by Luke Sharpe
“You mean like stinky, uncomfortable socks? ”
I wish I hadn’t talked about that at dinner. I decide to try a new tactic.
“You know, Manny is trying to get Dustin Peeler to sing a jingle for an All Ball commercial. If he does it, maybe we could arrange for you to meet him again.”
“I already told you, I’m not interested in Dustin Peeler anymore. Now get out!”
I forgot she is no longer a Dustin Peeler fan. Emily changes her celebrity crushes so often, it’s hard to keep up.
“Who do you like now? ” I ask. “Maybe we could get him as a spokesperson or something.”
“I like whoever picks you up and throws you out of my bedroom,” she says, between blowing on her toenails to dry them. (Most people probably can’t blow on their toenails, but Emily used to be a gymnast.)
I start to head out of her room. But when I reach the door, I turn back. “Did I mention you’ll get paid? ”
Emily looks up. “How much? ”
I tell her the first hourly wage Manny told me to say. She tries to look unimpressed, but I see her eyebrows flicker. “I don’t know,” she drawls. “Seems awfully low.”
I tell her the second hourly wage Manny told me to say. “Take it or leave it. I’m sure we can find someone else. It’s just that we’d rather have a family member, since sometimes we talk about company secrets.”
“Fine,” she says. “I’ll take it. But don’t tell anyone. I don’t want the word to get out that I’m spending my afternoons working for two geeks.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to call your boss,” I can’t help saying.
“Boss? ” she says, making her stuffed sardine face again. “Yuck. Hey, what will you call me? ”
“Um, Emily? ” I say. “Maybe Ninja Spider, although I’m thinking you need a new nickname.”
She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “No, I mean, like, what’s my role going to be called at Sure Things, Inc.? ”
Manny and I didn’t discuss this. “I don’t know . . . assistant? ”
Emily looks even more disgusted. I wish her face would freeze like that for a few days.
“Assistant in charge of Next Big Thing development? ” I suggest, trying to make it sound more important.
She rolls her eyes. “If I’m going to do this, I want to be vice president in charge of . . . whatever you said.”
“What do you mean if you do it? You already said you’re doing it!”
“Am I vice president or not? ”
I sigh. Manny isn’t going to like this. “Fine. You can be vice president. But you still have to do what Manny and I tell you to do.”
I dodge the pillow she throws at me.
Emily turns out to be much faster at going through the videos than Manny and I were. We felt like we had to watch the whole video, but Emily has no mercy. If the invention seems like a bad idea to her in the first few seconds, she goes on to the next video.
She uses her own system to classify the videos. She calls it the D.U.M.B. SYSTEM. Each video is given one of four labels:
D for Dumb (obviously),
U for Unoriginal,
M for Maybe (Manny and I watch all the Ms), or
B for Brilliant. (So far Emily hasn’t given a B.)
There are way more Ds than anything else. She must be wearing out the D key on her laptop.
One afternoon a few days later Manny and I are in the office watching the videos Emily has tagged M for maybe. We’ve divided them between us to make the work go faster. If either of us finds an idea we think is decent, we share it with the other one.
We have earbuds in, so we can’t hear each other’s audio. But out of the corner of my eye I see Manny sit up straighter. He starts to smile. Then he takes his earbuds out and says, “I think you should watch this one.”
I move over to his computer. He uses his mouse to click on the video’s play button.
A girl appears on the screen. “Hello,” she says in a very serious voice. “I believe my invention could be Sure Things’ Next Big Thing. It is called the SIBLING SILENCER.”
I like the sound of that.
The girl holds up something that looks like an oversized remote control. “The Sibling Silencer is a device designed to do exactly what it says: silence your sibling.”
Now, there’s an invention that could come in very, very handy.
“Unfortunately,” the girl continues, “there are still a lot of bugs to work out. Allow me to demonstrate.”
A boy walks into view. “This is my brother,” the girl says, gesturing toward him. “Alan, please begin speaking.”
