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

by Valerie Tripp

  Charlie, who was the tallest, placed Teddy in the duct. “Buena suerte, Teddy,” she said.

  “Bon voyage!” said Marie, waving from the corner.

  “Here goes,” said Gina. “Lights, action, camera!” She powered the two remotes: one to make Teddy roll forward on his skate, and the other to turn on the lights and camera attached to him. The girls held their breath and then cheered as, with a soft whirring sound, Teddy moved forward into the duct. As soon as his fuzzy body rolled out of sight, they switched to watching Allie’s laptop, on which they saw what was illuminated in front of Teddy by the lights attached to him. But Teddy had not gone very far out of sight before the girls heard a clonk! And the screen went dark. Gina shook the remote, checked the connections, and groaned.

  “Did Teddy bump into something?” asked Izzy. “Is the duct blocked, like we thought it might be?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” said Gina, furiously tapping the remote. “I can’t make him move forward or backward.”

  “Poor guy!” said Charlie. “We can’t leave Teddy lost and alone in there!”

  “I agree,” said Marie. “I know Teddy’s only a robot, and machines don’t have feelings, but—”

  “Shh!” interrupted Izzy. “Listen! I think the camera’s mic is picking up a sound. Hear that hum?”

  All the girls were silent. Then Allie whispered, “What are we listening to?”

  Charlie said, “I think Teddy has discovered a swarm of bees.”

  “Bees?” squeaked Allie nervously. “Do you think they’re mad because Teddy bumped into them? Do you think they’ll sting us?

  “No,” said Charlie. “When bees are swarming, they’re not aggressive. They’ve left their hive because it’s too crowded, so they don’t have any brood or food to protect. Bees usually swarm in the spring, but I’ve seen them swarm in the fall before.”

  “How do you know so much about bees?” asked Gina.

  “My moms keep bees,” said Charlie. “And by the way, honeybees are endangered. I bet my moms would love to give those bees a home. Anybody have a big plastic bag?”

  “I do!” said Gina. She reached deep into her backpack, pulled out a big trash bag, and handed the bag to Charlie. “What do you need it for?”

  “I’m going to climb into the duct and get the bees,” said Charlie very matter-of-factly. “I’ll get Teddy, too, of course.”

  “There’s no way you can squeeze into that duct,” said Marie. “Your shoulders are too wide.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Well, we’ll see,” she said.

  “Wait!” Izzy said. Everyone looked at her. She swallowed, fighting hard against her Dizzy Izzy self, which was shaking with anxiety and fear. She plucked up her courage and thought, Here’s another chance to leave Dizzy Izzy behind. She said, “I’ll go.”

  Charlie said, “Izzy, you don’t have to.”

  “I know,” said Izzy. “But hey. Capturing a swarm of bees in a trash bag isn’t hard compared to Forensics. It’s a piece of cake! Anyway, I can fit in the ducts. So it’s like sliding down the hose: It makes sense for me to do it.”

  “Yup, it does,” said Charlie. She handed the trash bag to Izzy. “Put the bag around the swarm from the bottom up and then twist the top of the bag shut. You won’t be able to get every single bee, and the ones left behind may dive-bomb and land on you. But they probably won’t sting, so don’t freak out. Claro?”

  “I’ll bee-eee careful,” joked Izzy weakly.

  Allie held her hand next to her mouth and pretended to whisper to Marie, “Aren’t you glad you were in France and missed two whole years of Izzy jokes?” She turned to Izzy and said, “Whatever you do, don’t make any bee jokes in there. The bees’ll definitely sting you if you do!”

  Gina checked to be sure Izzy’s headlamp worked, and then Marie, Charlie, and Allie hoisted Izzy up into the duct. Pretty soon, all that was visible of her to the other girls was the bottoms of her sneakers. Then her feet disappeared into the duct, too.

  “What’s it like in there?” asked Gina.

