Ben the Inventor

by Robin Stevenson

  “Test run,” Ben said. He picked up a golf ball and dropped it into a sloping metal pipe. He and Jack both crossed their fingers and held their breath. The ball dropped out the other end of the tube. It rolled down a ramp and knocked over a wooden post. The post landed on the first of a long row of empty CD cases. Down they went, like dominoes. Bing, bing, bing. The last CD case set off a mini-catapult, flinging a Ping-Pong ball into the air.

  At this point, the Stupendous Contraption needed a little help. The Ping-Pong ball wasn’t heavy enough to push the race car into the race-car launcher. Ben gave it a little shove. Whoosh! The race car zoomed along the plastic track and dropped off the end. It nudged a perfectly balanced soccer ball, which fell onto the end of the Ultimate Catapult.

  The weeds flew into the air.

  They landed in a pile less than two feet away.

  The boys stared at it in disgust. “Well, that’s no use at all,” Ben said.

  “It was pretty cool though.” Jack grinned. “Like when the race car knocked off the soccer ball. That was great. And the domino thing.”

  “Cool but not useful. They were supposed to fly across the street to your house.” Ben heard a car door slam. He stood up and looked toward the street. A blond woman in a suit was getting out of a car. “Is that her? The real estate person?”

  “Must be.”

  They watched as a second car pulled up. A tall bald man got out. The real estate woman waved to him. Then they walked through Jack’s front gate together.

  Jack turned to Ben. “I guess that’s the man who wants to buy my house.”

  Ben made a face. “No way.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “Well, launching the weeds didn’t work. So I guess we move on to Stupendous Plan B,” Ben said.

  “Okay. What’s Stupendous Plan B?”

  Ben didn’t actually have a Plan B, let alone a Stupendous Plan B. He thought fast. “We’ll just carry the weeds across to your yard,” he said. “We’ll spread them on the lawn while the real estate agent is inside showing that man your house.”

  A grin spread slowly across Jack’s face. “And he will think the weeds are growing there!”

  “Yeah, and he won’t buy the house because there is too much gardening to do,” Ben said.

  “Perfect,” Jack said, gathering up an armful of weeds. “Fire-bellied toads! Let’s go.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ben opened his back door and stuck his head inside. “Mom? We’re just going for a walk, okay?”

  “Stella, stop that.” His mom grabbed Stella’s arm. “Spit it out, honey.” She popped her fingers into Stella’s mouth and fished out something small and blue. “Lego, this time. She just puts everything in her mouth.”

  “We’ll be back soon,” Ben said.

  “Okay. Stay on this block,” his mom said.

  “Oh, we will.” Ben nudged Jack. “Come on.”

  Ben and Jack picked up the weeds they had piled by Ben’s front gate. They carried them across the speed bump. Then, very quietly, they scattered them around Jack’s lawn. Dandelions on the grass. Morning glory vine on the rose bushes. All kinds of dead green stuff along the path.

  They were almost finished when the front door opened. “Run!” Jack whispered.

  Ben followed Jack, dashing down the sidewalk. He thought he heard a woman yell after them, but he didn’t stop. They ran to the end of their block and hid behind a tree. Then they both sank to the ground, giggling like crazy.

  “Do you think they saw us?” Jack asked.

  “Probably. It doesn’t matter though. They don’t know who we are.” Ben stopped laughing. He frowned. “We should have put the weeds down before they arrived.”

  Jack laughed. “Yeah, they must think they are the fastest-growing weeds ever.”

  “Stupendous Weeds!” Ben said, cracking up.

  “Stupendous Weeds!” Jack grabbed him by the shoulders and pinned him down, half hugging him and half wrestling with him. After a minute, he let Ben go. He sat back on his heels and gave a long sigh. “I sure hope our plan works. ’Cause I really, really, really don’t want to move.”

