Ellie, Engineer

by Jackson Pearce

  “We have Popsicles!” McKinley said, and dashed to the freezer. She shook a full box of banana Popsicles at everyone. “I guess we could eat them to get to the sticks?”

  It was a lot of Popsicles, but between the four of them and a whole bunch of brain freezes, they managed to eat the whole box—twenty, all together. They gathered the sticks, then went outside with all the building supplies.

  “For the spinning toy bin, we’ll do this,” Ellie said, drawing a quick sketch. “I’ll drill a hole in the bottom of the basket, then we can put it on a little post on the floor of the doghouse so it rotates,” Ellie explained.

  “But we don’t have a post!” Madison said.

  “Sure we do—we can use . . . a pencil,” Ellie suggested. “Or a pen. It doesn’t matter.” The Presidents watched as Ellie used her drill to carefully put a hole in the center of the laundry basket. She put it on the pencil, then spun it so they could see how it would work once it was in the doghouse. “And then we’ll need to cut some pieces from the cardboard so the toys stay in their little sections.”

  The Presidents nodded as Ellie glanced at the clock on the microwave. Whoa! She’d been there for almost two hours—eating all those Popsicles must have taken longer than she thought.

  “Can I take your drawing with me? I’ve got to go work on another part of the doghouse, but I want to remember what you’re making over here,” Ellie said.

  “Sure,” McKinley said, nodding. “We’ll get to work cutting the cardboard out.”

  “I get to use the scissors!” Taylor shouted, startling everyone. But Ellie was already racing out the door.

  Ellie jogged all the way to Toby’s house, holding on to the tools in her belt so they wouldn’t jangle loose. When she arrived, he was drinking the day’s orange soda on the back porch, fanning himself with a comic book.

  “I’ve got the flower paper!” she called, waving it above her head as she approached him. She remembered at the last second that she was also holding The Presidents’ doghouse drawing, and hurried to hide it in the back of her notebook where Toby wouldn’t see it.

  “Hey! These flowers look great! Your mom’s friends are good artists,” Toby said.

  “Huh—oh!” Ellie said, remembering the lie she’d told Toby. “Right. Yep, they sure are. Let’s get them put up.”

  “Then the doghouse is done, right?” Toby asked.

  “Yep,” Ellie said, and secretly thought except the stuff The Presidents are working on, and then felt bad about the whole thing all over again. She was almost positive Toby would love to see the toy basket, after all.

  Ellie was a bit smaller than Toby, so she climbed inside the doghouse to put the flower paper up. Toby stayed at the door of the doghouse, smearing glue sticks all over the back of the paper and handing it to Ellie to paste on the walls. She lined the edges up, so it looked like real wallpaper in a real house. When they were done, she studied the house, thinking about where the rotating toy bin and sun deck would go. She wanted to tell Toby about them—they were pretty cool features, after all—and also wanted to tell The Presidents about how helpful Toby had been, especially with the snake sprinkler. But she kept her lips sealed.

  “Time for my bedroom security system?” Toby asked, once all the paper was glued inside and the doghouse was drying in the sun.

  “Sure,” Ellie said, happy to have something else to think about. She pulled out the pencil from her own notebook and started drawing. “If you have a regular door—do you? Good. So, since you have a regular door, I was thinking we could do something like this.”

  “Yeah!” Toby said. “That’s a great idea! What can go in the bucket? Slime?”

  “I bet you’d get really grounded if you dumped slime all over the floor,” Ellie said, tapping her pencil against her lips as she thought. What could they put in the bucket?

  Toby frowned. “But it can’t be something like . . . socks or jingle bells or tissues. It has to be something that makes them sorry they tried to snoop in my room when they know they’re not allowed.”

  “Hmm,” Ellie said. “Let’s think on it. For right now, we don’t need much. Just a bucket and some string. I brought some nails we can use.” She pulled a handful of small nails from her tool belt pocket to prove it.

  “I know where we can get a bucket and string!” Toby said eagerly. Ellie followed him to the garage, where there was a big paint bucket full of tennis balls. It didn’t seem like a good idea to dump them all out in the garage, so they carried them up to Toby’s room and dumped them on the other side of his bed.

