Niagara Falls, Or Does It? #1

by Winkler, Henry

  Start again, Hank, I told myself. Think. Niagara Falls ... or Does It? by Hank Zipzer.

  I wondered if the title could be considered a paragraph?

  Probably not.

  CHAPTER 8

  “MAN, ARE YOU LATE! ” Frankie said, a little bit angry. “It’s seven-thirty.”

  “We thought you weren’t coming,” Ashley piped in.

  “Hey, I didn’t think I was coming,” I snapped back. “Parent problems.”

  “I happen to know that your mom isn’t even home,” said Frankie. “I know that because she’s upside-down in my living room.”

  “My dad went to yoga class tonight too,” said Ashley. “He said he needed to de-stress. I’d be stressed too if I had to look at pictures of people’s disgusting insides all day.”

  “We gotta get my dad to go to yoga,” I said. “He could definitely use some de-stressing. He wouldn’t even let me come here tonight until I wrote a paragraph of my essay.”

  “Did you get one?” asked Ashley.

  “Yeah, I wrote a paragraph.”

  “Great,” said Ashley, throwing an arm around me.

  “Then I erased it.”

  “Not so great.” Ashley looked worried.

  “I assume you didn’t mention the erasing part to Silent Stan,” said Frankie.

  “He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.”

  I don’t lie to my parents, but I have to confess, there are times when I don’t spill everything. I think you know what I mean.

  I fell backward into one of the sofas that lined the wall of our clubhouse. Cheerio, who had come with me, started to sniff the place out. He always sniffs around like he’s going to find something new. He never does, but as long as he doesn’t lift his leg, I figure he can do whatever he wants.

  Our clubhouse is in the basement of our apartment building. When you get off the elevator, you start smelling soap suds because the laundry room is to the right. But if you turn to the left, there are three rooms with padlocks on them filled with stuff everyone who lives in the building doesn’t want. Old chairs and sofas and bird cages, suitcases of every size, boxes of books and food magazines. A lot of parent kind of stuff.

  One of the rooms doesn“t have a lock so we use it for our hideout. It’s a perfect meeting spot. Well, almost perfect. It would be totally perfect if Robert didn’t know about it.

  Ashley and Frankie had already made a list of the tricks Frankie was going to do for Papa Pete’s show. It said:1. Take nickels from nose

  2. Transform one scarf into many scarves

  3. Make thumb disappear

  4. Pull live furry thing from hat

  “Numbers one through three are nobrainers,” Frankie said, “but number four isn’t going to happen. We’d better face it now.”

  “But I promised Papa Pete,” said Ashley. “I shook on it.”

  “Fine,” said Frankie. “Then you’ve got to find me something live and furry.”

  “How about Robert?” I suggested.

  “No,” said Frankie. “His mother would freak out if we try to stuff him in a hat.”

  Cheerio got tired of sniffing and started to chase his tail.

  “Cheerio’s at it again,” Ashley said. “Doesn’t he ever get dizzy?”

  I looked at Cheerio twirling around like a top. A flash of inspiration hit me. Cheerio! He was small. He was furry. He was alive.

  “Members of Magik 3,” I said as I sprang off the sofa. “I have the answer. We’re pulling Cheerio out of that hat.”

  When he heard his name, Cheerio stopped spinning for a minute and looked me right in the eye. Then he started spinning again.

  Frankie put his hand to his forehead, like he had a bad headache. “He does that inside a hat and I’m telling you right now, he’ll burn a hole in the fabric.”

  “Cheerio can be calm,” I said. “He’ll cooperate.”

  “Right, and my name is Bernice,” said Frankie. “By the way, here’s another question, guys. What top hat have you ever seen that this dog would fit in?”

  “He’s our best choice, Frankie. He’s also our only choice,” Ashley said. “So we’ll just have to figure out a way.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose, and folded her arms in a way that meant business. Ashley can be tough when she wants to be.

  “I think we can build a hat big enough to hold Cheerio,” I suggested. “There’s stuff all over here that we could use.”

