The rest of the contestants started to applaud as the judges appeared, led by Mrs Magoonty.
‘This is it, buddy,’ I said with a grin. ‘Don’t forget to thank me in your winning speech!’
Martin gave a nervous smile. But no one looked as anxious as Trevor.
‘I can’t handle all this suspense,’ he squeaked. ‘Do you guys think we’ve won?’
Martin shrugged. ‘Who knows? But no matter what, we’ve done well, Trev. Amazingly well. Just look at where we are.’
‘A big room full of nerds,’ observed Declan.
‘A big room full of winners,’ Martin corrected him. ‘These are the best young inventors in Ireland. And we’re right here with them. No matter what happens, no one can take that away from us.’
‘You’re right, Martin! I’ve never felt more like a winner in my whole life!’ hollered Padraic.
His voice echoed around the hall and everyone turned to stare at the underpants-wearing, syrup-slathered boy with a sugar-crazed smile.
‘So, eh . . . as I was saying,’ continued Mrs Magoonty, ‘each invention was judged in four categories – originality, design, construction and usefulness. And the results are in.’
A tense silence descended over the hall.
‘The winners of this year’s Invention Convention are . . .’
I crossed my fingers, toes and ear lobes. ‘Please, please, please,’ I whispered.
‘Team . . . Whimmion’s!’
My heart sank, my ear lobes sagged, and my whole body slumped with disappointment.
Martin and his team-mates were quiet, but they clapped politely, heroically, along with everyone else. They watched Max, Vronny and Hugh bound on to the stage, followed by their impressive Garda Bot, who slowly mounted the steps.
‘Boom!’ shouted Hugh into the mic. ‘Victory is ours!’
‘Yes! In your face, losers!’ yelled Max.
‘Aww, look at all those sad faces out there. Sorry not sorry,’ sneered Vronny.
‘Congratulations, Team Whimmion’s,’ said Mrs Magoonty, looking annoyed by their bragging as she handed over the trophy and gold medals.
‘Thanks, Big Maggie, thanks a lot!’ said Hugh. He returned to the mic. ‘Ya know, just being a part of this Invention Convention thingy is a real honour. But you know what’s an even greater honour? Beating every one of you!’
He paused for laughter, but the room remained silent.
‘Seriously though, it means so much to me. And the robot. And to them,’ he added, pointing at Max and Vronny, ‘the kids who built the robot.’
‘Lie detected!’ blurted the Garda Bot.
‘What?’
Hugh glanced at the robot, then chuckled. ‘Ha! He’s just . . . overexcited.’
‘Lie detected!’
Hugh tried to ignore it, pressing on with his speech. ‘Ya know, when Vronzer and Maxo came up with this robot idea and asked for my advice on construction—’
‘Lie detected! My chief engineer was Vladimir Petrovski—’
‘Shut that thing up, Maxo!’ snapped Hugh.
‘What did it say?’ asked Mrs Magoonty, stepping forward.
‘Nothing! It’s just malfunctioning. Power down, Garda Bot!’ he ordered.
‘Do NOT power down!’ she interjected.
‘Conflicting orders! Confusion!’
Mrs Magoonty strode forward and took command. ‘Garda Bot, are you malfunctioning?’
‘Power down!’ hissed Hugh.
‘Not another word from Team Whimmion’s,’ warned Mrs Magoonty.
The robot beeped. ‘All systems functioning perfectly.’
‘Then answer me this, Garda Bot. Where were you built?’ she asked.
‘In an underground lab in Russia.’
There was a gasp around the room and Mrs Magoonty’s expression hardened.
‘By whom?’
‘By a team of robotic scientists who then secretly shipped me to a school called St Whimmion’s – which, I was informed, is the greatest school ever and all other schools are a bunch of losers.’
Mrs Magoonty turned to face the Whimmion’s trio, who stood there sheepishly, clutching their trophy and medals.
‘Well, it might be the greatest school ever, but it’s YOU who are the losers today,’ she informed them angrily. ‘The rules state that all inventions must be built by students alone. So you are hereby disqualified for cheating.’
The room erupted with a loud cheer.
