Trouble at Table 5 #4

by Tom Watson

  I reached out and touched the hanger.

  “It’s still warm,” I said.

  Rosie nodded and smiled. She knew it would still be warm.

  “So,” Simon said and looked at Rosie, “we’re going to walk to school rubbing coat hangers the whole time? Our hands will get pretty tired—and hot.”

  Rosie glanced down at the stuff on the table and twirled her hair.

  “We’re not going to use coat hangers,” Rosie said and looked at us both. “And we’re not going to walk.”

  ROSIE WAS BUSY with the Math Fair all day Saturday. Simon had basketball practice at noon on Sunday. So we didn’t meet up until Sunday afternoon. By that time, it wasn’t slushy on the sidewalk anymore—it was icy.

  We met Simon at his garage to get started. We checked the thermometer outside the door before going in.

  “It’s fifteen degrees,” I said.

  Simon yelled, “It’s going to be even colder tomorrow!”

  He had to yell because he was inside his mom’s car. We could see him through the windshield. All the car doors were open.

  “Why are you in there?” Rosie called.

  “I’m trying to go to the big monster truck show in Chicago with my dad!” Simon called back and then scrunched down out of sight. “Remember? For his birthday.”

  This explanation made, umm, no sense to Rosie and me.

  We hurried into the garage and looked inside the car. Simon was in the back seat. Both of his arms were shoved elbow-deep into the back-seat cushion.

  “Simon, what are you doing?” Rosie asked. She tried not to laugh.

  “The monster truck show,” Simon said and grunted, pushing his arms even deeper. “For Dad.”

  “How is shoving your arms into the back seat of your mom’s car going to get you to a monster truck show in Chicago?” Rosie asked.

  “The tickets are expensive,” Simon explained, still pushing and grunting. “And Dad’s birthday is in two weeks.”

  “But Simon, why are you—?” Rosie said and mimicked him, pushing her arms forward in the air and grunting.

  “I need money to buy the tickets,” he answered. “They’re twenty-five dollars apiece. I need to get fifty dollars.”

  “In your mom’s car?” I asked.

  “Sometimes you can find money in here,” Simon explained. He squeezed his eyes shut and searched with his fingers. “Coins fall out of people’s pockets and go down into the seats.”

  “Simon,” Rosie said. “To find fifty dollars in coins, you’d have to—”

  Simon interrupted Rosie.

  “Aha!” he yelled and yanked his hands out. He held up a quarter for Rosie and me to see. “Jackpot!”

  “Only forty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents to go,” Rosie said.

  “Not that much,” Simon replied as he climbed awkwardly out of the car. He pulled some more coins from his pocket. “I found some in the front seat too. And in the cushions of the living room couch! And in my jeans on Friday.”

  We couldn’t tell exactly how much money Simon had, but we knew it wasn’t anywhere near fifty dollars.

  Right then a freezing gust of air blew in through the garage door. Simon rushed to close it. That bitter-cold air blast reminded us why we were there.

  “Okay,” Rosie said and rubbed her hands together. “We better get started.”

  SIMON’S DAD HAD parked his car in the driveway for us so we’d have plenty of room to build our project.

  “We have to get this done before we walk to school tomorrow morning. That doesn’t give us much time,” Rosie said and shivered. “Let’s get moving. That will warm us up some. Thanks for bringing the burlap, Molly.”

  “Mom said we can use as much as we want,” I said and dropped it on the concrete floor.

  “What else do we need?” Simon asked. “Please tell me we don’t have to go outside to get anything.”

  “We only need one thing from your house,” Rosie said and smiled. “But we don’t need it until the end. Everything else is in here.”

  So we got everything we needed and put it all with the roll of burlap.

  “Let’s make sure two of us can fit inside the wagon first,” Rosie said. “And that each of us can pull the other two.”

  So we did that.

  Rosie and I got in the wagon. We sat facing each other. Simon pulled us around the garage. Then Rosie pulled Simon and me. And then I pulled Rosie and Simon.

