Trelane Scott received a $20 a week allowance for doing her chores – cleaning off the table after meals, loading and unloading the dishwasher, loading the clothes washer and dryer and folding the clothes. These had been her jobs for over two years, and after this time she had almost a thousand dollars in a savings account that her parents had started for her on her 12th birthday.
Every Monday the Scott family went out to dinner at a local restaurant – lots of people in Cheyenne went to Fort Collins, in Colorado, for dinner, but the Scott’s believed in supporting local businesses, and besides, there were plenty of good restaurants in Cheyenne.
After dinner, the family continued on to the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Dell Range and spent anywhere from a half hour to an hour there, browsing, and usually coming home with a couple of books each.
It had been midway through her twelfth year that she’d sat down with her parents for a James Bond movie marathon. The movie she’d seen was For Your Eyes Only, with Roger Moore as James Bond. Parts of the movie had taken place underwater, with underwater archaeologists excavating a Greek temple, and scuba diving, and the use of a JIM underwater suit. Trelane had been fascinated with the downhill skiing scenes early in the film (and had gone downhill skiing for the first time that winter) but what had really ignited her interest were the underwater scenes. That was what she wanted to do when she grew up, she decided.
There was no place in Cheyenne to learn how to scuba dive, but she wouldn’t always live in Cheyenne, Trelane had vowed. When she was old enough to go to college, she’d choose a college in Florida, or better still, Hawaii, and then she’d spend every minute she could in the water.
Trelane wandered through the bookstore. She knew she’d ultimately end up in the oceanography section – such as it was – but before then it was always fun to see what else was on offer.
She went to the magazine section first, and searched through the magazines in the science section. As usual, there were no magazines on oceanography. Plenty of magazines on space exploration and astronomy, not a thing on the oceans that they shared their planet with.
Trelane stepped over to the next section of magazines, and her eye fell on one entitled Make Your Own Webpage.
She looked at the cover thoughtfully.
Why not make her own oceanography magazine? She could publish it on the web and it wouldn’t cost her anything. And if she were going to make an Oceanography web magazine, she’d make one for the Girl Scientists Club as well! And Amber and Emily would help her, she knew.
“Found everything today?” asked the clerk as Trelane handed over the magazine and her money.
“Yes, thanks,” said Trelane with a smile. She accepted her change, picked up the bag, and went to find her parents.
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