The Homework Machine

by Dan Gutman

  Chapter 5

  January

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  My dad was sent overseas. It was during the vacation, I remember. We got the call around New Year’s Day. Kind of put a damper on the celebration. He had been in the air force for years and we always knew he could be called away at any time, but I guess we just hoped it wouldn’t happen. Me and my brothers and my mom were pretty upset.

  But he was a soldier, right? You do what you’re ordered to do. You know when you sign up that you’re going to defend your country one way or another. I understood. I don’t really want to talk about it.

  Before he went away, my dad gave me his chessboard and some books about chess. He told me to practice up, so when he came home I would be able to give him a good game.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  I was very upset when Snik’s dad was sent to the Middle East. We’re not best friends or anything, but even so. Snik was all gung-ho G.I. Joe about it. He said, “My dad is going to shoot guys,” and that kind of silly macho talk. I was against the war, and I didn’t want to see the dad of someone I knew get hurt.

  I didn’t discuss it with Snik very much. I didn’t want him telling me that people who were against the war were traitors and all that. But I’m sure he was thinking about his dad all the time. How could you not?

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

  I have always thought that instead of fighting wars, the leaders of the two sides should play a game of chess against each other. Whoever wins the game wins the war. Nobody has to die. War is not the answer. Chess is the answer.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  When I heard that Snik’s dad had to go to the Middle East, I just started crying. I couldn’t stop. It was like something opened inside of me. Everybody gathered around me and asked me what was wrong. That was the first time I ever told anybody at school that my dad died. I didn’t want Snik’s dad to die too.

  We probably have air force bases in Hawaii and Southern California and cool places like that all over the world. But he had to get sent to the one place where there was a war going on. Talk about bad luck.

  MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

  When Sam’s father was sent overseas, I noticed a change came over him. He didn’t crack many jokes anymore. He stopped making fun of people. He was more businesslike, grim even. I tried to talk to him about it, but he obviously didn’t want to. I wanted to comfort him. Sometimes you just can’t help.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  By January, we were using Belch every day. I had stopped doing my homework on my own entirely. I never even thought about doing it that way anymore. It was so much easier just using Belch.

  My mom used to smoke cigarettes when she was younger. I asked her how she started. She said that she tried a cigarette one day just for the fun of it when she was out with some friends who smoked. She didn’t like it that much, but a few days later she was with the same people and she had another one. She just wanted to fit in, you know?

  Little by little, she started smoking a cigarette here and there, and soon she started thinking about having a cigarette when she wasn’t smoking one. Before she knew it, she was smoking a pack of cigarettes every day, and she was addicted to them. I think I was becoming addicted to Belch almost the same way.

  I asked my mom how she quit smoking, and she said it was very hard. She tried a whole bunch of times, but she couldn’t do it. Finally, she quit when she was pregnant with me. She didn’t want me to be harmed by the tobacco in her body. That’s what it took for her to stop.

  RONNIE TEOTWAWKI, GRADE 5

  Every day, Snikwad, Kelsey, Judy, and Brenton would leave school together. The little foursome. They just couldn’t be a tight group. I couldn’t resist. I had to find out what was going on. So I followed them, hiding behind trees and bushes and stuff so they wouldn’t see me.

  They went over Brenton’s house. I hid behind a car parked across the street. A few minutes after they went inside, I saw some movement in one of the windows on the second floor. It was probably Brenton’s bedroom. His mother brought them something on a tray. Then she left and they closed the door.

  It looked like Brenton was fussing with his computer. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing. The others were standing around, talking and laughing. They stayed maybe an hour and then they left. That was it.

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  My dad sent me an e-mail saying how about a game of chess? I ask him how we can play chess when I’m in Arizona and he’s in the middle of some desert. He says we should each set up a chessboard and we can tell the other one our moves by e-mail. He says lots of the soldiers are doing it, and he gave me the address of a Web site that makes it easy.

  I went to the Web site, but it looked complicated. They use a code to identify the pieces and their positions on the board. It’s like this: P = pawn, R = rook, N = knight, B = bishop, Q = queen, and K = king. You use capital letters for the white pieces and lowercase letters for the black pieces. When you’re ready to make a move, you name the piece and the square you’re moving it to. So if white types in Nf3, that means he’s moving his knight to the third row and the sixth column.

  I e-mail my dad and say it sounds pretty complicated to me. He says I’m a big wimp and afraid to play him because I know I’d lose. So this is what I e-mail him back: Pe4.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  Jessica Martin used to be my best friend in the whole world. We’ve known each other since we were in kindergarten. When we were in the same class at school last year, we would come home every day and do our homework together. Sometimes other girls in the class joined us, too.

  Jessica asked me to meet her in the bathroom after lunch. She was all serious, like she had something very important and personal to get off her chest. She said she was upset because we hadn’t seen each other in a long time and I never called her anymore. I said it was nothing. We were in different classes now, and I was just busy, that’s all. I couldn’t tell her about Belch, of course.

