Leo stared at the box. "This is for sore muscles."
First, he boiled water. While the kettle roared, he measured a heaping cup of the bitter, grainy salt into a glass jar. When the water was ready, he poured it slowly, watching the salt dissolve like magic. He stirred until the liquid was as clear as a mountain spring. Then, he added a drop of blue food coloring, just because.
But morning is the great revealer of secrets. Leo shuffled into the kitchen, still in his dinosaur pajamas, and opened the fridge. His breath caught. making crystals with epsom salt
He set the jar on the windowsill. The morning sun hit the crystals, and they scattered tiny rainbows across the kitchen wall. His mom smiled. His dad took a picture.
Leo was bored. Not the quiet kind of bored that leads to reading, but the restless, floor-pacing kind that made his mom sigh. "Why don't you do something scientific?" she suggested, handing him a box from the laundry room. "Epsom salt." Leo stared at the box
"Whoa," he whispered.
The hardest part, he discovered, was waiting. The instructions said to put the jar in the refrigerator. "They need to be cold and still," his mom explained. When the water was ready, he poured it
"It's also for crystals," she said, and that was all the encouragement he needed.