The Next Level

by Jackson Pearce

  “These look great!” Kit said, her heels click-clacking on the pavement as they walked toward the end of the cul-de-sac. “I bet Mrs. Curran will love them. I know my grandma would.”

  It was still early, and for a moment Ellie worried that Mrs. Curran wasn’t even awake yet—her curtains were drawn tight and her garage was shut, and didn’t people her age sleep late? The front yard wasn’t a yard at all, but a garden with little stone paths through it and neat, orderly patches of flowers. There wasn’t a single droopy or brown flower in the whole yard, as far as Ellie could tell. It looked like a picture, but probably not the kind of picture Ellie would want to hang in her room. Ellie was about to comment on this to Kit when the front door opened.

  “Hello there, Ellie! Your father told me you’d be coming over to help me today,” Mrs. Curran called across the garden to them, hands folded together at her waist, like she was welcoming them to a party.

  “Hi, Mrs. Curran,” Ellie and Kit said back at the exact same time. They looked at one another. Mrs. Curran was not what they expected. She was wearing high heels and makeup and even a little pearl bracelet and about a million rings on each finger. Her hair was long and straight and silvery-gray, and she was tall and lean like some of the flowers in the garden.

  “Well, come along. Mind the flowers, please. Stay on those bricks,” Mrs. Curran said, motioning to the path that cut through the garden and to her front porch. Ellie and Kit hopped along the bricks and to the front porch. This close, Ellie could tell that Mrs. Curran was wearing perfume—fancy spicy perfume, not baby powder the way other grandma-age people did.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come to help out,” Mrs. Curran said, then tilted her head to the side. “What sort of belt is that?” she asked, pointing to Ellie’s tool belt.

  Ellie looked at Kit. Kit raised an eyebrow (which was a skill she’d inherited, according to Toby, because not everyone can do that—like rolling your tongue). “It’s my tool belt, Mrs. Curran,” Ellie said carefully. Wasn’t it obvious? It was a belt covered in tools, after all.

  “A tool belt. Well. How nice,” Mrs. Curran said in a way that told Ellie she didn’t think it was nice, so much as weird. Except . . . ​why wouldn’t Ellie need her tool belt, if she was here to help Mrs. Curran out? What was going on, exactly?

  “Come on in—and please wipe your feet. Actually, perhaps you’d better take your shoes off entirely,” Mrs. Curran said, glancing down at their feet. They obeyed, leaving their shoes on the front porch. They stepped through the door and into Mrs. Curran’s house, and—­

  “Oh!” Kit said gleefully.

  “Oh!” Ellie said only a little gleefully.

  Mrs. Curran’s house looked like a museum. A doll museum.

  There were dolls on shelves, behind glass, sitting on fancy carved benches. The floor was covered in thick red rugs and the lights were all gold and flickery. The windows were covered in lacy curtains, which meant it was sort of dark, though ahead Ellie did see a patio door that led to a bright green back garden. There was a doll sitting on the bench out there.

  “Look at the dolls!” Kit said, grasping Ellie’s hand.

  “I am!” Ellie answered. How could she not look at the dolls? They were everywhere!

  “Yes, yes—look at the dolls. But please don’t touch. They’re very expensive,” Mrs. Curran said sternly, shutting the door behind them.

  “Why do you have so many?” Ellie asked.

  “I paint them. That’s my job—painting their faces and skin and hair. See? These are some I did,” Mrs. Curran said, motioning to a case by the stairs. The dolls were on stands and had eyes that looked so real, they gave Ellie the heebie-jeebies. They were nothing at all like the dolls she had at home—those dolls could be tossed around or have their hair cut or accidentally get left at the theme park. These dolls definitely didn’t visit theme parks.

  “They’re beautiful,” Kit breathed.

  “It’s your job?” Ellie asked. It seemed like a strange job, and it was also a little weird to her that Mrs. Curran had a job at all. Her grandma didn’t have a job, and neither did Kit’s.

