Tj and the Rockets

by Hazel Hutchins

“Whatever he steals, he must wrap it in his jacket. Once it’s in the car, he’s home free,” I explained to Seymour. “We have to be at the back door. We have to bump into him or trip him or grab his jacket… anything to get him to drop what’s inside.”

  “Maybe I could invent some kind of beeper that goes off,” said Seymour.

  “That’s what the security man is trying to sell Mom and Dad. If we prove that it’s Mr. G., then they won’t have to spend all that money.”

  And Seymour would be cleared for good. That’s what I kept reminding myself because it felt pretty weird to have a plan to trap someone I’d actually liked.

  That Thursday, Mr. G. had a later shift than usual. Seymour and I had been at the store about an hour before it got close to the time he was getting off. We’d kept extra busy to avoid talking to him. Seymour had been helping me clean and reorganize the pet supply shelves.

  “Are you really, really sure it’s Mr. G.?” asked Seymour.

  “It has to be,” I said. “Who else could it be?”

  “What do you think he’ll take?” asked Seymour.

  “Usually it’s something on one of the lower shelves,” I said. “Not really low down but not really high up either. He could already have it wrapped in his jacket, but my guess is he actually picks it up on his way out of the store at the end of the day.”

  Seymour nodded.

  “And it’s usually on one of the end shelves for some reason.”

  “Hey,” said Seymour, “that lady looks a lot like your gran, except for the knitting bag. Your gran doesn’t do ordinary things like knit.”

  “Soap,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That’s what she always buys. A bar of soap.”

  “Weird,” said Seymour. “I think I’ll go check out the hinges. I want to see what size might work for my Amuze-A-Kitty.”

  It would have all been okay if the restaurant man hadn’t come in. He needed coffee filters, and the kind he wanted weren’t on the shelves. I had to go into the back room to look for more. I thought I’d hear Mr. G. when he came to get his jacket. I guess I was making too much noise shifting boxes to hear, and when I finally found the filters and turned around, Mr. G.’s jacket was gone.

  I hurried into the store. I quickly handed the restaurant man the filters and headed off to look up and down the aisles. I didn’t want to spook Mr. G., but if I could actually see him wrapping something in his jacket, I knew I wouldn’t be so worried about the plan.

  It was too late. I’d gone one way and he’d gone another. He was already almost out the back door. I could see his head just passing by the mirrors along the back wall. Seymour should have been there. Where was Seymour?

  If I hurried maybe I could barrel out the back door and run into Mr. G. after all. I took off down the aisle.

  And that’s when someone tripped me.

  “Seymour!”

  He jumped on top of me and held me down. He had an amazed look on his face.

  “It’s a knitting bag that steals things. She’s invented a knitting bag that steals things!”

  “Seymour! Mr. G. is getting away!”

  “It’s not Mr. G. It’s the lady with the frizzy hair. That knitting bag she carries has a trapdoor bottom. She didn’t know I was watching. She set it on top of the music box on that end shelf, and when she picked it up, presto—no music box. It was like magic!”

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Seymour. “I was so amazed I had to come and tell you right away.”

  By the time I convinced Seymour to let me up, we could see her pushing through the outside door. Seymour and I raced down the aisle and out the door after her. She must have begun to move a whole lot faster once she left the store, because she was nowhere that I could see.

  “There she is!” said Seymour, pointing to the left.

  I caught a glimpse of gray frizzy hair just before she turned the corner.

  We chased her. Down the street. Around the corner. We had to stop and look again. There she was, almost an entire block away. A white van pulled up beside her. We yelled and waved and began to run again, but if she heard us, she didn’t even hesitate. Right before our eyes the soap lady climbed into the van and sped away.

  Seymour and I stood with our mouths open. We hadn’t even been able to get a license plate number.

  “What’s up, you two? Something wrong?”

  Mr. G. had driven down the alley and spotted us standing on the street waving our arms around. Mr. G.! He wasn’t the thief after all!

  I felt a wash of shame. And I felt a wash of complete happiness. I didn’t have time for either, however. Seymour and I raced across and jumped into his car.

  “Follow that van!” called Seymour.

  “The soap lady’s the shoplifter,” I explained as quickly as I could. “She just climbed into that white van!”

  Mr. G. slapped the steering wheel and actually looked pleased.

  “Go, go, go!” said Seymour.

  “No need,” said Mr. G. “I didn’t suspect the soap lady, but I definitely thought he was way too slick.”

  Seymour and I looked at each other, bewildered.

  “I know that white van,” said Mr. G. “It belongs to the salesman who’s been trying to sell your mom and dad the security system.”

  “You mean they know each other?” I asked.

  “You bet,” said Mr. G. “It’s a scam. And I think we’ve just spoiled their fun.”

  Chapter 11

  “Now let me get this straight,” said Gran. “Your mom and dad suspected Seymour of shoplifting. And you, TJ, you suspected Mr. G. of shoplifting.”

  I’d been just as bad as Mom and Dad. I’d suspected Mr. G. without any real proof.