  Izzy breathed out heavily and a cloud of dust poofed around her. “Just a little dusty,” she said, her voice echoing in the hollow duct. “And dark.” She clicked on her headlamp and shimmied her way forward. Izzy was very grateful for her headlamp; it was darker than night inside the duct. Using her elbows to pull herself along, Izzy wiggled inch by inch farther and farther into the duct. After a while, she saw Teddy. He had become detached from his roller skate and had fallen facedown, his lights blinking forlornly, his camera askew. Izzy tucked Teddy down the back neck of her coverall and tied the roller skate to her belt. She slid her way forward like a snake. All too soon, she was right below the swarm. Warily, she opened the bag and even more warily lifted it so that the swarm was inside it. Then, as quickly as she could, she twisted the top of the bag shut and, followed by a few confused bees, snaked in reverse, feetfirst, until she felt four sets of hands grab hold of her legs and lower her to the floor.

  “Here,” she said, quickly giving the bag to Charlie and then handing Teddy to Gina. She let out her breath, realizing that she had been holding it practically the whole time she was in the duct.

  “You got ’em!” said Charlie. “Way to go, Izzy.”

  “Great,” squeaked Allie, sounding a bit undone at the sight of a big, buzzing bag of bees.

  “I’d better bring these bees home right away,” said Charlie. “They’ll be happy to be let out of the bag, and my moms will be really happy to get a whole new colony.”

  “We’d better postpone examining the ducts till another day,” said Allie.

  “Want to come home with me and see my moms release the bees?” asked Charlie.

  “Okay!” said the other girls.

  Izzy rode her bike straight to Charlie’s house without stopping to take off her coverall or headlamp. She forgot! She was thinking too hard about what she and her friends should try next.

  * * *

  “So should we fix Teddy and try again?” asked Gina. It was the next morning, and the girls were in their secret room, before their morning classes.

  “No,” said Izzy. “Just past where the bees were, the ducts divide into branches that are too narrow even for Teddy to squeeze through.”

  “What do you do if you can’t conduct the experiment that you want to conduct?” asked Charlie.

  Izzy opened the composition book. “I guess you just put that hypothesis aside,” she said. “In this case, on ice,” she said. She wrote in the book:

  Make an Observation: The school is too cold.

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

  Form a Hypothesis: A heat duct is blocked.

  Conduct an Experiment: Send robot Teddy through the heat ducts to look for blockage.

  Analyze the Data and Draw a Conclusion: Ducts too narrow. Unable to collect data. Unable to draw a conclusion.

  Marie looked over Izzy’s shoulder. “You should write: Ducts were a dead end,” she said.

  “It kind of seems like all our ideas are dead ends so far,” said Allie.

  “Maybe we should all just resign ourselves to freezing,” said Gina. “Because I’ll admit, I’m racking my brain, but I’m at a dead end when it comes to coming up with new hypotheses.”

  “¡Ajá! And I’ll admit, I’m just plain tired of dead ends,” said Charlie.

  “And I’m just plain dead tired of trying,” said Marie.

  They all looked at Izzy. “Uh-oh,” said Charlie. “Izzy’s got that dangerous ‘I’ve got an idea’ look on her face again.”

  Izzy laughed, but she meant it when she said, “We can’t give up now. I’ve got lots more hypotheses we can test.”

  “Like what?” asked Allie.

  “Like, is the air-conditioning or heating system on a clock or a timer that’s malfunctioning?” said Izzy. “Or is the air-conditioning’s electronic system connected by mistake to some other system—say, the fire alarm or burglar alarm—so it is re
sponding to a false ‘On’ signal? Or has a fuse blown? Or—”

  “You’ve convinced us,” Charlie interrupted. She smiled with affection at her friend. “Izzy, talk about ‘On’ signals! Your ‘On’ signal is stuck on.”

  Izzy grinned. “I’m sure the rest of you will think of some new things to try, too,” she said.

  She led the way down the stairs and through the auditorium into the hallway. The rest of the girls followed her. Suddenly, all of them came to a halt. Because smack in front of the principal’s office, where there were still orange traffic cones to keep kids away from the jumble of the scaffolding and repair equipment, someone had changed the sign that usually said ATOM MIDDLE SCHOOL so that it now read WHATOMESS MIDDLE SCHOOL.

  “Yikes,” said Izzy. “Guess the crowd is getting restless.”