  “It is,” Mrs. Curran said warmly, and it was clear she was very proud of her job. “Now, come with me.” Mrs. Curran swept around, walking in that quick way that adults walk when you’re meant to follow them. Ellie and Kit had to jog to keep up as they went down the hall. “Here’s what I thought you could help me with today—I need all of these envelopes stuffed. They’re bills for dolls I’ve painted,” she said when they reached the door to the kitchen.

  It was one of those things where Ellie didn’t totally understand what Mrs. Curran was saying until she saw what Mrs. Curran was talking about. The kitchen table, which overlooked the backyard garden, was covered in paper and envelopes. You couldn’t even see the tabletop! They were all in neat stacks, but there were just so many stacks.

  “Putting these in envelopes?” Ellie asked, surprised.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Curran said politely. “Is that a problem?”

  “It’s just . . . um . . .” Ellie licked her lips and turned to Kit. Kit was better at talking to adults; Ellie gave her a look. Since they were best friends, when one gave the other a look, they could understand each other without talking out loud. Like when Kit gave Ellie a look that said “I need a snack right now,” or Ellie gave Kit a look that said “stand back because this build might explode.”

  Kit nodded slowly at Ellie, then said to Mrs. Curran, “I think we were just expecting something a bit more . . . ​hands-on. Ellie is a great builder. She has plans for a cookie spinner, to organize the different types of cookies you make.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Curran said, chuckling a little. She put a ring-covered hand to her chest and smiled. “That’s very sweet, but I don’t make cookies. Though are you asking because you’re hungry? I have some hummus in the fridge, if you’d like a snack.”

  She doesn’t make cookies? Ellie thought, trying not to let the surprise show on her face. She had never met a grandma-age lady who didn’t make cookies, and Ellie didn’t even know what hummus was.

  “We’re not hungry, Mrs. Curran. But thank you,” Kit answered for herself and Ellie.

  “All right then—well, anyhow, I’ll be in my studio working, should you need me. It’s just up the steps, the first door you see.”

  And then, with another very nice but very lipstick-y smile, Mrs. Curran swept away, leaving Kit and Ellie with a pile—no, a mountain—of envelopes and absolutely nothing to engineer.

  Stuffing envelopes wasn’t the most boring thing Ellie had ever done, but it was probably the second or third most boring. The first most boring was definitely the time Ellie’s parents took her with them to the pottery store to buy planters and spent hours and hours and hours and hours looking at planters even though they were just planters so what was there even to look at for so long? Kit was better at being patient than Ellie was, and she calmly swung her legs back and forth under the chair while they worked. Ellie mostly squirmed.

  “Look,” Ellie whispered, jutting her chin toward the kitchen. “I could make a little wedge to stick under that door and keep it from being half-shut-half-open. That’s helpful.”

  “But she asked us to stuff these envelopes,” Kit said in a voice that sounded very grown-up.

  “Ugggggh,” Ellie said, and sank down in the chair. She put another boring invoice in another boring envelope, thinking about how much better it would be if she were in her workshop, thinking through what went so wrong with the elevator—she’d been working on a new design for it, but still hadn’t worked it all out yet. Ellie grumbled, “I just thought we’d be building, that’s all.”

  “I guess she just doesn’t need help with building,” Kit said, shrugging, then leaned back in her chair so she could see into Mrs. Curran’s studio. “I wonder what she’s painting. I wish she needed help with that.”

  “You’d be good at it,” Ellie said, nodding.

  “I didn’t know there were real people who pa
inted doll faces. I thought it was all machines,” Kit admitted.

  “Maybe I could make her a machine to—”

  “Ellie,” Kit said sternly.

  “Ugggggh,” Ellie said again, and sank so far down that her eyes were even with the table.

  “Everything all right in there?” Mrs. Curran called out. Ellie jolted back upright and stuffed envelopes faster than before.

  “Yes, Mrs. Curran!” Ellie and Kit answered in unison.

  It took almost two hours to put all the invoices into envelopes. The second the last paper was stuffed, Ellie leaped to her feet, called out “Thanks!” to Mrs. Curran, and sprinted for the front door. Kit hurried behind her, though she definitely took a little longer since she stopped to look at the dolls again on her way out.

  “Free!” Ellie said, and cartwheeled on the sidewalk. Her hammer fell out of her tool belt, and she scrambled to get it.