  “Okay, there’s plenty of room,” Rosie said when we were done. “And we are all strong enough to pull the other two. I’m sorry only two of us will be warm.”

  “That’s better than all three of us being cold,” I said to Rosie. “Plus, we’ll take turns each day.”

  “I want to pull you two on the first day,” Simon volunteered quickly.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” Simon said and grinned.

  “I thought we’d play rock, paper, scissors to decide,” Rosie said.

  “Nope,” Simon said. “I’ll pull first.”

  “Okay,” Rosie said. She picked up the metal gardening stakes and the duct tape.

  And we got to work.

  We stood up two metal stakes in the wagon about a third of the way in from each end. They were wobbly, but we used a ton of duct tape to hold them in place. Rosie said when the burlap was over them, that would help too.

  And she was right.

  We draped the burlap over the poles and the wagon. Then we used scissors to cut it so it ended halfway down the wagon’s sides. As we did, Simon made a suggestion.

  “I think we need a name,” he said.

  “For the wagon?” I asked.

  “For the whole thing,” Simon said. “I mean, we’re transforming this thing. It’s not a wagon anymore. It’s a whole new invention.”

  “We should name it after Rosie,” I said. “It’s all her idea. Or paint a message along the side or something.”

  “No, not after me,” Rosie said modestly. “It’s all of us working together.”

  “The Rosie Rocket!” Simon yelled, ignoring her.

  YOU’VE READ EIGHT CHAPTERS AND 3,792 WORDS. YOU’RE MAKING GREAT PROGRESS!

  ROSIE SHOOK HER head at Simon’s name suggestion.

  But that didn’t stop him. Simon kept shouting names as we worked—and Rosie shook her head after each one.

  We used more duct tape to secure the bottom edges of the burlap all along the wagon’s sides. It was starting to look like a sagging, badly shaped bubble.

  “Raging Rosie!” Simon exclaimed. “Like the Raging Inferno monster truck!”

  It took a little time to tape the front by the wagon handle, but we figured it out.

  “Rosie’s Winter Wagon!”

  Rosie and I made a vertical cut in the burlap at the back of the wagon. That was how we would get in.

  While we did that, Simon tested some sandpaper on a gardening stake that we didn’t use. He wanted to see if it got warm like the coat hanger had.

  “Whoa!” Simon said when he touched the metal. “This thing is hot!”

  “That’s why we’ll wear the gardening gloves,” Rosie said. “They’re rubbery on the palms, so we won’t burn our hands.”

  We poked holes along both sides of the back seam.

  “We need to close up this seam,” Rosie said and twirled her hair.

  “I’m on it,” Simon said and went over to a cardboard box against the wall. Rosie and I knew what was in there—a bunch of his old, beat-up sneakers. When we cleaned the garage in the summer, Simon wouldn’t let us throw them away.

  “You’re going to let us use your sneakers?” Rosie asked, surprised. “But what about all your special memories?”

  Simon hadn’t let us throw them away because he remembered doing certain things in each pair. He loved his sneakers.

  “Not the sneakers,” Simon said, bringing two pairs. “Just the shoelaces.”

  As we took the laces out, Simon told us what was special about each pair. />
  “I caught a wicked garter snake when I was wearing the black ones,” he said. “It was green with a yellow stripe.”

  “What about the red ones?” Rosie asked.

  “With those, I slipped on a wet rock down by the creek and cracked my head against another rock,” Simon said casually. “It didn’t hurt that much, but I got a bad cut. And I had a lot of blood on my cheek.”

  “That’s a special memory?” I asked. We had the laces out now.

  “No, that’s not the special part.”

  Rosie asked, “What is?”

  “When Mom saw all the blood, she felt sorry for me,” Simon answered. “She got me some gelato for the first time. Have you guys had gelato? It’s delicious! It’s way better than ice cream!”

