Barfing in the Backseat by Henry Winkler, Lin Oliver Read Free Book Online

museum.
    You won’t believe what greeted us in the entryway. What you’d expect in the entry of a science museum might be a spaceship or a dinosaur or a huge atom. If it’s a really cool science museum, maybe a model of the solar system with the rings of Saturn flashing on and off in neon. But there at the Science Museum of Virginia, what they had in the entry was a gigantic jar of candy.
    It was so huge that it almost touched theceiling. And it was filled with every delicious type of candy you could think of from all over the world—gummy worms, bubble gum, taffy, caramel, candy bars with coconut, chocolate bars with nuts and raisins, sour tarts, jawbreakers, thin cookie sticks covered with chocolate from Japan, lollipops of every color and one shaped like Switzerland. All I could think of was standing on the edge of the jar, diving in, and eating my way down to the bottom.
    “Did we just take a detour and wind up in heaven?” I asked my mom.
    She pointed to a big banner over the candy jar. It said, Candy Unwrapped: Science Never Tasted So Good.
    “The exhibit,” Emily said, “is about the science behind the candy we love. I’m going to use my markers to diagram sugar molecules, both simple and complex.”
    “Emily, you’re my hero,” I said. “You know just how to eke out every ounce of fun in any situation.”
    “Ease up on her, dude,” Frankie said. “You’ve got your own problems.”
    In the glory of the candy moment, I had forgotten about the missing homework packet. This is what happens to me all the time. I have one thing on the brain, and suddenly it disappears like it had never been there. Without a trace. You’d think that when a guy has lost his seven-thousand-page homework packet, he could keep that front and center in his brain for five minutes. Not me. Not your Hank. My brain was filled with sesame-seed-covered nougats from Thailand.
    “Hey, kids, look at that,” my dad said, pointing into one of the big exhibit halls. “Have you ever seen a tongue like that?”
    In the center of the hall was a giant tongue, as big as the kindergarten jungle gym at our school. Three kids were sliding down the tongue, and as they slid over different sections, the tongue talked.
    “Salty, sweet, bitter, sour,” it said.
    “That’s a weird sentence,” I commented. Of course, Emily had a comment on my comment. She’s a girl who can’t resist commenting.
    “It’s announcing the four flavors the taste buds can actually recognize,” Emily said.
    “Everybody knows that,” I said, which of course, I didn’t.
    “I don’t suppose you know where a butterfly’s taste buds are located,” Emily said with a smirk.
    “I think you’ll find them on their feet as well as in their mouths,” I answered.
    Emily was stunned that I actually knew this science fact. I have to confess, I didn’t read it in a book. I saw it on a
National Geographic
special on caterpillars and butterflies. But she didn’t have to know that.
    Frankie gave me a high five. It was the second time this trip that I got to out-brain my know-it-all sister. In fact, it was such a special occasion, I even high-fived myself.
    Emily took off to explore the tongue. Frankie started to follow her because it was a very cool and unusual object, but I grabbed the back of his Yankees sweatshirt and pulled him toward me.
    “This is no time for tongue slides,” I whispered. “We have a serious problem to solve.”
    “You keep on saying
we
,” Frankie said.“You’re the one with the problem, Zip.”
    “Fine, I’ll solve it by myself. Can I borrow your cell phone? I’ll call the motel where I left it.”
    “My parents gave it to me for emergencies only,” Frankie said, “with strict instructions not to make any other calls.”
    “Look at me, Frankie. Do you not see emergency written all over my face?”
    “Okay,” Frankie said. “One call.”
    He reached into his jacket pocket and slipped me his cell phone, just as my dad approached us.