She gave my coat a little pat as though it were a pet and then she walked away. ‘I am telling you this for your own good. ‘But you really need to work on the way that you present yourself.’ ‘You put together a good project,’ she said.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to see the woman judge. I wore mine, as it was the only way I could participate, but I kept my rabbit-fur jacket buttoned and belted even though the building was warm. Everyone from Mays High had to wear baby blue and gold shirts. The civic center was swarming with kids, all excited about the competition. I searched the hallway for my sponsor, but she was nowhere to be found. I could tell by the way that the judges looked at one another as I was leaving the small room. ‘My daddy won it for me in a poker game,’ I told them, rubbing my eyes with the backs of my hands. The three judges exchanged glares while I pulled on my rabbit-fur jacket. The other male judge said, ‘Michael, that’s a misdemeanor.’ The woman judge said, ‘Michael, that’s out of line.’
One of the judges, a heavyset man with processed hair, said, ‘How did a pretty girl like you get so interested in science?’ It burned like crazy, but I just wet my lips and tried to look bored as tears leaked from my irritated and iridescent eyes. Against my mother’s advice, I had applied a coat of liquid eyeliner, electric blue, to the pink rim above my lower lashes. Girls my age would hem me up in the bathroom for flaunting my excellent head of hair, but the men on the committee fidgeted in their chairs as I shifted my curls from one shoulder to the other. Irritated, I tossed my hair around while answering the questions. They didn’t even ask me what I thought about the issue of acid rain and whether I thought it was going to destroy the whole world. They seemed mostly concerned with whether or not I had done the work myself, trying to confuse me by quizzing me about the procedure for blending chemicals. My session with the judges was not challenging.
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