  “So, umm, bashing your head against a rock was worth it because you got to have gelato?” I asked.

  “Totally.”

  We tied the flaps with the shoelaces.

  “One more step,” Rosie said, looking at the wagon. “We need a hair dryer.”

  “Rosie-Dozy-Ding-Dong!” Simon shouted.

  SIMON BROUGHT HIS mom’s hair dryer into the garage. We plugged it into an extension cord—and plugged that cord into the wall.

  “We should run through all the steps like it’s tomorrow morning,” Rosie suggested.

  “You two hop in,” Simon said as we untied the shoelaces on the burlap flaps. “I’m going to be pulling tomorrow.”

  “I can’t believe it’s going to be even colder in the morning,” I said as I got into the wagon.

  “I really hope this works,” Rosie said, climbing in after me.

  Simon tied the flap shut—except for the very top. That’s where he stuck the end of the hair dryer.

  He turned it on.

  “Rosa-Pa-Looza!” he shouted.

  After being in the cold garage for so long, that blast of hot air felt awesome. Rosie and I took turns holding our hands up to it.

  It took about three minutes for it to feel pretty warm inside the burlap bubble. It didn’t blow up like a balloon or anything because burlap has lots of tiny holes in it. But it did stop sagging a bit.

  “Okay, Simon!” Rosie yelled over the loud hair dryer. “You can turn it off now!”

  He turned off the hair dryer, pulled it out, and tied the final shoelace. We knew the warm air would escape, but we wanted it to be as slow as possible.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “We wait,” Rosie said. “I want to see how long this holds the warm air.”

  While we waited inside, Simon worked on the outside. He felt all around and added extra duct tape wherever he thought warm air might be escaping.

  “Warm and Cozy Rosie!”

  It didn’t take long for the burlap to start sagging—just a few minutes. And it was already colder inside.

  “You can let us out now,” Rosie said.

  Simon untied and opened the flaps.

  “That didn’t last too long,” Simon said. You could hear a little disappointment in his voice.

  “Yeah,” I said as Rosie and I climbed out. I was a little bummed with the result too. “It takes fifteen minutes to get to school and it only took a couple minutes for the air to cool down.”

  “It’s okay,” Rosie said and smiled. She tossed the gardening gloves and sandpaper into the wagon. “The hair dryer just gives us a head start. We’re going to generate our own heat on the way using friction. The burlap will protect us some from the wind. And we’ll be moving around when we rub the stakes. All of that will help us stay warm.”

  This made me and Simon feel better. We trusted Rosie—and liked her confidence.

  “We’ll find out for sure tomorrow morning,” I said. Rosie and I zipped up our coats and got ready to go back outside. Simon climbed back into his mom’s car to look for more coins.

  “I have an idea,” Rosie whispered to me as we pulled on our mittens. “To help Simon.”

  But she didn’t tell me her idea until we got outside. That’s because right then, Simon shouted something from the car.

  It was something I don’t think he’s ever said before.

  “I can’t wait to go to school tomorrow!”

  ONLY TWO MORE CHAPTERS TO GO. HOW DO YOU THINK THEIR PLAN WILL TURN OUT?

  ON MONDAY MORNING we got to Simon’s garage fifteen minutes early. Rosie and I ran almost the whole way. It was super cold and we couldn’t wait to test the wagon.

  The thermometer read ten degrees.

  Simon was waiting for us in the garage.

  “Check this out,” Simon said and pointed to the side of the wagon. You could tell he was proud of something. Along the side of the wagon, Simon had painted the name of the invention.

  “Awesome, right?” Simon yelled.

  Rosie and I laughed. I’m not sure Rosie wanted to brag and have her name on the side, but I also think she felt proud of her invention. So I think it was okay.

  We put our backpacks in the wagon through the flap at the back. Simon’s was already inside. Then Rosie and I climbed in and Simon tied all the shoelaces except for the top one. Then he ran back to his house to get the hair dryer.

