Return of the Homework Machine

by Dan Gutman

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  Even though we weren’t “going out” anymore, I think the four of us had a bond. After a year of being part of the group and everything that happened, we had…something. You can’t go through what we did and just walk away like nothing ever happened.

  Snik had become friends with Brenton because they were both obsessed with chess. And Kelsey and I had become friends too. I guess sometimes like attracts like, and sometimes opposites attract. You never know.

  SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

  I gotta admit, it was cool to be part of a group for a change. I never had a lot of friends at my old school. The kids didn’t like me. I remember hearing them talk about their birthday parties, and feeling bad that I wasn’t invited. My mom wanted to throw me a party, but I didn’t think anybody would come, so I told her I didn’t want a party. Even though I really did. I still remember that.

  My birthday was coming up in October. I guess I started hinting around that Brenton, Judy, and Kelsey should get me presents. It was obnoxious, I know. But if you don’t tell anybody your birthday is coming up, how are they supposed to know?

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  One day Brenton didn’t know I was looking at him, and he was picking at the skin on the side of his thumb. I mean, really picking at it to the point of making himself bleed. So even if he was not my boyfriend, he was still my friend, you know? And I pulled him aside and demanded to know what was bothering him. You don’t do stuff like that to yourself unless something is bothering you, right?

  At first he said nothing was wrong. But when I pointed out that his finger was bleeding, he kind of sighed and admitted something was bothering him. “What is it? What is it?” I begged. And he said, in that cryptic way of his, “Okay, I’ll tell you. But not here.”

  Chapter 2

  October

  SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

  So one day, Brenton calls this meeting. Well, that pretty much blew my mind. Brenton never calls meetings. It’s not his thing. I figured he wanted to play chess. I learned the game over the last year and got pretty awesome at it, if I do say so myself. We played a lot over the summer. I even beat him a few times, which was amazing. Me, beating super genius Brenton Damagatchi! What a rush!

  KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

  I thought Brenton called the meeting to tell us that he rebuilt the homework machine. That would have been great, because I was having a tough time in school. Mr. Murphy is much harder than Miss Rasmussen was, and sixth grade is a lot harder than fifth. Homework was such a drag, anyway.

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  I assumed that Brenton had some deep, dark secret to tell us. I was almost afraid to find out what it was. I remember thinking, What if he had murdered somebody? Can you imagine?

  Well, whatever it was, I was glad we had the meeting. Because the four of us hadn’t been hanging out much since the summer, and I missed them. I missed being part of a group. They were my friends.

  BRENTON’S MOM

  I hadn’t seen Brenton’s friends for some time, so I was a little bit shocked when they showed up at the door after school one day. I had mixed feelings about it, to be honest with you. I felt that they were a bad influence on Brenton, especially that boy Sam, and Kelsey. She had pink hair! My son never would have gotten into any trouble if not for those kids, I’m certain of that.

  But there comes an age when you can’t pick and choose your children’s friends for them. You have to leave it up to them, and hope they use good judgment. I baked them some brownies and left them alone. But I kept Brenton’s door open, just in case.

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

  Something had been bothering me ever since the day we got called into the sheriff’s office last June. No, even before that. I reminded the others about the little blinking red light on the homework machine. When we were using it, one day I noticed that the light was still blinking even after I had turned the computer off. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Then, when we finally pulled the plug so we could throw the whole thing into the Grand Canyon, the little red light was still blinking. There was no traditional power source at all, but the light was on. No battery. The chip that controlled that light had somehow figured out—on its own—how to power itself. It was like it had a mind of its own.

  KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

  Brenton went on and on about some stupid red light on the computer. I didn’t see the point. So what? The light stayed on. Big deal. Maybe it was a glow-in-the-dark light or something.

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

  The thing is, after those hikers found the busted-up homework machine near the bottom of the Grand Canyon, we got called back here like we are now. The sheriff had a trash bag full of computer parts that had been found. I looked through the stuff carefully, and found just about every part of my old computer. Except one. The little blinking red light. It was missing. The brain of the whole thing was missing.

  SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

  I just about busted up laughing. Poor Brenton was losing sleep over some stupid little computer part that wasn’t with the other junk they found at the bottom of the canyon. Can you believe that? The guy’s gonna have a heart attack some day. You can’t sweat the small stuff like that. I told him to take a chill pill.

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  I thought Brenton was overreacting somewhat. He is a worrier, like me. But even I didn’t care about some silly little light. Okay, so they didn’t recover every single piece of the computer. That’s not so unusual. There was probably debris scattered over a wide area after it hit the rocks. We told Brenton there was nothing to worry about. The light probably got washed away by the Colorado River, or maybe it’s still out there, buried in the mud. The point was that it was harmless.

  KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

  After the big meeting was over, we played Ping-Pong. I beat Judy. She totally can’t hit a backhand.