Mrs Magoonty glared at Hugh. ‘And as their teacher, you will pay the ten-thousand-pound fine and serve a short but unpleasant sentence in jail.’
‘What?!’
‘It was stated very clearly on the entry form. Now please hand back your trophy and medals, and you’ll be escorted from the stage.’
Security men started to approach from either side.
‘No! You can’t do this! We’re the winners!’ insisted Hugh. But the security men kept coming closer. ‘C’mon, Maxo and Vronzer – RUN!’
He snatched the night stick from the Garda Bot and leaped into the crowd, clutching the trophy.
‘Arghhhhhh!’ came the screams, as young inventors fled left and right.
Amid the chaos, Hugh, Max and Vronny made for the exit.
‘Catch them, nerds!’ ordered Declan from across the hall.
‘They’re getting away!’ fretted Loopy Lou. ‘We gotty-gots to do something, Trevvy!’
‘Wake up!’ Crunchie yelled at Padraic, who’d nodded off in the bath.
‘Hmmm?’
I turned to Martin. ‘I’ve got an idea, buddy. How good is your aim?’
‘Weak and wobbly,’ he answered honestly.
‘Well it’ll have to do. Launch him, Martin!’
‘Launch him?!’ exclaimed Crunchie and Lou.
Martin seized the side of the tub.
‘Help him, Trevvy!’ called Lou, and Trevor gripped the other side. Declan realized what they were up to and grabbed the back.
‘Roll like the wind, Padraic,’ whispered Martin.
‘Huh?’
And with that, the three amigos gave the Tub Grub an almighty shove. It zoomed away with a confused Padraic inside it, who was thankfully too sugared-up to be frightened. He sped across the room, miraculously missing several students, and was making a beeline for the fleeing fraudsters. The bath was on a direct course to intercept them!
But unfortunately, as often happens in life, there was a bin in the way.
BOOM!
The bath smashed into it and vaulted Padraic into the air.
‘Wooooooh!’ he squealed. ‘I’m flying!’
Like a wingless, greasy angel, he soared majestically over the heads of the stunned students, dripping syrup from his slippery stomach.
‘I feel like a swan!’ he called, waving cheerfully at the upturned faces.
But as every young scientist knows, gravity has a way of asserting itself, and what goes up – even if it thinks it’s a swan – usually comes back down.
SPLAT!
Padraic landed perfectly on top of Hugh, who crumpled to the ground as Max and Vronny fell headlong over them. All four tumbled across the floor and collapsed in a heap.
The security men were upon them in seconds, and Mrs Magoonty swiftly reclaimed the trophy and medals.
‘You and your cheating school are banned forever!’ she declared, and the security men hauled them off.
‘Told ya we’d beat you!’ Martin yelled after them.
And indeed they had.
‘The trophy will now go to the runners-up!’ announced Mrs Magoonty.
Martin suddenly turned to his team-mates. ‘Wait – if they’re eliminated . . . does that now mean that we’ve won?!!!’
They all looked at each other, with their hearts in their mouths. Could this really be true? Did this twist of fate mean that Team Trepdem had now come first?!!
Well, dear reader old pal, I’m sorry to say that the answer was no. Team Trepdem had received top marks for originali
ty, but hadn’t quite aced the other categories. They would have won if they’d been in second place, but they were in twelfth place, so moved triumphantly up to eleventh – which, out of a hundred inventions, wasn’t half bad!
Every team was presented with a certificate, which had the word ‘Participant’ printed proudly across it, to the delight of the gang. Declan was particularly pleased that it was written in gold lettering (which he would later try to melt down and accidentally set on fire).
And for bravely apprehending the villains, Padraic received an extra gift – a banoffi pie.
‘We’re no losers! We’re Participants! We take part! We’re take-parters!’ declared Martin happily, as they posed for their official team photo.
The promised dance party kicked off and soon the place was awash with tea and buns. Padraic passed out on the floor, and while the boys drew a moustache on him, I wandered off among the exhibits.
I soon discovered that this Invention Convention wasn’t just for Realsies, and in the same way that the Museum of Tractors had imaginary exhibits, this place had imaginary inventions too. I heard applause in the distance and followed it to a room where a crowd of imaginaries were congratulating the competition winner. He was wearing a strange contraption, and I smiled when I saw his familiar face.