“Hey,” he says, “what are you doing? Can I play? What’s that thing you’ve got? Can I try it? Mom says you have to let me play with you because I’m your little brother and you’ve got to be nice to me. If you don’t I’m going to tell—”
Click! The girl presses a button on the remote control as she aims it at her brother.
“Rowf! Rowf rowf arf arf arf! Meow! Meow! Moo moo moo moo! Oink! ARF!” the boy says.
In the corner of the garage, Philo sits up and barks back. “Woof!”
“Thank you, Alan,” the girl says. She gives him a cookie. Eating it, he steps out of the picture. “As you can see, or hear, the Sibling Silencer currently does not silence siblings. Instead, it reduces their speech to primitive animal sounds. With your help, I’m sure we can take sibling speech all the way down to silence. Thank you.”
She takes a little bow, and the video ends.
“What do you think? ” Manny asks.
“I liked it when the brother talked like a dog. And a cat. And a cow. And a pig. That was hilarious,” I say. “But he could have been faking it. Maybe the remote control didn’t really make him talk that way.”
Manny nodded. “Yeah, I was thinking that too. We could ask the inventor to ship us the remote control, and we could test it out ourselves.”
“True, if she’s willing to ship her invention to us.”
“She probably is. She trusts us enough to send us the video about her invention. But in a way, it really doesn’t matter whether the brother’s faking those animal noises or not.”
I stand up and stretch. We’ve been looking at Emily’s M videos for quite a while. “It doesn’t? ” I ask. “Why not? ”
“Because we can handle the technology,” Manny says. “The important thing is the idea. And I think the Sibling Silencer is a great idea.”
“How do you know? You don’t have any siblings.”
“No,” Manny admits. “But I’ve been around our new vice president enough to know that a Sibling Silencer would be pretty handy for you to have.”
He’s right. A Sibling Silencer would be pretty sweet. Just about anyone with sisters or brothers would want one. Manny starts hitting the keys on his computer.
“What are you doing? ” I ask.
“E-mailing the inventor to tell her we’re going to help her develop a working Sibling Silencer,” he says.
“Wait! Slow down!” I yell. “Shouldn’t we talk about this a little more? ”
So we talk. But we still end up at the same conclusion: The Sibling Silencer should be Sure Things’ Next Big Thing. I’m worried that I won’t be able to figure out how to make it work, but Manny waves my worries aside. He’s got all the confidence in the world in my inventing abilities.
Too bad I don’t.
Because I know the truth about the All Ball.
Still, I can’t think of a convincing reason to say no (other than the truth, and once again, I’ve chickened out on confessing), so Manny e-mails the girl who thought of the Sibling Silencer. Her name is Abby, and she’s thrilled. She agrees to send us her prototype right away, along with detailed descriptions of all the work she’s done so far.
• • •
Things are moving fast. Too fast.
We’ve got th
e prototype and Abby’s plans, so I’ve been studying them. It was fun testing the prototype on Emily.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY ROOM? GET OUT OF HERE OR I’LL TELL DAD THAT YOU’RE ARF ARF ARF ARF! MEOW! WOOF! MEOW! OINK!”
I’ve made some progress, but I’m still stumped by some details. And I’m really feeling the pressure. Manny’s counting on me. Abby’s counting on me. Sure Things, Inc. is counting on me. And siblings all over the world are counting on me, even if they don’t know it yet.
A few days later Manny and I are working in the office. In the corner I’ve set up a minilab where I can run tests and do analyses. I’m trying out a few different approaches to certain details of the Sibling Silencer.
“How’s it going? ” Manny asks, coming over to the lab corner of the garage. He doesn’t come to this part of the office all that often. He’s usually too busy with his computer.
“Not great,” I mumble, concentrating on a new wiring configuration.
“But it’ll all come together soon, right? The Sibling Silencer? ”
I shrug.
Manny holds up a printout of an e-mail. “Well,” he says, “maybe this’ll inspire you!”
