Parker Bell and the Science of Friendship

by Cynthia Platt

  Theo cleared his throat and turned bright red.

  “Um, we could do chickens,” he said.

  Parker’s eyebrows went high up on her forehead. Her eyes bugged out. If Grandma Bell were here, she definitely would warn Parker about having her face stick that way. (Even though Parker really had told her over and over that scientifically it couldn’t happen.)

  “That’s a great idea!” Cassie said as she wrote in her notebook.

  Not only was Theo bringing his dreaded chickens into the picture, but Parker’s own BFF thought it was a good idea.

  “But I hate chickens!” Parker protested. “You know I do.”

  Cassie didn’t look up from her writing. “I know, but sometimes you have to sacrifice for science,” she told Parker. “And we need to pick an animal for our presentation!”

  “We could bring in one of my chickens,” Theo said. “And even a chick if one hatches in time, so we can talk about the down and how it keeps the chicks warm.”

  Now that Theo had started talking about chickens, there was no stopping him. Parker wasn’t sure if that proved or disproved her prediction about being kind to get him to talk. There was a strong possibility her prediction was wrong. Parker hadn’t considered that Theo might talk only when he was excited about something, like coding or chickens. Maybe he talked to Cassie because they shared lots of interests. All he and Parker had in common was their love of Morph-Bots. She needed to reassess her predictions.

  She also needed to get this situation under control.

  “I’m sure we can’t bring live animals to school,” said Parker.

  “But there already is a live animal in our classroom,” Cassie said.

  “And all the crickets that Snodgrass eats are alive too,” Theo added.

  Parker had to think, and she had to think fast. They just couldn’t do chickens for the Animal Adaptation Presentation! They couldn’t do chickens at all! Chickens were one of the top ten things that got Parker peeved. And by “peeved,” Parker really meant scared her like crazy.

  Besides, if they did chickens, how would Parker ever know if Theo was talking more because he loved the animals or because she was being nice to him? There were now too many variables to know if her experiment proved anything or not.

  “Snodgrass is in a tank,” she told them, thinking fast. “The chicken won’t be. It will just poop all over school, and we’ll end up in trouble.”

  Finally, Cassie looked up from her notebook. “Parker, you’ve said no to every idea that we’ve come up with.” Cassie did not sound pleased. “And you haven’t come up with any ideas of your own.”

  “So maybe we can do chickens?” Theo said.

  “We’re not doing chickens!” Parker exclaimed. “We can’t just bring in an animal. We need to do real science if we’re going to win!” She had this one chance to prove to the world she was a real scientist, like Jane and Mae. She wasn’t going to blow it now.

  “Then what are we going to do?” Theo asked.

  It was a good question. Just not one that Parker had the data to answer.

  Chapter 9

  Some Guinea Pig

  Parker went home feeling discouraged. Her mom had a headache from dodge ball day in her PE classes. Her dad was super busy in the bakery. So Parker went to the one living creature in the house she knew was always there for her and always understood exactly how she was feeling: Algebra.

  Her guinea pig hopped out of his cage and walked around for a bit, stretching out his itty-bitty legs. Then he climbed into Parker’s lap.

  “You’re some guinea pig, you know that, Algebra?” Parker said. “Much better than chickens.”

  The furry little guy climbed up to Parker’s shoulder and nestled there, as if he really understood how much Parker needed him right then.

  Parker scratched behind his ears, and Algebra purred like a little engine.

  “Like a little engine!” Parker said under her breath. She reached up and took the piggy off her shoulder.

  Suddenly, Parker was having a eureka moment all over again.

  Parker looked at Algebra very carefully. Itty-bitty legs. Beady eyes. Compact size. He could run fast to escape predators, even though there weren’t any in Parker’s bedroom. He could squeak, really loudly sometimes, as if he was trying to communicate with her. The wild cousins of guinea pigs weren’t exactly just like her domestic little guy, but they did the same thing to talk to one another. And if he were female, he could have a zillion babies to make sure that guinea pigs reigned supreme forever.

