Ellie, Engineer

by Jackson Pearce

  “Red paint powder?” Mrs. Caplan asked curiously.

  “Mom, it’s such a good idea. Then after they ring today you can just call all their moms and ask who has a red hand, and then they’ll get in trouble and the doorbell will stop ringing,” McKinley said, looking dire.

  “I do like the idea of the doorbell not ringing,” Mrs. Caplan said, nodding. “All right, go ahead. If anyone gets electrocuted, please come find me, okay? I’ll be in the kitchen, starting the tacos.”

  It took no time at all to put together the door alarm. Ellie found a bike tire tube in the garage, and they used cardboard paper towel rolls to load up the paint. McKinley badly wanted to test the alarm out when they were finished, but Taylor and Madison talked her out of it—they had a comic to finish and flowers to draw, after all.

  “Thanks, Ellie!” Madison said, waving as Ellie walked back down the driveway.

  “Thank you guys,” Ellie called back.

  “We’ll call you if we catch one of those jerk boys!” McKinley added gleefully.

  Ellie gave them a thumbs-up, but the truth was, she felt a little bad. The boys had helped her catch that dog, after all, and Toby was being especially helpful. How much trouble would they get in for playing Ding Dong Ditch and coming home covered in paint powder?

  Ellie went straight to her workshop when she arrived home so she could put away her tools—as much as she loved building, she was ready to take a break for the rest of the afternoon. She hung her tool belt on a hook by the door and carefully put her heaviest tools—like her hammer—in their spots on a shelf. Her workshop might look like chaos to some people, but Ellie knew exactly where everything was. This was important—if something went wrong with a build, you didn’t want to be stuck digging for the right sort of screwdriver or bolt. When everything was put away, she started back down the ladder.

  “Ellie! Where have you been?” Kit asked. Ellie jumped, startled. Kit was standing on her side of the fence, but she had a clear view of Ellie climbing down from the workshop. Kit waved.

  “Oh! I just had to do . . . errands,” Ellie said.

  Kit gave Ellie a long look, her head tilted to one side. Kit always knew when Ellie was lying—best friends were just like that. “Errands?”

  “Your hair doesn’t look oily anymore!” Ellie said, changing the subject.

  “I had to take three showers. Hey, want to come run through the sprinkler with me? Mom’s about to put it out,” Kit said.

  The truth was, Ellie was tired, even though it wasn’t even dinnertime yet. But she couldn’t just turn down the chance to run through the sprinkler with Kit. It was one of their favorite summer games.

  “Yes! Let me go put on my bathing suit,” Ellie said. She grabbed another rung of her treehouse ladder and was about to pop out of sight when Kit said something that made Ellie freeze right there.

  “Do you want to invite Toby?” she asked. Kit’s voice was very careful, like she was testing something.

  “Why would I want to invite Toby?” Ellie asked quickly, shaking her head like this was just bonkers.

  “Weren’t you playing with him earlier? My mom said she saw you and Toby chasing a dog with some pants. I didn’t really know if she meant the dog was wearing the pants or you were chasing the dog with some pants, though,” Kit said, putting a finger to her lips thoughtfully as she said this.

  “That wasn’t playing. We were both just trying to catch the dog, that’s all,” Ellie said.

  “Okay. I wondered why you didn’t invite me to chase a dog wearing pants,” Kit answered. “I thought maybe you were mad we had to break the french braider to get my hair out.”

  “No, no. That’s not it. I promise,” Ellie said. “Let me go put my bathing suit on and we’ll sprinkler, okay?”

  Ellie supposed she could have let Kit invite Toby to play in the sprinkler. But what if Toby said something about the doghouse? Or what if Toby made fun of their sprinkler game? Or what if Toby was a jerk boy, or what if Kit didn’t want to play with a boy, or what if . . . ?

  There were just an awful lot of what-ifs, and it seemed easier to just not tell Kit about Toby at all.

  Kit and Ellie ran through the sprinkler together until the ground was so soggy their feet sank down deep into the grass and made sucking noises when they pulled their toes free. Then, they started their very favorite sprinkler game—one of them would lie down right on top of the sprinkler, which tickled like crazy. Whoever could stand it longest won. Ellie went first.

