The Next Level

by Jackson Pearce

  Ellie’s jaw dropped so far that she felt like one of those cartoon characters whose jaw literally hits the ground. Mrs. Curran thought her tool belt was Toby’s? What?

  “Oh, that’s not mine,” Toby said quickly. “That’s Ellie’s tool belt. Those are her tools.”

  “You have your own! How nice. Well, I need to get back to work, you three. Thank you so much for all your hard work today. I won’t need you tomorrow, since I have a hair appointment, but I’ll see you the day after. Toby, dear, I’ll think of something for you—you deserve the biggest gift of all, what with all the repairs you did to my house!”

  “But Mrs. Curran!” Ellie said loudly, shaking her head. What was going on? Mrs. Curran was so mixed up, but she didn’t seem to realize it one bit—she was just smiling at them nicely, blinking, waiting for Ellie to keep speaking. But the words had all fallen from Ellie’s brain, and she had no idea what to say, much less how to say it. She looked down at the doll in her hands and her eyebrows wrinkled together.

  “Let’s go, Ellie. We’ll see you day-after-tomorrow, Mrs. Curran!” Kit said in a very calm, very Kit voice. She linked her arm with Ellie’s and led her out of the house, with Toby following behind.

  “It was bonkers!” Ellie said, and smashed her pillow against her head. She was still wearing her tool belt. She was supposed to take it off for bed, but her dad, who was sitting on the side of her mattress, hadn’t said anything about it (yet). But after hearing what had happened with Mrs. Curran, her dad definitely understood why she didn’t want to take it off, though, and why she was smashing her head with a pillow.

  “It was bonkers,” Ellie’s dad answered, nodding. “That must have been very frustrating. It does sound like you were very helpful, though. That was nice of you to fix so many things in Mrs. Curran’s house, when you could have just left after dusting.”

  “Yeah,” Ellie said, removing her head from the pillow. Her hair was crazy and staticky on top of her head, like a baby bird’s feathers. She sighed and turned over. “But it isn’t fair.”

  “No, it isn’t very fair,” he said. “It’s never fair when people make assumptions—like that you aren’t an engineer, or that Toby wouldn’t want a doll, or that I’m bad at basketball just because I’m short—”

  “What?”

  “Never mind that last one. It’s never right to make assumptions about somebody,” he said firmly. “Everyone is who they are, and who they are is perfect.”

  Ellie nodded. It was very nice to hear her dad say this, of course, because he was really smart, so Ellie knew it was true. Still, though, Mrs. Curran’s thinking that Toby was the engineer was biting at her ankles. It wasn’t exactly the first time someone had been surprised about Ellie’s being an engineer—lots of times, grown-ups thought the tool belt was just for show or that she was only playing with her dad’s tools. Ellie had always been able to prove them wrong, though, in the end.

  “But why wouldn’t Mrs. Curran believe me when I proved her wrong?” Ellie asked out loud. She hadn’t said any of her other thoughts out loud, but her dad knew what she meant. She and her dad were sort of mind readers like that.

  “Well, first of all, it is wrong of her to need proof that you’re an engineer.” He took a big breath, then went on, “But sometimes people are like that. I think Mrs. Curran has just never met a girl who is an engineer—and a good engineer, who makes all kinds of useful things . . . ​with the exception of that pickle elevator.”

  “It wasn’t a pickle elevator—the pickles were just on the elevator when it—” Ellie stopped short when it looked like her dad might be remembering that day a little too clearly. He cringed, and it looked like he was imagining the smell of all that pickle juice again. “Sorry,” she said in a low voice. “Go on.”

  “Right—anyhow, maybe the problem is that Mrs. Curran thinks engineering is for other people.”

  “What do you mean?” Ellie asked, turning over. She’d been tossing and turning, and now her skirt and tool belt and body were all tangled up in her unicorn bedsheets. As her dad answered, he tried to help her get untangled.

  “I mean that Mrs. Curran was a little girl once, too—she was your exact age, a long time ago. Maybe she never even dreamed of being an engineer. Maybe she doesn’t really know what it is to be an engineer. Maybe even the idea of using a hammer is crazy—and that’s just one teeny part of engineering! Maybe—Ellie, how have you tied the quilt in a knot?” he said, shaking his head at the cocoon of blankets Ellie had wrapped around herself.