  Ellie had never seen Toby’s room before. There were dinosaurs on the wallpaper, which Ellie thought were okay, and robots on his sheets, which Ellie thought were great—robots were the best—and she told Toby so.

  “Do you think you could build a robot?” Toby asked, eyes wide with excitement.

  “Maybe one day. But I think we’d better finish the security system before we start building robots,” Ellie said.

  “Oh, right. Now what?” Toby said, holding out the now-empty bucket and the rope.

  Ellie carefully drilled a hole right in the middle of the bucket, then threaded the string Toby had found—it was yarn from his mom’s craft kit—through. Toby, as it turned out, knew lots of knots from a report he’d done on sailors once, which he basically recited word-for-word as he tied a fancy-pants knot to hold the rope in place.

  “Okay, so let’s roll the chair over here,” Ellie said, grabbing Toby’s desk chair and pushing it over by the door. Toby held the chair steady while Ellie climbed up and nailed a single nail right in the ceiling, just above the door. He handed her the bucket, and she balanced it on the doorframe, then wound the yarn around the nail once. Toby took the other end of the yarn and tied it to the inside doorknob.

  “Now we fill it with something?” Toby asked, looking excited. He rubbed his hands together.

  “Not yet—we need to test it,” Ellie said. “You go outside and come in. We’ll see if the bucket tips over and dumps air all over your head.”

  “Isn’t there already air all over my head?” Toby wondered as he went out. He counted down—“One! Two! Coming in!”—then pushed open the door.

  The bucket, balanced on the door, tilted . . . ​but then the yarn unwound from the nail and the whole thing fell. The bucket smacked down on Toby’s head like a very bad hat.

  “Oh,” Ellie said.

  “Ow,” Toby answered, lifting the bucket up over his head. “I’ll get grounded for life if I drop a heavy bucket on my brothers’ heads.”

  “I think we need to use a hook instead of a nail. But I didn’t bring any hooks . . . oh! Wait!” Ellie said, grabbing the pliers from her tool belt. She climbed back up on the chair, which Toby steadied as he rubbed the spot where the bucket hit him. She grabbed hold of the nail with her pliers and slowly, carefully bent it back until it was shaped like a hook.

  “Whew. Okay, so now we just thread the yarn through . . . perfect! Go outside and try it again!” Ellie said.

  “How about Pickles tries it instead,” Toby said, grabbing hold of a big stuffed cat whose eyes had been loved off. He went outside and counted—“One! Two! Coming in! Or Pickles is, I mean!”—then threw Pickles toward the door. The weight of the stuffed cat pushed the door open, the bucket tipped, and—

  “Yes! It works!” Toby said, whooping. “Now do we get to fill it with stuff?”

  “Yep—but I have to go home for dinner. Tomorrow, can we put the doghouse on your wagon and wheel it over before lunch? We can eat at my house.”

  “Sure,” Toby said, “lunch tomorrow.” But he wasn’t looking at her—he was busy rooting through his desk drawer. “Fishing worms? The plastic ones, I mean. That’d be pretty gross, but only for a minute . . . WAIT! Paper clips! No, no, that’s dumb . . .”

  It was one day before the party, and Ellie felt ready. The doghouse was done—she just needed to attach the toy bin The Presidents were working on. She was meeting Toby just before luncht
ime to put the doghouse in his wagon, then wheel it over to her garage. Then, she’d go over to the Caplans’ house to pick up the toy bin. Kit was supposed to be off getting a party dress today, and Ellie had really wanted to go with her since it would mean lots of trying on dresses and jumping around the dressing room, but she wasn’t quite sure she had time to spend the whole afternoon at the fancy dress shop. It was always wise, she knew, to leave some extra time when you were working on a build, just in case it all went to bees.

  (Or just in case your grandma is mad and wants you to disconnect the waffle maker from the jack-in-the-box but it takes so long you have to miss ballet.)

  (Even though wind-up waffles sounded like a great game and a great way to make breakfast or a pre-ballet snack.)

  Ellie waited till she saw Kit’s mom’s car pull out of the driveway before hurrying out the door and down to Toby’s.