  “I wonder if Miss Penelope will like water. Some dogs don’t, you know,” Kit said, using her fingers to keep track of the seconds.

  “She probably will, since—hee-hee-hee—you do!” Ellie said, trying hard to keep from giggling when the sprayer went right over her belly button. She stayed on the sprinkler though, so Kit kept counting.

  “Maybe she’ll run through the sprinkler with us! That would be so much fun, wouldn’t it?” Kit asked.

  Ellie didn’t say anything, mostly because she was trying too hard to stay on the sprinkler while it tickled her, but also because she was worried that if she talked about Miss Penelope, she’d accidentally spill the beans about the doghouse. She’d already told Kit about her first birthday present, after all. “Ah! I can’t take it! How many seconds did I get?” Ellie said, springing away from the sprinkler.

  “Twenty-four. My turn!” Kit said, and splashed down onto the sprinkler. Unlike Ellie, Kit was very careful to keep her face from getting mud specks on it. Kit managed twenty-eight seconds of being tickled, which wasn’t quite a record but was close. Eventually, Kit’s mom came out and put the sprinkler away, smiling a little hard at Ellie as she did so.

  “I thought you might be off playing with those boys again,” Kit’s mom said. “It looked like you were having fun.”

  “Oh, no. Not at all. Just catching that loose dog,” Ellie said fast. Too fast. Kit tilted her head to the side again, and Ellie felt her cheeks heat up. “I think I need to go home and take a bath before dinner though. Bye, Kit! See you tomorrow!”

  “I hope so!” Kit called after her, sounding a little sad. Ellie almost, almost turned around—because it was absolutely nuts for Kit to say that. After all, it was summer vacation! Kit and Ellie saw each other every day during summer vacation.

  Well. They wouldn’t have today, technically, if Kit hadn’t seen Ellie climbing down from the workshop. Ellie was too busy working on a project with Toby and The Presidents. Working on a project without Kit.

  It’ll be okay—it’s all for Kit’s party. Once Kit sees why I’ve been sneaky, she’ll understand, thought Ellie. Right?

  Ellie couldn’t help waking up early the next morning—it was so exciting to be in the middle of a build. She snuck out the front door so Kit wouldn’t see her leave, then ran down the street to Toby’s house. He was already awake and in the backyard, with the doghouse, which made Ellie happy. She bet he was as excited about the build as she was. Ellie walked up and noticed he was drinking an orange soda and writing something on a notepad.

  “Isn’t it early to be drinking your soda for the day?” Ellie said, pointing to the can. She was only teasing, but Toby jumped, then scrambled to hide the notepad.

  “Oh, this is an old can. It’s just water inside,” he said quickly, pouring out a tiny bit from the soda can to prove it. “If you put water in once you’re done, it still tastes a little orange soda-y.”

  “What were you drawing?” Ellie asked. She walked over and sat down beside him on the deck steps, but Toby kept leaning back and forward to keep her from seeing his notepad.

  “It’s nothing. Come on, let’s keep building! Did you find someone to do the flowers?”

  “Yep. I have some connections,” she said.

  This got Toby’s attention. His eyebrows went up a little. “You have sources. That’s what spies and secret agents call them. Or sometimes contacts. You have contacts or sources or—hey!” Toby shouted when Ellie, taking advantage of how distracted Toby was by being
a know-it-all, dove for the notepad and snatched it up. To her surprise, it wasn’t a drawing of anything that could get Toby in trouble—like when he and the other neighborhood boys sometimes drew butts in class.

  “Hey! What’s this?” Ellie asked. There was a picture of a door, a bunch of stuff around it, and that was it. She looked at Toby, whose cheeks were bright, bright red.

  “It’s dumb,” he said.

  “What is it?” she asked. It might be dumb, but she couldn’t know until she knew what it was.

  Toby sighed and scooted closer so he could see the drawing as he explained. “It’s something I’d like to build. My little brothers are always going into my bedroom, right? So I wanted to make some sort of security system to keep them out. They’re twins, so one’s always stealing my stuff and the other’s always breaking it. Or sometimes they both break it.”