  “Yeah, like what?” Frankie asked.

  I looked around. On the shelf above the door, I saw a big, round hatbox kind of thing. We pulled it down, took off the top, and put Cheerio inside. He fit perfectly.

  “Great, we’ll use this,” I said. “We’ll cover it in black felt.”

  “Like we happen to have a big pile of felt lying around,” Frankie said.

  “I know where they sell felt.” I had just seen some the week before in the ninety-nine-cent store. It was in the school supplies section.

  “It’s still not going to look like a hat,” said Frankie.

  “Then we’ll get some cardboard and make a brim,” I answered.

  “That sounds hard,” said Ashley. “How will we get the brim to stick on?”

  “Trust me,” I said. “I’m a genius with super glue.”

  “Okay, genius,” said Frankie. “Tell me how we’re going to keep your nutcase dog inside the hat until it’s time to pull him out?”

  “I’ll build a pocket inside and put some biscuits there, to keep Cheerio calm.” By now, Frankie and Ashley were pretty impressed with my ideas. I have to admit, I was too.

  “We can even put the whole hat on wheels,” I said. I don’t know where that idea came from. It just popped into my mind. One second there was nothing in my head, and the next second there was a hat on wheels. It was amazing.

  “Hank, you are covered in creativity,” Ashley said.

  “You’re the second person today who’s used that word,” I said to her. “Ms. Adolf told me she was looking forward to seeing me use my creativity in my essay.”

  Then it struck me. Creativity. It was the answer to all my problems. Creativity solved our hat problem. And creativity was going to get me through Ms. Adolf’s essay. And not just get me through, either. My creativity was going to get me the best grade of my life.

  Let everyone else write their stupid five paragraphs. Not me. Right then and there, I decided I was going to build my essay. I’d bring Niagara Falls into the classroom, water and all.

  I could see it in my mind, just like I saw the big hat for Cheerio. I’d build a living model of Niagara Falls, with the cliffs and waterfalls and even a boat. Everyone would know firsthand what I did on my summer vacation. Principal Love would hear about how great it was and come to our classroom just to see it. He’d call my dad and say what a great job I had done.

  Papa Pete always says, “There are many roads to Rome.” I used to think he was talking about the traffic in Italy. But now it made sense to me. What he meant was, if you can’t get there one way, take another way. Like if you can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat, pull a dachsund out. And if you can’t write about Niagara Falls, build it.

  My brain was on fire, and it felt good.

  CHAPTER 9

  DO YOU KNOW what lucky is? Lucky is having friends who understand that building a magic hat can wait when Niagara Falls needs to be built right away. Lucky is having friends who don’t make you feel stupid even though that’s how you think of yourself. Friends who don’t make fun of you because some things—well, a lot of things—are hard.

  I am so lucky.

  As soon as I told Frankie and Ashley my idea about building Niagara Falls instead of writing the essay, they both volunteered to help.

  “This is a big project,” I said.

  “We better make a list of supplies we’ll need,” Ashley suggested. “Frankie, you get a pencil and write the list.”

  “No way,” said Frankie. “I’m not a secretary. I’m a builder. A hammer-and-nails kind of guy.”


  “When was the last time you built anything?” Ashley asked him.

  “Kindergarten,” said Frankie. “Remember that awesome gingerbread house I made out of milk cartons and graham crackers?”

  “I remember that it collapsed and then you ate it,” I said.

  “Okay, you win. Hand me the pencil,” Frankie said.

  “The first thing we’re going to need is water,” I said. “Lots and lots of water.”

  “Newspaper and flour to build the cliffs,” added Ashley.

  “Twigs to make trees out of,” I said.

  “And rhinestones for the stars in the sky,” said Ashley.

  Frankie stopped writing.

  “This isn’t a T-shirt, Ashweena. Keep in mind, we are building one of the natural wonders of the world. Rhinestones have no place here.”

  “Then how about rocks for the cliffs,” suggested Ashley.