  “Did you figure out what to put in your security system bucket? I was thinking, maybe Ping-Pong balls?” Ellie asked as she got closer. Toby made a few cutting motions across his throat, and soon Ellie saw why—his mom was behind him, picking peppers in her little garden.

  “I have something great in it, but I’ll tell you later,” Toby whispered, giggling a little. Ellie grinned—Toby looked really happy, so it must be something great.

  Together they loaded the doghouse into his wagon. It was a bit lopsided, and Ellie had to adjust one of the wheels that made it go a little sideways, but it worked just fine in the end. Once they got to Ellie’s garage, they carefully unloaded it, trying their best to avoid the shingles—they were cut-up cans, after all, so they were a little sharp if you grabbed them wrong.

  “Perfect,” Ellie said as they walked out. She mashed the button and the garage door rattled shut behind them. “I guess it needs to be wrapped though, huh?”

  “Maybe you could get a big giganto gift bag,” Toby said, squinting at the sun. “Or just a bow for the top, like in the car commercials. That’s how you’re supposed to give giant gifts—you don’t really wrap them.”

  “Or—”

  “What’s going on?” a voice interrupted. It was a high voice and sounded sort of like a voice you’d expect to hear coming out of a cartoon piece of cake. Ellie spun around. Kit was standing in her own driveway.

  Ellie looked at Kit. Kit looked at Ellie. Ellie looked at Toby. Toby looked confused.

  “Are you guys wearing the same clothes?” Toby finally asked. Ellie looked and, yep, she and Kit were both wearing their otter dresses, and they hadn’t even planned it. The only difference was, of course, that Ellie was wearing her tool belt over hers. It looked like the otters were trying to leap into the pockets.

  “I thought you had to go dress shopping,” Ellie said. This probably wasn’t the best thing to say, but she was so surprised she couldn’t think of anything else.

  Kit said, “We had to come back. Mom forgot my tights and said we can’t try on dresses without proper undergarments.” Toby snort-laughed at the word “undergarments.” Kit gave him a look, then went on. “I thought you said you weren’t playing with Toby, you were just chasing a dog.” Kit didn’t sound mad; she sounded sad. And that made it worse.

  “Oh, um. I . . . ,” Ellie said, but then trailed off. She couldn’t tell Kit the truth—that would ruin the surprise!

  “You could have just told me you wanted to play with him instead of me,” Kit said, looking down.

  “But that’s not it!” Ellie said, her eyes going wide. “Look, I can’t tell you why I fibbed, but I promise, it’s a really good reason.”

  “How do I know you’re not fibbing about that too?” Kit asked.

  “She’s not,” Toby said, but the fact Toby knew this—that Toby was here at all—only seemed to hurt Kit’s feelings more. “We’re just building something together.”

  Now Kit looked really sad. “He’s helping you build something? Why didn’t you invite me?”

  “You can’t help me build this thing, is all,” Ellie tried to explain.

  This didn’t help either. Kit took a step back, then held her chin up as high as she could. Ellie could see she was trying her hardest not to sniffle. Ellie bit her lip. Maybe she should just tell Kit about the doghouse and ruin the surprise. She opened her mouth—

  Kit spoke first. “I think I’ll go get my dress now. Have fun building without me,” Kit said sharply, and spun around on her heel. It was her official business voice, the same one she used onstage at her pageants. It was a voice that was hard to argue with.

  “Man. She was mad,” Toby said as Kit disappeared.

  “I should have told her about the doghouse,” Ellie said. “Now she’ll be mad at me until her party!”

  “But then she’ll be super happy when you give her the doghouse. And you’ll go back to being friends, easy-peasy,” Toby said.

  “Maybe,” Ellie said miserably, because she knew it wasn’t always so easy-peasy. An apology didn’t always make hurt feelings go away. She and Toby went inside her house, where she slunk through the kitchen, gathering the ingredients to make her favorite peanut-butter-marshmallow sandwiches.

  “Are you sure this is a real sandwich?” Toby asked as she slathered peanut butter on some bread.

  “Of course it’s a real sandwich. Bread, stuff in the middle. Sandwich,” Ellie said.

  Toby looked unconvinced but pressed the sides of his sandwich together and took a bite. His eyes lit up. “Wow. That’s a good sandwich.”

