Ethan Marcus Stands Up

by Michele Weber Hurwitz

  When I peek around the bottom of the stairs, I see Ethan lying on his stomach on the icky floor, looking at his laptop screen, and Brian gluing a piece of paper to the trifold display board, which is propped on the sofa. Their backs are to us.

  “Hey, guys,” I announce, and both of them jump.

  Ethan quickly closes his laptop and bolts up. “What are you doing, Erin? Spying on us?”

  “No, we just came down to say hi.”

  “Hi, Ethan.” Zoe waves, giggling and hiccuping again.

  “Hi.” He glares at me. “Okay, you’ve said hi. Now if you don’t mind.”

  Brian folds the display board, then stands in front of it and crosses his arms, like he’s guarding it.

  I try to look past Brian. “What’s the big secret?”

  “It’s none of your business. Just go back upstairs!” Ethan shouts.

  “You guys aren’t . . .” I look back and forth from Ethan to Brian. “Don’t tell me . . .”

  Zoe claps. “Wait! Are you guys doing Invention Day? Something related to your protest, Ethan? That’s so cool!”

  “Seriously?” I raise an eyebrow and give him a look. (Mom’s training me; I’ve almost got it down.)

  “Fine,” my brother says. “If you want to know so badly, we are, okay?”

  “Hold on. Do you know what you’re getting into here?”

  Brian rolls his eyes. “Go ahead, Erin McBarren, tell us we’re idiots and we’re out of our league and we’re gonna fail.”

  Zoe shakes her head, her long ponytail swinging from side to side. “She wouldn’t do that!”

  Brian smirks. “Yes, she would. In a second.”

  “I won’t, I promise. So what’s your invention? Maybe we can help. Give you some advice.”

  Ethan kicks a pen that’s on the floor and it rolls into a corner. “We don’t need any advice.”

  “It’s something about the problem of sitting too much in school, right?” Zoe asks. “Sorry, I saw the board before you closed it.”

  I nod. Now it’s making sense. “Oh, I get it. You want to invent something to solve your ESD issue?”

  Zoe looks confused. “What’s ESD?”

  “Nothing,” Ethan snaps.

  I walk to the display board. “Can I see?”

  Brian’s holding the glue bottle out in front of him with two hands, like he might squirt it in my face or use it as a weapon.

  “I come in peace,” I say.

  “Whatever,” Ethan mutters. “She’s not going to give up. Like a barracuda. Just let her look at it.”

  Brian gives me a little sneer, then lowers the glue bottle and steps aside.

  When I unfold the board, I see they’ve glued on a few sheets of paper. One says: SITTING IS THE NEW SMOKING, and another says: CONSTANT SITTING PUTS YOU AT RISK OF MANY DISEASES.

  “Hmm. Not bad. I have to admit, I’m actually kind of impressed. But what’s your invention?”

  They don’t say anything.

  I turn and look at them, then do another eyebrow raise, for effect. “You do realize you need an actual invention? Not just all these facts about the problem, right?”

  “How clueless do you think we are?” Brian huffs. “We have one. And it’s good. Real good. But that, we’re not telling you.”

  “Yeah,” Ethan adds. “Now can you get out of here, please?”

  I point to the plastic bag that Brian brought. It’s on the floor by the sofa, but it’s twist-tied so I can’t see what’s inside. “Those are your supplies?”

  Ethan stamps his foot. “Erin! Leave!”

  “Fine! Be that way!” I grab Zoe’s arm and pull her toward the stairs.

  Zoe smiles at Ethan. “Maybe we can all break for lunch together. I brought some homemade granola.”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know, maybe.”

  I start to go up. “Well, we’ve got loads of work to do with invasive plants. To basically save every forest in the country. Not to mention life as we know it.”

  Zoe waves. “Bye, Ethan.” She skips up the stairs.

  “We’ll be in the garage if you change your mind,” I call.

  Ethan zooms up behind me and practically pushes us out. “We won’t.” He slams the basement door.

  ETHAN

  When I come back down, Brian says, “Well, that was pleasant. Always fun to hang with your sister.”

