Izzy Newton and the S.M.A.R.T. Squad

by Valerie Tripp

  “I’ve got my fingers crossed,” said Charlie.

  “It’s so chilly out that my fingers have frozen around the handlebars of my bike!” joked Izzy. “Otherwise, I’d cross my fingers, too.”

  “A STEM team is an awesome idea,” said Allie. “Everybody thinks so.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” said Izzy. “Some people think it’s stupid.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Charlie. “Who thinks that a STEM team is stupid?”

  “Well,” said Izzy reluctantly. “You know Marie’s friend, the one you just beat in a race?”

  “Her name is Gina Carver,” said Charlie.

  “When I was in the Girls’ Room,” said Izzy, “I overheard Gina telling Marie that I was ‘out there.’ She said I was ‘toxic’ for liking ice hockey and suggesting a STEM team.”

  “ ‘Toxic’?” repeated Charlie. She slammed on the brakes of her bike. Izzy and Allie stopped, too. “That’s just plain wrong. I thought you were really brave for standing up for a STEM team. You owned it. And I know you hate being the center of attention.”

  “Yes!” agreed Allie loyally, as the girls started pedaling again. “You talked in front of everybody, Izzy, just like a regular person.”

  Izzy shuddered at the memory of the lunchroom on Thursday. She could hardly believe she’d been so brave herself! People who were not shy had no idea how excruciating it was for her to speak in front of people. And now it seemed that it was all for nothing. “I heard Gina talking Marie out of joining anything as uncool as a STEM team,” she said. “And the three of us being on it is the kiss of death.”

  “It all adds up,” said Allie. “Didn’t I tell you Marie has dumped us? We’re history now. So Marie’s all palsy-walsy with that new hipster girl Gina—”

  “What’s a ‘hipster’?” interrupted Izzy.

  “Hipsters are ultracool and into retro stuff, like Gina’s thrift-store outfit,” said Allie. “It makes sense that Marie would glom on to a hipster. She’s all about that ‘I’m awesome without trying too hard’ vibe.”

  “Well, upcycled clothing is super Earth-friendly,” said Charlie. “I don’t know…I was pretty impressed with Gina. She is fast. I only beat her by an eyelash today. And I like how she has lots of pockets on her clothes, like she’s a marsupial.”

  “But Gina said mean stuff about Izzy,” Allie said to Charlie. She turned to Izzy and said, “I think Marie is awful for not sticking up for you when Gina dissed you, Izzy.” She shook her head and frowned. “Very lame.”

  Charlie said thoughtfully, “I think Marie is hiding something. But I guess we’ll never know what. It’s just going to be off-the-charts awkward, every time we meet up.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be like skew lines,” said Allie, who liked to use ideas from math to explain things. “We’ll pass each other, but our paths will never intersect, not ever, not even to infinity.”

  “I just wish I knew what we did that was so wrong,” sighed Izzy.

  The girls leaned their bikes against Charlie’s house and headed inside.

  “I don’t think it’s anything we did,” Charlie said. “It’s what we are in Marie’s mind.”

  “Absolute zeros, coolness-wise, you mean?” said Izzy, shedding her jacket, hat, and scarf, grateful for the warmth in the kitchen.

  Charlie nodded. “Marie thinks that if she’s friends with us, we’ll pull her coolness quotient down to rock-bottom because ours is so low.”

  “Hey! Speak for yourselves!” protested Allie. She swung her scarf around as if it was a feather boa and joked, “Moi, not cool? No way! What is middle school, an alternate universe?”

  “The question is,” said Izzy, getting to the heart of the matter, “what are we going to do? I refuse to just give up on being friends with Marie.”

  “Do you have a plan?” Charlie asked.

  “Well,” said Izzy. “Maybe somehow we could change Marie’s mind.”

  “By changing ourselves?” asked Allie indignantly.

  “No,” said Izzy slowly and thoughtfully, “by changing something else, something…important.”

  “Like what?” asked Allie.

  “Uh-oh, Allie! Red alert!” joked Charlie. “Man your battle stations: Izzy’s got that ‘I’ve got an idea’ look. Run for cover!”

  Allie laughed, but Izzy ignored Charlie. “What if,” Izzy said, “we put our brains together and secretly, without telling anyone what we’re doing until we’re successful, solve the mystery of why the school is so cold?”