  Ellie scooched up in the bed and kicked her legs free from the blankets. Her dad was staring at the knot in the quilt in disbelief. He reached for one of the screwdrivers on Ellie’s tool belt and jammed it into the knot to untie it. “Anyhow,” he said. “Maybe Mrs. Curran never believed she could be an engineer, so she doesn’t believe you could be an engineer.”

  Ellie considered this. “But no one is automatically an engineer. Everyone has to learn.”

  Her dad lifted his eyebrows at her, which meant he was waiting for her to realize something.

  Ellie mashed her lips together. “So . . . ​you think that we need to teach Mrs. Curran to be an engineer?”

  “Maybe,” Ellie’s dad said, nodding. “Maybe that’s the best way to show her engineering is for everyone, and not just boys.”

  “That might be hard,” Ellie said, imagining Mrs. Curran holding a hammer. It looked about as out of place as Kit holding a squid. Ellie knew Kit had never seen a squid outside of pictures, but they looked slimy, gooey, and sticky enough that she refused to go into the ocean over her head. Ellie had suggested an antisquid suit of armor but hadn’t figured out how to build one that Kit could swim in (yet).

  “It’s always hard to change someone who has made an assumption,” Ellie’s dad said. “But the best way to change a person’s mind is to teach them.”

  “Or maybe you could just tell her I’m an engineer?” Ellie suggested. “I bet she’ll believe you. Grown-ups usually believe other grownups.”

  “Good night, Ellie,” her father said, and kissed her forehead.

  “But Dad—”

  “Butts are for sitting on,” her dad answered. “Don’t sleep with the tool belt on. You’ll get screwdriver-shaped bruises.”

  “Okay,” Ellie grumbled as her dad clicked off her lamp.

  She slept with her tool belt on anyway (mostly by accident), and even though she got screwdriver-shaped bruises, they were totally worth it.

  “I don’t know,” Kit said thoughtfully, twirling her hair around her fingers.

  “You didn’t know a thing about engineering when we met,” Ellie pointed out.

  Kit frowned. “That’s true. And neither did Toby. But Toby and I wanted to learn about engineering. I don’t know that Mrs. Curran does. Oh—wait, let me grab her foot.”

  The foot in question belonged to Miss Penelope, Kit’s pet sheep. Kit’s dad and sister were allergic to dogs, so they’d gotten her a sheep for her last birthday. Sheep, as it turned out, made pretty good pets. Even if they couldn’t be potty-trained, they could be trained to spin in circles, jump over broomsticks, and not steal carrot sticks right out of your hand. Miss Penelope was trying very hard to eat a patch of dandelions in Kit’s yard, but Ellie and Kit were trying equally as hard to get a dog harness through her legs. Kit caught the sheep’s foot and tucked it through the harness, then clipped the harness shut.

  They were in the process of building a saddle for Miss Penelope’s back—one that the dolls Ellie and Kit had gotten from Mrs. Curran could ride in together. The project was trickier than it sounded, since Miss Penelope (and, Ellie supposed, all sheep) sort of pranced when she walked. The prancing had made the saddle sway back and forth on Miss Penelope’s back until the dolls jostled right out of their first few saddle attempts. Ellie had decided some research was in order—research was very, very useful for engineers, and so when the first few saddles hadn’t worked, she’d looked up other sorts of saddles on Kit’s mom’s p
hone. Research was also sometimes very, very surprising, because the saddle that Ellie thought would work best for Miss Penelope was the type people used on elephants.

  “All right, how do we build this elephant saddle?” Kit asked, plopping down on the ground as Ellie opened up her notebook.

  “I was thinking something like this,” Ellie said, and drew as fast as she could.

  “See this piece here?” Ellie asked, pointing to the X-shaped bit at the bottom of the saddle. “I’m not sure what to build it out of, but I think that’s the thing that keeps the saddle steady when an elephant or a Miss Penelope is moving or prancing or jumping.”