  “Really. She’s getting more annoying, if that’s even possible.” I open my laptop. “So, where were we?”

  “You were on the site with that doctor dude who thinks people weren’t meant to sit all day and chairs are slowly killing us.”

  “Right. You know, he says that standing for three or four hours a day is equal to running ten marathons a year?”

  “That’s crazy. Man, I think I sit for like, I don’t know . . .” Brian counts on his fingers. He sucks at math. “Whoa, it’s close to twelve hours! Half the freakin’ day!”

  “I know. And most of that’s in school.”

  I go back to the site and print more stuff for the display board. I practically never want to sit in a chair again. You can get fat, weaken your muscles, mess up your spine. Then there’s this little-known scary fact: you use more energy chewing gum than you do slouching in a chair.

  And my personal favorite—photos of two brain scans, one of a “sitting” brain and the other of a “moving” brain. The sitting one looks like the person could be dead. The moving one is lit up like a fireworks show.

  You tell me how a kid with the sitting brain is supposed to focus and concentrate in school. Impossible, right? See, scomas are a real thing. I knew it.

  Then I somehow come across a quote from Charles Dickens. He used a standing desk, and so did Thomas Jefferson and Ernest Hemingway! Whoa. I love those guys. They got it.

  I shout to Brian, who’s got glue all over his fingers and is trying to unstick them. “C’mere! Look at this!”

  He reads over my shoulder. “That’s awesome. Wait, Dickens? Wasn’t he in that movie we saw with the giant aliens?”

  “No! He wrote famous books, like . . .” I can’t even think of one.

  “Oh, yeah, that guy. A Tale of Two Cities, right? My brother’s reading it for freshman English.”

  “Yes! Who would argue with anything Charles Dickens said?”

  I type the quote, hit the print button, then run upstairs to grab it from Dad’s office. I come back down and hand it to Brian to glue onto the board.

  “If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.”

  —Charles Dickens

  “The explode part is great,” I say. “Because that’s how I feel in class every day.”

  Brian makes an explosion sound, then falls to the floor.

  “Exactly.”

  We’ve explained the problem we plan to tackle. Now, step two: inventing the desk-evator.

  We can do this. WE can do this!

  Right?

  ZOE

  Increased energy? Check.

  Racing heartbeat? Check.

  Loss of appetite? Breathless? Can’t stop thinking about him? Check, check, check.

  The quiz on my phone gives me my score: twenty-five points. I gasp. Then this flashes on the screen, with little pulsing red hearts: NO DOUBT ABOUT IT, GIRL. YOU ARE IN LOVE!

  “Zoe!” Erin snaps her fingers. “Are you doing this with me or not?”

  “Sorry, I just got a little distracted by something.” I slide the phone into my back pocket.

  “I’ll say. Come on, we were going to test the garlic next.”

  “Right, right.”

  Erin picks up a little bottle, then jots something on a pad of paper. “Okay, trial number one with garlic.”

  I walk over and stand next to her, but I feel kind of dizzy. Don’t be alarmed, I’m still very concerned about the invasive plant problem. But all I can think at the moment is . . . Zoe Feld-Kramer, welcome to a whole new world!

  It’s confirmed.

  There’s no denying it
anymore: you are in love with Ethan Marcus!

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Step Two

  ETHAN

  Brian and I hang out in the basement all day, but somehow we never get around to the desk-evator. We watch a movie, make up this basketball game where the ball has to land on the air hockey table, then basically spend the rest of the time eating bags of pretzels, popcorn, Chex Mix; whatever we can find in the pantry.

  Then, around five, we decide that we should have a sleepover so we can work on our invention on Sunday. Mom says it’s okay with her if it’s okay with Brian’s mom, which it is. We ask if we can sleep in the basement, but she says no right off the bat. She wrinkles her nose, shakes her head, even sticks out her tongue.

  “You know I like to let you make your own decisions, but it’s disgusting down there,” she says.