  “How many tickets did you make?” Rosie asked me.

  “About twenty,” I said and patted my backpack.

  “Me too.”

  “He’s going to be surprised,” I said and shivered. “I hope he hurries.”

  “Do you want to start with the rubbing?” Rosie suggested. “That will warm us up some.”

  It totally did.

  We put on the gardening gloves, picked up the sandpaper, and started to rub it against the metal poles. We rubbed faster and faster. We moved that sandpaper up and down for almost a full minute.

  Then we stopped to rest and took the gloves off to test the temperature of the metal. It was really warm. I could feel the heat a few inches away from the metal. It was like holding my hands up to a fireplace.

  Rosie smiled.

  For a minute, I thought that she smiled because the whole rubbing-the-metal-pole-heat-generating-friction thing had worked to perfection.

  But that wasn’t what she was smiling at.

  Simon had come back into the garage.

  She pointed at him—and laughed.

  I turned to see. It took me a few seconds to figure out what I was looking at. We could see through the burlap, but it was kind of blurry.

  Simon was wearing his muscleman costume from Halloween. The only difference was that he wore his winter coat and hat too. And he was carrying the hair dryer.

  He waddled up to us.

  “What are you doing?!” Rosie yelled and laughed at the same time.

  “I told you I got really warm in this thing on Halloween,” Simon yelled back as he plugged the hair dryer into the extension cord. They didn’t really need to yell, but it helped since we were separated by the burlap. “Plus, I look totally cool, right? I mean, I look like this super strong guy pulling you two in Rosie’s Wicked Ride. Right?!”

  We didn’t stop laughing until Simon was done with the hair dryer. Then he tied the final shoelace. He pulled us down the driveway, past his dad’s car, and onto the sidewalk. We saw his mom and dad taking pictures of us from inside the house.

  Rosie and I put on the gardening gloves and picked up the sandpaper.

  It was time to heat things up.

  IT TOOK ABOUT fifteen minutes to get to school.

  And Rosie and I were totally warm—for lots of reasons.

  1. Rosie’s Wicked Ride was warmed up to begin with by the hair dryer.

  2. We were protected from the wind.

  3. Rubbing the metal poles with the sandpaper totally worked. They got hot—and warmed the air inside. Every few minutes, we rubbed them again to keep them hot.

  4. The activity itself warmed us up too. We weren’t just sitting there. You know what I mean?

  It was fun.

  And it was something else too.

  It was entertaining.

  Not f
or us.

  For other people.

  I mean, how often do you see a muscleman pulling a burlap-wrapped-bubble-wagon thing down the sidewalk? And inside there are two girls frantically rubbing sandpaper up and down two metal poles?

  Umm, not very often.

  If ever.

  It was a rare and unique thing to see. So when people saw it, they stared.

  They yelled.

  They clapped.

  They whistled.

  Cars drove alongside us and honked.

  Not like loud, blaring, mean honks. It wasn’t like this: HOOOOOOOOONK! It was more like short, friendly, encouraging honks, like this: Beep! Beep!

  It was crazy.

  It was fun.

  And it was warm.

  “I think we can stop now,” Rosie suggested once we turned a corner on the sidewalk and saw the school.

  “I know we all worked together and everything,” I said and stopped rubbing. “But I’m glad Simon painted Rosie’s Wicked Ride along the side. It was your idea.”

  “Thanks,” she said. And then she changed the subject. I knew she would. She doesn’t like to take credit for stuff. That’s just the way she is. She asked, “Do you think we should give Simon the tickets right away?”

  “Let’s wait until we get inside,” I answered. “We’ll give them to him at Table 5.”

  And that’s what we did.

  Fun and Games!

  THINK

  In this book, Rosie, Molly, and Simon solve the problem of staying warm on their walk to school. Can you invent a contraption that helps you solve a problem at your house? Maybe you’ll invent something that lots of other kids can use too!