Cartboy and the Time Capsule

by L. A. Campbell

  Mr. Tupkin will barely look at me either. So he’s definitely a lost cause. (I wrote him an apology letter, for saying he was boring and all, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t even read it.)

  Given the situation, I have had no choice but to take matters into my own hands. To come up with a Plan B.

  Besides my dad and Mr. Tupkin, there’s just one other person who can get me ungrounded. One last person who could overlook a lousy little F for the happiness of a young man. A person who is still, on the inside anyway, a great big mush.

  Mom.

  My idea is to do some good old-fashioned, time-honored, sucking up to the lady of the house. Do stuff with her that she likes to do. Help out. Make eye contact with her friends.

  Which is why I’m going to tell you about a few activities that are a really big deal, especially with moms, on Earth right now.

  #1 ACTIVITY THAT IS REALLY BIG ON EARTH TODAY: THE BOOK CLUB

  There is barely a mom alive today who is not part of something called “book club.”

  For reasons my brain can’t begin to process, once a month they all get together at someone’s house to discuss a book they have read for fun. Not because they had to read the book, but because they wanted to.

  One thing I noticed is that whenever my mom hosts the book club, she puts out about fifty trays of little snacks and cookies and stuff. I guess all that reading makes you hungry.

  The month of May is always my mom’s turn to host. When the ladies showed up at seven o’clock last Tuesday night, I was ready.

  They all gathered in the living room and started to chat about the book they were reading, Sense and Sensibility. (A super barfy love story by someone named Jane Austen.) As soon as the conversation got going, I appeared in the doorway with a tray of oval-shaped vanilla cookies.

  “Ladyfinger, anyone?”

  Ladyfinger cookies.

  Ladyfinger cookies you could make on Halloween.

  I’d put on my mom’s apron for extra effect, and as I passed the tray around, I made sure to stop at every one of the ladies.

  “Here you go, Mrs. Boswell. How’s your knee? Better I hope.”

  “Mrs. Stoddard! You’re looking ravishing!”

  “Well, hello, Mrs. Popper. I can hardly notice the hair in your mole tonight.”

  When I reached my mom with the cookie tray, she gave me a long stare. Her eyebrows got that crinkle in between them like they always do when she gets mad. But when she heard Mrs. Boswell and Mrs. Stoddard talking about what a nice boy I was, I saw her melt like a fudge pop in the sun.

  Before leaving the room, I casually grabbed a copy of Sense and Sensibility off the coffee table. “I don’t know about you all,” I said, “but I believe the main character, Marianna, was correct in believing one should marry for love, not for money or position.”

  Thank God for book summaries on the Internet.

  I tossed the book on the table and walked out holding my ladyfingers high. Check, I thought, on the book club.

  What’s next?

  Book Club Reading Over the Years

  #2 ACTIVITY THAT IS REALLY BIG ON EARTH TODAY: THE ART MUSEUM

  Stowfield is about fifty miles from Philadelphia, which is a really old city that has about a million museums. Whenever we drive there, my parents try to cram in every single one since “we used up all that gas.” When it comes to Philadelphia, I am pretty much sobbing by the time we leave.

  Of all the museums in the city, the Philadelphia Art Museum is the biggest. It’s about fifteen jazillion square feet and there are like, three thousand rooms. My body starts aching when I even look at the place.

  The Philadelphia Art Museum, known to kids everywhere as the “Museum of Pain.”

  But my mom loves all museums, the bigger and artier the better. So a few days ago, when she was making lentil soup, I dropped by the kitchen.

  “Hi, Mom. I was thinking, I’d like to spend some more time with you.”

  “That’s nice, honey.”

  “How about a day at the Philadelphia Art Museum? Just you and me?”

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yeah, Mom, I just am really becoming interested in art. Maybe you could show me some stuff you like.”

  “I’d love to! Let’s go tomorrow. Admission is free on Sundays in May and the museum is open until five o’clock. We can stay for six hours!”

  “Six hours?”

  “I mean, uh . . . that’s great!”

  I tried to keep from crumpling onto the kitchen floor. “Sounds like a nice day together, Mom.”

  I could already tell this was going to be much, much harder than the book club. Six hours of looking at paintings and sculptures and little Chinese vases. They have a whole wing just on needlepoint rugs!

  But as my dad always likes to say, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  The museum doors opened at 11:00 a.m. sharp and my mom charged in there like a Thoroughbred out of the starting gate. “Where should we start? Ooohh, how about nineteenth-century decorative arts? No, let’s do French Impressionism.”

  By noon, I thought I was going to die and we still had five hours to go.

  “Oh, Hal, look at the craftsmanship in that ceramic figurine!”

  “It’s exquisite, Mom.”

  “C’mon, let’s head over to the lecture on Roman Aqueducts.”

  My mom trotted from room to room, with me slugging along behind her, trying to keep my legs from buckling and my eyes from sticking shut. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that every hour I spent with her was one hour closer to being ungrounded.

  That, and a few of the sculptures were pretty entertaining.

