The Trouble with Rules

by Leslie Bulion

  Hi, Mom! I typed. You there? I hit Send. I always typed out whole words for Mom instead of using IM shorthand.

  Hi, sweetie! How was your day?

  Okay, I answered. My new friend came over. Helped Dad with photo shoot in woods.

  Sounds great! Mom typed back.

  I smiled. Mom was right. My day had been lots better than okay.

  Another IM popped up. Nick go too?

  I blew out a long, slow breath, then typed an answer. No.

  He drew chalk roads while we were at the stream.

  I’m sure he still wants to be your friend.

  I closed my eyes. I wanted to be Nick’s friend, too. But things had gotten out of control. I felt the weight of those rocks coming back on my chest. Why do kids act so stupid? I typed.

  You mean Nick?

  No! My fingers flew over the keys. I knew in my heart that none of it was Nick’s fault. I mean everybody else! My eyes stung and my throat closed up tight. It was a good thing I could bang on the keyboard and didn’t have to talk. Why can’t everything just be like last year?

  Things change, I guess, Mom typed. And hormones start to fly.

  I groaned. Fingers in my ears!

  LOL! Mom answered.

  Where’d she learn that? Not kidding, I typed.

  OK. Just remember, Nadie… Everyone figures out this growing up thing in their own way… You will, too.

  How can we figure this out if we can’t even talk to each other?

  I’m sure you’ll find a way, Mom messaged. Sorry, sweetie. Got to run now. Love you! Mom.

  I could see that Mom wasn’t signed on anymore. I love you, too, I typed slowly and hit Send anyway.

  NickFan wasn’t showing on my buddy list. But he could have changed his screen name and I wouldn’t even know about it. I clicked on the drawing program and opened a new file.

  An instant message popped up from RobotGord: Hi, it’s Gordon. R U Nadie?

  Why in the world was Gordon IM-ing me? Yes, I typed. I hesitated, then hit Send.

  Can U help with Spark bug cover?

  Gordon had picked up on the layout program just fine in school. U know how, I wrote back.

  I can’t draw like U. Work 2 gether?

  I thought about it. I guessed I could do some drawings for him the next day at lunch. He’d have to figure out how to scan the drawings into the cover, though.

  OK, I typed.

  I live on Laurel. B right over.

  No! 2 morrow in school, I pounded at the keys. But RobotGord had already signed off.

  I ran upstairs. “Dad!” I grabbed his arm. “This kid is coming over to work on a Spark cover with me.”

  Dad smiled. “Right now?” he asked. “And who might this kid be?”

  “Gordon,” I said, finding it hard to believe myself.

  “Oh,” Dad said. He looked at the clock. “Well, it is a school night, so he—Gordon is a he, right?”

  “Yes,” I said miserably.

  “Well, he’ll have to go home by nine, don’t you think?”

  I thought he should go home before he even got here, but I didn’t say so. Dad went into the living room and picked up a magazine. A few minutes later Gordon knocked on the kitchen door, and I had to let him in. He went right over to the table and spread out his papers. Something about him looked different.

  “Here’s where I got my idea,” he said. He showed me Mr. Allen’s list of the different kinds of insects—the biggest insect orders—beetles, butterflies, flies, bees, and a couple of others. Then he pulled out another copy of the same list, but this one had numbers up in the tens or hundreds of thousands next to the name of each order.

  “Those are the numbers of different species in each of the insect orders. I thought—well, what do you think? If we draw one bug to represent each order, but no matter what size the bug actually is, we’ll make it big or small depending on how many different species of that bug there are in the world?” He looked at me eagerly.

  I tried to picture it. “You mean like here where it says there are three hundred and fifty thousand kinds of beetles, we make the beetle the biggest bug in the picture? And since there are only twenty thousand different bugs in the grasshopper order, we make the grasshopper the smallest?”

  “Yeah! Exactly! We could put in water, trees, and dirt, all those colors washed into the background the way you do it. See? I tried to draw the bugs.” Gordon showed me a page of rough sketches. “But I’m not so good without something to draw from. I know it’s a lot of drawing. We should probably put in the top seven kinds, at least, and I was hoping you might, well…” His voice trailed off.