  He was one amazing bundle of animal adaptations.

  The guinea pig kept purring and Parker felt so happy that she could purr herself.

  She finally had the perfect solution to the chicken problem. But just bringing Algebra into class wasn’t going to win her team a gold medal. They had to go above and beyond and really prove themselves as scientists to win the Triathlon. Besides, she really didn’t think Ms. Garcia would like it if they brought a live animal to school, especially for an all-school assembly. What Parker had to do was to figure out how to make one guinea pig into an amazing and really scientific presentation.

  But no brilliant ideas were popping into her head. She collapsed onto her bed, holding Algebra in her arms.

  Parker looked up at Jane and Mae.

  “You two would know how to make this happen,” she said glumly. “But I can’t figure it out at all.”

  Jane looked like she completely understood. Mae smiled as if she fully believed Parker could do this. She hoped Mae was right.

  * * *

  The best idea ever came to Parker when she least expected it: over the macaroni and cheese her dad had made for dinner. Oh, it wasn’t the mac and cheese that made the long-lasting LED light bulb go off inside her head. It was the double-armed robot in the middle of the kitchen table that she’d built last year. One arm held the saltshaker, the other the pepper. All you had to do was press a button in front of your plate and the robot would swivel around and bring you whichever shaker you wanted. Even her mom had been impressed with this gadget (probably because Parker hadn’t taken apart anything in the kitchen to make it).

  Parker loved robots. She had heaps and hoards of robotic parts and engines and kits in her Mad Science Lab. Enough to do something really brilliant for the Animal Adaptation Presentation. Something brilliant like building a guinea pig robot!

  But Parker wouldn’t be able to show off all of Algebra’s many animal adaptations with a single robot. She needed to think bigger than that. She needed to build bigger than that. Her team wasn’t going to make just one robot.

  “We’re going to make a whole robot army!” she announced during dinner.

  Her mom and dad looked over at her. “You’re going to make a what?” her mom asked.

  “A robot army,” Parker replied. “Of guinea pigs. For the Animal Adaptation Presentation. That way, even if we don’t win, we can still chase off the Dempsey Triplets with our robotic minions!” This idea was getting better by the minute!

  Her mom and dad stopped eating. They looked at each other. Then they looked back at Parker.

  “No,” her dad said. “No way.”

  “Why?” Parker cried. “You don’t think I’d be able to do it?”

  “No, honey, we think you would be able to do it,” her mom said. “That’s the problem.”

  “Robotic minions are never a good idea,” said her dad. “They always lead to trouble in the movies. Don’t you remember what happened in Robot Alive?”

  “The minions ate all the people,” her mom offered. “I didn’t even know robots could eat people.”

  “I guess some can,” her dad replied.

  “But that was just a movie,” Parker reminded them. “This is real life. Real robots don’t eat people. They don’t eat anything. They just use power.”

  “Power they get from eating people,” her dad said.

  Parker couldn’t tell if they were joking or if that movie had had a stronger impact on
her parents than she’d thought. Personally, she had found it unrealistic.

  “Well, our robot army won’t eat people,” Parker declared.

  “They’ll just chase off the Dempsey Triplets?” her mom said.

  “Only if Aidan and Braidan and Jaidan don’t take the last part of the Science Triathlon seriously enough,” Parker replied.

  Her parents looked at each other again. “No way,” they said at the same time.

  Parker sighed. “What if I promised that we wouldn’t go after the Dempsey Triplets with our guinea pigs?”

  Her dad twisted his mouth into his thinking expression. “And the robots wouldn’t eat anyone?”

  “The only thing they’d do is show off guinea pig adaptations,” Parker promised. “No eating anyone or chasing anyone.”

  Her dad looked at her mom and her mom looked at her dad. “Sounds like some gold medal science to me,” her mom said.