  It really isn’t. I don’t know why Mom and Erin think that. (1) It’s cooler than any other room in my house (I’m talking temperature), so when I’m sweaty from shooting baskets outside or it’s a boiling summer day, the basement is by far the best place to be, (2) it’s completely private, and (3) when Erin’s freaking out about something, it’s a good spot to hide out in until she calms down.

  The greatest part is that the spiderwebs and light bulbs make it feel like a cave, plus there’s a decent echo if you stand in the corner and yell, which I used to do all the time when I was little.

  There was one time Erin wanted to use the basement. She’s probably still mad about what happened. Brian and I had set up this obstacle course where you had to jump over blobs of bubble gum. After we were done, we kind of forgot about it. How was I supposed to know that Erin was having a slumber party the next day and the girls were gonna pretend to pan for gold in the basement?

  I thought it was funny—everyone had gum on their feet and one girl had a glop in her hair—but Erin said I messed everything up, “like usual.”

  Anyway.

  Mom says she doesn’t understand why Brian and I can’t sleep in my room, and I’m trying to come up with reasons, but then Dad just goes, “Let ’em stay in the basement. What’s the difference?”

  Finally Mom says all right. She must’ve realized this is her chance to clean out my room. I bet a bag of my old T-shirts will be at Goodwill before I figure out what’s missing.

  We order a pizza. Dad comes down and tries to fix the air hockey game, because he really wants us to play it. He tells Brian he was the air hockey champion of his neighborhood when he was our age. I already knew that. Anyway, after a half hour, he bangs the table with a fist, unplugs it, and gives up.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” I say. “We’ll survive without air hockey.”

  He flicks the puck with a finger, but it barely moves. “It’s just such a great game. You know I beat Joey Mancuso twelve times in a row one summer?”

  Brian and I don’t say anything. I don’t want to break it to Dad that nobody plays air hockey anymore.

  He sighs, walks to the stairs. “Not too late, guys.”

  After we hear the basement door close, we start talking about all kinds of stuff; the kind of stuff you think isn’t important, but really is.

  Like how come some people think pencils are a perfectly fine thing to give out at Halloween. And why Senñora Pling has a fit whenever we can’t remember a Spanish word for something. Which Hogwarts house we’d be in. How my neighbors have this miniature tree in the shape of a Hershey’s kiss. And what’s up with Wesley Pinto.

  “Personally,” Brian says, “I think the dude is all show and no action.”

  “Possible. It’s a good show, though. I definitely don’t want to mess with him.”

  “Yeah, really. Maybe he was bullied or something when he was little, so he wants to act like he’s so tough.”

  “It’s weird, though. When I went to Gilardi’s room to turn in the form, he was there. It seemed like he was, I don’t know, hanging out.”

  “Very weird.”

  We move on to Jamie and how she talked to Brian in Target and if that means she likes him. Then we start imitating our teachers’ voices and cracking up over their first names. Mr. Kearney, the gym teacher, is Kirby, Senñora Pling is Florentina, and Mr. Delman is Grover! Who names their kid Grover? Didn’t his parents realize that’s a character on Sesame Street?

  I don’t know what time we end up falling asleep, but it must be late, because the next morning, we don’t wake up until after eleven. We toast bagels for breakfast, then hurry back to the basement to start working on the desk-evator.

  Brian dumps out all these things from the plastic bag—a couple of Slinkys, pieces of cardboard, the lid from a plastic box, a screwdriver, a handle from something, giant rubber bands, and some kind of metal tripod stand. And a stack of stuck-together square-shaped red and green magnets.

  I look over the pile. Unlike my mom, Brian’s mom doesn’t throw anything away. “Magnets? What are those for?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I was just grabbing anything. Found ’em under my bed. Could be useful.”

  “Okay. So . . . any thoughts here with this stuff?”

  He jabs me. “I got some thoughts.”

  “Go for it.”

  He takes one piece of cardboard, puts the Slinkys on opposite ends, then lays another piece of cardboard on top of them. “So what if the Slinkys expand and push up the top cardboard when you want to stand at your desk. It wouldn’t really be cardboard. Or Slinkys. This is just to demonstrate how it could work. The concept, you know?”