  Gordon’s sketches were a decent start, but it looked like he just hadn’t given each one enough time. Time was going to be a big problem if we had to finish all of these tonight.

  “Wait a minute!” I exclaimed. “I’ve already done these!” I ran upstairs and got my science packet. I showed Gordon how I’d included a drawing for almost every major insect group. “They’ll be perfect for your idea. Come on. We can use my dad’s computer.”

  Gordon followed me downstairs. While I scanned in my bug drawings and sketched the background, he figured out how big each bug should be and where it would go. We took turns filling in extra colors. Gordon had never used a drawing stylus before.

  “This works great!” he said. He added a border to the background. The cover was looking very professional.

  “This was a cool idea, Gordon,” I said. “Mr. Allen is really going to like it.” I stepped back from the screen and squinted. My eye kept going back to one dull area on the cover. “Nope.” I shook my head. “With all of the beautiful butterflies in the world, we just can’t use my drawing of Lacey’s boring old wheat moth.”

  Gordon chewed his lip. “You’re right,” he said. “Do you want to draw something else?” He held out the stylus.

  “No,” I told him. “You do.” I pulled out the big butterfly guide from my dad’s bookshelf and handed it to Gordon. “Pick one.”

  He closed his eyes and let the book fall open on its own. He started to draw with the stylus, then stopped.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Just keep your eye on the picture. Start with a small shape, then add more shapes around it until you have the whole thing.”

  Gordon bit his lip and started drawing again. He looked back and forth from the book to the screen. I watched a series of honeycomb shapes connect into the graceful form of a swallowtail butterfly. With a few clicks, Gordon washed in a brilliant yellow.

  “Wow.” I nodded. “Beautiful.”

  He ducked his head, and I saw him smile.

  “Hey!” I blurted out. “Now I know what’s different about you! You’re not acting like a robot!”

  Gordon stood up abruptly. “Thanks for the help, Nadie,” he said. “Can you print that and bring it in tomorrow?” He was already halfway up the stairs.

  “Gordon, wait!” I called after him.

  He stopped and turned first his head, then his arms, then his body toward me.

  “Why do you do it?”

  Gordon looked at the ceiling for a moment. “Robots-can-act-the-same-way-to-boy-humans-and-to-girl-humans,” he said, going back to his mechanical voice. But then he added in his regular voice, “And after everyone gets used to it, no one even makes fun of them much for being robots.”

  I was still thinking about that long after I’d heard the screen door bang behind him.

  16

  THE ENORMOUSLY

  BRILLIANT IDEA

  When I got to school the next morning I saw Nick over by the window, pouring water into his hellgrammite habitat. He didn’t look up. Why had he bothered to draw the streets for Brambletown again? I’d been chewing that around and around in my mind since breakfast. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I put my backpack in my cubby and sat down.

  “Hi!” Summer said. “Guess what? My tick shriveled into a tiny raisin.”

  “Ugh,” Lacey exclaimed loudly. She made a face
and checked to see who was watching her.

  A tick raisin didn’t seem like a happy picture to me. “Does that mean it’s—”

  “Yup. Gave its life for science, I guess.” Summer shook her head sadly. “I didn’t feed it. I mean, whose blood was I going to give it?” She held her palms up. “Mine?”

  Lacey harrumphed and swiveled around in her seat, turning her back to us.

  “What are you going to do about the assignment?” I asked Summer.

  “Well, there are lots more ticks where that one came from. But listen,” she said, changing the subject, “I have to tell you about my great idea—”

  “Nadie, would you step over here a moment, please?” Mr. Allen called from his desk. “You, too, Gordon.”

  Whatever idea Summer had, I wasn’t going to hear about it now. I watched Gordon do his metal-boy walk to Mr. Allen’s desk, then followed him. All year long I’d thought Gordon’s robot act was weird and a little dumb. But now I got it. A robot could be friends with anyone—boys and girls—because, well, he was just a machine. I could see now that Gordon the robot was smart. Really, it was everyone else who was acting dumb.

