Ruby Goldberg’s Bright Idea

by Anna Humphrey

  “I can’t believe that just happened,” Penny said, hugging me back. “It’s so unfair. You and Dominic should have won!”

  I stepped back and looked at Penny, who was always on my side and never stopped cheering for me. I knew she deserved the same. I noticed Dominic out of the corner of my eye. Without our third-place-winning Rube Goldberg machine, I never would have gotten to know him better. He was standing talking to Grandpa, who looked happier than I’d seen him in ages.

  Even my sister, Sarah, was grinning at me from across the gym. The talk we’d had in the kitchen the other day had made us closer than we’d been in ages.

  I touched my bronze medal and held it up so it caught the light. Sure, it wasn’t gold or even silver . . . but it meant a lot all the same.

  “It’s totally fair,” I said to Penny, hugging her one more time. “Your project was amazing. You deserve the silver. And Aaron’s mummy brains thing was . . . definitely interesting,” I said, wrinkling my nose a little. From where we were standing we could see him chasing Brianne and Anya around the gym with one of the bits of brain yarn on a crochet hook. “Plus,” I went on, “third place feels pretty good too.”

  Chapter 10

  But even though I ended up being happy enough with my bronze medal in the science fair, don’t think for a second that I wasn’t determined to take first place in the backyard croquet tournament at Grandpa’s.

  Since Dominic had started to hang out with us sometimes after school, and Mr. Petrecelli said he’d play too if we “kept the nonsense to a minimum,” we’d decided to scrap our scores and start fresh. The next Friday was the first day of the new semifinals, and I did triceps flexes the whole walk to Grandpa’s to warm up my swinging arm.

  “What are you doing?” Penny laughed, catching me striking a strong-man pose in the reflective surface of a car window.

  “Nothing much,” I lied.

  “She’s getting ready to kick our butts at croquet,” Dominic said, doing the “kick bottom” signs we’d taught him. I didn’t deny it, but I didn’t confirm it either. Keeping your opponents guessing is part of the game.

  “Don’t worry, Dominic,” I said as we crossed the street and started up Grandpa’s steps. “I’ll show you a few of my signature moves if you want. That way at least you’ll stand a chance.” Then, because I didn’t want him to think I was being too nice to him, I stuck out my tongue. He stuck his right back. Then he chased me up the porch steps. Penny just rolled her eyes at us.

  Dominic and I may have been a team when it came to the science fair, but ever since then we’d been locked in some pretty fierce (but friendly) competition. Sometimes it meant we were vying for top grades in math. But other times we were dreaming up stupid contests—like who could fit the most bites of apple into their mouth without swallowing, or stand on one foot the longest. (I always won that one.)

  There weren’t any newspapers piled up on Grandpa’s porch that day, I noticed as I let us in . . . and the lawn was freshly mowed. If anything, the place had never looked better. Since Grandpa and Mr. Petrecelli had started going out for walks, Grandpa’s mood and energy had improved a lot. And, like me and Dominic, he and Mr. Petrecelli had also become kind of competitive—or maybe it was just that they were inspiring each other.

  Grandpa had put in a new hydrangea shrub in his front yard. . . . Then Mr. Petrecelli went out and got two weigela bushes. Grandpa painted his mailbox yellow to cheer up his front porch. . . . Then Mr. Petrecelli got new outdoor lighting and a shiny set of house numbers that were so big you could see them from all the way down the street. Most recently they’d been having a debate about how to protect the plants now that winter was only a few weeks away. Mr. Petrecelli wanted to wrap them up in burlap sacks, while Grandpa said to let them be.

  “He was a fussy old grump years ago when your grandma and his wife were friends,” Grandpa confided in me one day, “and now he’s an even fussier older grump. But he does have a way with the garden,” he admitted. “And I have to say, it’s been nice to have company on my morning walks, and someone to have a coffee with in the afternoons.”

  I could see that Mr. Petrecelli had been out that day to the hardware store to get the burlap for the bushes. It was sitting on his porch. I pushed open Grandpa’s front door, expecting to hear them bickering about it, but everything was quiet . . . not to mention dark.

  “Grandpa?” I called. I turned to Penny and Dominic and shrugged. “Maybe he went out to get groceries or something.”

  We put our backpacks in the corner. Then I flicked on the light. Something sticky came off on my hand—a big piece of Scotch tape.

  “SURPRISE!”

  Mom, Dad, Sarah, Grandpa, and Mr. Petrecelli jumped out from behind the sofa.

  I shook my hand to get the piece of tape off and noticed that it had been holding up a string. When I tugged on it, the string released a net attached to the ceiling. The net came free, and a shower of colorful balloons rained down around a big banner strung across the room. It read: congratulations, young scientists!

  “What the heck!” I exclaimed.

  Penny was clinging tightly to my arm like she was about to faint from the shock, and Dominic’s eyes were blinking even faster than usual underneath his hair.

  “I’ll get the sparkling cider,” Sarah called, walking around the couch to the kitchen.

