Ruby Goldberg’s Bright Idea

by Anna Humphrey

  All morning long I hemmed and hawed, but the truth was, I knew I needed Dominic. So at silent reading time I propped my book open in front of me to act as a privacy screen. Then I pulled the tiny spring out of a ballpoint pen and quietly taped it to a piece of stiff cardboard I’d snatched from the recycle bin on my way into class. I tested it once, then wrote my answer on a note, folded it into a tiny square, and pressed it down against the mini catapult. SPROINGGGG. The square of paper sailed across the aisle and landed smack in the middle of Dominic’s desk, exactly like I’d planned.

  “Ahhh!” he screamed, jumping in his seat. Now, that part I hadn’t planned. The whole class, including Ms. Slate, turned to look at Dominic. I shook my head in disgust. What was the point of building a spring-loaded-secret-note-passing machine if the person receiving the note couldn’t even keep quiet?

  “Is everything okay, Dominic?” Ms. Slate asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dominic said. “Just this tiny paper . . . um . . . paper cut.” He held up a finger. “Sorry.” A few kids at the front snickered, but then everyone went back to reading. Dominic quietly unfolded my note and read it. Then he leaned across the aisle. “What do you mean by ‘Okay!’?” he asked in a loud whisper.

  I sighed softly. I ask you, would I have taken the time to pass him a note if I’d wanted to whisper back and forth across the aisle?

  “Okay!” I whispered back, giving up. “It means, okay. I thought about it, and you can help with my Rube Goldberg machine. We can be partners. Come to my Grandpa’s house with me after school tomorrow. Bring your helicopter.”

  I went back to my silent reading book—Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was just at the part where Charlie finds the golden ticket, when, WHOOSH, something sailed right in front of my nose and landed on my lap. “Wha—” I said, pushing my chair back in surprise. Penny looked at me from across the room, and Ally and Brianne turned in their seats. Thankfully, Ms. Slate was busy writing the homework on the board, and if she’d heard me, she was choosing to ignore it.

  I grabbed the square of paper and unfolded it quickly. Okay!! it read.

  I glanced across the aisle just in time to see Dominic putting away the note launcher he’d built with two rulers, a rubber band, and a stack of textbooks. It was basic, at best, but I had to give him points for trying, and I couldn’t help noticing: He was grinning like a five-year-old on his birthday.

  • • •

  But as happy as Dominic seemed in class, the look on his face was nothing compared to how overjoyed he was the next day at Grandpa’s house.

  “Hello?” I called out. I’d picked up the newspaper again on our way in and was carrying it under one arm, along with the mail. The letter carrier always came first thing in the morning, which meant that Grandpa hadn’t left the house all day. Without Tomato to take for walks, I guessed he didn’t have much of a reason to get outside. It worried me. So did the dishes piled on the kitchen counter, and the grass in the front yard that hadn’t been mowed in almost two weeks and was creeping up past my calves. “I’m here!” I called again. “And I brought someone with me.”

  “Just a second. I’ll be right out.” Grandpa’s voice was coming from the bedroom. It wasn’t like him to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon, but then again he hadn’t exactly been acting like himself since Tomato had died.

  “You can put your bag down there.” I showed Dominic the spot on the floor where I always dropped my backpack. “I’ll get us something to drink.”

  “Cool!” Dominic exclaimed, walking to the far side of the living room and inspecting the display case Grandpa kept there. It was lined top to bottom with the model planes he used to build. My favorite was a little yellow and black one called the Champ. I wasn’t so much into planes, but I’d helped Grandpa build it when I was seven. He’d put it together, and then I’d painted it. “Are these all your grandfather’s?”

  “I see you found my planes,” Grandpa said before I had the chance to answer. He was coming down the last few stairs, holding tight to the banister. “Ruby and I built one of those together.” It made me feel proud that he’d remembered. “I’m Alfred,” Grandpa said. “And you are?”

  “Dominic, sir,” he answered. “I’m helping Ruby with her science project. Do they really fly?” he asked, turning his attention back to the planes. I could see his reflection in the pane of glass. His eyes seemed to grow wider and wider with each plane he studied.