‘Wilbert!’ I exclaimed, and he hopped towards me happily, carrying a trophy. ‘You won?!’
‘It seems so!’ he chuckled. ‘I kept working on that Wonkey Self-Milker that I invented on our way home from the quest, and it proved to be quite the hit!’
With his hoof, he pressed a button on the contraption on his belly and some green milk squirted out. It was impressive – but I also felt a twinge of guilt.
‘Wilbert, I’m sorry I wasn’t better at milking you and looking after you. I wanted to be the best pet owner ever . . . but I let you down. Maybe I’m just not cut out for it.’
Wilbert frowned, confused. ‘But Sean – I owe all of this to you! When you brought me on the quest for the Notion Potion, you changed my life! Without you, I’d still be eating rocks and trying to swallow my own elbows – instead of contributing to science and improving the lives of imaginaries everywhere!’ He lay a hoof on my shoulder. ‘I thank the day that Martin gave me to you, Sean – the finest IF that a Wonkey could ever wish for.’
He gave me a hug and then bounded away, leaving me with a tear in my eye and his weird milk on my shirt.
‘Well, at least the Notion Potion helped someone,’ noted Crunchie, joining me with a grin.
‘So our questeroo wasn’t a big failure after all!’ added Loopy Lou brightly. ‘Even if it didn’t help your Realsie.’
‘Actually, I think it did help him,’ I mused. ‘When Martin thought he’d drunk the Notion Potion, he let his imagination run wild. He got crazy-creative, and unleashed an idea that beat some of the smartest kids in the country. His imagination unlocked his imagination, which, when you think about it, is some mind-bending science!’
‘No, Sean – that’s some mind-bending science!’ blurted Loopy Lou, and raced off towards an imaginary invention – a mini tornado that was shooting gumdrops in every direction. ‘I gotta gets me one of those!’
‘Wait for me!’ called Crunchie, hurrying after him.
I was about to follow when I noticed another exhibit nearby. It showed a picture of Barney Bunton, imaginary friend to the inventor Harry Ferguson, and I wandered over to it.
The exhibit gave some history about the pair, and I discovered that Barney was a bit of a mad genius, just like his Realsie, and had a few odd quirks. For example, he liked to play the violin to birds, he washed his feet in a basin of unicorn spit every morning, and he had a weird habit of collecting his nose pickings in a small bottle.
I paused when I read this last titbit.
Nose pickings . . .
I pulled out the little bottle that I’d borrowed from Barney’s hat and read the label again.
N.P.
No way. It couldn’t be. Could it . . . ?
If it was, then Harry and Barney had nothing to do with Notion Potion at all. Which also meant that the Mad Mechanic really did think of all those incredible inventions himself.
I shook the bottle, peering inside it.
And it also meant that those nasty, shrivelled-up, crunchy things that I’d eaten were in fact . . .
Oh balls.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EOPS
The gang returned home to Boyle, and life got back to normal. Things had changed a lot since Martin had embarked on this crazy adventure. He was no longer sharing a house with a trio of triumphant sisters, but they, like Martin, had realized that winning was overrated. And in some ways, they’d all managed to win anyway.
Having lost her sack-punching battles, Sinead had decided to start growing potatoes instead of smashing them, and soon she was happily tending to a flurry of little green shoots in the back garden. It was the first time she’d ever tried to create something rather than destroy it, and although she’d have an occasional slip-up, where she’d suddenly stomp or punch one of them, most of the time she took pretty good care of those spudlings, to the astonishment of the other Moones.
Fidelma had abandoned her goal of becoming the first female Taoiseach of Ireland (for the moment at least), but had no regrets, as she was madly in love for the first time in her life. And although nobody could really understand what she saw in the dorky Dessie Dolan, there was no denying that she was positively glowing these days.