  At some point late in the afternoon, my mom and I walked into the Hall of Egyptian Tombs. It was full of all these stone slabs and burial treasures the Egyptians made a long time ago. They had so many complicated carvings, it must’ve taken them a hundred years to build each one.

  Given how much work it was just to rebuild a little deck railing, I could appreciate what the Egyptians went through. I practically broke out in a sweat just looking at those tombs.

  I was kind of lost in this thought when I looked over, and who did I see standing right in front of the tombs?

  Ryan Horner.

  What was he doing at the museum? It didn’t make any sense. Then I noticed he was sketching one of the giant stone slabs. He must have had to come here for history homework.

  Suddenly, I really was breaking out in a sweat. The last time I saw Ryan, he was at the top of Arnie’s basement stairs laughing. Seeing him again made me so mad I wanted to shove him into one of those stone coffins and shut the lid. But if I tried to do anything like that, he’d just stand there and yell something like, “Nice try, Cartboy.” Or, “Maybe next time, Cartboy.”

  The best thing I could do was get out of there as fast as I could, before he spotted me. I steered my mom in the opposite direction, but right as we were leaving the room, something caught my eye. Ryan was texting on Arnie’s phone. I could tell because of the custom purple plaid case.

  What the heck was Ryan doing with Arnie’s phone? Did he steal it? Did Arnie let him borrow it? I thought back to the night of the dance, when I saw Arnie and Ryan behind the bleachers. Arnie had definitely shown Ryan something on his phone. It had to be our secret.

  But now, Ryan had the phone. The whole thing was making my head spin, because all I know is that Arnie’s phone is his favorite thing in the world, so why would Ryan have it?

  The question gnawed at me right up until about five o’clock, when it was finally time to go home. My head was aching, my feet were on fire, and my back was killing me from all that walking.

  I looked a lot like Uncle Lou.

  In one way, though, it had been a good day. I could tell I was close to getting ungrounded. We walked toward the car, and my mom put her arm over my shoulder. “You want to go for ice cream, honey?” she said. “There’s a place just a few blocks from here.”

&
nbsp; It worked! It worked! I thought. She’s taking me for ice cream! I’m out of the doghouse!

  My mom and I sat down at the ice-cream counter and started to eat our whole-wheat soy cones. After a minute, she looked up and stared me right in the eye. Here it comes, I thought. She’s going to tell me I’m ungrounded.

  Instead, all she said was, “I know what you’re doing.”

  “What do you mean, Mom? Do you want to go to the green market after this?”

  “I love that you are trying to get on my good side, Hal. To be a better son.”

  “Um . . .”

  “But there’s only one way to get out of being grounded. It’s time to forget about me. And do the thing you should be doing.”

  Unfortunately, I knew exactly what she was talking about. Studying for the history final. It was in two weeks, right before the end of school.

  “I can’t learn history, Mom. I just don’t get it.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Dad?”

  Suddenly, my whole-wheat soy cone didn’t taste so good. Even though it was sugary and sweet, it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I figured it probably had nothing to do with the ice cream. And everything to do with the fact that my mom might be right.

  Popular Tourist Attractions Through the Ages

  Dear Whoever Found This Journal and Has Actually Made It This Far:

  I really didn’t want to talk to my dad. It seemed like the worst idea ever. It seemed like my dad and I had gotten to a point where we were never going to see eye to eye on anything. I didn’t have the remotest clue how two people could be related but also be 100 percent, total, complete opposites.

  But in the end, that was the thing that changed my mind. I realized my dad is my dad and we couldn’t go on not speaking to each other forever. Even though I was sure the talk wouldn’t go well, I figured I should give it a try.

  I found him sitting quietly at our kitchen table, sewing a button on a ragged blue uniform. He was getting ready to do his favorite hobby, Revolutionary War reenacting. He and his friends go over to the soccer field in town where they act like they’re at Bunker Hill taking on the British. They pretend to shoot one another, then head over to Arby’s for a snack afterward.

  Arby’s roast beef sandwich with “horsey sauce.”No one knows which part of the horsey the sauce comes from.

  “Dad?” I said.

  He didn’t look up.

  “Dad, I’m sorry I called you a grease monkey.”

  He still didn’t look up.

  “And that I said you were dusty. And squeaky. And . . . I’m sorry I said your quotes are dumb.”

  I waited for him to talk, but he just sat there sewing and not saying anything at all. Things were going even worse than I thought they would.

  “It’s just . . . the thing is . . . I’m having the most horrible year ever. It’s not only because I don’t like, okay hate, history. It’s . . . well . . . Arnie went behind my back. I never thought Arnie was perfect, but turns out he’s not the person I thought he was. At all. And now, sixth grade is almost over, and I don’t even have a friend. I guess I kind of took my frustrations out on you.”

  Finally, my dad lifted up his head. He put down his sewing needle and looked me straight in the eye. “When I was your age, I had a tough time in history too. I just didn’t see why it was so important.”

  The words “history” and “not important” had never appeared together in one of my dad’s sentences before.

  “But then, how come you think history is so interesting now?” I asked. “I mean, all the people are still dead. And the facts are just as boring.”