  Ben and Jack watched from a safe distance as the bald man drove away. Then they snuck up to Jack’s house and peeked through the fence. The real estate agent was still there. She was picking up all the weeds and piling them in one corner of the yard. Ben thought it was funny to see someone gardening in a suit. But, from the look on her face, she didn’t find it very amusing at all.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. He and Jack dashed across the speed bump and into Ben’s backyard.

  Ben flopped down on the grass, laughing. “Whew. That was great.”

  Jack rolled on top of him and pinned him down again. He liked to wrestle. “Yeah,” he said. “That was fun.” Then he stopped smiling. He sat up and looked at his watch. “The open house is in one hour. The weeds will be cleaned up by then.”

  For a minute, Ben had forgotten they weren’t just playing. “I know,” he said. “We need another plan. Plan C.”

  It was lucky he and Jack were good at coming up with plans. Inventors were smart like that.

  Chapter Eight

  “Okay,” Ben said. “What kind of things would make someone not buy a house?”

  “Um, if it was falling down or something like that?” Jack said.

  Ben shook his head. “We can’t make your house fall down. Anyway, even if we had dynamite or something, it would be a bad idea. You still have to live in it.”

  “I didn’t mean we should really make it fall down. I meant, we could make people think it was falling down.”

  “Hmm.” Ben thought about that. “How?”

  Jack stood up. “We go to the open house.”

  “Can we? Are kids allowed?”

  “My mom told me anyone could go,” Jack said. “She thinks all the nosy people in the neighborhood will be there.” He frowned. “She’s been cleaning like mad. She even made me take down my Star Wars posters and hide them under my bed.”

  “Wow.” Jack’s bedroom walls had always been covered with Star Wars posters. Ben couldn’t even picture it without them. It made him think about how awful it would be if Jack moved. Someone else might get his room and make it look completely different.

  There was no way he could let that happen. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll go to the open house.” Then he had a great idea. “In disguise!”

  “Fire-bellied toads!” Jack said.

  Ben and Jack dragged the costume trunk out from under his bed. It was filled with all kinds of stuff. There was a robot costume from when Ben had loved robots more than anything. There were the Viking costumes he and Jessy had made together. His old Halloween costumes were in there too. There was a skeleton costume, a devil costume and even a shark costume.

  But there was nothing that seemed quite right for an open house.

  Jack tried on a fake mustache. “What do you think?”

  “Goofy.” Ben put on a construction hat. “How about this?”

  “We’re not going to look like grown-ups,” Jack said glumly. “We’re too short.”

  That gave Ben an idea—a Stupendous Idea. “Jack! I know. I can sit on your shoulders. We can pretend we’re one person.”

  Jack’s face lit up. “Cool.” He pulled a long black cloak out of the trunk. “This will hide me. All that will show is your head.”

  By twelve o’clock, Ben and Jack were ready to go. Ben stood on the deck steps. Jack bent down. Ben scrambled onto his shoulders. The cloak was tied around his neck. It hung down below Jack’s knees. All that showed was Ben’s head at the top, and Jack’s running shoes at the bottom.

  Ben had drawn on a mustache with his mom’s eyeliner. He had the construction hat on. It was time to put Plan C into action.

  Chapter Nine

  “Hurry up,” Ben said. It felt odd sitting on Jack’s shoulders. Wobbly.

  “You’re heavy!” Jack said. He was walking carefully across the
speed bump. “And I can’t see where I’m going.”

  “Keep going straight,” Ben said. “Now stop. Step up on the sidewalk.”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Jack asked.

  Ben was not sure. He didn’t have any better ideas though. “It will be fine,” he said. “Keep going. You’re on the front path. Almost at your front door.” He could see people walking around inside. Mostly strangers, but there was the woman from two doors down, and the man who lived in the corner house. Jack’s mom had been right about the neighbors coming to look.

  “Are there lots of people?” Jack asked.

  “Can’t you hear them?”

  “Yeah.” Jack stopped at the front door. “Should I just walk in?”