  “You should try it with potato chips,” Ellie said.

  Toby looked almost as impressed with this suggestion as he had been with the water balloon launcher. When she didn’t say much else, he put his sandwich down and looked at her. “Do you think we can hook the hose up to the doghouse today, so Dylan and the McClellan twins can come see it work?”

  Ellie shrugged at him. “I guess. But I’m sure we’ll turn it on at the party.”

  “Well, yeah, but we weren’t invited. It’s a girls-only party,” Toby said.

  “What?” Ellie said, startled. It was one thing for the neighborhood boys not to be invited because they were sometimes jerk boys, but to not be invited because they were boys? “How can a party be girls-only? Everyone likes parties!”

  Toby shrugged. “We didn’t get invitations from Kit’s mom—all the girls from class did, but none of the boys. Dylan says that’s because it’s a fancy ladies’ tea party. But I really like tea! At least, I like it when you put a lot of sugar in it. Did you know they take breaks in England to have tea? Like, when they want to relax for a minute.”

  “You should be able to come to the party.”

  “It’s okay,” Toby said. “I mean, we didn’t invite you and Kit to play soccer, because it was a boys-only team.”

  “That was dumb too,” Ellie said. “You even said it earlier!”

  “Yeah,” Toby agreed. He took another big bite of sandwich just as the doorbell rang. Ellie thought it might be Kit and ran to the door, almost crashing right into it. She flung it open.

  It was The Presidents.

  “Hey, Ellie! We’re having some trouble with the toy bin,” McKinley said. “We thought you could help.”

  McKinley was holding the bin—the pen the bin rotated on was crooked, and it didn’t look like it would turn correctly. It was a quick fix, an easy fix, but . . .

  “Um, I . . .” Ellie glanced back toward the kitchen, where Toby was waiting.

  “Is the rest of the doghouse done? Can we see it?” Madison asked. Madison had a big, loud voice. Normally, it was great, especially if you were her partner on a school project where you had to talk to the class. But right now, her having a big, loud voice was a problem, because—

  “Is that Kit? Is the surprise ruined?” Toby asked, and Ellie cringed as she heard his flip-flops slapping the floor as he ran her way. He rounded the corner in the hall, and his mouth dropped.

  “What’s he doing here?” McKinley asked, scowling.

  “What are they doing here?” Toby aske
d, scowling back. This made McKinley scowl harder.

  Ellie bit her lips, then answered everyone’s question at once. “Helping with the doghouse.”

  And then, they all exploded.

  “You didn’t tell me that!” Toby shouted at the same time The Presidents yelled—almost all together—“You didn’t tell us that!”

  Ellie flinched. “Okay, I’m very, very sorry—it’s just that I know you all don’t always get along!”

  “That’s because he’s one of the jerk boys,” McKinley said.

  “That’s because they’re gross girls,” Toby answered.

  “Stop it!” Ellie said. “No more name calling!” They all looked really mad, but at least they went quiet for a second.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me they were helping, Ellie. I thought we were building the doghouse together!” Toby said eventually, and now he didn’t sound mad—he sounded hurt, just like Kit had earlier.

  “And you lied to us,” Madison said. “You told us you were building the house alone.”

  “You didn’t even tell them I was helping?” Toby said, eyes wide.

  “I just . . . I . . .” Ellie didn’t know what to say or how to say it. She fiddled with one of the latches on her tool belt nervously. She could fix all sorts of things—mailboxes and fences and ladders—but she didn’t know how to fix this.

  “Well, we are leaving,” McKinley said. Madison put the toy bin on the ground. Taylor didn’t let go of the scissors.

  “Me too,” Toby said.

  “Wait!” Ellie called, but they were all on their way down the sidewalk. They split at the bottom. Toby stomped toward his house, and The Presidents stomped back toward McKinley’s. None of them looked back.

  Ellie sank down on the bottom step of the staircase. Her eyes felt hot and her mouth went all tight. It was one thing for one friend to be mad at her, but for all her friends to be mad at her? Her stomach flipped around. Why had she told so many lies to begin with? Even if they hadn’t wanted to help with the doghouse, at least they wouldn’t all be stomping off.