  Charlie nodded. “We really, really better solve the Mystery of the Cold School, or there will be a revolution.”

  “Well, Allie and I know where the fuse box is,” said Gina. “Our blueprints show that it’s near the gym, in a utility room. Do you want to check out your hypotheses about blown fuses or the air-conditioning system being connected to a timer or the fire alarm, Izzy? We could go at lunch.”

  “I have a Pep Squad power lunch today,” said Allie. “So you guys go without me.”

  “Nope,” said Izzy. “We’ll all go. We’re a squad, too.”

  “Right—we’re the Smart Squad,” said Charlie, smiling at her own cleverness.

  “Gina and I can stay after school today,” said Marie. “My sister has the day off from work, so we don’t have to babysit Crosby. Let’s meet at the utility room after everybody’s after-school stuff, and check out the fuses.” She grinned. “I guess Izzy’s stubbornness is contagious. It looks like none of us wants to give up on solving this case!”

  Once again, Izzy’s hypothesis proved wrong.

  That afternoon, when the girls examined the fuse boxes and electrical circuits, they saw that there was no timer or alarm connected to the air-conditioning or heating systems.

  “And none of the fuses are blown,” said Izzy, “so that means that this hypothesis is blown.”

  The girls trudged upstairs to their secret room near the roof. They were all too discouraged to talk. Even Izzy’s stream of ideas had run dry. Marie sat down and began leafing through the composition book in which Izzy had kept their notes. It was a bit tattered now. There were watermarks on the front cover, and some of the pages were stuck together with ketchup streaks.

  “None of the hypotheses in that book worked,” sighed Charlie, watching Marie.

  “What’ll we do now?” asked Allie. “Give up on solving the cold problem and build campfires in the classrooms?”

  “Bring in heat lamps?” joked Gina. “Wear long underwear?”

  “Long underwear is a fashion don’t,” dismissed Marie, only half-joking.

  Izzy slid down onto the floor next to Marie and looked at the book with her.

  As Marie flipped back to the first page in the book, Allie asked, “We should just toss that thing. We don’t need old ideas; we need new ones.”

  “Well,” said Izzy, “our old ideas are new ideas to Marie and Gina.”

  “Right,” said Marie. “Like, what was your first hypothesis? Where did you start?”

  “We started with the thermostat,” said Izzy, pointing to the first page in the book. “It’s in Mr. Delmonico’s office. We thought that maybe because it’s in direct sunlight, it registered a high temperature and kept kicking the air-conditioning on and turning the furnace off.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Marie. “I saw the thermostat when Gina and I met with the principal to ask about the lights on the stairs.”

  “Speaking of lights,” said Gina. “I’ve invented a way to remind us NOT to let the door slam shut behind us so no one will ever be trapped on the roof again.” She took a little gizmo out of her backpack. “See this LED light bulb? I’ve made a circuit that connects it to the door. It’s wired so that the light bulb will blink on and off until you throw the bolt to stop the door from shutting all the way.”

  “Thanks,” said Charlie. “You’re a genius, Gina. We should replace all the old bulbs in this room with LED bulbs. They don’t get so hot, and they last longer so they’re better for the environment.”

  “Well, I just happen to have an extra LED bulb,” said Gina. She held it out to Charlie. “Here.”

  Suddenly, Izzy yelped. She jumped up and bounced on her toes.

  “Izzy?” said Charlie. “Are you okay?”

  Izzy nodded. She was so excited that she stumbled over her words. “I think, I mean, oh, what if?” Finally, she gave up trying to explain, took the LED light bulb from Charlie, and gestured to her friends, saying, “Come with me!”

  Izzy led a small stampede through the halls. When the girls got to the principal’s office, Izzy screeched to a stop. She signaled for the girls to cram into a doorway with her.

  “What is going on?” hissed Marie.

  “Shh,” Izzy shushed. “Mr. Delmonico is in there.”

  “Duh,” said Allie. “Hello? It’s his office.”

  “We have to get him out of there,” said Izzy.

  “Why?” asked Gina.

  “How?” asked Marie.

  “What for?” asked Allie.