Things also took an unexpected turn for Trisha. Her junk-jewellery business had been going well, but it turned out that she’d never bothered to clean her recycled rubbish, so a lot of her customers got infections. Her trash trinkets also began to stink, and hungry cats followed poor Linda around until she finally tossed out her tuna-can earrings. But the Power-Power Ties were the worst disaster. They began leaking battery acid, which burned through expensive shirts and left a nasty rash on the skin. The town mayor was covered in blotches and was threatening to sue. But Trisha didn’t seem in the least bit bothered. In fact, she was quite tickled by all the trouble she’d created, and pretended that she’d planned it all out, bragging that she’d pulled off the greatest ‘fake fashion scam’ in the history of Boyle.
So in the end, none of them did what they set out to do, but what they did, in some ways, made them a lot happier.
‘Maybe you’re right, Sean,’ said Martin, as we sat on the back wall pondering all this. ‘Maybe you can win without winning. I wanted to get my face on the Winners Wall, and even though I didn’t quite get there, I sure as flip don’t feel like a loser. I guess what matters most is to be . . . a Participant!’
He ripped open his shirt to reveal his Participant certificate, which he was wearing on a chain around his neck.
I sighed. ‘Martin, do you have to rip open your shirt every time you say the word “Participant”?’
‘I do, Sean, yes,’ he admitted, ‘I’m afraid I do.’
As Martin entered his final week of primary school, he was still keen to leave his mark in some way, and brainstormed ideas with Padraic about what to do on their last day.
‘I’m gonna be Martin Mayhem!’ he proclaimed. ‘We’ve gotta do the maddest stuff, the craziest things we can think of – so no one forgets that Marty Moone and Padraic O’Dwyer walked these halls!’
Padraic nodded excitedly. ‘I know what’ll make everyone remember me. I’ll knit them all lovely scarves!’
‘What? No! I’m talking about doing destructive stuff.’
‘OK, how about this? Let’s turn all the globes into snow globes!’
‘Let’s turn him into a snow globe,’ I muttered.
‘How about this?’ said Martin. ‘Let’s use the toilet all day and not flush it. And then blow it up!’
‘That’s more like it!’ I cried.
‘Let’s steal all the chalk and hide it,’ giggled Padraic, ‘but then, in a twist, tell them where it is!’
‘That’s l
ess like it.’ I sighed.
They continued to concoct ideas, but as they strolled to school on their last day, the pair were still no closer to a plan.
‘Let’s turn all the chairs back to front,’ proposed Padraic, ‘but sit back to front on them, so we’re facing the right way!’
‘Let’s put the chairs on the tables, and the tables on the chairs,’ suggested Martin. ‘And then blow them up!’
‘Let’s shave naughty words into our beards!’ blurted Padraic.
‘We don’t have beards,’ Martin reminded him.
‘Let’s grow beards!’
‘Yeah! Actually . . . we might not have time for that, seeing as it’s now our last day of school,’ noted Martin as they came to a stop outside the old drab building.
‘Look! They put up a sign!’ marvelled Padraic.
It was hanging on the front of the school and read: ‘Goodbye, Sixth Class. We’ll Miss You’.
‘I gotta get in there!’ squealed Padraic, and he ran off, kicking over a bin with excitement.
‘This is it, buddy. Time for some mayhem!’ I cried.
But as Martin stared at the sign, his eyes started brimming with tears, and his voice cracked as he murmured quietly, ‘I don’t want to leave.’
Instead of trashing his school that day, like most of his other classmates were doing, Martin wandered around delivering long, heartfelt goodbyes to everyone and every thing that he encountered.
‘Bye-bye, blackboard. Bye-bye, chairs. Bye-bye, broken projector – I’m going to miss you most of all,’ he said fondly.
He gave a long hug to a confused Trevor in the corridor, and he found Declan Mannion in the yard, sliding a heavy manhole-cover back into place.
‘Need a hand, Dec?’ he offered.
‘Nah, all done, Moone,’ replied Declan. ‘I just squeezed Principal Maloney’s favourite chair into the sewer. He won’t be finding that in a hurry!’
‘Oh Declan, you old scamp,’ Martin chuckled affectionately.
‘Huh?’
‘It’s been an honour primary-schooling with you.’
‘Eh. Yeah. Have fun in your stupid new school, Moone.’
Martin frowned. ‘Aren’t you going to be there too?’
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