  “Gotcha.”

  Brian tries it, and the Slinkys fall as soon as he lets go. “I mean, we’d have to figure out how it would stay up, I guess. And what we’d really use.”

  I grin. “And who said you can’t make things?”

  “Funny. Your turn.”

  I pace around the basement, jumping and trying to touch the metal pipes on the ceiling. “So basically, we need a base, two movable sides, and a top. And some way for it to clip onto the desk.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “But what do we use to make that?”

  “Not Slinkys.”

  I crouch, pick up the tripod. “What was this from?”

  “The bottom of an old music stand we had. I don’t even know why we had it, because no one in my family ever played an instrument. My mom, she just buys things for no reason.”

  “Yeah. Could be an idea for the base, though?”

  “Maybe.”

  We get to work, trying to make a desk-evator from the stuff Brian brought and other junk I find in the crawl space that seem like legit hardware-type items. Shelf brackets, hinges, a couple of metal rods. We even play around with the magnets for a while, but we end up making designs that look more like miniature tables and unstable bridges, not a model for a desk-evator.

  After a couple of hours, Brian smacks his forehead with his hand. “YouTube.”

  I groan. “Why didn’t we think of that before?”

  I run upstairs. Erin’s in the family room. As I pass her, she says, “How’s it going?” but I don’t answer. I grab my laptop charger (battery at 8 percent) and rush back down. I search “standing desks,” then find a video with this guy in a dorky plaid short-sleeved shirt who’s showing how to make your own standing desk.

  “Excellent,” I say, pushing play. “This’ll definitely help.”

  The guy lays out some tools and materials, explains how easy it is, and says no one should pay for the expensive standing desks you can buy.

  A few minutes in, Brian taps my shoulder. “Uh . . . he’s using a power sander. Do you know how to use a power sander?”

  “No.”

  “And a power screwdriver.”

  “I see.”

  “This is easy?” Brian snorts. “For him. Maybe he works in construction or something?”

  “Agree. This is way too complicated.”

  We watch another video about how an elevator works, because that’s what we want the idea to be, but that’s complicated
too. Steel cables, an electric motor, hydraulic fluid, centrifugal force.

  Brian stretches out on his back, clasps his hands behind his head. “If we need to know about centrifugal force, I might be out, Marcus.”

  “It can’t be this hard.” I keep searching YouTube for something that’ll help. I find a few more videos, but nothing all that useful.

  Dad comes down to see if he can give us an assist, but then he studies our mess and strokes his beard, which he does when (1) he’s trying to figure out a problem, or (2) can’t figure out a problem. “Sorry, guys,” he says, “this is way above me. I’m a lowly accountant, not a structural engineer.”

  Mom manages an eye doctor’s office, so I doubt she could give us any help either. Unless one of us needs glasses.

  Brian’s breathing heavy and his eyes are closed. While he zones out, I work on the desk-evator design some more. I end up with this shaky, wobbly thing made out of the metal rods, hinges, and the plastic lid. I have no idea what to use for the base or how it would clip onto a desk at school.

  Brian opens his eyes and sits up just as the thing I made collapses.

  “Okay, so it needs some work,” I say.

  He nods. “Maybe a little.”

  Let me tell you, the carrot seed approach, it isn’t as straightforward as it looks on the page.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Seagulls

  WESLEY

  Mom calls from Florida on Sunday night, but when Dad hands me the phone, I tell him I don’t want to talk. He doesn’t push it. What’s she gonna say anyway? How’s school and How’re you doing and I miss you?

  Yeah, if you missed me, you wouldn’t be in the Sunshine State, would you?

  My parents split last year, which was better than them yelling at each other all the time. So that’s an improvement. But then Mom decided she wanted to “find herself” in Florida. What the heck does that mean?

  Brett and me are supposed to go there and live with her when she gets a big enough place and a job and gets “settled.” She told Dad she’s living with a friend at the moment. I think it’s this guy she dated before she and Dad got married. Don’t ask me why I think that, I just do. Okay, I saw his name come up on her phone a few times. Barry. What a stupid name.