  Jessica asked me if Kelsey was my new best friend, because she saw me riding bikes home from school with her. Jessica said that Kelsey is, like, trailer trash and she’s got pink hair and everything.

  I said don’t be ridiculous. I could never be friends with Kelsey. It wasn’t a nice thing to say, but I didn’t know what else to say to Jessica. I didn’t feel good about the whole thing. I didn’t know what to do. I’m just not good in situations like that.

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  So this jerk Ronnie Teotwawki comes up to me in the lunchroom one day and asks me why I’m hanging around with Brenton. I tell him I’m not hanging around with Brenton, and he says oh yeah, how come you leave school with him every day? I say it’s none of his business who I leave school with and he better leave me alone and stop watching me or I’ll bust his head open. That shut him up.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  My friend Heather in the other class asked me if I wanted to come over after school and listen to this cool new CD she burned by some new band. I told her I couldn’t, but I didn’t tell her I was going over to Brenton’s house with Judy and Snik.

  She looked kinda hurt and said what’s up? How come I see you with that jerk Judy all the time now? Are you friends? Are you turning goody-goody? She said Judy was stuck-up and snotty and all that. I said I know. I told her I wasn’t friends with Judy or anything. I couldn’t tell Heather about Belch. She tells everybody everything. I guess it’s better for Heather to tell everybody I’m friends with Judy than to have her tell everybody about Belch.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  I felt bad about Jessica, so I called her up and asked her if she wanted to do something. She said she couldn’t because she had a ton of homework to do. My homework was done hours before. She started asking all these questions, like how come you aren’t working on your homework? How did you finish it so fast?

  I kind of freaked out. What was I supposed to say? That a machine did my homewor
k for me? I told Jessica that I did some of my homework at school, but I’m not sure if she believed me.

  I was never very good at lying. Some people can just look you in the eye and tell you a total lie and you never know it. When I tell a lie, I get nervous and I start sweating and stuttering and I can’t look the person in the face. I’m terrible at it. I’d rather just tell the truth, to tell you the truth. But sometimes you can’t.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  Heather said she thought it over and she couldn’t be friends with me anymore if I was going to hang out with a stuck-up jerk like Judy. So I told her that I didn’t want to be friends with anybody who insisted on telling me who I was allowed to hang out with. She got all mad and so did I. I guess me and Heather aren’t friends anymore.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  I was walking to the bike rack with Snik and Kelsey when I saw Jessica and some of the other girls leaving school together. I guess they were going to go do their homework together. Jessica kind of glanced at me. She didn’t invite me to join them. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. After that we weren’t friends anymore.

  MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

  When Sam told me he was playing a game of chess with his father by e-mail, I was just thrilled. Before that, I didn’t see that he had any real hobbies or interests. Finally he had found a positive interest that would stimulate his mind, and every child needs that. For some kids, it’s sports, or playing a musical instrument, or reading. For me, it was nature. For Sam, it was chess.

  I also thought playing chess was a great way for him to keep in touch with his father, who was so far away. It helped get Sam out of his funk for a while, too.

  I was careful not to tell Sam how pleased I was with the chess, though. Sam is one of those students who think that if a grown-up approves of something they do, it must not be very cool and maybe he should stop doing it. I didn’t want that to happen. You have to be very careful with the way you treat each child.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  My dad has this thing where we have to sit around the dinner table and talk about serious subjects every night. Like, he’ll bring up the subject of gun control or athletes taking steroids and the whole family has to give our opinions.

  One night we were talking about knowing right from wrong. Dad said that sometimes the difference between right and wrong is obvious. Like when you add two numbers together, there is a right answer and a wrong answer. Or robbing a bank or killing somebody is definitely wrong.

  But in some situations, you can’t tell the difference between right and wrong so easily. Like driving faster than the speed limit is wrong, but if you’re rushing to the hospital so that a baby can be born, then speeding is okay. Or hitting somebody with a baseball bat is wrong, but if that person was attacking your mom, then it’s okay.

  I didn’t feel well. I felt physically ill. I had to excuse myself from the table.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  Feeling guilty about what we did? Yeah, I guess a little. But hey, we didn’t hurt anybody. There are a lot of horrible people in the world who get away with lots of stuff. What we did wasn’t so bad. There are degrees of wrongness, you know? If you get all worked up over the little wrongs, you won’t appreciate how wrong the big wrongs are.

  POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH

  I first became aware of this so-called homework machine back in January. Got an anonymous tip. Somebody called the hotline and said a kid at Grand Canyon School developed a machine that did homework automatically. Then they hung up. It sounded like a kid. Traced the call to a pay phone. Figured it was a crank. Kids do this kind of stuff all the time. Sounded like a load of bull, if you’ll excuse my French.