  Mr. Allen’s head was bent over Gordon’s Spark cover. “I recognize these insect sketches from your science packet, Nadie,” he said without looking up. “That’s a problem.” He tapped the drawing and frowned.

  I wasn’t on the Spark editorial board anymore, so I probably wasn’t supposed to work on the cover. What if Mr. Allen made Gordon do it all over again? Today was Thursday. He couldn’t finish all those drawings in time for this issue. There’d be no Spark this week, and by next week we might not even be working on bugs anymore.

  “But Gordon had such a great idea,” I tried to explain. I saw Owen watching us and lowered my voice. “I just helped him out, that’s all. It really is his work.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Mr. Allen said. He looked at me, then at Gordon. He smiled. “This work belongs to both of you. It’s quite remarkable, really. You should both be extremely proud. I know that I am. This cover takes the material we’ve been working on and uses it in a whole new way. It also showcases each of your special talents.” He looked over the drawing again and cleared his throat. “I think I feel about as happy as any teacher can feel right now,” he finally said. “Thank you, Nadie.” Mr. Allen shook my hand. “Thank you, Gordon.” Gordon’s face turned a very unrobotlike shade of red.

  “But Mr. Allen, if it’s good, then why is it a problem?” I asked.

  “It’s a problem because your name isn’t on the cover along with Gordon’s,” Mr. Allen said, pointing to the bottom of the page. “You two had better rethink that byline. This cover shows me that we need to rethink our Spark editorial board as well. All students who can share ideas and work together should be able to do so—that’s the whole point, after all. It’s what already makes our magazine spectacular and unique.” He turned toward the window. “Nick?”

  Nick looked up.

  “Are you free at lunchtime to go over this week’s Spark editorial with Jess?”

  Nick nodded. I saw him drum a triumphant two-fingered riff on the windowsill.

  “Excellent. Yes, excellent.” Mr. Allen nodded back and faced the class. “And now, entomology enthusiasts, please return to your seats and take out your insect feed journals.”

  We ended up having a big Spark organizational meeting that lasted through lunch and recess. Nearly half the class was there. Kids suggested new jobs like poetry editor, news editor, and photographer. Summer volunteered to write a pet care column. Gordon and I were in charge of cover art. Nick was back on the editorial page. Alima and Jess were going to start a new section for letters to the editor.

  The busy school day went by like any other, but something had changed. Maybe it was just that heart-tingling feeling of spring breaking through, but I felt I could sense all kinds of possibilities wafting in on the breeze.

  At the end of the day, Mr. Allen called me up to his desk again.

  “Nadie, I was wondering something. Did you scan in all of your sketches for the cover?” he asked. “Or did you draw them with a mouse?”

  “Well, I scanned in most of them,” I explained. “But Gordon did the butterfly right on the computer. He didn’t use a mouse, though. He used my dad’s drawing stylus.”

  “A drawing stylus?”

  I glanced at the clock, then explained how the stylus worked like a pen on a pad. “My dad’s computer drawing program has lots of special tools and effects. You can do all kinds of cool things with the stylus.”

  “If your work is any indication, that program is a wonderful learning tool,” he said. “I’d like to have something like that in our classroom. Do you know the exact name of it?”

  I shifted from one foot to the other and looked at the clock again. I’d been planning to wait for Nick at the corner of Broom and Laurel after school. I was just going to come right out and ask him about Brambletown. But instead of getting to our corner first, now it looked like I wasn’t going to show up at all.

  “Why don’t I ask my dad for more information and bring it in tomorrow?” I suggested hopefully.

  “Thank you, Nadie. That would be very helpful,” Mr. Allen said. “Have an imaginative afternoon!”

  I raced to our corner at a flat-out run, but Nick wasn’t there. I picked up a handful of pebbles from the gutter and heaved it at the stop sign. Maybe boys and girls really just couldn’t be friends. I didn’t know anymore.