  “The ones on the top row do,” Grandpa said, coming up behind him to point them out. “All except that one there.”

  “The P-47D Thunderbolt!” Dominic exclaimed.

  “A boy who knows his planes.” Grandpa sounded impressed. “She’s a beauty. The engine gave out a few years back, though. And my hands are a little shaky these days. I don’t think I’d be able to fix it.”

  “I could fix it for you.” Dominic dug his hands deep into his pockets. “If you wanted me to. I made a Super Cub DSM before . . . and my dad helped me with a Firebird Commander last year. That one was hard.”

  “Well, isn’t that something?” Grandpa was smiling. “I’ve got a Firebird in my collection too. As I remember, installing the sensors was tricky.”

  “Dominic’s building an RC helicopter,” I announced. “All from parts from the hardware store. It’s not even a kit.” I was surprised to hear myself bragging about Dominic’s accomplishments, but I hadn’t seen Grandpa looking so happy in weeks. Maybe talking to someone about model planes was just the thing he needed to help him feel a little less sad about Tomato—at least until the Tomato-Matic 2000 was ready for its grand unveiling.

  Grandpa slid the glass of the cabinet open and lifted out the Thunderbolt. It was definitely one of the nicest planes—a deep forest green with a checkerboard pattern on the nose and wingtips. “It’s not every day I have an expert model builder come to visit and offer his services,” Grandpa said. “She’s yours if you’re willing to fix her.”

  “You mean . . . ?” Dominic’s eyes were positively enormous now.

  “If you can get her flying, you can keep her,” Grandpa said. “She’s not doing much good sitting in that case. Just bring her by so I can take her for a spin when she’s ready.”

  Dominic took the little plane from Grandpa, holding it so carefully you’d think it was made of glass.

  “This is so awesome!” he said.

  “Come on, Dominic.” I held out a glass of lemonade to him. I was grateful that he’d cheered Grandpa up so much, but we couldn’t stand there talking all day. The Tomato-Matic 2000 was waiting.

  Dominic set the plane down gently on the kitchen table, and I pushed the sliding door to the backyard open, motioning for him to step through first.

  I was busy setting my lemonade down on the railing and sliding the screen door shut, when I heard Dominic call out cheerfully, “Hello there!”

  I looked around to see who he was talking to, and there was our favorite neighbor, Mr. Petrecelli, trespassing on Grandpa’s lawn again. He was standing near Tomato’s cross, where I’d found him before, holding a pair of garden clippers, even though he wasn’t clipping anything. I could tell from the look on his face that Dominic had startled him.

  “No need to shout!” Mr. Petrecelli barked. “I can see you there.”

  “Oh. Sorry,” Dominic said, using a much softer voice. He shouldn’t have bothered. But then, he’d never met Mr. Petrecelli before. He didn’t know yet that, no matter what he did, it would get on the old man’s nerves.

  “What’s that?” Mr. Petrecelli said now. “I can’t make out your mumbling.”

  I sighed and grabbed Dominic’s arm. “Don’t worry about him,” I whispered. “That’s my grandpa’s neighbor. He’s always like that.”

  “I heard that,” Mr. Petrecelli announced, using an even angrier tone. “I wouldn’t have to snap at you if you’d just leave me alone. Most people just want to be left alone, you know.” He shuffled his feet in the grass. “I can’t get a moment’s peace back here with yo
u kids running around shouting at the top of your lungs.” He glanced at Tomato’s cross again, then seemed to remember the clippers he was holding in his hand. “Aaaach,” he grumbled. Then he hacked a single branch off a bush, as if that were what he’d come over for all along. “It’s overgrown back here,” he said. “Tell your grandfather to prune his bushes once in a while.” He bent over stiffly to pick up the branch, then retreated into his own yard.

  “Wow. What’s with him?” Dominic said once he was gone.

  “Trust me,” I said. “I have no idea.”

  “Seems kind of lonely or something,” Dominic offered.

  I didn’t know about that. Considering how much he hated people, you’d think being on his own would be exactly what Mr. Petrecelli wanted. Plus, he’d just told us to leave him alone.

