch apart in the universal symbol for small. Denise shook her head violently and shot up toward the surface.

In exasperation, Astrid blew out bubbles around her regulator, and then kicked her way back up to the surface of the Mediterranean. She spat out her mouthpiece and pulled the dive mask up onto her forehead.

“We’ve got fifteen minutes left before we’re done,” she said.

“Shark!” shouted Denise, scrambling up the ladder that hung from the side of the small boat.

“Shark?” said Toby Bundersmith, who was waiting topside. He threw aside his Batman comic and helped Denise up the ladder. “That’s lucky. I was hoping to see a shark when I was in the water, but I didn’t.”

“Come on, Denise,” called Astrid. “I still haven’t got a picture of a lobster yet.”

“There is a shark!”

“It’s only a little one,” said Astrid. “It is more afraid of you than you are of it.”

“That’s not possible,” said Denise. “And it wasn’t little. It was big—large, hefty, colossal, enormous, gigantic, mammoth, massive, oversized, tremendous, vast.”

Astrid tossed the camera up to Toby. “It was little—tiny, inconsequential, minuscule, petite, teeny, undersized, microscopic, miniature, did I say miniature already, no? runty, bitty, wee.”

“Come on,” said Toby, holding his hand down for Astrid. “I’m getting bored up here anyway. Let’s go in and have lunch.”

“Hurry up and get in the boat before that shark gets you,” said Denise, helping Astrid up.

“Honestly,” said Astrid. “It was the size of a dachshund.”

“I got bit by a wiener dog once and had to have five stitches,” replied Denise. “He didn’t have shark’s teeth either, just regular dog teeth.”

The next morning, Mr. Bundersmith again took the kids to school. They didn’t go to first period this morning though, but collected in their team rooms with the seniors who would serve as their guides on the field trip. Then they loaded up onto the monorail train for the trip to the Saguaro Cactus Park, located deep within the Maxxim campus. There were 105 freshmen on the trip, divided up into groups of five. Each group was guided by a senior. Dennis Brown led Astrid and Christopher, as well as Alicia Noble, Madison Laurel, and Bud Collins. Each of them carried a small backpack, containing their lunches and their personal digital assistants.

Supervising the entire gathering was Dr. Franklin the Geology teacher, Dr. Ikeda the Biology Teacher, History teacher Mr. Hoffman, and five parent volunteers.

Technically there wasn’t a monorail station in the Saguaro Cactus Park. However there was a platform forty feet in the sky and a stairway leading down to the desert floor. The students and teachers climbed out of the train and made their way down to assemble into their groups at the foot of the stairs, as the monorail whooshed away.

“Alright guys,” said Dennis, taking charge. “We’re going to walk about two hundred yards due east. There’s an outcropping just above a dry riverbed there where I think you’ll find some great samples.”

The freshmen dutifully followed him through the sand, around rocks, prickly pear cactus and towering saguaros. Alicia and Madison happily snapped pictures of the various plants, squealing excitedly when they identified a teddybear cholla. Astrid made note of the various cactus varieties too, but she really wanted an example of the wildlife. She began looking in the many holes around the bases of the cactus plants.

“Watch out there,” said Dennis. “There are five different kinds of rattlesnakes around here and I don’t want either one of us bitten by any of them.”

“I don’t want to be bitten either,” said Astrid. “But I wouldn’t mind getting a few snapshots.”

When they reached the dry riverbed, she found not a snake, but a large chuckwalla lizard that had taken refuge in a crack on the rock face. She took a dozen photographs and recorded her findings on her MX-360. The beast was about eighteen inches long, and its orange colored body indicated that it was a male of the species. She tried coaxing it out of the crack, but the lizard closed its eyes and ignored her. By the time lunch rolled around, she had photos and notes on half a dozen different lizards—no snakes or tortoises though.

As the six students sat on a large rock, in the shade of the outcropping and ate their lunches of ham and cheese sandwiches, they compared their findings. Bud, who was the only student in the group besides Astrid working on desert animal life, had found and photographed coyote, rabbit, and kangaroo rat tracks. He and Astrid shared their data by bumping their MX-360s together. An hour later, Dennis guided them all back to where they had started, to find another monorail train waiting to take them back to Rachel Carson High School.

“I hope you found plenty of interest, Astrid,” said Dr. Ikeda. “I’m expecting something great from you.”

“I think I got everything I need,” replied Astrid.

Toby and Denise approached the staircase from the west and gave Astrid a wave. They both looked just as pleased with their field trip as she was. When she saw Austin trudging back in the rear of his group however, his face was clouded over by a frown. Once everyone was aboard the train and it was on its way, she stepped forward to where he was sitting to see what the problem was.

“Um, nothing,” said Austin. “I’m just worried about… um, putting all this stuff together. I never had to write a really big assignment, um, paper, like this before.”

“Don’t worry,” said Astrid. “You’ve got lots of time and I’ll be glad to help you.”

Austin nodded, but looked far from happy.

They had just finished eating when the phone rang.

“It’s for you, Astrid,” said Mr. Richards.

“Hello,” said Astrid, putting the phone to her ear.

“Astrid, please you must come at once. We need you.”

“Mrs. Diaz? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Valerie,” replied her friend’s mother. “She’s very sick.”

“Did you call Dr. Lower?”

“No, no. It’s my other Valerie.”

“You mean Robot Valerie?”

“Aye, si,” said Mrs. Diaz. “She feels week and she won’t eat ever since you turned her into a robot.”

“I didn’t turn her into a robot!” said Astrid, exasperated. “She’s always been a robot.”

“Please come and help her.”

Mr. Brown gave Astrid and Denise a lift over to the Diaz home where they found Valerie and her mother wringing their hands as Robot Valerie lay rather stiffly across the sofa.

“I tried to get her to eat some chicken soup,” said Mrs. Diaz.

“She can’t eat,” said Astrid, more exasperated than ever. “She’s a robot.”

“But she’s so week and she feels so sick,” said Valerie.

“Did you plug her in?”

“What do you mean?”

Astrid lifted Robot Valerie’s right arm and pressed a small recessed button. A compartment door opened and she pulled out a retractable cable. Unlike the rest of the United States which used NEMA 1-15 two prong or NEMA 5-15 three prong electrical outlets, Maxxim City and Maxxim Industries used an Excalibur interface plug, a smart plug capable of channeling a wide variety of power levels and data at the same time. Astrid plugged the tiny square plug into a matching outlet on the wall of the Diaz living room, right behind the end table.

“I feel better,” said Robot Valerie.

“I’m surprised you managed to go this long without a recharge,” said Astrid. “Why didn’t you plug yourself in?”

“I didn’t know I had to.”