Wonder

wagging her tail and went over to him.
“Who’s my little girlie? Who’s my little girlie?” Auggie was saying
as she licked him all over the face.
“I wish I had a dog,” I said. “My parents think our apartment’s too
small.” I started looking around at the stuff in his room while he
turned on the computer. “Hey, you’ve got an Xbox 360? Can we
play?”
“Dude, we’re here to work on the science-fair project.”
“Do you have Halo?”
“Of course I have Halo.”
“Please can we play?”
He had logged on to the Beecher website and was now scrolling
down Ms. Rubin’s teacher page through the list of science-fair
projects. “Can you see from there?” he said.
I sighed and went to sit on a little stool that was right next to him.
“Cool iMac,” I said.
“What kind of computer do you have?”
“Dude, I don’t even have my own room, much less my own
computer. My parents have this ancient Dell that’s practically dead.”
“Okay, how about this one?” he said, turning the screen in my
direction so I would look. I made a quick scan of the screen and my
eyes literally started blurring.
“Making a sun clock,” he said. “That sounds kind of cool.”
I leaned back. “Can’t we just make a volcano?”
“Everyone makes volcanoes.”
“Duh, because it’s easy,” I said, petting Daisy again.
“What about: How to make crystal spikes out of Epsom salt?”
“Sounds boring,” I answered. “So why’d you call her Daisy?”
He didn’t look up from the screen. “My sister named her. I wanted
to call her Darth. Actually, technically speaking, her full name is
Darth Daisy, but we never really called her that.”
“Darth Daisy! That’s funny! Hi, Darth Daisy!” I said to the dog, who
rolled onto her back again for me to rub her tummy.
“Okay, this one is the one,” said August, pointing to a picture on
the screen of a bunch of potatoes with wires poking out of them.