  “Rocks are good,” said Frankie. He added rocks to the list.

  “Let’s put a boat at the bottom of the falls,” I said. “I must have a toy boat somewhere. And maybe I can get a spare pump from one of Emily’s old fish tanks.”

  “What do you need a pump for?” asked Frankie.

  “Something’s got to push the water over the falls,” I said.

  “We better have a pan to collect the water,” said Ashley. “A big pan.”

  I asked everyone to gather as much stuff as they could and meet the next night to begin building. We were all pretty excited—until we turned to leave, that is. Then we saw the worst thing you could possibly find in the doorway. Robert.

  “Hi guys,” he said with a grin. “Good news. My mom says I can join the meeting.”

  I’ve got to remember to tell his mother he’s not invited.

  “What are you guys doing?” he asked.

  “Fourth-grade stuff,” answered Frankie. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “We’re building Niagara Falls,” I said.

  “More than six hundred thousand gallons of water flow over Niagara Falls every second,” Robert said.

  “How do you know that?” Ashley asked.

  “Actually, it’s all up here,” Robert said, pointing to his head.

  “Clear your throat, Robert,” said Frankie.

  A lot of times, Robert gets this really annoying bubble in his throat when he talks, like he’s got a little ball of slobber down there. He’ll just go right on talking if you don’t tell him to clear that thing out.

  “I bet you won’t be able to create the mist,” Robert went on. “Did you know that Niagara Falls produces enough mist to fill half the Grand Canyon every twenty minutes?”

  Ashley thought for a minute. “As much as I hate to admit it, the mist does sound important,” she whispered to me.

  This gave Robert all the encouragement he needed. “My mom has a fan she puts in the window on really hot days. We could use it to blow the water around to look like mist. I think she’d let us borrow it.”

  Oh great. Now it was us.

  The next morning, I waited until Emily was in the shower and went into her room. In her closet, I found an old pump left over from when she had her Japanese fighting fish. I put the pump in a paper bag, along with a LEGO boat from my toy chest. Then I went into the kitchen to find a pan. As I was clanking around in the closet, my mom came in.

  “Hi honey. What are you looking for?”

  “That big pan you cook turkey in on Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh, I loaned it to Mrs. Fink. She was making a turkey for her son-in-law’s birthday. Come to think of it, she never returned it.”

  “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to get it back from her,” I said. “I need it for a school project.”

  “Be sure to ask her how the turkey turned out,” my mom said, as she put water on for tea. “I suggested she stuff it with wheatgrass and bean sprouts. I’m sure it was delicious.”

  I went next door to Apartment 10B and knocked on the door. Mrs. Fink answered. She isn’t a small woman, and in her pink bathrobe, she looked like one of those giant pink elephants in the cartoons.

  “Hankie!” she said. “Come in for a doughnut. I’ll put my teeth in.”

  “That’s okay, Mrs. Fink,” I said. “I have to get to school. I was just wondering if I could get our turkey pan back.”

  “Of course, darling,” she said. She went to the kitchen and came back with the pan. As she handed it to me, Mrs. Fink smiled and I thought I saw her gums. I took the pan and ran, without asking about the turkey.

  After school, I took all my stuff to our clubhouse. Frankie brought a big stack of newspapers. Ashley had a box of rocks and pebbles she had collected at Riverside Park. Even good old Robert showed up with a fan.

  There’s a sink in the broom closet down the hall, and I filled the turkey pan halfway with water. We let Robert do most of the newspaper shredding. Ashley and I soaked the paper and mixed it with flour to make papier-mâché. As we built the cliffs, Ashley reminded me that we had to make a hole for the hose that was going to bring the water to the top of the falls.

  The next day, we made another batch of papier-mâché and added it to the cliffs. A couple times, the cliffs got so high that the papier-mâché slid down to the bottom. I had to prop it up while Ashley held her hair dryer up to it. Even then, it took two whole days and nights for the cliffs to dry.

