Ethan Marcus Stands Up

by Michele Weber Hurwitz

ETHAN

  The discussion of where the Marcus fam should go to dinner starts at about four thirty on Sunday, when my sister’s getting hungry. (She claims she has a “small stomach.”)

  I say, pizza? Because that’s what I always say. Mom says no, we had that last week.

  She suggests Thai, but Dad says he’s not in the mood for that. Then Dad says, “How about Mexican? I could go for an enchilada,” but Erin shakes her head. “I don’t want Mexican.”

  Then we all end up annoyed at each other.

  It’s a lot of fun.

  Anyway, after like, ten other suggestions, Dad says he’s making an “executive decision” and “let’s go.”

  He takes us to this hot dog place where you park outside and shout your order into a speaker, and people bring the food to your car. The food delivery people are on roller skates, which is an added bonus. If I ever work at a restaurant, this would be my top choice.

  Mom warns us that this isn’t going to be a “regular thing.”

  Dad tells her to relax and live a little.

  “Hot dogs aren’t healthy, and we can only do this once in a while,” she says.

  Dad ignores her, bites into his dog, then closes his eyes and goes, “Ahhhhhh.”

  I’m in the backseat with Erin, ready for her usual Erin-ness, maybe some Spanish phrases thrown in, but she’s acting weirdly normal. Even . . . nice?

  “So how’s your invention coming along?” she asks me. “You didn’t quit?”

  “Yeah, and we’re done.”

  “Really? So you’re ready for Thursday?”

  “As ready as we’ll ever be. How ’bout you and Zoe? What’d you decide?”

  “Um . . . I think we’re going to stick it out.”

  “Cool.”

  She shrugs. “Yeah, you know, sometimes things happen in mysterious ways.”

  “Right. They sure do.”

  I stuff some fries into my mouth. No doubt about it now. Erin definitely wrote the note that was in my locker. I don’t know exactly why, because I never do with her, but I’m going to chalk it up to things like gravity and infinity and Mr. Delman’s ties. You can’t explain it, it just is.

  ERIN

  Zoe and I spent the entire weekend trying to re-create what happened with the roots. We mixed substances, tried them individually, even soaked the roots overnight. Nothing worked.

  This kind of research, we both realized, could take years. Zoe said she’s determined to get to the bottom of this and would report back when she found something out.

  But I’m not sure we’ll be able to uncover the mystery in time.

  So I don’t know what we should do, as far as Invention Day. We can’t display a half-done project. An experiment without a solution. And, most importantly, no real invention.

  We’d be disqualified. Embarrassed in front of everyone. And Marlon . . . I can’t even bear to think about the conceited expression that’d be plastered on his face or what type of mean insult he’d hurl at me.

  Only . . . this time I could be ready. This time, I could be prepared with a comeback.

  I should do Invention Day for that reason alone.

  That would actually be . . . hilarious.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Invention Day

  ETHAN

  The gym doors open at five p.m. for setup, even though Invention Day, which really should be called Invention Night, doesn’t start until seven. There are posters all over McNutt about it, and families are invited.

  Mom and Dad told me and Erin they’re “bursting with pride” and “can’t wait to see the soon-to-be-famous Marcus inventions.”

  This is turning out to be a pretty big deal.

  So Brian and I, who are never early to anything, decide to get there right at five. I want to set up, then scope out the competition, and he wants to watch for Jamie. Dad drops us off with a thumbs-up and “See you later, boys!” Erin says Zoe’s mom will take them a little later.

  While we’re waiting to check in with Gilardi, who’s sitting at a table outside the gym, I ask Brian if he knows for sure that Jamie’s even coming.

  “I heard her say she was.”

  “When?”

  “Today, in LA. I was hanging around by her desk.”

  I shake my head. “You’re obsessed, you know that?”

  “Yeah. So?” He cranes his neck, searching the hallway. “What about it?”