  “Or maybe we could fix the problem of the crowded staircases,” suggested Allie.

  “Those are both good ideas,” said Charlie. “We’ve put up with being frozen and crushed for three days solid. If the grown-ups were going to solve these problems, they would have done it by now.”

  “WE’LL do it! And every kid in the whole school will love us!” said Allie. Her brain had a tendency to fast-forward through the tough parts of a challenge and go straight to the triumphs.

  “We’d go from Absolute Zeros to Absolute Heroes,” agreed Izzy. “We’d be doing Mr. Delmonico an act of kindness, too.”

  “That poor guy!” agreed Allie. “He needs kindness.”

  “And well, maybe, just maybe,” Izzy said, “solving one of the mysteries would impress Marie and make her remember why she used to like us.”

  “Because we’re math and science nerds?” asked Allie.

  “I’m not sure whether she’ll like us because of that or in spite of that,” said Charlie, shaking her head.

  “I’m all in on your idea, Iz!” said Allie, already raring to go. “Where do we start?”

  “We start where we are,” said Izzy, echoing Granddad. “That’s usually best. So, I’ll begin. I think the coldness problem is The Worst.”

  “I’ll say!” said Allie. “It’s super annoying! It’s the coldest September ever, like a second Ice Age! And our school’s heat doesn’t work. The cold school is even more annoying than the stair jam. It’s a drag having after-school activities canceled because the building is so cold that it’s a safety hazard.”

  “My experiment in biology didn’t even work because the fluids had a thin coating of ice on them,” Charlie complained.

  “You think that’s bad,” said Allie. “I couldn’t feel my pencil in my hand in Math class. My hand was so cold it was numb.”

  Izzy laughed. “Okay, okay…enough!” she said. “So, let’s focus on the coldness problem. It’s the one that we have the best chance of fixing. We just have to figure out why the air-conditioning keeps going on and the furnace keeps going off. It seems like first, we should go look at the thermostat. It controls the heat and air-conditioning going on and off.”

  “Where’s the thermostat?” asked Allie.

  “It’s in the principal’s office,” said Izzy. “Remember? Mr. Delmonico mentioned it at the first-day assembly.”

  “There’s only one thermostat for the whole school?” asked Allie.

  Izzy shrugged. “It’s an old building,” she said. “I bet it didn’t even have air-conditioning when it was first built.”

  “Okay, so, we go to—” Charlie began.

  Just then, Charlie’s little twin brothers, Caleb and Ben, ran in. “Charlie, Izzy, Allie!” they said. “Come see!” Caleb and Ben pulled the girls by their hands and dragged them back outside. Charlie’s moms, Susannah and Laurie, were there, kneeling next to a big box by a shed.

  “Puppies!” said Caleb, Ben, Charlie, Allie, and Izzy all together.

  Charlie’s moms laughed. “Someone dropped these puppies off at the animal hospital today,” said Susannah. “You can look, but better not touch them because they haven’t had their shots yet. Ten cuidado.”

  “Sí, Mami,” said Charlie.

  “They’re golden retrievers,” said Laurie, “about six weeks old. They need homes.”

  “Oh, I’d take them ALL,” said Allie. “But my own dogs, Mimi and Mitzvah, would be jealous.”

  “I do
n’t think Wickins would like a puppy, either,” said Izzy sadly. “Though he’s so lazy that he might not even notice.”

  “Look how they’re all squished together,” said Charlie. “It’s so cute.”

  “They’re adorable,” agreed Izzy. “But they’re so crowded they remind me of us in the halls, trying to get to Math class on time.”

  “The puppies cuddle to stay warm,” said Laurie.

  “There’s an idea!” joked Izzy.

  Susannah and Laurie looked surprised when the girls all laughed. So Charlie explained, “Remember how I told you that our school building is freezing? Well, we’re going

  to secretly try to figure out how to warm everybody up.”

  “Good for you!” said Susannah.

  “Be sensible,” said Laurie. “Don’t do anything dangerous.”

  “Let’s try to go look at the thermostat first thing Monday morning,” said Izzy. “That’ll be a safe and sensible place to start.”