  Ben nodded. Then he remembered Jack couldn’t see him. “Yes,” he said. “Straight ahead. Then a couple of steps left. Yes, perfect.”

  “Now what?” Jack whispered.

  “Stop talking,” Ben said. “You are the body, remember? I am the head.” His heart was racing. The real estate agent was across the room. She was looking right at him. Ben looked away quickly.

  A man with a beard was walking toward the front door. Ben waited until the man was a few feet away. “Ahem,” he said.

  The man looked up at him.

  “This house is falling apart,” Ben said. He tried to make his voice low, like a grown man. “There is a rat living in the roof. And, um, it leaks when it rains.”

  “The rat leaks?” The man hid a grin behind his hand.

  Ben shook his head. “The roof leaks. And a new roof costs thousands of dollars.”

  “It does indeed.” The man waved over a woman who was admiring the stained glass window in the living room.

  She smiled and crossed the room. “Yes?” She looked at Ben and laughed. “Well, hello.”

  Ben noticed that she was very pregnant. “Hello,” he said.

  “Darling, this gentleman was telling me the house needs a new roof.” The man put an arm around her waist.

  “Is that right?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry to hear that. A new roof costs a lot of money.”

  “Exactly,” Ben said. “So you don’t really want to buy this house.”

  The real estate agent appeared behind them. She grabbed Ben’s cloak and yanked it off. “You two again!”

  Ben jumped off Jack’s shoulders and stood beside him. He was so scared, he could hardly breathe.

  “Off you go,” the real estate agent said. “Go on. Out!”

  “Oh, it’s okay.” The pregnant woman was laughing. “They’re just having fun.”

  “Well, their fun cost me a sale.” The real estate agent glared at them. “The man who looked at the house this morning said he didn’t want to live across the street from a couple of badly behaved kids.”

  Good, Ben thought. He didn’t want to live across the street from a grumpy bald man.

  Chapter Ten

  “Success!” Ben said once they were back in his yard. “It worked! No grumpy bald man!”

  Jack looked less sure. “She was pretty mad,” he said. “I hope she doesn’t tell my parents.”

  “Me too.” Ben didn’t think his mom would be too happy about Plan B or Plan C. He looked across the street, and his heart sank. People were streaming through Jack’s gate. Lots of them. Old people. Families. Young couples. Even a woman with a yappy dog tucked under her arm.

  Jack watched them too. “This stinks,” he said. He dropped the cape and sat down on the grass. “I feel like it’s not even my house anymore.”

  “This really stinks,” Ben said. There was a big lump in his throat. His eyes stung with tears. He had a feeling all the plans in the world might not be enough to make Jack’s family stay.

  The next day, Ben’s mom made his favorite food for dinner: pizza with pineapple and pepperoni, no sauce and not too much cheese.

  “Ben,” his mom said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  Ben put down his slice of pizza and looked at her. He had a bad feeling.

  “Jack’s mom called.” She looked at him. Her eyes looked sad, and there were frown lines in between them.

  Ben wondered if he was in trouble. Maybe the real estate agent had told Jack’s parents about what they had done. He hoped that was it. Because being in trouble for Plan B and Plan C would be better than the other thing Jack’s mom might call about.

  “They have an offer on their house, Ben. A good offer.” His mom made a face. “I’m so sorry. They’re moving. But they won’t go for another month. At least Jack will be here until the end of the summer.”

  “It’s not fair,” Ben said. He squeezed his eyes tight, trying not to cry. One hot tear snuck out. “He’s my best friend.”

  “I know. You will miss him. And he will miss you.” His mom stood up. She walked over to him and gave him a long hard hug. “We will visit. I promise. And he can come here too. His mom says he can even come and stay with us for a weekend once they have settled in. Thanksgiving, maybe.”

  “It won’t be the same,” Ben said.

  “You’re right. It won’t be the same.” His mom sighed. “That’s life, Ben. Things change.”

  Maybe so, Ben thought, but I don’t have to like it.