  We’re one of the first groups in line, along with Parneeta, Naomi, and two guys who sit at the computer table in the cafeteria. Everyone’s carrying their display board. Naomi also has a big plastic bin, and Parneeta’s wheeling a cart loaded with boxes.

  We’re just holding our board and the desk-evator, which people are looking at kind of funny, like they can’t figure out what it is. They’ll see soon enough.

  Once we get inside, Brian and I walk around the gym until we find the table with our names on it. It’s right under the basketball net. Great spot! We stand up the display board on the table, lean the desk-evator against it, then stand back to see how it looks.

  “Well, whaddya think?” I ask.

  “Good, I guess.” Brian grins and jabs me. “No one will wonder if we made this ourselves, that’s for sure.”

  “Remember, this is only a prototype,” I remind him. “An early design.”

  “That it is.”

  We both turn and scan the gym. And there are things going on that I couldn’t have imagined in my craziest dreams. Naomi smooths out a red tablecloth, then fills little bowls with candy and places them on her table. The computer guys are plugging in their laptops and firing them up. Another group is arranging balloons on their table and taping streamers around the edge. And Parneeta—get this—has a tall metal pole on a stand with a bright pink flag on top that says PARNEETA’S POUCHES.

  What the heck?

  “We’re idiots,” Brian says. “It’s confirmed. We’re complete idiots.”

  I swallow a sudden lumpy throat ball. “Were we supposed to do all this? Like, decorate? Have bowls of candy? Was that on the form?”

  “I don’t know! I didn’t go to Invention Day last year. I guess this is a thing. How people get the crowd to come to their table.” He smirks. “The judges, too, probably.”

  “That’s not right. It shouldn’t be about swag. And . . . tablecloths!”

  “Face it, everything is. We’re screwed.” He glances toward the gym door. “Oh God, there’s my mom. I told her not to get here this early.”

  Brian’s mom waves excitedly, then walks over and hands Brian a plastic bag. “I thought you’d be hungry, honey. You too, Ethan. There’s sandwiches, pretzels, and two clementines.”

  He takes the bag and throws it underneath our table. “Thanks. Now can you go and come back later, please? No other parents are here.”

  She winks and pinches his cheek. “Of course!”

  After his mom leaves, Brian and I stand in back of our balloon-less, streamer-less, flag-less, candy-less table. And then, I swear, it’s like I’ve stepped into the pages of The Carrot Seed. Only I have a desk-evator, not a carrot seed.

  Naomi comes over, looks at our invention, tilts her head, and squints. “What is that?”

  “It’s a desk-evator,” I say. “So kids can stand at their desks when they’re tired of sitting and need to stretch their legs. You know, wake up their brains.”

  I demonstrate how the desk-evator folds in and out. Then I attach two of the chip clips to the edge of the table. “This will keep it on the desk. See?”

  “Oh,” she says. “Interesting. That’s a lot of tape.”

  “Well, the thing is—” I start to explain.

  She backs away, says she has to go. “Sorry, I have way more to set up.”

  Parneeta stops in front of us and bites her lip like she’s trying not to laugh. The computer guys walk by and I hear one of them whisper, “They’re so out of their league.”

  Romanov’s parading around to each table with his arms crossed like he’s
sure he has everyone beat and why is anyone else even here. All that’s on his table is the robotic hand and a black tablecloth. He doesn’t even have a display board.

  He stops in front of us, stares for about two seconds, then does that weird head shake, one slight right and one slight left. And leaves.

  Everyone who sees the desk-evator seems to be saying, without saying it, that it’s a joke. That we’re a joke.

  Brian picks up the plastic bag and looks inside, then takes out two sandwiches wrapped in plastic. He offers me one. “Turkey?” We sit on the floor behind our table.

  “Should we go?” he asks, unwrapping his sandwich.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, look at our invention. Look at our, uh, display. Maybe we should just sneak out the back and take the desk-evator with us.”

  “No! What do they know? It’s the judges’ opinions that count. And they’ll get it, I’m sure they will. Even though it looks a little rough, they’ll understand the concept.”

