text: The Incredible Edible Box By Denise A. Pearson “Earth to Bradley Carpenter. This is your partner, Casey Tillman calling.” I lifted my head. “What’s the problem?”said Casey. “Problem? We’ve been working on this for a month. How can we win first prize in the science fair if we can’t make our eco-friendly box project work?” “We’ll get it to work. I don’t want Creepy Freddie Potter to beat us. Or that know-everything girl, what’s her name . . .” “Susan Kinder,” I said. “But she’s not so bad.” “Mmm,” said Casey as he scraped our latest failure out of my mom’s best fry pan and into the trash. “What’s next?” I asked. Casey glanced at the kitchen clock. “It’s late. I gotta get home. We’ll work on it tomorrow.” I just stared at him. “Don’t look so worried. We’ve got a whole week left. Just because the milk and flour paste on the cereal baked in the pie crust didn’t work, doesn’t mean anything. Tonight, I’ll sleep on it.” “Sleep on it?” Casey shrugged on his jacket. “Don’t worry. I do my best thinking while sleeping. We’ll come up with a prize winner by the end of the week.” At lunch the next day, Casey leaned close and whispered, “You’ll never believe the dream I had last night.” “Yeah?” Casey hunched his shoulders and shifted his eyes right, then left. He looked like a second-rate Dracula stand-in. “I was in your mom’s kitchen. Then the fridge door opened. All. By. Itself. A long, green arm stretched out of the fridge and grabbed me. Then it dragged me into the fridge. It was so scary it woke me up. “And Ta-Da! I knew this had to be the solution for our project.” “Uh, I think I’m missing something here. I don’t get it,” I said. “Celery. The green arm was a stalk of celery. We’ll weave celery together to make our edible box.” Casey entwined his fingers to demonstrate. “Weave celery? Uh, Casey, celery’s crunchy, not bendable.” “Did I forget to mention the part about dehydrating it first? Then it’ll be in flat strips that we can weave together.” “Won’t it leak?” “We’ll use egg whites for glue. Clever, ain’t it?” I had to admit it was. After a week of slavishly weaving slabs of desiccated celery about each other in varying configurations, we had succeeded. A basket weave pattern proved to be the sturdiest. Now, here we were, in the school auditorium, setting up our project. Our poster read: The Incredible Edible Box. How more eco-friendly can you get? Eat the contents of the box and then . . . eat the box. “Think our chances are good?” I ask Casey. “Go-umphral.” “What?” I glanced at Casey. “Hey, those samples are for people to try and then like us on our Facebook page. Don’t eat them all up.” Casey swallowed. “I can’t help it. Your idea of using ranch dressing instead of egg whites was fabulous - and very tasty.” Suddenly, a shadow hovered near our exhibit. “Tillman and Carpenter. I wondered what project you guys would enter,” Freddie said. “I expected it to be in the field of science - not an entry to the Pillsbury Bake-Off. â ” I wedged myself between Casey and Creepy Freddie. Since losing the Science Trivia marathon to Casey, they’d become mortal enemies. “It’s better than depriving mice of sleep, then running them through mazes,” Casey shot back. Freddie sneered. “We’ll let the judges decide that tomorrow.” Although the judge’s decisions wouldn’t be until six that evening, we arrived at school early the next day so we could refill our sample bin. The ones we brought yesterday had been gobbled up by the end of last night’s open house - everyone liked them. This morning, we had broken up all our prototype boxes into small pieces to make more samples. “Hi,” Susan Kinder said as we walked past her exhibit, which was next to ours. Her project was growing hydroponic vegetables. “Hi Susan,” I said. Casey nodded to her. “She really is nice,” I whispered to him. “If you’d only . . . Holy Cow!” Our exhibit, and only remaining edible box, looked more like a piece of Swiss cheese than a box. “Who would stoop so low?” I asked. Casey lifted up a small, white mouse from the inside of the box. His eyes darkened with anger. “A two-legged rat, that’s who.” “Creepy Freddie,” I said. Casey gazed at the mouse. “Hey,” yelled Freddie, thundering over from his booth. “My mouse! Dino escaped last night.” Freddie plucked the mouse from Casey’s hand. He glanced up at our hole-riddled box. “Oops! Guess Dino decided to make a snack out of your project. So-o-o-o sorry. And before the judging too.” Susan came over and said, “I bet he deliberately put that mouse in your booth last night.” “Yeah, but there’s no way we can prove it,” said Casey. “What’ll you guys do? An edible box is such a great idea.” “There isn’t much we can do,” I said. “Can you make a new one?” “We haven’t any materials left,” Casey said. “Maybe I could help,” Susan said. “I read the ingredients for your box on one of your posters. I have celery in my hydroponics tank which you can use. There’s a convenience store across the street that must sell ranch dressing. And we could use the oven in the school cafeteria for dehydrating the celery. We still have most of the day get this done before the judging and I’ll bet we could get out of all our classes to do this. What do you think?” I tried to catch Casey’s eye so we could talk this over, but he was staring at Susan. “Why would you want to help us?” he asked. “Maybe because I think going green and leaving a small carbon footprint is the best way of preserving our future.” Then she grinned wickedly. “And, maybe because I like you guys much better than Slimy Freddie Potter.” I smiled back. “We call him Creepy Freddie.” “Creepy Freddie?” Susan tasted the words. “Fits him perfectly.” Casey flashed her a smile. “Yeah, don’t it though.” We pushed Susan’s booth next to ours and went to work. We were putting the finishing touches on our posters by the time the judges came around. The head judge peered at the latest edition to our poster collection. He looked at his clipboard and said, “I don’t remember seeing this exhibit listed.” We all gave each other quick glances, then Casey stepped forward to explain how two science projects had become one. “. . . and it melds environmental concerns of recycling with the newest technological advances in agriculture,” finished Casey. The judges nodded their heads and examined our combined posters that announced “The Future of Food - - - From Hydroponic Farming to Edible Boxes”. As they walked on to the next booth, they were munching our free samples of the Incredible Edible Box. Needless to say, Creepy Freddie wasn’t happy to be in the audience as Casey, Susan, and I mounted the stage to claim first prize.