  Charlie laughed. “Maybe we are as weird as Marie and her friend Gina think we are. Who else would voluntarily go to the principal’s office? That’s where you go when you’re in trouble!”

  Trouble? thought Izzy, suddenly anxious. Is that what I’m leading us into?

  “Whoa!” breathed Izzy. Allie and Charlie bumped into her as she stopped short at the door of the principal’s office Monday morning. “This is a surprise.”

  Izzy leaned back so Allie and Charlie could see past her. They gasped when they peeked through the open door and saw who was speaking to the principal: Marie and Gina!

  “Maybe they’re here to put their phones in phone jail,” whispered Izzy.

  “Yeah, a girl in my English class forgot to turn in her phone, and she got in trouble,” said Allie.

  Charlie watched the girls carefully. She was really good at reading body language and facial expressions. “Marie looks super serious,” she said. “And Gina looks like she’s ready for a fight.”

  Then the girls heard the principal say something that seemed to confirm that Marie and Gina were in hot water.

  “All right,” Mr. Delmonico said to Marie and Gina firmly. “One chance, girls. That’s all I’m giving you. I’ll walk you to class now, to be sure you get there on time.”

  “Yikes. Did they skip class on Friday?” whispered Allie.

  Izzy’s soft heart went out to Marie. She tried to smile at Marie as she and Gina left with Mr. Delmonico. But Marie rushed past without making eye contact, walking so swiftly that her phosphorescent sneakers made a glowing flash of color.

  Izzy shivered. “Absolute zero,” she sighed.

  “Yes, it’s still so cold in here!” agreed Charlie.

  Izzy didn’t contradict Charlie even though the temperature of the building wasn’t really what Izzy was referring to.

  Just after Mr. Delmonico left with Marie and Gina, a team of mechanics came out of the office. Izzy was too shy to approach them, but outgoing Allie bounced up to a technician and asked, “Why don’t you just turn off the whole heating and air-conditioning system?”

  “We did that,” said the technician. “But it’s so cold outside that the school got too cold inside. And no matter how cold it is inside, when we turn the system on, the air-conditioning goes on, not the heat.”

  “Bummer!” said Allie.

  “You can say that again, kid!” said the technician.

  When Izzy, Allie, and Charlie sneaked a peek into Mr. Delmonico’s office, Izzy was glad to see that the manila envelope she’d left there Friday was on his desk but disappointed to see that it was sitting unopened atop a messy pile of papers.

  “There’s the thermostat,” said Izzy, pointing. The thermostat was on the wall, just above a lamp that sat on the principal’s desk. Sunlight streamed in through the window.

  “Why is Mr. Delmonico wasting electricity by having his desk lamp turned on?” said Charlie, frowning. “It’s a sunny day!”

  “See where his chair is?” said Allie. “He’s got his back to the window, so his shadow is cast over the desk. He has to have his light on even when it’s sunny so he can see stuff clearly.”

  “Sunny! Aha!” said Izzy happily. “The sun! Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I bet we are,” said Charlie. “The sun shines straight onto the thermostat, so the thermostat thinks the temperature is hot, and the air-conditioning goes on.”

  Izzy nodded. “Our first—and, if we’re right, final—hypothesis!” she said.

  The three girls exchanged enthusiastic fist bumps. But they didn’t have time to talk. They had to hurry off to their first classes.

  In Math, Trevor poked Izzy in the back. “Hey,” he said. “Any news from Mr. Delmonico?”

  Izzy shook her head. “I don’t think he’s even opened the envelope yet,” she said.

  “Shoot,” said Trevor. “Well, no news is good, right?”

  “Not exactly,” said Izzy. “It’s more like inert.”

  * * *

  When Izzy, Allie, and Charlie met at lunch, Allie said, “I thought for sure those repair people we saw in the principal’s office would figure out the problem. But it doesn’t feel like it. The school’s still cold.”

  “So we haven’t missed our chance to solve the Mystery of the Cold School,” said Charlie, biting into a sub sandwich the size of a real submarine.

  “We better be quick about it,” said Allie.

  “No,” said Izzy firmly. “We have to be scientific about it. I’ve got it all planned.” She pulled a black-and-white marble composition book out of her backpack. “I brought this for us. We’ll keep a record of every single solitary step we take,” she said. “Right now, I’ll write our hypothesis about the thermostat.”