  “Okay, you keep the faith, man.”

  “So we didn’t make a whole show of our table with balloons and stuff, but the main thing is that this is really important. The thousands of kids who get square butts in school every single day are counting on us. It’s a good invention, I know it is.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You told me that a billion times.” He takes a bite. “We probably should’ve gone with those hinges, though. The tape makes it look like crap.”

  I sigh. I can’t eat. It’s six thirty already, and every table is set up. Except one. I look around the gym and realize I don’t see Erin and Zoe.

  I get up and walk over to the empty table. It’s theirs.

  My sister would never be late to something like this. To anything.

  What’s wrong? Where are they?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  To Be Continued

  ERIN

  Registration closes at six forty-five p.m. At exactly 6:42, Zoe and I walk through the front doors of McNutt. Ms. Gilardi’s still at the table outside the gym. Perfect.

  She stands and claps a hand across her heart when she sees us. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here. I was starting to get concerned. The other groups have all checked in. Is everything okay?”

  “Absolutely fine,” I say.

  She crosses our names off the list. “You better hurry inside and get set up.”

  “No worries.” I open the gym door and motion to Zoe. We’ve got only two things to put on our table, so it won’t take us very long.

  When I get inside, it’s exactly how I expected it to be. Like last year. Tables around the gym with everyone’s inventions, plus signs, balloons, bright tablecloths, the works. Parneeta went all out. I’m not surprised. There’s only one empty table, by the far end of the bleachers. Ours.

  I turn to Zoe. “You okay with this?”

  She nods. “I think it’s very brave. And better than not showing up at all.”

  “Agree. All right, let’s go.”

  On the way to our table, I catch Ethan’s eye. He’s got the desk-evator invention on his bare table with their display board. It looks like a little kid made it, compared to everyone else’s professional-looking projects, but for some reason, I kind of like it.

  Ethan’s watching as I stand up our display board. Then Zoe places the one other item in front of it. It’s a bleached-out root.

  In a second, Romanov’s here. As I knew he would be. He crosses his arms, quickly scans our board, then does this mean smirk. He turns to leave. But I’m ready.

  “Marlon,” I say. He turns back. “I’m not afraid to admit we struggled and have a long way to go. That’s the sign of a great inventor.”

  Zoe holds up the root. “Edison, comma, Thomas.”

  “Japanese proverb,” I add. “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”

  He laughs, rolls his head back. And then he walks away.

  I squeeze my hands into fists and actually growl. I want the last word. “Excuse me!” I shout, but he doesn’t stop.

  Zoe puts her arm around my shoulders. “He’s not worth it, Erin.”

  “But—”

  “No. Don’t stoop to his level. Stand tall. This is what we decided to do.”

  “You’re right.” My voice catches.

  The gym doors are about to open for the families, but right before they do, Ethan and Brian come to our table.

  Brian looks at our board, then claps twice. “Erin McBarren, gotta hand it to you. I couldn’t have predicted this in a million years. It’s actually kinda cool.”

  Ethan sighs. “You couldn’t fix your project?”

  “We could not,” I answer. “We decided to go in another direction.”

  I reread our display board for the hundredth time.

  The heading, in bubble letters: FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO FAILED AT FIRST.

  We listed as many as we could fit on the board. Edison, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Vincent van Gogh, Dr. Seuss, Walt Disney, Soichiro Honda, Abraham Lincoln, Steven Spielberg, even Lady Gaga and Jay-Z, who Zoe wanted to include so we could cover all fields. After their names, we have a short explanation of how each of them failed at some point.

  But the best part is the entire right side of the board. It says ERIN MARCUS AND ZOE FELD-KRAMER.

  After our names, we explained our experiment and our intended invention, the All-Natural Invasive Plant Destroyer. And then we wrote about how we made an accidental discovery, describing how something—and we will find out what—affected the root of an invasive plant. At the bottom, we have (also in bubble letters): TO BE CONTINUED.

