Catch a Glimmer of Your Star

I can't believe they would do this

Today, I'm going to meet my parents.

Libraries always created the most comfortable environment for working in. Just being surrounded by all those books gave Basil the motivation to sit down and read some papers, even with the noise of dozens of students studying in chatty groups around them, even if he could hear Sunny smashing his keyboard in frustration.

Basil flipped through page after page of reports. He identified the relevant number on each report and added it to his spreadsheet of estimated expenses. The final number on the spreadsheet would have daunted Basil if he had not seen his parent's willingness to offer him thousand-dollar cheques every week.

"I can't beat this level," Sunny groaned, closing his laptop out of anger.

"Sorry," Basil replied.

"You don't have to be sorry about anything," Sunny said. "That was all on me. Argh! I should've been able to make that jump..."

"I mean, 'sorry' as in, I'm sympathetic for you," Basil clarified.

Sunny blinked his working eye. "Oh. Usually you say 'I'm sorry' instead."

Basil had no idea why he omitted the 'I'm' part. Was his brain really so fried just because he was going to meet his parents in an hour?

"I can't accept your sympathy either," Sunny said humorously. "I'm so bad at that game, you deserve to laugh at me."

"Hey, it's a hard game," Basil said. "I remember trying to beat that water level. It took me so many tries!"

"You've played it before?" Sunny asked, surprised.

"Yup." Basil winked. "When you were sick that one time. I looked at what games you had on your laptop, and..."

Sunny just laughed.

I should show Sunny how to beat that level when we get home.

Sunny recovered his composure. "How's your research going?"

"I have an estimate," Basil replied. "Our water testing kits, and the cost of the trip itself, will just be a drop in the bucket compared to the legal costs. We'll need sixty thousand dollars at minimum."

Sunny just stared at Basil wordlessly upon hearing that number.

"But if my parents keep sending me money like they've been doing for the past five months, I should be able to meet our expected costs within a year," Basil went on.

I'll talk to them about this when I meet with them today.

They should be happy to see that I'm getting all this research experience.

"Basil. I know this is important to you. But...maybe this project might be too much for us to handle?" Sunny suggested.

"I know," Basil admitted. "If we don't find anything, we'll just have to leave it. Even if we do find something, we'll need to talk to a group to handle the whole legal part for us."

Sunny wore a pessimistic face. "Can we really get an environmental group to help us?"

"It all comes down to the data we collect," Basil answered.

I'm hoping we can establish a definitive link between the levels of toxic chemicals in a river and being near a Coup de Soleil factory.

Marie and her dad told us that there's a high chance this link exists, somewhere.

"I feel kind of bad," Sunny said. "You're doing all this work and...I'm just kind of tagging along doing nothing."

"It's okay," Basil said. "You can just let me do everything."