Minerva Clark Gets a Clue — Karen Karbo

Mark Clark took the spongy ends of the electrodes and dipped them in a bowl of salt water. He told the crowd salt water conducts electricity best.

He then put one electrode on each temple, one behind my ear, and one smack in the middle of my forehead.

As if from far away, I heard him tell DeMaio to tell his audience that he was now recording my brain waves on his laptop. Everyone was staring at me like I was some freak-show freak. I was a freak-show freak.

"Even the brain waves of a thirteen-year-old girl can produce a gloriously perfect work of art," DeMaio was saying. "Perfect and beautiful. Total perfection."

The audience smirked -- I knew that look! -- and a clap of thunder hit us, as if a giant had dropped a bowling ball right onto the roof.

Then it was like a black curtain came down in front of a stage, only the curtain was smack in front of my eyeballs. That's the last thing I remember: the word "perfection" and that window-rattling thunder, before everything went black.