  “Hello, Your Lateness,” Dad said. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Mr. Allen kept me after class for a few minutes,” I said. “He asked me for information about our computer drawing program.”

  “I can get that together for you.” Dad jangled his car keys. “But right now I’m off to get Zack. There’s pudding in the fridge.” He went out. “Summer’s mom phoned,” he called from the driveway. “I told her your idea was okay by me and I called the town hall to get permission. Just wait for me to come back before you get started.”

  Town hall? I pushed open the screen door and stuck my head out. I heard the car door slam. “What idea?” I yelled. Dad waved as he drove away.

  Mystified, I went to the refrigerator and took out a dish of vanilla pudding. I stared at the skin on top, examining the little lines and swirls. At first they looked like an abstract design, but after a while they started to look like a beehive and a swarm of bees. Great. Thanks to Mr. Allen, I now had insects on the brain. I stuck my spoon into the beehive first. The rest of the pudding quivered.

  I took a big spoonful of beehive skin with creamy pudding underneath. The soft part melted away on my tongue, and I chewed the drier skin, then swallowed. “What idea?” I said aloud.

  “My idea!” Summer opened the screen door and came in waving a can of yellow spray paint. “That’s what I started to tell you this morning. I mean, why let all our work on Brambletown just wash away in the next good rain?”

  I looked at the can of spray paint, then at Summer’s grin. “Enormously brilliant.”

  “My mom gave this to me,” Summer said. “It’s a kind of quick-dry paint that her store’s not ordering anymore.”

  I got another pudding out of the fridge and traded it to Summer for the spray can. While she ate, I read the back panel. At the bottom it said “Coverage: 12 square feet.”

  “Do you think this will be enough?” I worried. “Brambletown has lots of roads.”

  “Don’t worry about that—come and look!” Summer pulled me outside to her bike, parked in the driveway. Contact was curled up in the kiddie trailer next to a cardboard box filled with spray cans.

  “I guess old Contact’s guarding the goods,” Summer said, laughing.

  I scratched the orange cat behind her ears. I felt the gentle, steady rhythm of her purr travel through me as I looked out at the chalk beginnings of what would be our new Brambletown.

  When Dad came home, he helped us get started. The clerk at Town Hall had told him that since no houses had been
built yet on the cul-de-sac it would be okay to put paint on the street surface. They’d have to repave it after houses were built anyway.

  Dad showed us how to spray close to the ground and downwind so we wouldn’t paint ourselves or breathe in fumes. Apparently not interested in paint, Contact stayed in the kiddie trailer. Zack bustled back and forth from the house to the driveway bringing treats and water for “kitty.”

  Summer and I filled in all of the chalk roads with white and pale yellow spray paint. Brambletown was taking on a bold new look. I stood up straight to stretch and admire our work.

  “We have lots of other colors,” Summer said, tossing through the cans in the box. “We can use them for the shops and houses. What do you want to add first?”

  “A paint store,” I said right away. “In honor of your mom.”

  Summer gave me one of her wide-open smiles. I shaded my eyes and surveyed the painted roads of Brambletown. They looked solid and permanent. I was glad Summer was here. A cloud passed over the sun, and in its shadow I had that prickly feeling of being watched. I looked over at Nick’s house. His living room curtain was pulled to the side in one place. The sun came out again, flooding Brambletown with buttery light. I took a deep breath and looked back at our new roads.

  “How would it be if the buildings weren’t just flat—if we made them stand up somehow?” I asked Summer.

  “It would be great!” she said. “We could skate or bike around them like we were in our own little town.” She pursed her lips. “Do you have wood and stuff to make them with?” she asked.

  “No,” I told her. “I have another idea. I’ll be right back.”

  I walked across the cul-de-sac and up Nick’s driveway. My legs felt quivery like the pudding. As I raised my hand to ring the bell, the door flew open.

  “Hi,” Nick said.

  The familiar smell of his mom’s lemon furniture oil made me gulp. “Do you still have any of those plastic grocery crates?” I asked.

  “You mean the ones from the store? We have lots in the garage,” he said.