  “Especially with Cassie and Theo to help you,” her dad added.

  Parker’s face clouded over.

  “What’s wrong?” her dad asked. “You’re still working with Cassie and Theo, right?”

  “I only just thought of the idea,” Parker told him. “All I have to do is let them know and we can start building.”

  But a tiny bit of worry poked at her the way Jaidan’s finger had all last year in art. What if Cassie and Theo didn’t agree to her brilliant idea? What if they ended up doing chickens?

  What if Parker never got a chance to prove what a good scientist she was by winning the gold medal?

  Chapter 10

  Mad Scientists at Work

  Parker always did her best scientific work in her lab. She’d built a two-foot-tall Ultra-Megabot in there. She regularly examined things like her own hair and guinea pig poop with her microscope. She constructed contraptions using the bins of tools and petri dishes and spare parts that lined the lab. She never threw anything away, as who knew when she’d need leftover robotic spider legs or a mini solar panel or even old wires to connect the things she built to their power sources.

  Her Mad Science Lab was the best room in the whole house. And it was all hers!

  For the next few afternoons, though, it would be Cassie’s and Theo’s, too. Cassie didn’t love the Mad Science Lab the way Parker did, because Cassie was more into computers and facts than working out experiments and building. None of that mattered now, though. Parker had everything they needed all in this one room to make the very best, most scientific Animal Adaptation Presentation ever.

  All she had to do was convince Cassie and Theo to build the army of guinea pig bots.

  “So here’s what I’ve been thinking . . .” Parker began. That was as far as she got, though. Because Theo had something to say.

  “Wow!” For once, Theo wasn’t looking at his shoes. He walked around Parker’s lab, looking at everything. “This is the best room ever.”

  “Thanks!” Parker said. “It’s my favorite too.”

  “Are these all robot parts?” Theo asked, peeking into a bin.

  “Yep,” Parker said. “And did you see the Ultra-Megabot I made? It can talk in his voice, or you can record your own so he sounds like you.”

  Theo picked up the robot and admired it. “This is amazing.”

  It turned out that the Mad Science Lab brought out the new talking Theo. And it turned out that Parker and Theo had more in common than she’d thought. Just as Parker opened her mouth to say more friendly things (what better place to keep testing out her theory about Theo than in an actual lab?), Cassie reminded them why they were there.

  “Should we brainstorm presentation ideas?” Cassie said. “The sooner we get started, the better!”

  “Yes!” Parker replied, getting back on topic. “Let’s do this.”

  Cassie tossed her long braid over her shoulder and got out her notebook so she could write everything down. “Who’s got an idea of what we should do?” she asked.

  At the very same moment, Parker, Cassie, and the new talking Theo all blurted out answers.

  “Guinea pigs!” Parker said.

  “Cats!” Cassie said.

  “Chickens!” Theo said.

  They all looked at one another for a second.

  “Okay, that’s a lot of ideas,” said Cassie. “So which do we do?”

  That turned out to be a tricky question.

  “What could our project be if we did cats?” Parker asked Cassie. Parker wanted to do guinea pigs, of course. But Cassie was her BFF, so Parker needed to take her ideas seriously.

  Cassie bit her lip as she thought about it. “Well, we couldn’t bring Cleopatra, even if there wasn’t a live animal issue,” she replied. “Cleo would freak out around so many people.”

  “I guess we could make a cat poster,” Theo ventured.

  Parker wanted to remind him that a poster was a boring idea, but then she had to remind herself that she was being extra-super nice to get him to keep talking. “We need to think bigger than that,” she told him. “The best way to show that we’re real scientists is to do some real science.”

  “Well, we could bring in my chickens,” Theo said.

  “But then we’ll have to bring in live animals,” Parker reminded him. “And that won’t really show off our science skills.”

  Theo frowned. “But you want to bring in your guinea pig,” he said. “He’s a live animal too.”