  It’s standard procedure to keep a record of all calls. So I did, of course. Just in case. I know a guy in Washington who looks into this kind of stuff. Told him what I knew, which wasn’t much. He said maybe he would check it out if he had time.

  RONNIE TEOTWAWKI, GRADE 5

  It wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t me who told the cops about the machine. I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles if you want me to. I’ll swear it on my mother. I never called the police.

  Chapter 6

  February

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  One morning Kelsey came to me and said she had a secret she wanted to share with me. Ordinarily, I don’t like sharing secrets or hearing other people’s secrets. It’s not that far from lying, really, because once you know someone’s secret and you keep it to yourself, you’re not being honest with the people around you.

  Anyway, Kelsey looked like she was going to tell me the secret no matter what. She lifts up her shirt and shows me that she had pierced her belly button.

  Well, I almost threw up. That is just about the most disgusting thing I ever saw. I can’t believe her mom would let her do that. Or maybe I can. After all, she did let Kelsey dye her hair pink. But I can’t understand why anybody would ever want to do that. It’s just gross.

  My mom always told me that if I don’t have something nice to say to somebody, I should say nothing at all. But I lied and told Kelsey her belly button ring was cool. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  I knew Judy thought that what I did was disgusting. She’s good at a lot of stuff, but she’s not very good at hiding her feelings. But hey, she pierced her ears, right? What’s the difference?

  MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

  I was in the lounge and I asked some of the other teachers if it was common for an unpopular child to suddenly become popular with the other students. That’s what seemed to have happened with Brenton, He was just about shunned when school started, and very soon he seemed to be quite popular. I couldn’t figure it out.

  Mrs. Wallace, who has been teaching for more than twenty years, said that a child can change a lot in one year. Some kids start fifth grade at the maturity level of a fourth grader and end the year with the maturity level of a sixth grader. But she said that in all her years of teaching she had only seen unpopular kids suddenly become popular a few times. She said that if that happens, it means the other kids are using him or her in some way. Kids don’t just suddenly become popular for no reason.

  JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

  One day I went to get a drink of water after the bell rang for dismissal, and when I got back to class, Snik, Brenton, and Kelsey were gone. They went to Brenton’s house without me! That had never happened before. I was really upset.

  I hopped on my bike and all the way over there I was trying to figure it out. Was it an accident? Or did they do it on purpose? Maybe there was something they wanted to talk about and they didn’t want me to hear. Were they trying to send me a message? Were they trying to cut me out of the group? I didn’t know what to do.

  KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

  Judy came in all upset. I asked her what was wrong and she said nothing. But it was so obvious. It was all over her face. She totally can’t hide her emotions. Finally she blurted out that she was mad because we left without her.

  Man, she gets upset easy! I told her it was nothing. We looked around for her after school and couldn’t find her, so we left. What’s the big deal? I told her she was being silly, and then she got mad at that. Her voice was even trembling.

  She stayed mad for a long time. Man, when she grows up, she’s gonna get an ulcer or something. She cares too much about everything. She’s lucky she doesn’t have anything serious to worry about.

  When I was six, my dad got hit by a snow-mobile and he died. I was there. I saw it. When something like that happens to you, it puts stuff into perspective. I’m not going to get all bent out of shape because some kids leave school without me. You know what I mean?

  SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

  In an e-mail, I asked my dad if he shot anybody yet. He said he didn’t want to talk about stuff like that, and maybe we should stick to chess.

  He beat me pretty fast in that first e-mail game
. I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention because he captured my queen and after that he just took all my other pieces one by one. I’ll never let that happen again.

  After he checkmates me, he asks me if I’m up for another game or am I too chicken? I tell him to bring it on, hotshot. He moves one of his pawns up and so do I. I move the pieces on our chessboard at home, so I can see the game better.

  Chess by e-mail is pretty cool. I would usually check my mail after dinner and Dad’s move would be there waiting for me. I liked having as much time as I needed to decide what to do next. No pressure.

  I learned some of the basic strategy by then. Like, you want to bring your pieces out from the back row as early in the game as possible. But you don’t want to bring your queen out too early, because then she’s open to attack and she can get in the way of your pawns. It’s a really complicated game. You gotta think.

  BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

  Snik came in one morning with his chessboard. He told me he was playing a game against his dad and he needed some advice. He set up the pieces and I looked things over. He had done a pretty nice job. His dad was a piece ahead, but Snik was in a good position and could still win.

  I told him a few things he didn’t know. Like a rook is worth more than a bishop or knight, which are worth about the same. And if you have two pawns in position to make a capture, you want to capture toward the center of the board. But he had already learned a lot of stuff on his own. He’s smarter than he gives himself credit for.

  I’m an okay player. Not great. I’ve never really studied the game. The most important thing to know is that chess isn’t a battle, it’s a war. You want to gradually build up tiny advantages and make your position better until the enemy has no choice but to quit. I advised Snik to castle so he could get his king away from the center of the board.