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

  After they left, I checked my e-mail, like I do about ten times a day. There was a note from that Milner guy. All he wrote was, “Did you find the chip?”

  MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

  One of the important parts of the sixth-grade curriculum here is the Anasazi. They were people who lived in this part of the country two thousand years ago. They were the ancestors of the Indian tribes, like the Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo. In fact, the word “Anasazi” means “enemy ancestors” in the Navajo language.

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  Mr. Murphy told us all about the Anasazi. Who would have thought that anybody ever lived right inside the Grand Canyon? Of course, the canyon wasn’t as deep as it is now. But the Anasazi farmed, and they built dwellings out of mud and stone. And then, around 1300 A.D., they left. Nobody really knows why. It’s a mystery. I found the whole thing to be really quite interesting. Mr. Murphy is an expert in history and space and…just about everything. He knows so much!

  MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

  I didn’t know anything about the Anasazi. The kids don’t realize this, but every week, I go to the library and research whatever we are studying the next week. You have to keep one step ahead of those little munchkins, you know?

  One day, Judy came to the library while I was there. She was looking for information about the Anasazi. That’s the mark of a dedicated student! I had to pretend I wasn’t reading the material for the first time.

  KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

  Learning about those cliff-dweller people was a big bore, like everything else in school. I guess kids in Texas are forced to learn about cowboys, and kids in Hawaii are forced to learn about pineapples, and kids in Pennsylvania are forced to learn about…gee, I don’t know. Pencils? But we happen to live in Arizona, so they force us to learn about a bunch of people who made mud houses. What I want to know is, if those Anasazi people were so important, how come kids in Texas, Hawaii, and Pennsylvania don’t have to learn about them?

  SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6


  Mr. Murphy said those Anasazi dudes built some of their houses right into the cliffs. What’s up with that? Who would want to live on a cliff? What if you were sleeping and in the middle of the night you rolled over? You might fall off the cliff. That would really suck. No wonder their civilization collapsed. They probably fell off the cliffs and died. Nothing mysterious about that.

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  I was at the library one day looking things up. They have every issue of the Phoenix Gazette going back over a hundred years, and it’s fun to look at the old ads and things. Anyway, I stumbled across an article from 1909. It said that an entire Egyptian city had been found in the Grand Canyon! No kidding. According to the article, this city had hundreds of rooms, artifacts, hieroglyphics, and even mummies. Mr. Murphy was there that day, and I showed it to him.

  MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

  Judy showed me this article about an Egyptian city in the Grand Canyon. This caught my eye, because I’d never heard of such a thing. I had been taught that all Native Americans were descended from Ice Age explorers who came across from Asia on the Bering Strait. But this article suggested people came from Egypt to the Grand Canyon.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to look into it. There were papers to grade, tests to write, lesson plans to work out. But I made a copy of the article so I could look into it later.

  SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

  All summer long, Brenton and I played a ton of chess. Like every day. I mean, there were days when we wouldn’t even stop to eat. But somewhere along the line, I lost interest. It’s a cool game and all, but even a good thing gets old after a while.

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  That was another thing that bothered me. Brenton was supposed to be my boyfriend, but all he ever wanted to do was play chess with Snik. I hardly ever saw him over the summer.

  Personally, I have a problem with the whole idea of chess, I must confess. I know it is a real intellectual game, but I can’t get past the idea that it’s a simulation of warfare. Two armies lined up against each other. Capturing enemy soldiers. Violence. Doesn’t a game like that just promote aggressive behavior, like violent video games and movies?

  SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

  I told Judy I was gonna invent a new kind of chess game. Instead of two armies that try to kill each other, you have two armies that compete to make the most friends. And then at the end of the game, everybody holds hands and sways back and forth while they sing “Kumbaya.” She told me to shut up. I swear, that girl has no sense of humor.

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  Don’t tell him I said this, but my theory is that Snik stopped playing chess because it reminded him of his dad. He was the one who taught Snik how to play, and when he was sent to Iraq they played chess by e-mail. When Snik’s dad was killed in the war, it had to affect him.

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

  Why did Snik stop playing chess? My theory is that the human brain is very adaptable. Like, when you first jump into a pool, the water always feels cold. But after a few minutes of swimming, you don’t feel cold anymore. And when you eat something that you really love, the first bite tastes better than the tenth bite. We adapt to things.

  What does that have to do with chess? Well, Snik adapted to the fun of the game. In the beginning, it was all new and exciting to him. But he got used to it. Once the novelty was gone, he was ready to move on to something else.

  MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

  No, I never liked chess. I know it’s a military simulation, and a lot of the guys I was with in the service played it. But I’ve seen war with my own eyes. I saw my own men die. War is about blood and death. Fear and confusion. Killing people who hate you and want to kill you even though they’ve never met you. It’s not about jumping around squares with little plastic figures.

  KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

  After they gave up chess, the boys got obsessed with model rocketry, of all things. The whole rocket stuff started because Snik had been hinting up and down about his birthday coming up. I thought it would be cool to throw him a surprise party. Judy and Brenton liked the idea, and we got Snik’s mom in on it. She sent him out on some lame errand, and when he came back home, we jumped out from behind the curtains and freaked him out. It was cool. Mrs. Dawkins made a cake and we sang “Happy Birthday,” and Snik blew out the candles. It was cute. He looked like such a little boy while he was opening his presents. I got him some video game where you get to shoot and kill everything in sight. I knew he’d like it because there was a warning label on the package that said it was inappropriate for kids.

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  I bought him a book on the history of graphic novels. Snik always says that he hates to read, but I know that he reads comic books, so I thought he would want to learn more about them.

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

  There’s a hobby shop in Williams that I go to sometimes with my mom. They have a lot of model trains, cars, planes, stuff like that. I was in there one day when I noticed a shelf filled with model rockets. That seemed like the kind of thing Snik might like, so I got him one for his birthday present. In retrospect, it was not a wise choice.

  SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

  Of all the presents I got, the coolest one was the rocket. It was called “Pop Fly” and it was made by a company called Estes. The thing was about two feet tall, and it was shaped like a baseball bat. The best thing was that at the top of the rocket was a baseball. So you shoot the thing up three hundred feet in the air, and when it reaches its highest point, the baseball separates from the rest of the rocket. Then you try to catch the ball when it comes down. Way cool!

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

  I used to have a few of these model rockets myself. They have a small engine with propellant inside. You ignite it with an electrical spark. The rocket goes up, and its body is made of a few hollow pieces. You insert a little parachute between the payload section and the body tube. So once the propellant is all used up, an ejection charge blows the tubes apart. They’re connected by a rubber shock cord. The whole thing floats back down and you can put it together and use it again with a new engine. It’s quite ingenious.

  KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

  Snik and Brenton put the baseball rocket together from the kit. We all went out to the field near the school to shoot it off. Judy’s dad had a bunch of baseball gloves, so we each took one to try and catch the ball when it came down. We chipped in a dollar each, and whoever caught the ball would get to keep four dollars. Like I’m gonna catch a ball, right? We all had to move fifteen feet away from the rocket. Me and Judy pretty much just watched and covered our heads with the baseball gloves.

  SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

  So me and Brenton put the rocket together real carefully. I put the decals on the outside. It looked awesome. You have to pack this flame-resistant stuff called wadding around the parachute so it doesn’t burn when the ejection charge goes off. Brenton had an old launch rod we used so the rocket would go straight up in the air instead of at some crazy angle. We all got out of the way and put on baseball gloves. Everybody did the countdown. Ten…nine…eight…you know. I pushed the button on the controller to send the spark along the wire that would ignite the engine.

  And you know what happened? The thing just blew up on the launch pad! Pow! It didn’t go anywhere. I mean, it just disintegrated.

  The girls freaked out, but Brenton and I were laughing our heads off. It was a riot. Brenton spent like seventeen dollars of his own money on this rocket, and it just exploded in a tenth of a second. It was still cool, though. I love watching stuff blow up too. I decided right away to get another rocket and figure out what went wrong.

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

  There was an electrical malfunction of some sort. I’m not exactly sure what transpired. Maybe we got a wire crossed in the controller, or the engine was upside-down or something.

  JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

  I couldn’t
believe they thought it was funny when the rocket blew up. Boys can be so immature. To be honest, I don’t like the whole idea of shooting rockets up in the air. Mr. Murphy told us the main reason the United States started a space program in the first place wasn’t to explore outer space. No, the main reason was to land a man on the moon before the Russians did. Isn’t that silly and immature? We spent billions and billions of dollars to go to the moon so we could win some symbolic military victory. It was like a sport.

  Don’t boys ever do anything that doesn’t involve one side winning and the other side losing? I think the world would be a lot better if women ran things.

  MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

  One day in language arts, I assigned the class to write a one-page “what if” essay. That’s an essay in which you speculate how the world would be different if something was changed. Judy turned in an excellent essay. I have it here in my briefcase….

  WHAT IF WOMEN RAN THE WORLD?

  by Judy Douglas

  If women ran the world, there would be no more war. Because if mothers were in charge of the military, nobody would ever send their son or daughter off to fight.

  Women are more caring and sensitive than men. If women ran the world, poor people would no longer go hungry because we would make sure to feed them. We would take all the extra food we throw away at restaurants and supermarkets, so homeless people would get three meals a day. We would feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and shelter the homeless. We would stop polluting the atmosphere and put an end to global warming.

  If women ran the world, there would be less crime, and more compassion. Less hate, more love. Less fighting, more cooperation. People would respect one another and obey the law. There would be less smoking and drinking and drug abuse too. The world would be a better, safer, happier place. Everything would be a lot cleaner and neater too. Because most boys are pigs.