“What is it? ” I ask, taking the e-mail. I read it, and realize it’s a letter from a producer of Wake Up, America! saying they’d love to have us on their show to announce our Next Big Thing!
“There must be some mistake here,” I say as I continue to read. “The date they’re confirming is really soon!”
“That’s no mistake,” Manny says. “It’s the perfect time to announce the new product.”
“But we don’t have a new product!” I say, trying not to shout. “We just have an idea. And I have no idea how long it will take me to turn the idea into something real that we can sell!”
Manny pats me on the shoulder. “You’re the genius who invented the All Ball, remember? I figured scheduling this announcement on TV would motivate you!”
“I don’t need motivation!” I say, much louder than I mean to. I try to speak in my normal voice. “That’s a lot of pressure on me, Manny,” I tell him.
“I have faith in you!” Manny replies, grinning at me. “Setting a deadline is one of the best ways to motivate a creative genius. I read that in one of my management journals.”
Manny starts to walk away, but then he turns back. I’m pretty sure what he’s about to say is the reason he came over to the lab in the first place.
“Actually,” he says, looking at the floor, “we kind of have to have the Sibling Silencer soon.”
“Why? ” I ask.
Manny runs his fingers though his hair. “Because I kind of poured a lot of what we made on the All Ball into promoting the Sibling Silencer. Without the Sibling Silencer, the whole company could go under.”
“Promoting it? Already? But it doesn’t exist!”
“You have to buy commercial time in advance,” Manny explains. “And the holiday shopping season is crucial to the success of a new product like this. Every business journal says so,” he adds before he walks away.
You need to steal Manny’s business journals and file them away in the garbage can, I tell my hands.
I know Manny well enough to know he’s not that worried. He really believes I can pull this off.
How do you tell your best friend that his best friend is a big fraud?
The Inventor Who Became a Zombie
NOW THAT I’VE GOT A deadline, I’m spending every spare moment I can find working on the Sibling Silencer. I’ve got it to the point where it doesn’t make siblings sound like animals, but they still speak gibberish.
This is what happened the last time I tested my prototype on Emily:
“YOU’D BETTER NOT BE POINTING THAT STUPID THING AT ME AGAIN, BECAUSE I’M GOING TO TELL GLARBLE FWIMBAH SCHNOOZAY KALAPP WHEEFEE! ”
Funny, but not silent. Far from it. Emily actually seemed to get a little louder after I zapped her with the remote control.
I’ve been working on the Sibling Silencer late into the night at my desk. My days are all the same: get up early to work on the Sibling Silencer, go to school, go to the office to work on the Sibling Silencer, come home to eat Dad’s bad dinner (last night it was ragout of rutabaga), do my homework, work on the Sibling Silencer, and sleep. On the weekends I just leave out the school part. Oh, and walk Philo. I do that, too. But I’ve been making the walks shorter and shorter to save time.
And our appearance on Wake Up, America! is getting closer and closer. . . .
At school one day I fall asleep at lunch. I end up facedown in my sloppy joe. Somebody takes a picture and posts it on the Internet with the caption “GENIUS AT WORK.”Luckily, with my face in my lunch, you can’t really tell if it’s me or not. It could be anyone.
It’s tough to stay awake in class, too. In science Mr. Palnacchio calls me up to the front to help him explain the Science of Color. I practically fall asleep leaning against the board and get red marker on my face. Jenny Starling raises her hand and asks, “Mr. Palnacchio, what’s the science of getting color all over your face? ” Everyone laughs.
I walk through the halls like a zombie. Dressing up like a zombie for Halloween is really fun, but actually feeling like a zombie? Not so much fun.
A sixth grader runs up to me. “Hey, Sure!”
I turn to him and mumble, “Yes? ”
“I’ve got this great idea for an invention!” He lowers his voice so no one else can hear. “It’s a pop-up changing room. You could use it on the beach, or even in the locker room so you wouldn’t have to change right in front of everyone else.”