  “Who wants cake?” Mom asked.

  “HA! If you could have seen the looks on your faces!” Mr. Petrecelli said, sinking into Grandpa’s favorite chair and pulling up the footrest.

  Grandpa sat us down as the guests of honor on the sofa and handed us each an envelope. We opened them on the count of three, and inside we each found a subscription to Science Kids magazine.

  “Thanks, everyone,” Penny said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Dominic agreed. “This is great. Oh, wait,” he said. He went across the room and opened his backpack. He took out a small cardboard box. “I have something for you, too.” He opened it, then handed Grandpa the Thunderbolt model plane he’d taken home the first day he’d come over. “I got it working.”

  “Well, I’ll be . . . ,” Grandpa said in wonder. He took the controller Dominic held out to him and set the plane on the table. Everyone cheered when it lifted off.

  And after that the party really got started. Grandpa turned on an old Beatles album, and we took turns flying the Thunderbolt. Mr. Petrecelli told Grandpa about his favorite places in Italy, and then—like I’d predicted—they started arguing about the shrubs in the front yard. Mom and Dad did some kind of swing dance in the middle of the room, and Penny and Sarah swapped dance recital stories.

  “Well,” Grandpa said, coming to sit down beside me with his second piece of cake. “What did you think of our little Rube Goldberg machine?” He motioned toward the balloons, which were still all over the floor. “Your dad and I put it together. We call it the Party-Matic 2000. I know it’s simple compared to what you’d dream up.” He smiled. “But we’re no bronze medal winners.”

  “I love it, Grandpa,” I said, picking up a red balloon and throwing it into the air. And I meant it. It was true that the balloon drop hadn’t been complicated, but that didn’t matter. The best part was that my dad and Grandpa had taken the time to put it together for us. Plus, to tell the truth I was feeling kind of done with complicated Rube Goldberg machines. Lately I’d been more into geology. Did you know that if a supervolcano were to erupt, it could rain hellfire across thousands of miles and cause worldwide climate changes? Crazy, right? Maybe next year I actually will do my science fair project on Mount Saint Helens. It’s pretty fascinating stuff.

  “Look at that,” Grandpa said now, glancing down at my empty paper plate. “You need a second piece of cake.”

  He went off to get me a big piece with lots of icing, and while he was gone, I picked up another balloon and bapped it at Penny, who bopped it to Dominic, who tried to thwack it back, except he aimed too high and hit the banner, which came loose from the ceiling an
d fell down on my head.

  “Dominic,” I groaned, unsticking the tape that had caught in my hair.

  “Sorry,” he yelped, except he didn’t have to apologize. If anything, I should have thanked him, because the way the banner fell suddenly gave me a great idea for improving Grandpa and Dad’s Party-Matic.

  What if, instead of just hanging the banner with tape, we strung it up on the old clothesline from the Tomato-Matic? We could also add a small weight to the net full of balloons. When you turned on the light, the string would get pulled, releasing the net—just like before. Except now when the net opened, the weight would also fall. If we attached a string to the weight, it could trigger a simple motor. The motor would start up, and the banner would unfurl across the room. Then, for a dramatic finish, we could rig up a few bags of confetti, which would explode like fireworks when they were pierced by a pin on the end of the unfurling banner. It would be so cool!

  Grandpa sat down beside me and handed me my piece of cake. “You looked a million miles away there for a second, Ruby,” he observed. “What were you thinking about?”

  Mom laughed as Dad dipped her so low that her head almost touched the floor. Mr. Petrecelli bit his lip as he maneuvered the model plane around a hanging plant, and Penny looked across the room at me and smiled.

  “Nothing much,” I said, taking a bite of cake and letting the icing dissolve on my tongue. Maybe the Party-Matic was working fine just the way it was . . . even without exploding bags of confetti. After all, when you had as many good people in your life as I did, you could afford to keep it kind of simple.

  ANNA HUMPHREY is the author of Rhymes with Cupid and Mission (un)Popular, both novels for teens. Ruby Goldberg’s Bright Idea is her first novel for middle-graders. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, with her husband and two kids.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Anna Humphrey and Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Vanessa Brantley Newton

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  Book design by Chloë Foglia

  Jacket design by Chloë Foglia

  Jacket illustrations by Vanessa Brantley Newton

  The text for this book is set in Bembo.

  The illustrations for this book are rendered in a combination of traditional and digital media.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Humphrey, Anna.

  Ruby Goldberg’s bright idea / Anna Humphrey ; illustrations, Vanessa Brantley Newton.—First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: Ruby is determined to win the gold with her fifth-grade science fair project, a Rube Goldberg machine to help her grandfather, but the real prize turns out to be something completely unexpected.

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8027-8 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8031-5 (eBook)

  [1. Science projects—Fiction. 2. Inventions—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. Grandfathers—Fiction. 5. Goldberg, Rube, 1883–1970—Fiction. 6. Science fairs—Fiction.] I. Brantley Newton, Vanessa, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.H8935Rub 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013002034