  “Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” Kit teased, though she was stretching her arms up to the sky—sitting for so long made them feel crunched up. “Wonder what she’ll have us do tomorrow.”

  “Let’s worry about that tomorrow,” Ellie said with a sigh. “Come on, let’s go find Toby.”

  Toby was in his front yard along with the other neighborhood boys—the McClellan twins and Dylan—playing some kind of game that looked like tag at first, but then looked like wrestling, and then looked like cowboy make-believe, and then looked like Dylan trying not to cry because he’d skinned his knee a little bit.

  “It’ll be fine. You just need to wash it off,” Kit said matter-of-factly, as they all circled up around Dylan.

  “It is fine! I don’t care about it,” Dylan said, but he was sniffling. Kit rolled her eyes at how hard Dylan was pretending it didn’t hurt, then helped him up and led him into Toby’s house.

  “Tell my mom it wasn’t my fault, Kit!” Toby yelled after them. Kit gave him a thumbs-up over her head. Toby turned to Ellie. “What happened after I left yesterday? Did your dad get the pickle jars cleaned up? Did the pickle juice kill the grass like I said it would?”

  “I don’t know about the grass. But my punishment is I have to help Mrs. Curran all week. I thought that meant building things, but Kit and I just spent all morning stuffing envelopes,” Ellie explained.

  The McClellan twins and Toby all made the same “ew, gross” face.

  “What did you guys do this morning?” Ellie asked. “Did I miss anything great?” A few weeks ago her parents had made her go shopping for new sandals, and she’d missed seeing a snake sleeping in a tree in Dylan’s backyard. They’d tried to describe it to her (they said it was all lumped together like ice cream from a soft-serve machine) but it just wasn’t the same, and then the snake was gone by the time she got home, and she’d lost one of the sandals at the pool anyway.

  “We were waiting for you!” Toby said. “We were wondering if you know how to build a water park. Or at least a waterslide.”

  Ellie considered this. “Well, I don’t really know how to build anything that I haven’t built before. You plan something and then you build it and then you know how after.” This was something Toby still had trouble understanding—that Ellie could start building without knowing one-hundred-percent-for-sure how it would turn out. It seemed to impress him and also to make him sort of nervous.

  “Do you think you know how to plan a waterslide? I had some ideas to start—here, come look,” Toby said, waving for her and the McClellan twins to follow him.

  They walked around to Toby’s backyard, where there was a big blue camping tarp lying on the ground with a hose thrown over it. Everything was more than a little soggy, and it didn’t look very water-slide-like.

  “We put this down to slide on, and then put water on it, but we didn’t slide very well,” Toby said, frowning.

  One of the McClellan twins cleared his throat and said, “We didn’t slide at all. That’s how I got this bruise. And that one. And that one.”

  “We stopped when I got this one,” the other McClellan twin said, and pointed to a fat, purply bruise on his elbow.

  Ellie cringed—it looked like it hurt. “Let me think,” she said, and walked in a big circle around the failed waterslide before pulling out her notepad. She drew a quick sketch of what she thought might work better.

  She figured the best thing to do was to put the tarp up on the slide of Toby’s swing set. That way, they’d be sliding down for the first part, which would make them faster once they got to the flat part of the tarp. She also drew up a stand for the hose, so that it would spray water down the tarp the whole time.

  “Ooo, that looks fun!” Kit said, reappearing behind Ellie. Dylan had seven robot Band-Aids on his knee. This was way more than he needed to cover the scrape, but he didn’t look sniffly anymore, so Ellie figured they must be helping somehow.

  “No waterslide robot?” one of the McClellan twins said when he spied over her shoulder, sounding more than a little disappointed.

  “No, but this is still a machine, you know, just a really simple one,” Ellie said helpfully, pointing to the slide. “Same as a ladder, or a ramp, or even stairs—they all connect something high to something low!”

  “I told you a waterslide robot didn’t make sense,” Toby hissed at the McClellan (who looked like he still thought it was a good idea).

  “Anyway,” Ellie said. “How about you all get the tarp moved, while I work on the hose stand?”