  “Hmm,” Ellie said, studying the drawing.

  Toby went on. “So I want to build something that blares a really loud alarm, maybe, when the door handle gets turned. Or maybe a bunch of teeny poison darts could zip from the wall and stick them right in the arm!”

  Ellie nodded a little but thought maybe Toby watched too many movies. “I bet your mom wouldn’t be too happy about little poison darts or a super loud alarm. But maybe something else would work . . .” She stopped and looked up at Toby. “Maybe we can work on this in between working on the doghouse.”

  “Really? You’ll help me with it?” Toby said, looking relieved. “I didn’t get very far on my own. You can tell, I bet. I just drew the door and some alarm ideas and then a bunch of butts on the next page.”

  “I can tell,” Ellie said. “We can work on it tomorrow. We’re basically done with the doghouse until I go get the flower paper from the . . . uh . . .” Ellie tripped over the words. What she almost said was they could work on it while they waited for The Presidents to finish up drawing the flower wallpaper. But she didn’t think Toby would like knowing The Presidents were helping any more than they would like knowing he was helping. After all, even if Toby turned out to be okay, he was still one of the neighborhood boys.

  Toby frowned. He wasn’t dumb. “What’s going on? Who is making the flower wallpaper?”

  “Oh, just a . . . uh . . . friend of my mom’s,” Ellie said fast. This was two lies about the doghouse in two days, and she hadn’t liked either of them. She changed the subject as fast as she could. “Anyway, I was saying that I bet we can work on it tomorrow afternoon, after I get the flower paper. Come on—let’s work on the doghouse. I’ll show you how to use sandpaper.”

  Together, they finished the little border, which Ellie made out of some cut-up pool noodles wrapped in ribbon, and the ramp. The ramp was just a piece of wood they laid down by the door, but she showed Toby how to rub the sandpaper back and forth so it was smooth—that way, Miss Penelope wouldn’t get splinters.

  “I have an idea for something Kit might really like,” Ellie said. “Sprinklers.”

  “Sprinklers? On a doghouse?”

  “Yep. Kit loves running through sprinklers,” Ellie said, feeling proud of the idea. She’d had it last night while lying in bed and liked it so much she kicked the blankets away and wrote it down right there in the dark. (She couldn’t read the handwriting so well the next morning, but that didn’t matter because it was such a good idea, she remembered it anyway.) None of the doghouses they’d seen that morning had sprinkler systems, so it would be really extra special. The two of them walked around to Toby’s backyard, where the doghouse sat half-finished, its soda-can roof bright and shiny in the morning sun.

  Ellie put her hands on her hips. “All right. We’ll need to get a plastic pipe, or maybe a piece of garden hose or something like it. We probably shouldn’t cut up your dad’s garden hose for this. I did it once to my dad’s when I was building a marble-slinger, and he wasn’t so happy.”

  “Oh! I know where we can get something like a hose! Hang on,” Toby said, and dashed into the house. A few moments later, he emerged, holding a rubber snake. He waggled it at Ellie.

  “Nice try, but I’m not afraid of snakes,” she said.

  “No—it’s a rubber hose! It’s hollow, just like one. Will it work?” Toby asked. He sounded really excited that he’d thought this up, and maybe a little offended that she’d thought he was just trying to scare her.

  Ellie studied the snake. “We’d have to put holes in it to let the water through. Is that okay?”

  Toby shrugged. “I have, like, a million rubber snakes. Besides, a snake sprinkler sounds cool. I want to see you build it.”

  Ellie grinned and took the snake from Toby. With his help, Ellie poked some holes in the rubber snake using a nail, then strung it up on sticks attached to the doghouse. Then they jammed the hose into the rubber snake’s mouth, and ta-da! Dog sprinkler. Snake sprinkler? Dog-snake sprinkler?

  Whatever it was, Ellie thought it was excellent. “Huh,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “It doesn’t look very friendly to snakes.”

  “I don’t think most dogs like snakes anyhow,” Toby said. “But if it turns out Miss Penelope does, I think I’ve got a rubber lizard that would also work.”

  The doghouse was looking spectacular. She and Toby high-fived, then walked around and around the doghouse, admiring their work.