  “Oh, Izzy,” sighed Allie. “Congratulations. You just won the Nerd of the Century Award. You are unbelievably c-a-r-e-f-u-l.”

  “Yup!” said Izzy cheerfully. She wrote the steps in the Scientific Method and their findings so far:

  Make an Observation: The school is too cold.

  Form a Question: Why is the air-conditioning/heating system malfunctioning?

  Form a Hypothesis: The thermostat registers high temperatures because it is located in direct sunlight.

  Conduct an Experiment: Observe what happens when there is no sunlight shining on the thermostat.

  “Okay, now we just have to wait for bad weather, and—” Allie began, but Charlie corrected her.

  “There’s no such thing as good or bad weather,” said Charlie. “Nature needs rain and cold as much as it needs sun and heat.”

  “Okay, Ranger Rick!” said Allie, raising both hands in surrender.

  “Anyway,” said Izzy, “scientists have to use words that are more specific than ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Today is ‘sunny, warm, and dry’ so we have to wait for a ‘dark, cold, and rainy’ day before we can go to the final step, which is…” Izzy said aloud as she wrote:

  Analyze the Data and Draw a Conclusion

  The girls were so absorbed in their plans that they lingered in the cafeteria too long and had to push their way through crowds of kids rushing to class in the tightly packed hallways.

  “Just wait,” said Izzy cheerfully. “When we figure out how to warm this place up, kids won’t have to wear their bulky jackets anymore. That will free up so much space that it’ll seem like the halls have magically gotten wider.”

  “Can’t happen a moment too soon for me!” wailed Allie, squashed between two tall eighth graders in giant ski parkas. “I’m tired of being the turkey in the middle of a middle-school sandwich!”

  * * *

  That evening, after dinner, Granddad sat next to Izzy on the couch and looked over her shoulder as she was trying to do her Forensics homework.

  “Blank page, eh?” he asked.

  Izzy sighed deeply. “I’m supposed to come up with a topic I want to make a speech about,” she said. “And the problem is, I don’t want to make a speech at all. About anything. Ever.”

 
“Didn’t you just tell me that you stood up in the cafeteria and spoke about a STEM team?” Granddad asked.

  “Yes, but that just about did me in!” wailed Izzy. “And anyway, that wasn’t a speech. That was one sentence that took five seconds, max. The idea of making a real speech is…” Izzy trailed off and then shook her head. “Right now, just thinking about it, my stomach’s churning, my head’s spinning, and my hands are shaky.”

  “You’ve got the Paper Due Flu,” said Granddad. “I’ve seen the symptoms before, with your brothers. There’s only one cure.”

  “What is it?” Izzy asked.

  Instead of answering, Granddad asked, “Did I ever tell you about Sir Isaac Newton’s first law? It says that ‘An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion.’ ”

  “I don’t get it,” said Izzy. “That doesn’t have anything to do with me and my speech.”

  “Oh,” said Granddad. “I think it does. Because loosely translated, in your case, Newton’s first law means: Quit moping. Get moving.”

  Izzy had to laugh. “Very scientific!” she said.

  Granddad nodded. “Newton’s laws have many practical applications,” he said as he stood. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  But despite Granddad’s advice, Izzy’s page—and mind—remained empty of speech topics. And the next day, to add to Izzy’s misery, the sky was a dismal gray. A chilling, weepy rain drizzled down. As the Atom Middle School students trudged into the building—bundled up, shuffling along in their boots and scarves and hats and gloves—Izzy heard complaints from every side:

  “Now it’s monsoon season!” muttered a boy.

  “This is cruel and unusual punishment,” complained an eighth-grade girl.

  “I feel like I should be wearing waders,” wailed another girl, “because it’s so wet in here!”

  “I’m calling Health and Human Services to complain!” shouted a boy, raising his arms over his head, fists clenched.

  Yet another team of workers had dismantled the halls’ overhead pipes, and students were hopping around an obstacle course of ladders and orange safety cones. Soon the floors were sloppy and slippery from the rain dripping off kids’ coats and boots, which made the hallways slick underfoot. Izzy, Allie, and Charlie carefully wended their way to their lockers to put their books and lunches away.