  “Real elephants can’t jump, though,” a voice said—Toby’s voice. He was standing at the gate to Kit’s backyard, peering inside. When Ellie looked over, he slunk back, like he hadn’t meant to say that loud enough to be spotted. When he realized they’d seen him, he added, in a quieter voice, “It’s not that they don’t have knees—that’s something people say, but it isn’t true. It’s that they can’t get enough spring to lift up into the air. And also they weigh, like, a lot a lot.”

  “What are you doing out there?” Ellie asked.

  “You didn’t invite me in,” Toby pointed out, even though this was strange because it wasn’t like Toby had to knock and be invited into the backyard. He could just come on in, and usually did, same as Ellie.

  “Come in,” Ellie said, and Toby did, but he looked at the ground a lot. “Are you all right?” Ellie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t look all right,” Kit said, hauling Miss Penelope back to where they were standing. (Miss Penelope could be a very stubborn sheep, so sometimes you really had to pull her along.)

  Toby scratched Miss Penelope’s head with his fingertips, then toed at the dirt when he answered. “Are you guys mad at me for yesterday? For what happened with Mrs. Curran thinking I did all the building? I thought you might be especially, Ellie.”

  Now it was Ellie’s turn to toe at the dirt. She wasn’t mad at Toby—it wasn’t his fault, after all, and he’d tried to tell Mrs. Curran the truth. But she was still pretty mad about the situation.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Ellie finally said. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Okay,” Toby said, looking relieved. “I tried to tell her! And she didn’t believe me, and then she didn’t give me a doll.” He looked especially sad at that last part, and Ellie could tell Toby was sadder than she’s realized about not getting a doll.

  “You can play with our dolls,” Kit said helpfully. “We were just making them a saddle so they can ride on Miss Penelope like she’s an elephant-sheep. A sheepephant?”

  “An elepheep” Ellie suggested.

  “A shelephant?” Toby said, and they all nodded, since that was clearly the best one.

  Ellie showed Toby the sketch of the shelephant saddle and explained how they were having to think about what to use for the part at the bottom.

  “I think on real elephant saddles, those bits are carved out of wood,” Toby said, tilting his head to the side as he studied the drawing. “Can you carve wood?”

  “I’m not allowed to use the good knives anymore,” Ellie said, shaking her head. “Any other ideas?”

  They tried quite a few things they could find at Kit’s house—drinking straws (too flimsy), Popsicle sticks (not long enough), wire coat hangers (too pokey), and bananas (the right shape, but Miss Penelope ate them—peels and all—when no one was looking). They were all watching Miss Penelope nose at the last pieces of banana peel, when Ellie suddenly thought of what they could use. She jumped to her feet and dashed back to her house without saying anything, then returned a few moments later with . . .

  “More dolls?” Kit asked, confused. Ellie had two of her old dolls in her arms. They weren’t looking so great—Ellie and Kit had cut off their hair a little unevenly while playing salon, and one’s face had gotten a teeny bit melted when Ellie got her too close to a hot glue gun.

  “Are those for me? Because . . . um . . .” Toby asked hesitantly, looking between the not-so-great-looking dolls and the new dolls from Mrs. Curran.

  “Look!” Ellie said, and held up one of the dolls. They were the sort of dolls with real joints—Ellie bent the doll’s leg just a little bit at the knee.

  “Oh!” Kit and Toby said in perfect unison.

  They popped the legs off the dolls—Toby was pretty grossed out by this, but doll legs and heads came off so often that Ellie and Kit weren’t fazed—and bent them just a teeny bit. They were perfect for the bottom piece of the saddle. They attached them to the cardboard piece, then attached that to Miss Penelope’s harness.

  “I don’t know. It looks kinda creepy,” Toby said.

  “Good creepy,” Kit said, giggling.

  They placed their new dolls in the saddle and buckled them in with Kit’s hair ribbon.

  Then, Ellie led Miss Penelope very slowly forward to see if the saddle slipped at all . . .

  “It works!” Toby shouted, pumping his fist in the air. This startled Miss Penelope, who bounced away, but the dolls stayed put in their seats! Ellie, Kit, and Toby clapped as she jumped over the fence around Kit’s mom’s blueberry bushes. The shelephant saddle kept the dolls safe, even through the jump.