Zombie Me automatically reaches into my pocket and pulls out my wallet.
I take one of Manny’s Next Big Thing cards and hand it to the kid.
“What’s this? ” the kid asks, disappointed.
“Read it,” I mutter. “Explains everything.”
Then I zombie-walk my way down the hall toward my next class. Unless it features a unit on eating human brains, I’m probably not going to do very well.
But lack of sleep isn’t my only problem. Every time I try to work on the Sibling Silencer, I hear this voice inside my head. It says things like this:
You’re a fraud.
There’s no way you can do this.
You’re going to fail.
Your company will go bankrupt.
You’ll go to prison.
Naturally, these thoughts don’t exactly inspire me to do my best. But I keep on trying. Luckily, I really like the idea of the Sibling Silencer. Every day, Emily makes me like it even more.
Take now, for instance. I’m standing in the kitchen, minding my own business. (Okay, I’m standing here because I’m so tired I can’t remember where I am supposed to be. But that’s not the point.)
“What are you doing standing in the middle of the kitchen? ” Emily demands. “Just standing there like a zombie? You are so weird. This town should build a weird museum and put you in it. You could be their main exhibit. If you’re just going to stand there with your mouth hanging open, you give me no choice but to take your picture and post it on the Internet.”
She pulls out her camera and takes my picture.
I stumble back up the stairs to my room. The plans for the Sibling Silencer are calling to me. And they have a really annoying voice that’s not unlike Emily’s annoying voice: “INVENT ME! COME ON, HURRY UP AND INVENT ME!”
Most nights, before I get too sleepy, I take a couple of minutes to write a quick e-mail to my mom. Somehow, just typing my troubles to her makes me feel a little better. It’s nice to know that somewhere on the planet there’s someone who loves you, even if you can’t figure out how to invent a Sibling Silencer.
(I know my dad loves me, even if he does seem to be trying to punish me with his awful cooking. And I’m pretty sure Philo loves me no matter what.)
Hi, Mom,
Hope you’re doing great, and that all your research i
s going well. We sure do miss you. Me especially. I don’t actually know about Dad and Emily. I can’t get inside their brains. (I don’t think I’d want to get inside Emily’s brain.) But I do know I miss you a lot.
School is fine. Lots of homework—lots more than in sixth grade, and I already thought that was kind of too much. But I’m keeping up with it, barely. (Don’t worry, my grades are good.)
The All Ball’s still really popular, and selling well. Manny says we expanded to five new countries this week. He calls them “new markets.” To me, “market” seems like kind of a small word for a whole country.
Still working on the Next Big Thing. It’s tricky. Hope I crack it soon, especially since we’re already booked to announce it on a morning news show. That’s Manny for you. Oh well. I owe him a lot.
The Hyenas are just about done with their season, unfortunately. There’s always next year.
Love,
Billy
I hit send. Then I crawl into bed and fall fast asleep. The last thing I remember thinking is, You’re a fraud.
• • •
The next day, I’m in the office, twirling the rods of the foosball game, knocking the ball back and forth from one end of the table to the other.
Klop! Klop! Klop! Klop!
I guess if Manny can play chess against himself, I can play foosball against myself. Except I’m not really playing. I’m thinking.
When he hears me knocking the ball back and forth, Manny looks up from his sales figures. “Wanna play a game? ”
“No, thanks,” I say. “I’m thinking.”
“What about? ”
“The Candy Brush. I had a thought about the flavor conversion unit. I’d like to test it out, but I’ll need some new materials . . .”
Manny looked concerned. “That’s great, Billy, but what about the Sibling Silencer? We’ve gotta go on that TV show and introduce it in just—”
“I KNOW!” I shout, surprising Manny and myself. Philo jumps to his feet to see what the matter is.
It’s like a balloon of worry and guilt and stress has been getting bigger and bigger inside me until it finally popped. I take a deep breath. “I know,” I say more quietly. “I haven’t forgotten.”