“OK,” Megan said. “I’ll probably want to get a special salon cape for kids in case any of them need a haircut—they make really cute ones with animals on them. And maybe some special kids’ shampoo . . .”
So it was all set. When I climbed into bed that night, between the vet/beauty parlor/day care news and the keeping-Baxter news, I could barely sleep.
In the morning (Saturday = Baxterday!), I brought my dog books into the kitchen to read while I ate my Crispy Rice. Now that I was officially half a dog owner, I had a lot to learn.
The books talked about how to help your new dog overcome the “insecurity” of a new home: You needed to give him a quiet place to retreat to (and Baxter had two beds now—his old bed and a new bed that I’d just chosen at the pet store). You also needed to spend lots of time with him so he wouldn’t be lonely.
Baxter hadn’t seen me all night. My half might be feeling lonely and insecure.
I ran over to Professor Reese’s house. But when I got to the front door, I didn’t know if it was too early to knock.
I didn’t see anyone through the living room window. I went around to the side of her house and got down on my hands and knees to peek into the lab window.
There was Baxter, all adorable on his old fuzzy bed that I’d tucked under a desk. (We’d put the new pet store bed upstairs because I wanted the old bed to stay in the lab—I liked its Baxter smell.) And next to him was Professor Reese, sitting at a table lit by a bright lamp. She was looking into this piece of equipment that was like a microscope, only with two tube thingies sticking up instead of one.
I thought, Huh. What’s that?
I knew Mom wouldn’t let me hang out at Professor Reese’s without TJ. I ran back home and into his room. “Wake up!” I hopped up to sit on the end of his bed, bouncing it hard when I landed. “Baxter might still be insecure! We need to get over there.”
TJ groaned and pushed me off with his feet. “I need to work on my short today. I only have seventy-eight pictures.”
“TJ, we have a deal!”
He opened his eyes and glared at me. “We have a deal for an afternoon walk—one walk for all my chores.” He rolled over to face the wall.
I slumped down on the bed again. I didn’t want to see Baxter for only one little walk—I wanted to see him all weekend. Plus, I wanted to know what the weird microscope thingy was.
TJ would never want to go over just to see Baxter. But maybe I could convince him that hanging out in the lab was Fun! “Professor Reese has a new piece of equipment in her lab!” And I made it sound as Fun! as possible.
He rolled back over and opened his eyes. “What is it?”
“I don’t know! I’m going to go find out!!” And I said that with an extra exclamation point. “Eat your breakfast and come on over!” Then I ran out again.
When I got back to the lab window, I knocked on it as politely as I could. Baxter woofed, and Professor Reese jumped in her chair. But then she motioned me in.
Baxter met me crazy happy at the back door. “Saturday is Baxterday!” I nodded, and he nodded, too. Then we went down to the lab so I could see what the new piece of equipment was. “What is that?”
“A spectrometer,” Professor Reese answered. “It belongs to the science museum, but sometimes I borrow it for a day.”
“What does it do?”
“Scientists use spectrometers in different ways. I’m using this one to study different wavelengths of light.” She smiled at me. “Want to see?”
When I looked through the “adjustable telescoping eyepiece,” I saw the rainbow color band but with the red and indigo-violet ends shorter than the posters on the wall showed.
“Are you doing an experiment?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” she said. “Right now I’m thinking.”
“Oh. What are you thinking about?” I’d never thought while looking through a spectrometer before, and I wanted to try it.
“T-waves.” Which, she told me, she had discovered, all by herself. Only she had discovered them so recently that no other scientists knew about them.
“Can I see one?” I asked. And even though I didn’t know what a T-wave was, I started feeling excited because it wasn’t even on the posters yet.
So I looked into the spectrometer again at the rainbow color band, and she explained, “What you’re looking at is the middle section of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now imagine it’s laid out flat, as if you had placed a ruler down on a table and were standing over it, looking down on it.”
“OK,” I said.
“Now I’m going to recalibrate the spectrometer”—and here she began adjusting the adjustable telescoping eyepiece—“until it’s as if you squatted down with your eye level to the top of the table and looked at the ruler from the side . . . just . . . like . . . so . . .”
The color band got narrower and narrower as the eyepiece rotated until I was looking at the color band sideways. It was so thin, even thinner than a ruler, that it almost disappeared completely. “I can barely see it anymore.”
“Just wait . . .” she said.
All of a sudden, on the red end of the rainbow, there was a tiny flash of white light like a piece of glitter glinting in the sun. “Hey!”
“You’ve just seen a T-wave.” She smiled.
I got up and walked over to study the posters on the walls. “What does it do?” Because if radio waves sent music and X-rays showed you skeletons and microwaves made popcorn, I was wondering what was left.
“I’ve been asking myself that question for months.”
She sat back down at