  “Seems kind of miserable if you ask me,” I answered.

  “Yeah,” Dominic agreed. “But a lot of times there’s more to people than they let you see.”

  I’d known Mr. Petrecelli my whole life, and if there was more to see, I hadn’t seen it yet. It didn’t seem worth arguing with Dominic, though. We had a ton of work in the backyard shed ahead of us. Before long Dominic was bound to see for himself what an old grump Mr. Petrecelli was.

  “In here,” I said, leading the way. I swung the latch on the door open and flicked on the light. “There it is!” I picked up the test newspaper I had sitting on the windowsill and tossed it onto the left side of the teeter-totter. The chain reaction began.

  “The weight of the newspaper tips the teeter totter . . . ,” Dominic said.

  “Which tugs on the rope that releases the bowling ball . . . ,” I went on, as we watched it happen.

  “That falls onto the other side of the teeter-totter . . . ”

  WAP! The bowling ball landed with a thud in the big ice cream container I’d nailed to the teeter-totter to hold the ball in place.

  “And catapults the newspaper into the air . . .” Dominic laughed as the weight of the bowling ball sent the Somerville Times flying in a perfect arc. “And it lands it right in the basket.”

  “Which starts off down the clothesline and travels in that direction,” I said. “Until it gets stuck right there.” I sighed. “Unless you raise the clothesline, and then it goes way too fast. My dad says we should put in a motor.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Dominic said. “Could we use that?” he pointed out an old tire swing that was gathering dust near the paint cans in the corner of the shed. I didn’t know how an old tire swing was going to help us, but I was more than curious to find out. “Do you have a screwdriver?” he asked.

  We detached the tire from the chains and took off the swivel joint at the top, then rolled the tire back into the corner. What we really needed, Dominic explained, were the S-hooks and eyebolts. An hour later, using the metal parts we’d borrowed from the tire swing, along with a D cell battery and some alligator cable clips Dominic had in his backpack, we had a small, working motor. It coiled up a string that tugged on the clothesline, and presto—the basket holding the newspaper (which was held firmly by some of the S-hooks instead of the constantly breaking shoelaces I’d been trying to use) sailed smoothly to the end of the clothesline. I couldn’t help it. I broke into applause, and Dominic gave a little bow, then brushed his hair back out of his eyes, grinning. “You already had most of it worked out,” he said generously.

  “Now we just need to figure out how to dump the newspaper and trigger the helicopter to make it lift the slippers,” I said.

  So we went back to the drawing board—literally. We hauled out a huge board that Grandpa had tucked behind his lawn mower, spread a bunch of paper on top of it, and started to sketch the machine using my smelly markers. I made the pulley system smell like cinnamon, then drew the newspaper in using the black licorice marker. At the top of the clothesline, I added a balloon, bright red and smelling like cherries. It looked pretty, and I had a feeling Rube Goldberg would have approved. “After all,” I told Dominic, “drawing is what made Rube Goldberg really famous. He was a cartoonist.”

  “I didn’t even know he was a real person,” Dominic said, taking a break from adding green and purple stripes to the teeter-totter. He listened intently while I told him pretty much everything I knew about Rube Goldberg—which, thanks to Grandpa, was kind of a lot.

  “The name of his most famous cartoon character was Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts,” I told Dominic, which made him burst out laughing. “He also wrote the script for the first movie the Three Stooges were in,” I added.

  “No way! My granddad used to show me their movies. They’re those three guys who do stupid things, like smacking each other in the forehead and tripping each other, right?”

  “Curly, Larry, and Moe,” I said. When I was little, I’d named my three goldfish after them. Not that my goldfish ever slapped each other. Grandpa used to show me those movies too. They were so funny.

  “My brothers and I used to play Three Stooges,” Dominic said. “I was always Moe. One time we were playing at the Grand Canyon when we were on vacation, and my brother Ian tripped me, and I almost fell right in! I was only about five feet from the edge. I told on him, and he had to have a time-out in the car . . . so he missed the mule ride. He’s still mad at me for that.”