  August went by too fast. It was warm and sunny. Ben and Jack spent almost every day together. They played with water guns. They picked blackberries and ate them right off the prickly green vines. They played soccer and hit golf balls against the fence. They pretended to explore other planets. But mostly they invented things. Because they were inventors.

  “And inventors invent inventions,” Jack said. He was lying on Ben’s deck, writing the alphabet on a large piece of paper. Blocky capital letters stretched in neat single file across the page.

  “That’s right.” Ben was working on his own alphabet page, slowly writing each letter with a finetipped black marker. His writing was not as tidy as Jack’s. Ben liked to write fast more than he liked to write carefully. But today he wanted his letters to be perfect, because this might be their most important invention ever. X, Y, Z, Ben wrote. “There,” he said. “I’m done. Ready?”

  “Ready.” Jack slid his paper above Ben’s so the two alphabets lined up. A under A, B under B, C under C.

  “What code, do you think?” Ben asked. “Maybe a Plus Three Shift?” His mom had given him a great new book about how to write and read secret codes.

  “Plus Two,” Jack said. “Two like you and me. Because we will always be friends. Even if we don’t live close to each other.”

  “Fire-bellied toads,” Ben said. “Plus Two then.” He grinned and slid his page along two letters. Now the letters lined up with C under A, D under B, E under C, and so on. Then he taped the two sheets together. “This can be yours,” he said. “And we’ll make another one for me.”

  “Fire-bellied toads,” Jack said. “I’ll email every week.”

  “Me too.” Ben looked at the decoder and grinned. “And no one else will be able to read our messages.”

  Chapter Eleven

  At the end of August, Jack’s family packed all their things into a giant moving truck. Their house looked very strange with nothing in it.

  “Bigger,” Ben said. “It looks way bigger now.”

  They were standing in Jack’s empty bedroom. Jack’s mom had told them it was time to say goodbye. “We don’t really have to though,” Jack said. “Because we can email each other tonight, if we want to.”

  “Plus we can visit each other,” Ben said. “My mom says you can even stay with us if you want. For a weekend.”

  Jack tackled him and pulled him down to the bare wood floor. “Yes! And we’ll do something Stupendous.”

  Ben nodded. “We sure will,” he said. He knew they would always be friends. But he still felt sad. He had really loved having a friend right across the street.

  A week later, Ben sent Jack an email. It read:

  Hi Jack!!! You’ ll never guess who bought your house. Remember the pregnant woman
and the man with the beard who were at the open house? Well, they just moved in. I guess they didn’t believe us about the roof. They have a little baby now. It cries all the time. Loudly! But here’s the good part. They also have a kid who is eight! A girl called Sarah. You can meet her when you come and visit. And guess what else? She put Star Wars posters all over your room. She is nice, but I wish you still lived there. I miss you. From your friend, Ben the Inventor.

  Ben stopped typing. That was long enough. It took a long time, writing messages in code. He had to write his emails the normal way first. Then he had to put them in Plus Two Shift code. His mom was even letting him have extra computer time to do it. Just typing Hi Jack!!! took him a couple of minutes. It became Jk Lcem!!! Ben loved that. Jk Lcem!!!

  Finally, Ben had his message all in code. Ben the Inventor became Dgp vjg Kpxgpvqt. It looked Stupendous. He grinned. It was going to take Jack hours to decode the whole email.

  Ben yawned and stretched. Through the window, he could see Sarah. She was wearing 3-D glasses and making crazy designs with chalk on the sidewalk in front of her house. Her hair was tangled and long, and she had bare feet. He had played with her a couple of times already. She even wanted to walk to school with him and Jessy when school started next week.

  When Ben thought about it, Plan B and C hadn’t been a total failure. Sarah’s parents had liked that there were other kids living on the street. They had even liked the way he and Jack had dressed up at the open house. So it was thanks to Plan B and C that Sarah lived across the street instead of the grumpy bald man.

  Outside, Sarah stood up. She put down her chalk, and she walked across the speed bump.