  Even Cassie had her doubts. “What’s the difference if we bring in one live animal or another?” she asked. “We might still get in trouble.”

  This was Parker’s big moment. “We wouldn’t have to bring Algebra to school,” she told them. “We can make guinea pig robots instead.”

  “Guinea pig robots!” Theo said. His eyes were wider than Parker thought eyes could go. It was hard to tell, though, if that meant he was excited or peeved.

  “How many would we have to make?” Cassie asked, opening her notebook. Parker knew she could count on Cassie to be practical.

  Now Parker had to be practical too. She had to really think this through. For their presentation, they had to build robots that would show off guinea pig adaptations. So she thought about the ways guinea pigs had evolved in order to survive in the wild.

  “We’ll need one that squeaks,” Parker said. “Because wild guinea pigs can make noises to alert their friends or ask for help.”

  Cassie wrote this trait down in her notebook, then looked up. “Algebra can run pretty fast for such a little guy,” she said. “Would that help him escape predators?”

  “Yes!” Parker loved this.

  “I read once that guinea pigs can eat their own poop to get extra nutrients,” Theo said.

  “Well, Algebra doesn’t do that, but maybe some guinea pigs do,” Parker said. “Let’s look it up. Maybe we could make a robot that eats little pellets. So instead of pooping everywhere like a live animal would, it would eat poop.”

  Here they were, her best friend in the world and someone who was maybe-kind-of-sort-of becoming a friend, all thinking like scientists!

  Her maybe-kind-of-sort-of friend nodded as if he was thinking it all over.

  Theo might not have been much good at science in second grade, but he was clearly a scientist in the making now. Plus, he was talking more and more. It seemed like science and Parker being extra-super nice were making him more chatty. She would have to record this evidence to help her draw conclusions about her Theo experiment. Later. After they’d proved themselves to be top-notch, award-winning scientists.

  “I think we should also have lots of baby guinea pigs to show how fast they multiply!” Parker said. “It helps keep the species from any danger of going extinct.”

  For a minute, the only sound in the Mad Science Lab was the scribbling of Cassie’s pencil as she jotted down ideas. Theo scratched his chin. Parker was so thrilled they were actually considering her plan!

  Cassie looked at Parker. Parker looked at Theo. Theo gave them both a huge grin.

  “Let’s make rob
ots!” he said. “How hard can it be?”

  Parker Bell felt like it was finally her turn to feed Snodgrass and she was about to eat a cricket. She was ready to plan and design and build. And her two friends were by her side to do it.

  Chapter 11

  An Army of Rodents

  The problem was that having an idea and putting it into action were two very different things.

  “If we’re going to make one squeak, could we make it talk, too?” Cassie asked. “Then it could tell the audience cool guinea pig facts.”

  “But we’re supposed to show actual animal adaptations,” Parker argued. “And guinea pigs are awesome, but they definitely don’t speak human.”

  “I’m still not sure how we’re going to make it squeak at all,” Theo added, not at all helpfully.

  All they had done was talk in circles about what they could do, without actually deciding how to do any of it.

  “This is harder than I thought it would be,” Cassie said.

  It’s one thing to make a generic robot—any scientist or engineer could do that. It was another thing entirely to make a whole bunch of bots that acted like guinea pigs.

  There were so many factors to consider. Should they use solar panels or batteries? Have legs or wheels? Add fur or not? How would they make the eyes? And how could they get a robot guinea pig to squeak good and loud?

  Parker’s dad knocked at the door of the lab. He had three glasses of milk for them and some of his world-famous chocolate chip cookies.

  “How’s it going up here?” her dad asked. “Usually it’s a lot noisier when you’re at work.”

  “That’s because we’re not really at work yet,” Parker told him.

  “We need a plan before we can start,” Cassie added. “You know how important a plan is.”

  “I do,” Parker’s dad said. “You have to figure out at least a basic recipe before you can start trying to make the perfect brownie.”