  Luckily Mr. G. hadn’t found out about it. And Seymour… don’t ask me why, but Seymour’s feelings weren’t even hurt. He was just totally delighted to have been part of catching a couple of crooks. Mom had still apologized to him and given him all the hinges he needed for the next hundred years. Gran was trying to understand everything.

  “But it was an older lady who was stealing things? The one you called the soap lady?” asked Gran.

  “She was working with the man who was selling the security systems,” nodded Seymour. “The whole thing was a trick to make store owners spend money they didn’t need to spend.”

  “The police arrested them last night at a store on the other end of the city. They were doing the same thing there,” I told Gran.

  “Talk about sneaky,” said Gran, shaking her head in disgust.

  “Inventors sometimes do sneaky stuff,” said Seymour. “The man who invented the first shopping carts secretly hired people to walk up and down the store and push them like they were regular customers.

  “But he wasn’t stealing from anyone,” Seymour quickly added. “He just wanted people to get used to the idea.”

  The ear-piercing squawk of feedback on a microphone cut through the air. We were in the gymnasium and it was the end of the science fair day. Mom, Dad and even Mr. G. had taken turns away from the store and dropped by in the morning. Gran had showed up about an hour ago.

  The school principal was at the microphone.

  “I’d like to begin by congratulating everyone on the most successful science fair we’ve had at the school for some time. Well done, everyone.”

  There was applause, of course, and then the principal continued.

  “The first award I’d like to present is the Information Award. It’s based on how well the student can explain his or her project to others. I’d like to commend our winner this year for a very thorough and enthusiastic knowledge of his subject matter. The winner is Gabe.”

  Gabe—the kid who hates school! Ms. K. really is a witch. Once Ms. K. had got him to use sports for his science project, he’d gone all out, one hundred and ten percent—isn’t that what sports people say?

  Gabe hadn’t just found out how a speed gun works; he’d also learned how
people had first measured speed back when they didn’t have regular clocks, let alone stopwatches and speed guns. He’d found out the fastest speed of all sorts of things (including cats, which Seymour and I were resource people for) and made charts comparing them. He’d talked to sports trainers about what types of muscles help people run fast or skate fast or jump high or smack a puck or throw a baseball really hard. And the more he learned, the more he found he liked telling other people about it.

  The most amazing part is that when he began to have trouble understanding the science behind it, Mr. Wilson had helped him.

  “Mr. Wilson really knows his stuff,” Gabe explained. “He didn’t do the project for me either. In fact, I think we were wrong about him doing kids’ projects for them. He’s just had so much experience he knows how to pass it along. I might end up being a science teacher like Mr. Wilson when I’m done being a famous hockey player.”

  Good grief.

  The principal gave out five other awards, but none of them went to our class. That was okay. We’d done way better than we’d expected. Ms. K. had risen to the challenge in her quiet, witchy manner, and we hadn’t let her down. For the first time in the history of the school there were great science projects on both sides of the gym.

  “Let’s go look at your invention again, Seymour,” said Gran.

  The Ping-Pong ball machine looked pretty much the same as it did when Seymour had first brought it over to my house. It worked the same too. Seymour had tried to use the hinges from the store to make it always fire just one ball at a time. Whenever he got one part of it under control, however, something else would give and—boom— it would explode balls everywhere. The cats got so they wouldn’t go anywhere near the thing.

  That’s when Seymour had his true brain wave. He decided it wasn’t something for cats to play with at all. It was something to keep cats away. He renamed it The Cat-Astrophe and set it by the china cabinet. Alaska hadn’t gone anywhere near Mom’s special ornaments ever since.

  “You know, Seymour, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll steal your idea next year.”

  We turned to find Ms. K. and Amanda standing behind us.

  “My idea for the Cat-Astrophe machine?” asked Seymour.

  “No, no,” said Ms. K. quickly. “I mean the idea of inventing something. I’ll suggest it to my students next year. I think it’s an idea that might really take off. We might even get more awards than Mr. Wilson’s class by encouraging students to let their imaginations take flight.”

  Seymour looked at me meaningfully. So did Amanda. What was going on?

  “Take off,” said Seymour.

  “Take flight,” repeated Amanda.

  They looked at me. They looked at my rocket. I figured it out. So did Ms. K.

  “Does your rocket fly, TJ?” asked Ms. K. “I thought it was just a model.”

  Gran was smiling, but she didn’t say a word.

  “It does fly,” I said, “but sometimes things go wrong and it flies crooked. Sometimes I forget to put wadding in and the plastic streamers melt.”

  I’d finally figured out what that black sticky stuff was.

  “Would you like to try?” asked Ms. K. “The prizes have already been awarded. You won’t be docked if something goes wrong.”

  It wasn’t the prizes I cared about. I looked around the room. Mr. Wilson was talking to Gabe, Mia and some of the other kids in our class. He was actually interested in their projects. Maybe next year, now that he knew he wasn’t the only teacher who was good at getting kids enthusiastic about science, he’d share some of his fancy equipment. I didn’t want to ruin that for other kids.