  “That’s true. History is about a bunch of dead people. And I agree that the dates and the battles and the treaties and stuff can all seem the same. But that’s not all there is to history.”

  My dad reached under the table and started feeling around for something on one of the kitchen chairs. I heard a crinkling noise, then I saw him pull out a shopping bag. It didn’t look like the usual ratty old shopping bags we have around the house. There were no worn-out handles or rips in the bottom. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like a brand-new shopping bag from Binders, the bookstore downtown.

  “I got you something,” he said.

  And then, my dad reached in the bag and pulled out a book. As he did, I noticed something I hadn’t seen in a long, long time. My dad was holding a cash-register receipt. The book he got me was brand new.

  “Yes, it is a history book, Hal. But I promise it’s not boring. It’s a bunch of short stories about the most famous men of the Revolutionary War. George Washington. Benjamin Franklin. Benedict Arnold. Guys who did amazing things.”

  I took the book from him and ran my hand along the shiny cover.

  “I think you’ll find the stories of all these men interesting. They weren’t perfect. They made a lot of bad decisions. But they made good decisions too. Decisions that still affect our lives today.”

  I saw that the book had tons of pictures and the words were big. It was like it was written for kids who don’t like history.

  “This book really helped me when I was your age. I think it’ll help you too. You might even come across something in these stories that’ll lead you to the thing you’re looking for most,” said my dad. “Right now. In sixth grade.”

  “Dad, the thing I’m really looking for, the thing I’m dying to find, is in RavenCave. It’s Susie’s scythe. There’s no way this book could help me with that.”

  “You never know.”

  Dear John? Sally? Ben? Hzimaloo? Zringelop?

  For the past two weeks, I’ve studied and studied and studied. Every day. History, history, history.

  For the entire first half of June, I got Cindy Shano to come over after school and tutor me. It was pure torture and cost me about a year’s allowance in Milk Duds, but after a while some of the stuff actually started to stick.

  Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” inspired people to fight for their freedom.

  Paul Revere’s midnight ride warned the colonists the British were about to attack.

  George Washington convinced nearly all his troops in Trenton to keep fighting for independence, even though they were tired, hungry, cold, and legally allowed to go home.

  Benedict Arnold decided to switch loyalties and side with the British. He deserted the Patriot army.

  There were lots and lots of facts. So many facts. In the end, it was impossible to remember all of them. All I can say is, I tried.

  That last fact, though, the one about Benedict Arnold, kept sticking in my brain. Partly because of the book my dad gave me. And partly for an even bigger reason—I could understand firsthand what it meant to be a traitor. What it was like to ditch a loyal friend and go to the other side. ’Cause that’s pretty much what I did to Arnie.

  It turns out Arnie had given Ryan something valuable to get the answer to how Susie could find the scythe. But it wasn’t our secret that he traded. The thing he traded was his phone. Cindy told me while we were studying. Just about everyone in the whole school knew about it besides me.

  Arnie gave Ryan his favorite possession so he could get the secret not for himself, but for both of us. So we could get to Level 13 together, like we’d always planned.

  I haven’t seen Arnie much lately. I looked over in his direction once in Mr. Tupkin’s class, but he looked the other way. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s got himself a new best friend by now.

  Right after I finished taking the history final, I went straight home. I sat down on my bed next to Bea and Perrie and opened up RavenCave on my computer. I was still stuck on Level 12. The only difference was that finally I knew how to get to Level 13. I didn’t have any special tips or secrets or ideas. I just knew that I was going to have to fight hard to find the answer, and not give up until I got it. I also knew that when I got to Level 13, I wasn’t going to stop. I would keep going until I reached Level 14. That way, if Arnie does ever speak to me again, I can show him how to get there
too.

  Believe it or not, almost a whole school year has gone by since I first started writing to you. This is going to be my last communication because we have to hand in our journals to Mr. Tupkin tomorrow.

  I hope somehow I helped you see what life was like long before you lived.

  And that wherever you’re from, it is a good place. Where they have easy tests, a video game as good as RavenCave, and tons of doughnuts. If they do, definitely try the chocolate-glazed with sprinkles.

  Goodbye, So Long, Zip Dop Snorg!

  I’m sneaking this one last bit in at the end because I wanted to tell you what happened today, on the last day of school.

  I got the score of my history final.

  I barely, just barely passed.

  I actually worked really hard and was glad I passed the test. But I was also pretty bummed because there was no way my score was high enough to make me pass for the year.

  The last person I wanted to see was Mr. Tupkin. I avoided him all day. But when eighth period rolled around, I had no choice. I needed to turn in my history textbooks and clean out my locker.

  I walked into the history classroom, and Mr. Tupkin was sitting there alone. He was behind his desk, reading a dusty old book. He didn’t even look up when I walked over. So I just dropped the textbooks in the pile near his desk and turned to leave.

  I stopped when I heard Mr. Tupkin say, “Hal.”

  He never calls me that.

  “I want to tell you your final grade for the year.”

  I turned around to face him. I noticed my throat was dry and my palms had started to feel clammy.

  “That’s okay, Mr. Tupkin, I’ll just wait for the report card.”