  You can never stop being optimistic about inventions. That’s rule number one.

  Ethan shoves his hands into his jean pockets. “It should say somewhere on there that this is all your brother’s fault.”

  “Actually, it is,” I say. “And it’s okay.” It’s time to tell him.

  “You didn’t ruin our project,” I confess. “When everything got messed up and spilled on the table, one of the substances, or a combination of them, changed some of the plant roots. But we didn’t have enough time to find out which one. Or ones.”

  “Wait,” Brian says. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “So”—Ethan points back and forth from himself to Brian—“let me get this straight. We kind of helped you? In an accidental-missed-catch kind of way?”

  Zoe smiles and bobs her head just as the gym doors open. “You did! It was accidentally brilliant!” She touches his arm. “Like many inventions are.”

  “Wow.” Ethan scans our display board. “I was inspired by Edison too. Kinda crazy, huh?”

  I shrug. “Not so crazy.” I see Mom and Dad, waving excitedly. “You guys better get back to your table.”

  “Hold on,” Ethan says. “Come clean, Erin. You wrote the note, right?”

  “What note?”

  “About the folding table.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You didn’t put a note in my locker?”

  “No.”

  At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I see the desk-evator collapse.

  “Oh, Ethan,” I groan. “You had to use TAPE?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Panda-monium

  ETHAN

  Brian and I run to our table. The desk-evator has completely fallen apart. The spatulas got loose, and one of the chip clips somehow broke and tape is peeling everywhere. The whole thing just exploded. And of course, we forgot to bring an extra roll of duct tape.

  Brian kicks the table and the display board falls over too. “This is a disaster. How are we supposed to fix this? We should just add our names to Erin and Zoe’s fail list and call it a night.”

  In minutes the gym gets crowded, noisy, and hot. People are streaming in like this is the event of the century. Mom and Dad are heading toward Erin’s table.

  Brian stands up the board. I try retaping the spatulas, but the tape’s lost its stick
iness and they’re not staying. The chip clip is busted. And the cutting board looks like it’s about to break in half. So our invention is now basically a collection of random kitchen items and five pounds of useless tape.

  “Forget it,” Brian scoffs. “I told you weeks ago. Look at this place. We shouldn’t even be here.”

  Romanov’s demonstrating his robotic hand. Naomi’s putting her antibiotic bandages on people’s arms. The computer guys are . . . I don’t even know what they’re doing.

  And Parneeta. She’s next to us. Are you ready for this? A kid, who someone says is her little sister, is standing in front of the table in a panda costume, handing out samples of Parneeta’s lightweight backpack invention. Why she’s dressed as a panda, I don’t know, but it’s hard to resist a panda or a cute kid.

  Little Panda Girl is stealing the show. People are lining up to get a sample and take a picture with her. They’re putting on the backpacks like it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever seen. Parneeta’s Pouches are suddenly everywhere in the gym.

  “I guess that’s what you call marketing,” Brian cracks.

  Gilardi, standing on the first row of the bleachers, taps on a microphone, and then it gets quiet. “Welcome, everyone! Isn’t this wonderful? Aren’t these kids amazing?” People clap and cheer. “In this room tonight might very well be a future entrepreneur or scientist or technical wizard.” People clap again. And call out their kids’ names.

  Nobody calls out Ethan or Brian. Not even our own families.

  “We will now begin the judging,” Gilardi continues. “But I want to say congratulations to everyone, no matter whose invention wins! Please enjoy yourselves, and be sure to have some lemonade and cookies!”

  She puts down the microphone, and then the judges start walking from table to table with clipboards. It’s Gilardi and the other seventh- and eighth-grade science teachers, and for some reason, Mr. Delman. What an LA teacher would know about judging inventions, I have no idea. But I can pretty much guess we won’t get his vote.

  D’Antonio’s here too, smiling and shaking the parents’ hands, and Mean Secretary is parked on a chair at one end of the gym, eating cookies.