  And there was something else too. I’d done it. I’d figured out how to play it safe around Mr. Wilson. I’d set up my rocket and then I’d sat in one place beside it. I’d spent the entire afternoon in the gym without anything going wrong. It was time to quit while I was ahead.

  I looked at Ms. K. and shook my head. She nodded and began to talk with Gran about some of the other projects nearby.

  That’s when I felt it. That sick feeling again. How could I feel sick? Everything had gone great. Everything had gone super.

  But at that moment I realized something I hadn’t understood before. By playing it safe I wouldn’t have to worry about things going wrong, but I’d also lose the chance to do something I really did want to try.

  “Wait!” I said. “I’ve changed my mind. I think.”

  The next moment Seymour and Amanda were helping me pack everything outside before I could change my mind back again.

  “Being nervous is okay so long as you use it to do a good job. I’m scared silly every time I try something in front of people,” said Amanda.

  I didn’t know the smartest kid in class got stage fright.

  “It’s going to work this time, TJ,” said Seymour. “I discussed all this with Alaska and T-Rex last night when I was showing them the Cat-Astrophe machine.”

  Which was ridiculous, but I knew it was Seymour’s way of saying he was behind me too.

  I went over everything in my head. I knew now that while it was true that model rockets were safe, they were also very finicky. Everything had to be exactly right if you wanted to have a perfect launch, and a perfect launch also meant bringing the rocket back to earth undamaged again.

  The body type and engine size had to match. The fins had to be firm and perfectly lined up. The parachute had to be folded properly, not just shoved in. There had to be fireproof wadding between the engine and the streamers or the parachute to keep the heat of the engine from melting the plastic.

  It’s a good thing I had lots to think about because somehow word had spread and the entire school was now filing onto the side of the playing field to watch.

  Gabe was there with his borrowed radar gun to see if he could measure how fast the rocket travelled. Mr. Wilson had hurried down to his laboratory and come back with something that would measure how high it flew. I knew these things were happening because kids were calling across the field, but I tried not to hear. I tried to concentrate on setting up the rocket exactly as it needed to be set up.

  At last everything was ready. I nodded to Seymour to begin the countdown.

  “Ten, nine…”

  His voice was clear and steady on the afternoon air.

  “Eight, seven…”

  The other kids in our class began to count too.

  “Six, five…”

  More kids were counting.

  “Four, three…”

  More and more voices.

  “Two…”

  It sounded like the entire school.

  “One…”

  I took a single slow, wonderful breath. The entire school was watching, but the truth is I forgot all about them. It felt like just me and the rocket.

  “Blastoff!” called Seymour

  FSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS…

  It must have been the longest second in history. This was a much larger and heavier rocket, and for two complete heartbeats there was a lot of smoke and sound but no upward motion. It just seemed to sit there on the brink, quivering. Oh no! It really was going to fall apart right on the launchpad!

  And then…

  Swooo…

  ooooo…

  oooosh!

  It was off! It rose into the air smooth and sleek and eager as if it was born to fly. Up and up and up—sure and strong with a glorious rushing sound both powerful and sweet.

  “Yahoo!” shouted Seymour.

  The thrust stage was over and momentum alone was carrying it upward against gravity. I could see it slowing. It was wonderfully high in the air.

  “One, one thousand. Two, one thousand.”

  I was counting under my breath. This time it would be five full seconds before the smaller charge would, I hoped, pop the nose cone and I’d find out if the launch was really a success.

  “Three, one thousand. Four, one thousand.”

  The rocket had reached maximum height. It seemed to hang in the air.
>
  “Five, one thousa…”

  And then it happened. A perfect circle of red and white appeared round and full and beautiful against the blue of the sky.

  The parachute had opened.

  My brave little rocket was returning safely home.

  My name is TJ Barnes—rocket man.

  The books where Seymour found his facts

  about inventions:

  Brockman, John (editor). The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

  Caney, Steven. The Invention Book. New York: Workman Publishing Co., 1985.

  Gardner, Robert. Experimenting with Inventions. New York: Franklin Watts, 1990.

  Hopper, Meredith. I for Invention—Stories and Facts about Everyday Inventions. London: Pan Macmillan Children’s Books, 1992.

  Jones, Charlotte Foltz. Mistakes that Worked. New York: Doubleday, 1991.

  Platt, Richard. The Macmillan Visual Timeline of Inventions. Toronto: Macmillan Canada, 1994.

  Vare, Ethlie Ann and Greg Ptacke. Patently Female—Stories of Women Inventors and Their Breakthrough Ideas. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2002.

  Wulffson, Don L. The Kid Who Invented the Popsicle. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1997.

  Wulffson, Don L. Toys! Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2000.

  Hazel Hutchins is a prolific, award-winning author for children who knows how to make her readers laugh and cry while keeping them on the edge of their seats. Hazel was captivated by rockets when her son bought a kit at a garage sale when he was ten. He helped her with the technical details for her story. Hazel lives in Canmore, Alberta.