  Charlie didn’t ask any questions. She said, “It’ll look fishy if we call him out here for no reason, Izzy.”

  “Then we’ll just have to go into his office and distract him,” said Izzy.

  “Okay,” said Charlie, “but you’re going to have to do the distracting. You’re the only one who has a good excuse to talk to Mr. Delmonico. Ask him if he’s read your STEM team proposal.”

  Izzy entire body clenched, head to toe. “Can’t one of you talk to him?” she begged.

  “No!” said Allie, Charlie, Marie, and Gina all together.

  “How’ll I get him away from his desk?” asked Izzy.

  “You’ll think of something,” said Charlie.

  “We’ll be right behind you,” said Marie.

  “I’m not budging until someone tells me what’s going on,” said Allie, stamping her foot.

  So Izzy explained. “I think the air-conditioning keeps going on and the furnace keeps going off because Mr. Delmonico put a desk lamp with an old-fashioned light bulb right under the thermostat. The thermostat registers a high temperature as if the whole building is hot,” she said. She held up Gina’s bulb. “This LED bulb won’t generate as much heat, so it won’t fool the thermostat. We’re going to switch bulbs.”

  “Well, it’s worth a try,” said Gina. She took the LED bulb from Izzy and said, “You talk. I’ll switch.” She grinned and held the bulb above Izzy’s head, joking, “It’s your bright idea, after all!”

  “Okay,” said Izzy. “Let’s go.” She took a deep breath and knocked on Mr. Delmonico’s door. Allie, Gina, Marie, and Charlie were packed tightly behind her and so abuzz with nerves that Izzy felt like they were a bee swarm.

  Mr. Delmonico looked up. “Come in, girls,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  Everyone waited for Izzy to speak. But Izzy was petrified: She was so scared stiff that she felt as if she had been turned to stone. It was like Forensics multiplied by stage fright with a scoop of shyness on top, only worse. Allie gave her a little shove forward, but Izzy could not make her mouth work.

  Allie came to her rescue. “This is Izzy Newton,” she said. “The girl who suggested a STEM team.”

  “Oh, yes!” said Mr. Delmonico. “Izzy, I gave your proposal to the board for their consideration. Good research work, by the way.”

  “Mxntks,” Izzy croaked. After that failed attempt at saying thanks, she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Charlie spoke up. “We were thinking that the board might ask you what kind of project a STEM team could do for the school. And, uh, for example, look out this window.”

  When Mr. Delmonico got up from his desk and went to the window
, Gina unscrewed the light bulb from his lamp. The bulb was hot, so she pulled her sleeve down over her hand to protect it.

  “Yes?” asked Mr. Delmonico.

  Charlie had a desperate look on her face. Izzy could tell that she was stuck. Marie took over. “Look up at the roof above the auditorium,” she said. “A STEM team could plant grass up there and make this building a green school.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Delmonico. He started to turn away from the window, but Izzy pointed and redirected his attention. Her voice sounded strangled because she was so nervous, but she managed to say, “And maybe we could put wind turbines up there to generate our own electricity.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Delmonico again. “I—”

  “Green buildings save money,” said Gina. She appeared at Izzy’s elbow, so Izzy knew she’d switched the bulbs.

  Mission accomplished, thought Izzy, weak with relief.

  “Well,” said Mr. Delmonico a third time. “I—”

  “That’s all we wanted to say,” said Marie abruptly. She turned toward the door. “So, thanks! Bye!”

  Mr. Delmonico looked a little surprised as the girls made a hasty retreat, stumbling over one another in their hurry to get out of the principal’s office. “Thanks, Mr. Delmonico! Bye!” they echoed Marie. “Bye!”

  Once outside the office, the girls collapsed. “Nice job, everybody,” said Izzy. “You guys are The Best. I never want to do anything like that in my life ever again!”

  “Not to be a downer,” said Allie as the girls left school, “but I don’t think you should get your hopes up about this latest hypothesis, Izzy. The bulb is such an easy solution. How come none of the technicians thought of it?”

  “How come it took us so long to think of it?” added Charlie. “It’s so simple.”