  “Kit! What is your sheep doing in my blueberries?” Kit’s mom called through the screen door. “And—what is that on her back?” she shrieked.

  “It’s a shelephant saddle!” Kit said. Kit’s mom stepped through the screen door, eyes wide and mouth parted in horror.

  “Are your dolls riding on the body parts of other dolls?” Kit’s mom asked.

  “Just the legs,” Ellie said. “And they were old dolls.”

  Kit’s mom swallowed very hard, then shook her head. “I’m going to guess you made that, Ellie Bell?”

  “We all made it,” Ellie said.

  “But it was Ellie’s idea,” Toby said proudly, knocking Ellie with his elbow.

  “I guessed as much,” Kit’s mom said thickly. “Have you ever considered engineering nice things, Ellie? Like maybe . . . ​maybe a pretty doll bed? Or a chair to sit very still in?”

  “Mom!” Kit said. “That’s very rude! The shelephant saddle is very nice!”

  “Apologies, apologies,” Kit’s mom said with a sigh, then turned to go back inside, grumbling under her breath. Kit was clearly embarrassed about what her mom had said, but Ellie was beaming. It felt so good that at least one grown-up knew she was an engineer.

  “We can do this,” Ellie said, nodding tightly as they stood at Mrs. Curran’s door the next morning.

  “Of course we can,” Kit said, nudging her.

  “I don’t know,” Toby said, shaking his head.

  “Toby!” Kit and Ellie said at once, and glowered at him.

  Toby grumbled. “Okay, okay. We can do it! I think. We might be able to do it.”

  “You’re not being very supportive,” Ellie said, folding her arms.

  Toby sighed and gave a not-very-convincing thumbs-up.

  Today was the day they were going to try to teach Mrs. Curran some engineering, and the truth was, Toby was saying exactly what Ellie was feeling—lots and lots of doubt that this was going to work. They’d come up with a plan yesterday afternoon, after playing with Miss Penelope for a few hours, but making a plan in Kit’s backyard and going through with that plan at Mrs. Curran’s house suddenly seemed like very, very different things.

  “Stop it! You can’t get on the pageant stage expecting to lose!” Kit said. She could see the worry on Ellie’s face. She grabbed Ellie’s shoulders and looked her dead in the eye, then said, “Chin up! Eyes and teeth! Smile big!”

  This wasn’t a pageant, and Ellie wasn’t so sure that pageant tips were going to work, but she forced a smile all the same. Kit reached forward and rang Mrs. Curran’s doorbell.

  “There you are!” Mrs. Curran said when she answered. Today she was wearing a long skirt with feathery bits that fell down to her
high heels, and a silky blouse. She sipped on her tiny espresso cup as she stepped aside to let them in. “You’re a bit later than usual, and I had begun to think perhaps you weren’t coming today. I’m so glad you have, though, because I picked up something for you, Toby!”

  “Oh!” Toby said. It was obvious that Toby was mixed up—it was nice to hear she had a gift for him, but also it felt wrong to take one since Mrs. Curran was giving it thinking Toby had fixed up her house himself. Mrs. Curran clicked away in her heels to the dining room table, then turned around to hand him a bag from the store up the street. Toby reached into the bag and pulled out the present.

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Curran. This is great,” Toby said, turning the gift over and over. It was a . . . ​box of sand? Toby looked at Ellie for an explanation, but she was just as confused as he was.

  “It’s an ant farm! I know little boys like bugs,” Mrs. Curran said with a chuckle. “Now, you have to send off for the ants, but there’s a little paper in there that shows you how to do it.”

  Kit, who was not really interested in bugs, looked like she might be sick over the idea of ants in the mail. Ellie wondered why anyone would need to send ants through the mail, when they were all over the yard anyway. Toby, however, looked a little more interested in the present now.

  “Cool!” he said. “Does it come with instructions on how to teach the ants to farm? What do they farm?”

  Mrs. Curran chuckled. “I think just dirt, dear. They make tunnels. Anyhow, today if you don’t mind, I thought you might help—”

  “Oh, wait!” Ellie jumped in. She’d almost zoned out, wondering about ants in the mail. She looked up at Mrs. Curran and thought about what Kit said—Chin up! Eyes and teeth! Big smile!