The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

write down the address. You have to see it. There’s a picture of me on my horse, Soul Man. With my gold ribbon, ha ha. Stick out your hand.”
    Lindsay held her hand out and Sally wrote the web address on it with a purple gel pen. “Thanks,” Lindsay said, not quite believing that a girl like Sally was actually speaking to her without calling her Smurf or Munchkin or Thumbelina, thanks to the stupid folktales they had to read for Mrs. Potter’s language arts class.
    Second bell rang, and the girls bobbed their way through the sea of camel-colored blazers, crisp white blouses, and plaid skirts. At the door of Mrs. Shiasaka’s classroom, their homeroom, Sally said, “You’re all right, Lindsay. Here, have a pack of the cinnamon gum my dad brought back from Mexico. It’s totally insane. If you put five pieces in your mouth at the same time, it gives you blisters.”
    The minute homeroom ended, Lindsay headed to the nurse’s office. Her stomach actually did kind of hurt, not because of the gum—she was saving it—but the tension of watching Sally and Taylor fight had turned it sour. She let the nurse give her some Tums—orange flavor—and lay down on the cot, watching Good Morning America on the tiny television while the nurse knitted a purple scarf that had flecks of gold in it.

    Dr. Ritchie stood at the whiteboard with her colored markers in her hand, going on and on about the first time ever Siemens Westinghouse award for middle school science projects.
    “I realize this is short notice, it being September, and our projects are to be presented in December, but I want you girls to know what’s at stake. If a student applies herself, goes the extra mile on a science project, this award is within reach. Awards accrue on a student’s transcript. Consequently, by the time this student is a senior in high school, she just might win an academic scholarship that pays for everything.”
    “What do you mean by everything?” Sally asked.
    “Not only tuition, but also textbooks, Bunsen burners, meals, and housing.”
    It sounded impossible to Lindsay, but she had to try for it. More than anything she wanted to go to a college with a first-rate science department, and she knew her mother wouldn’t be able to pay for it all.
    “This is why you girls need to take this year’s Science Fair very seriously,” Dr. Ritchie said, and turned to write potential topics on the board in her beautiful backhand script. Every girl at Country Day had tried to copy the elegant, spidery handwriting at one time or another. Lindsay was no exception. Dr. Ritchie was left-handed. Lindsay was right-handed. She knew for a fact that being left-handed automatically made you special.
    Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling, and Albert Schweitzer were all left-handed. Of course, no believable scientific theory could rest on such a small group of people. When Lindsay probed further, however, more proof emerged. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, M. C. Escher, Mark Twain, Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, H. G. Wells, Eudora Welty, and Jessamyn West—all lefties. The lack of women in her research had initially bothered her until she mentioned it to Allegra. “Chalk that up to male chauvinism,” she said. “Lots of left-handed women were geniuses. Janis Joplin was. All it means is that the macho-man researchers didn’t bother asking.”
    “Do you think Dr. Ritchie wears granny undies?” Sally whispered to Lindsay.
    Dr. Ritchie immediately looked their way. Lindsay, who had never gotten in trouble, looked back, smiling at her favorite teacher. Dr. Ritchie would stay after school if you needed help, but if you talked in her class during a lecture, it made her go postal. Stop it, she mouthed to Sally when Dr. Ritchie had turned around again.
    “In addition,” Dr. Ritchie enunciated sharply, “I’m pleased to announce that the NIH—National Institutes of Health—has allocated to California schools a stipend for studying science