  “I loved the mule ride!” I said. “The time we went, my mule was called Salty.”

  “Mine was Willow. Too bad they didn’t name one Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts,” Dominic said, and then we both broke out laughing again. “Okay, how about this?” Dominic said when we’d finally gotten ourselves under control. He drew what looked like a small sword over the top of the balloon. “We can use a letter opener to pop the balloon from above. We’ll need to trigger it somehow, of course.”

  He looked deep in thought, and while he started sketching out some possible mechanisms, I studied him carefully. I couldn’t help thinking about what Dominic had said in the yard about Mr. Petrecelli. “A lot of times there’s more to people than they let you see.”

  Was it possible that was true about Dominic as well? Ever since he’d started stealing my science project ideas, I hadn’t been able to look at him without thinking what a sneaky, underhanded copycat he was . . . but the Dominic I saw this day was different. He was funny. And smart. And kind of nice, even.

  “Gorgonzola Butt,” he muttered under his breath, and then laughed softly. “I’m going to use that one on my brother next time he calls me Nerd Face.”

  I smiled. It was a pretty funny name. I made a mental note to remember it. It might come in handy the next time Sarah took all the pepperonis on pizza night.

  “Wait a sec!” he exclaimed. “Forget the balloon. I just thought of something better.” I peered over his shoulder while he started to sketch. Then I grinned when I saw what he had planned.

  “I like it,” I said. “I like it a lot.” And despite the small nervous feeling I still had in my stomach, I had to admit, I was actually starting to like Dominic, too. How weird was that?!

  Chapter 7

  A whole week had gone by, and with every passing day the science fair was getting closer, and the machine was getting bigger and better—but there was a long way to go yet. So even though we’d been putting it off for a while and that Friday was supposed to be the day Penny and I finally broke the tie in our backyard croquet match with Grandpa, I just couldn’t fit it in.

  Plus, Grandpa seemed so out of it that I was sure he’d forgotten all about our tournament anyway. The day before, when Dominic and I had arrived, we’d found him sitting in his armchair, staring at an old picture of him and Tomato on the beach. He’d looked a million miles away, and he hadn’t even remembered to get up to offer us a snack.

  “I’m really sorry,” I told Penny as Dominic and I said good-bye to her outside the school. We were so close to perfecting the newspaper dump part of the Tomato-Matic 2000, and then we could move on to the slippers lift. I knew Penny would understand. “We’ll finish the tournam
ent soon, okay?” The science fair was just days away. It made my heart race to think about it.

  “Sure,” she said. “No problem. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, though, right?”

  “Definitely!” I answered, not wanting to hurt her feelings, even though I wasn’t 100 percent sure I’d have time to hang out. I hadn’t spent an afternoon with Penny in more than a week, and I wanted to see her, but it would kind of depend on how well the machine was working by then.

  On our way to Grandpa’s house, Dominic and I stopped by the hardware store again for a few supplies. Then we hit the fruit and veggie stand on the corner for one more thing. “You sure you want to use my idea?” Dominic said as we loaded ripe tomatoes into a bag. It was true that Dominic’s suggestion for triggering the helicopter might get messy, but it was also pretty funny. Plus, there was the fact that Grandpa grew huge tomatoes every summer, and made his own sauce. Tomato had loved to eat grandpa’s tomatoes too. It was how he’d gotten his name as a puppy. Really, Dominic’s idea was meant to be.

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  It took us most of that afternoon to rig up the catch at the top of the clothesline that released when the newspaper basket hit it, then dumped the newspaper onto the coffee table and started a tomato rolling down a ramp.

  On Saturday morning we both got to Grandpa’s early and moved on to setting up the mannequin arm, which we’d found in the garbage outside a store. When the tomato reached the halfway mark on the ramp, it hit a lever that released a band we’d tied around the arm, dropping it just in time so that the mannequin hand smacked the tomato, turning it to juice that oozed into a bucket we’d set up underneath. The bucket was already filled with other smushed tomatoes, and the weight of the extra juice had to make it just heavy enough that it would fall off the ropes that were holding it and land on top of the helicopter liftoff button we’d placed underneath.