  “Got it!” Kit said cheerfully. Kit got everyone moving the tarp. Ellie, meanwhile, found a toy sword in Toby’s garage, and stuck it in-between the wooden planks at the top of the swing set. She then balanced the hose on the handle part of the sword.

  “But won’t someone have to stand up here and squeeze the sprayer to make it work?” Dylan asked as the other boys and Kit stretched the tarp out nice and flat on the little hill.

  “Nope! I thought of that,” Ellie said, and took a hair tie out of her tool belt. Tool belts were for all kinds of tools, including hair ones. Plus it was really hard for Ellie to hammer things when her hair got in her face, which it almost always did even with a hair tie. She wrapped the hair tie around the sprayer so it held the trigger down, and water sprayed out the end in a big fan. It caught the light and made a little rainbow in the air.

  “Is it ready?” Toby asked eagerly, rubbing his hands together.

  “Almost—we need some soap,” Ellie said.

  “Soap? I think you only need soap with a real shower, not an outside shower,” one of the McClellan twins said politely.

  “It’ll make it even slipperier, so we slide better,” Ellie explained.

  “Oh! It will lower the friction,” Toby said, looking excited that he knew the word, even though Toby was the kind of person who always knew the word. “That’s what it’s called—friction. Friction makes it hard for things to slide.”

  He hurried inside and came back with a giant bottle of lemon-smelling soap—the kind for dishes. He squirted it all across the tarp; little bubbles fluffed into the air, and everything smelled lemony.

  “Now it’s ready,” Ellie said, folding her arms. She couldn’t wait to try it, but she was still a little slow to take off her tool belt. She didn’t like taking off her tool belt—it was such an important part of her! It felt like taking off her legs or her elbows, but probably not exactly like that since it didn’t hurt. It was just hard, is all. Ellie finally took the tool belt off, though, and laid it in a neat pile near Toby’s deck.

  “Come on, Kit—let’s go together!” Ellie said. Kit nodded, and they climbed up to the top of the slide and then sat down one after another.

  “Try not to go super fast. I don’t want to end up in the mud at the end,” Kit said so that just Ellie could hear. Kit was a very neat person, but sometimes she was shy about that.

  “Okay—it’s not mud, though, just grass. And we’re sliding in soap and water, so it’s basically exactly like the washing machine.”

  “I don’t usually get in the laundry machine, tho
ugh,” Kit said, but she turned toward the waterslide anyhow. “Ready?”

  “Go!” Ellie said, and she and Kit pushed off from the slide. They whizzed down the slide and shot out onto the tarp over the grass faster, faster, faster, until they slowed and rolled into a pile at the end of the ride.

  The neighborhood boys whooped behind them; Ellie and Kit untangled their legs and high-fived.

  “See? You did get to build something today after all!” Kit said, laughing, as they ran back to the top of the slide, ready for another turn.

  They all ran back and forth and back and forth until everyone smelled like lemons and they’d all given up getting the little flecks of wet grass off their faces. It was pretty much perfect, in fact, until Toby’s mom popped out of the garage door and saw what was going on. Toby was just about to launch himself down the waterslide when he saw her. He tried to stop but instead just tripped over his own feet and clunked down the slide instead of whooshing.

  “Hey, Mom!” he called out, waving from the mud.

  “Tobias Michaels! Did you ask permission to use that kitchen soap for a waterslide?” she called out. She didn’t seem mad, but she definitely seemed annoyed.

  Everyone looked at the ground except for Toby. Ellie hated it when her friends got in trouble in front of her, especially when she had something to do with it. She thought about what her dad said—that engineering was supposed to help people—and her stomach went squiggly.

  “Oh. I forgot,” Toby said, sounding nervous. “I’m sorry. I don’t think we used much. And I read online that you can add water to a bottle of soap to make it last longer. It’s a great budgeting tip!”

  Toby’s mom sighed, and when Ellie peeked her eyes up, she was relieved to see that Ms. Michaels looked a teeny bit less annoyed. “Thank you for the tip, Toby, but that’s not the point. We’ve talked about asking permission. Remember? I’ve told your brothers they can’t use your things without asking anymore, Toby, and they’re following the rules . . . How would you feel if they weren’t?”