Mind Games by Jeanne Marie Grunwell Page A

thrilled about teachers and other people reading a lot of these things. I wish I never had to read them. But seeing yourself through other people's eyes is not such a bad thing. In a way, I guess that's what our project ended up being about.
    I still feel we present a strong case for our hypothesis. But ultimately, the verdict rests with you, the reader. See what you think.

Introduction
Marina Krenina
    M R . E NNIS SAYS THAT THE INTRODUCTION IS SUP posed to be short, because this is not the interesting part of the project. Of course I was given the short assignment.
    This is very well, but it is not so short to explain how we began.
    I have recently learned the word coincidence. Certainly, that is one way to describe all that has happened. But if you wish to call it that, you have no need to read further in this report.
    At our school, we have one class each week that we choose for our own enjoyment. This is the only reason we go. It is called a club. This is a strange thing for me, for we do nothing like this in Russia, where I come from.
    The second week of school, in homeroom, we are asked to choose the club we wish to join. At this time, my family is in America only one month, and my English is not yet so good. Of course I study some English in Russia, but I do not know it as much as German or French. So when the teacher talks fast, and all the students are also talking, I suddenly understand only a few words, like shut and up and detention.
    We have a paper to complete for the clubs, and I think this is a test. I cannot read so many words on this sheet. For example, there is the place to write my name, and there is the word
basketball.
    Next to me sits a boy named Ben Lloyd. Ben is very, very smart. Do not ask me how I know this, but I know. I see the answer he writes on his paper, and I think this must of course be the right answer to the test. So even though I understand it is a bad thing to do, I write the same answer on my club paper.
    And that is how I came to be in Mr. Ennis's Mad Science Club.
    At this time, I know only a few people at the school. Therefore, I think I will not know anyone who wants to study Mad Science besides Ben. But I am surprised at once. For I go to this club class, and here again is the girl with red hair.
    On the first day of school I notice this girl immediately because of her thick braid, which is the color of the orange jam that my mother and I take every morning in our tea. I am admiring this beautiful hair tied with bright ribbons of green and gold, and all the while the girl is walking nearer to me. She is smiling. And suddenly she clutches my hair into her fist and draws it up to her nose. I am astonished. But then I think perhaps this is some American greeting which I have not yet observed. The girl shouts, "Cat fur!" I do not know what this means, but I see people stop in the hall to look at us, and I hurry away. I have not yet learned the meaning of this custom. It is a long while before I see it practiced by anyone else.
    As I fear, on this day in Mr. Ennis's class the red-haired girl again takes my hair in her fist. But before she can make a nice sniff, her sister comes and begins to yell at her. I know it is her sister because of her red-blond ponytail and her voice, which resembles mine when I am angry with my younger sister, Lilia. However, it is difficult to know between these sisters which is the older. Their height is exactly the same shortness.
    "Kathleen, don't do that!" the one sister shouts.
    And Kathleen lets go of me, although not before she takes a tiny smell. "You smell so good," she tells me. "Like a pond in the woods." This makes me happy, because in Russia our dear dacha (summer home) was near a little lake in the forest. But I have not been there in two years, since the time we begin saving money to move to America. And I know my hair smells only of apricot and vanilla, which is the shampoo I use each morning, and probably too of Papa's cigarette smoke—the