Chapter 70: Project Meeting

Now at Preston's house they all headed up to his room. A simple marble set here, a couple of rubix cubes there, and a few family mementos. His closet was closed, probably to hide the mess of clothes and there was a computer desk as well.

Preston's bed sat in the corner, the blanket ruffled from getting out of it. Jeffrey grabbed the whiteboard from out on the hallway. Meanwhile Preston grabbed one of his parents or should he say the family laptop.

Logging into the account, he gave the computer to Samantha to check a few emails before passing it to Jeffrey. Jeffrey let Samantha and Preston takeover.

Samantha started first, "our experiment has been going pretty well. Preston and I have discussed the project and we're pretty much ready to present."

Jeffrey and Dresden nodded.

Preston went over some of the data they collected and the recipes they changed.

Preston's room smelled of soap and Elmers glue, off to the side were various batches sitting in a stack of jars.

"Here's where we're going to present, the county competition will be hosted at the convention center. Every city near Westchester, Carlisle, and Cormant will gather here"

The presentation went quite a while as Dresden and Jeffrey asked some questions.

"Who's in charge of transporting our project?", Jeffrey asked.

"I will be", Preston responded

"Can we see your presentation?", Dresden brought up.

Samantha and Preston pulled out the flash cards.

Samantha told Dresden and Jeffrey, "Dresden you'll be doing demonstrations and showing off what we've made. So get used to talking about it and get comfortable with talking to adults and Judges."

Then Samantha turned to Jeffrey, "Jeffrey, you're in charge of promotion. Bring some friends over and take a look at some of the other projects. Go talk to some of them and see if we can swap samples or exchange information. We could always make more friends at competitions."

Samantha pointed to the layout of the competition. It was Dresden's turn to present.

"According to the schedule there will be three phases of the competition. Number 1 is the inspection and judging phase. They'll take a quick look at all the projects and figure out which ones they're interested in", Dresden paused for a moment looking at the other three project members.

"After the first phase is the promotion and question phase. There will be audience judges where they receive other feedback and decide on the semi-finalist and other honorable mention awards.", Dresden looked at Jeffrey to speak.

Jeffrey finished their preparations, "From here they choose a finalist and we'll know if we're one of the winners or runners up. That's about it for our science project. Then we wrap up go home."

Samantha asked, "So what's this phase 2 thing about promotion and selling slime and Oobleck."

"I thought it would be fun, I didn't really expect we'd make as much money as we did", Jeffrey admitted.

Looking at the stuffed cashboxes between the four of them, After 4 weeks of hard work they were holding $350 in cash. they made $1920, while spending about $400 on materials. Jeffrey sold about 1-2 jars a day totaling 38 jars, Preston was a close second with 29, Samantha sold 26 and Dresden sold 15 jars.

Quite a bit of time has passed since Jeffrey gathered the four of them together, they themselves had no idea what to do afterward. Perhaps they could keep going or they might split apart to do their own thing. It seemed they had achieved the primary goal they set.

"So what next?", Preston asked.

"We keep going", Dresden replied.

Samantha stayed silent, school was manageable and it seems they formed a sort of relationship in the group. They were friends, project partners, and classmates. However, classmates come and go. They each get different teachers and their schedules and class period change.

Preston and Dresden grabbed a soccer ball and dragged Samantha and Jeffrey to play as well.

Heading to the local park, they played a match between all four of them. 2v2, switching teams and members until they got tired.

All the while the question hung in the air unanswered.