  Finally, the cliffs were ready for us to decorate. We put rocks and pebbles around to make them look real. Frankie had snipped some branches off the ficus tree in his living room when his mother wasn’t looking. We stuck those along the top of the cliffs to look like trees.

  On Saturday night, I decided it was time to add the water part. I had been collecting cardboard tubes from our apartment. Three came from rolls of paper towels and a couple others were from bathroom tissue. I love saying “bathroom tissue.” It rolls off your tongue. Not like “toilet paper,” which sounds too much like what it actually is.

  If I do say so myself, I had come up with a great plan to get the water to the falls. I was going to connect the tubes with waterproof tape. Then I’d wrap the outside of this cardboard snake with Saran wrap. We’d hook one end up to the hole we’d made in the cliffs, and the other end up to the faucet in the cleanup sink in our classroom. Connect the pump, turn on the water, and presto, Niagara Falls.

  “What are you doing?” asked Frankie, when he saw me wrapping the tubes in Saran wrap.

  I told him my brilliant plan.

  “I don’t know, Zip,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you think that tube is going to be strong enough to hold water?

  “Hey, if you can cover a bowl of watermelon with Saran wrap and turn it upside down, then this will hold too,” I assured him. “I tell you water is going to sail through this baby.”

  On Sunday night, we had one final meeting to finish the project. I glued more trees onto the cliffs and put little LEGO people into the boat. Ashley and I carefully attached the hose. We painted the cliffs brown—or, as Robert pointed out, burnt sienna. He’s a real pain about vocabulary, that guy, but I have to admit, he was very helpful.

  When Niagara Falls was finished, we all stood back to admire it.

  “Don’t move,” Frankie said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He disappeared. Two minutes later, he was back, panting. He had run up six flights of stairs to his apartment. When he’s on a mission, Frankie never waits for the elevator. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gleaming baby blue stone that I recognized right away. It was his best piece of turquoise from his private rock and mineral collection. Frankie put a spot of glue on it and placed the turquoise on top of the cliff.

  “It’s got good karma,” he said.

  He gave me his classic Big Dimple smile, then put out his hand. We did our secret handshake.

  “You’re going to knock ’em dead, Zip.”

  Didn’t I tell you I was lucky?

  CHAPTER 10

  THAT NIGHT, it was hard to sleep be
cause I was so excited. I couldn’t wait until morning when I’d take Niagara Falls to school and show everyone my living essay.

  I heard the door creak open. My mom stuck her head in.

  “All set for school tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Are you sure you’re finished with your essay?” she whispered.

  “It couldn’t be any more complete, Mom.”

  “Do you need me to proofread it?”

  “I’m telling you, Mom, it’s perfect.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  And she closed the door.

  I stared up at the ceiling. All I could think about were the incredible things that were going to happen to me after I showed Niagara Falls. I made a list in my head.

  TEN INCREDIBLE THINGS THAT WILL HAPPEN AFTER EVERYONE SEES MY NIAGARA FALLS PROJECT BY HANK ZIPZER

  1. I won’t get just an A on it, I’ll get the highest A they’ve ever given in America.

  2. Ms. Adolf will finally smile. (I wonder if her face will crack.)

  3. They’ll call an assembly for everyone in the school to see my project. Newspaper reporters will come. Television stations will bring their cameras.

  4. I’ll interview Frankie and Ashley on television. Maybe even Robert. Hmmm ... no, not Robert.

  5. The mayor of Niagara Falls will come to shake my hand.

  6. Principal Love will declare a school holiday in my honor.

  7. I’ll be called to the White House to show my project to the president.

  8. The president will be so impressed, he’ll pass a law that kids in the fourth grade no longer have to write essays.

  9. Every fourth-grade student in the country will break their number-two pencils in half.

  10. Just before they do, they will all write me letters to say thank you. I’ll have to get a secretary just to answer my fan mail.

  11. I will never have to clear the table again. Emily, on the other hand, will have to do it until she’s fifty-six.

  I fell asleep with a smile on my face.