  “This engineering stuff is awesome,” Toby admitted.

  “Oh, I know,” Ellie said.

  The following morning, Ellie went back over to see The Presidents. She was careful not to step on the doormat—it looked like the Ding Dong Ditch trap wasn’t set, but she didn’t want to get coated in red paint powder. McKinley answered the door, with Taylor and Madison just behind her.

  “Ellie! The trap worked perfectly!” McKinley squealed.

  “Mrs. Caplan called the neighborhood boys’ moms, and it turned out to be Dylan who was covered in red paint. He has to carry in all the groceries for two months!” Taylor said triumphantly.

  “Wow. That’s great!” Ellie said. Carrying in the groceries wasn’t so bad a punishment—besides, even if Dylan had helped catch Muffintop, he was still Ding Dong Ditching, so it was pretty fair.

  “Madison and Taylor slept over so we could finish all the roses. And so we could make cinnamon rolls. Want one?” McKinley said as they walked through the kitchen. Ellie took one from the pan and followed The Presidents down the hall.

  “Okay, so, we drew a bunch of roses,” Madison said. “But we drew some other flowers too, a little because Kit likes all kinds of flowers, but mostly because we got really tired of drawing roses.”

  “The doghouse is going to be the best present at Kit’s party,” McKinley said. “All I got her was a bunch of hair ribbons.”

  “Kit loves hair ribbons, don’t worry,” Ellie told McKinley through a mouthful of cinnamon roll.

  “Yeah, but they’re no doghouse,” Madison said, and Ellie kept quiet, but secretly, she agreed. They turned the corner into a fancy dining room. There were markers spread across the table, and the floor was littered in construction paper. There was a neat fat stack of paper at one end, all of it shades of pink.

  “So here are the drawings of the flowers,” Madison said, pushing the stack toward Ellie. Ellie flipped through the drawings and her mouth fell open. The roses were really good. They looked a lot like the drawings in their comic books, which is to say, they looked pretty much exactly like real roses. It was way better than Ellie could have done.

  “And . . . well . . .” The Presidents all looked at one another nervously. Ellie was grateful Taylor spoke up when she did.

  “We have some more ideas for the doghouse,” Taylor said.

  “Huh?”

  Taylor ran to the other side of the fancy table and grabbed a piece of paper. She held it behind her back, looking a little worried. “We don’t really know a lot about engineering, so maybe not all of these ideas are good. But we just had some doghouse ideas and wanted to show you. Is that okay?”

  Ellie’s eyebrows rai
sed. “Sure! Let’s see.”

  The Presidents grinned, and Taylor put the piece of paper on the table. The four of them huddled around it.

  “What do you think? Is this engineering?” Madison asked excitedly.

  “Well, this is sort of just drawing,” Ellie said, thinking about how much it looked like Toby’s drawing of his bedroom security system. “But it’s how engineering starts. I always try to draw a project before I start building it.”

  “You think you could build this?” McKinley said excitedly.

  “Um . . .” Ellie took a big breath. Some of the stuff in the drawing was pretty much impossible to build—at least, impossible to build before the party. The helicopter and its landing pad, for example, were the sorts of things Ellie figured she’d have to do a lot of research on (though, now that she thought about it, maybe if she took the motor out of the lawnmower . . .). “I don’t think there’s time to build all of this before the party, since it’s only two days away—but you guys had some really good ideas, so let’s think.”

  “Woohoo!” McKinley said, flinging her arms in the air. The other two Presidents high-fived her.

  “Maybe we could build this,” Ellie said, pointing to the rotating toy bin. “I think there’s enough time to add the sun deck—if you guys can help me.”

  Madison nodded eagerly. “Of course we’ll help!”

  Ellie grinned—she’d wanted the doghouse to be bigger and fancier, after all! Together, she and The Presidents scouted through McKinley’s house, looking for supplies. They found a laundry basket in the basement, some cardboard boxes, and an old cutting board in the yard sale pile (Ellie promised to pay fifty cents for it if McKinley’s mom was mad that they took it).

  “So, we’ll use the cutting board as the bottom of the sun deck. But we need some Popsicle sticks, I think, for the railing,” Ellie said, frowning.