Science According to Amber
Paul Hostovsky
“We were doing the Periodic Table of Elements and Mia got Aluminum. I wanted Aluminum. I’m mad at Mia for taking Aluminum when she didn’t even want it. Not the way I did. I really, really wanted Aluminum. Because I like its name and its atomic number, which is 13. Instead I got Boron which is boring and rhymes with “moron” and I just know somebody is going to think of that. And everybody has to fit their Element on an 8 x 5 index card, with its name and chemical symbol and atomic number on the front, and the story of how it got discovered or isolated on the back. Aluminum’s chemical symbol is Al, which looks like A-one, like A-plus one. But Boron’s chemical symbol is just B which is blah, and its atomic weight is 11 which is the age of my older brother Josh who’s mean. And on top of everything Kelsey got Carbon which is so unfair because her father drills oil wells for a living and she’s already like the most popular girl in the whole school and she lives in a big house on a hill and I hate science now because it’s so random and it really makes absolutely no sense at all.”
Feature museum via The Metropolitan Museum of Art