by Tom Watson
“That’s awesome!” I exclaimed.
Simon gave Rosie a fist bump.
“But there are three problems,” Rosie said. You could tell she was excited and nervous at the same time. “Three huge problems.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“The first problem is Copycat Katie,” Rosie whispered and nodded her head at Katie Cunningham. Simon and I knew exactly what Rosie was talking about. Katie had copied Rosie’s science fair ideas two years in a row. “We have to keep this idea a secret.”
“What’s the second problem?” Simon asked.
“I don’t know if we can get it done in time,” Rosie answered. “We only have two days.”
I asked, “And the third problem?”
“I have no idea if it will work.”
Then the bell rang.
“Let’s go,” Simon said, reaching for his backpack on the floor. “We can talk about it on the walk home.”
“I can’t leave yet,” Rosie whispered. She eyeballed Katie again. “I have to ask Mr. Willow one more question—but not until Katie is gone.”
YOU’VE ALREADY READ SIX CHAPTERS AND 2,933 WORDS! HOW ARE YOU FEELING?
WE WALKED TO my house from school and Rosie explained her plan to us. Simon and I thought it might actually work.
“How do we start?” I asked as we got to the back patio.
“We need to get our supplies,” Rosie said as she unzipped her backpack and pulled out ten magnifying glasses. “Mr. Willow let me borrow these from the science closet. I told him they were for the science fair.”
“Did he ask you what our project is?”
“Yes,” Rosie answered and nodded. “But guess who came back into the room to get something from her desk right then?”
“Copycat Katie?” I asked.
Rosie squeezed her lips together, squinted her eyes, and nodded again. Rosie almost never looked mad—but she looked kind of mad right then.
“No way!” Simon exclaimed. “She wants to take your idea? Again?!”
“I didn’t want to take the chance, so I told Mr. Willow I wanted it to be a surprise,” Rosie said and shook the mad look off her face. She knew we had to get moving. “Let’s get what we need.”
“We need some big plastic bottles,” Rosie said after we’d collected everything else. “Regular water bottles won’t work. We need big two-liter soda bottles.”
We didn’t have any at my house.
But some of my neighbors did.
Simon, Rosie, and I found ten of them in the big blue recycling bins at the end of their driveways. It was kind of weird looking through my neighbors’ garbage. But it wasn’t gross things—like old food and wet stuff. It was just recycling things—newspapers, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and cardboard.
We took those ten bottles back to my patio and put them with the other supplies.
“We need an awesome name for our project,” Simon said.
Rosie and I thought that was a good idea.
“We’re inventing something to attract fireflies,” Rosie said. “What’s a good name for that?”
“The Great Firefly Catcher?” I suggested.
“It’s good, but we’re not really catching them,” Rosie said. “It’s more like we’re getting them to meet up in one place.”
“I’ve got it!” Simon exclaimed. “The Fantastic Firefly Fetcher!”
It was perfect. Rosie and I both loved it.
“Okay, we have a name,” Rosie said. “Now we have to turn these soda bottles into clear plastic tubes. Oh, and there’s something else.”
Simon asked, “What’s that?”
“We have to figure out one more thing,” Rosie said. “And it’s going to be tricky.”
WE SAT DOWN criss-cross applesauce on the patio to tear the bottle labels off. While we did that, Rosie told us the trickiest part of our project.
“We have to sneak into the greenhouse during school and dig ten small holes with the little shovel,” Rosie said.
“We can’t go outside during school,” I said and bit my lip a little. “It’s against the rules. We’ll get in big trouble.”
“That’s why it’s the trickiest part,” Rosie said.
“We can only go outside at recess,” Simon said. “But the greenhouse is locked anyway. Only teachers have keys.”
“And the walls and door are made out of glass,” I said, picturing the greenhouse. “It’s got a screen roof to let rain in—and keep bugs and birds out—but there’s no way to get inside.”
“It’s tricky,” Rosie repeated. “But we have to find a way in.”
“I have an idea,” Simon said as he scratched his fingernail against a bit of label that was still stuck on his last bottle. “The walls are glass, so we can’t get through them. But the top is just a screen. It’s pretty loose and flimsy. I think I could get through it.”
“How are you going to climb up there?” Rosie asked as we started to cut the tops and bottoms off the bottles to turn them into tubes.
“I’m not going to climb up,” Simon said. “I’m going to fall down.”
I asked, “How?”
“I’ll jump off the roof of the school, that’s how.”
“You can’t jump off the school roof!” Rosie screamed and laughed.
“Why not?”
“You’ll break your legs! Or worse!” Rosie said. Now she was really laughing—like, hard. She was holding her belly.
Simon turned my way for support. He looked at me and said, “I figure the screen roof will slow me down before I smash into the ground.”
I shook my head. “It won’t slow you down enough. You cannot jump off the school and through the greenhouse roof.”
“All right, all right,” Simon said, giving up.
It was quiet then. We were each down to our last bottle to cut.
“We can’t use the roof by falling through it,” Rosie said slowly and twirled her hair, suddenly serious. “But we can use the roof.”
“How?” Simon and I asked in unison.
“Tomorrow at recess,” Rosie answered. She paused and looked at Simon, then at me. “We’re going to play Frisbee.”
MORE THAN HALFWAY THROUGH! WHAT DO YOU THINK ROSIE IS GOING TO DO WITH THE FRISBEE?
AT RECESS THE next day, Thursday, we launched our plan to get the greenhouse keys.
We hurried toward the back of the playground near the woods. That’s where the school garden was. We had figured out our roles at lunch.
I would throw the Frisbee.
Rosie would negotiate with Mr. Willow.
Simon would dig the holes.
Rosie and Simon watched Mr. Willow. He was the teacher on the playground with us that day. He was shooting baskets with some of the girls in my class—including Katie.
“He’s not looking, Molly,” Rosie said. “Go ahead and throw it. Try to get it in the middle of the roof.”
I was pretty nervous. I’m not, like, totally athletic or anything. I took a deep breath—and threw the Frisbee.
It was a perfect shot.
Whew.
It landed near the center of the greenhouse’s screen roof. We could all see it sag a little in the middle.
“Perfect throw!” Simon exclaimed.
“Okay,” Rosie said. “My turn. Let’s hope this works.”
Simon and I watched as Rosie ran over to Mr. Willow. We couldn’t hear her, but we watched as she talked and motioned with her hands. She pretended to throw a Frisbee. She pointed up in the air—and at the greenhouse. She made a poking motion up toward the sky.
And then Mr. Willow did exactly what we wanted him to do. He reached into his pocket, retrieved his keys, and pointed to the one that opened the greenhouse door.
Rosie ran back.
“How fast can you dig ten holes?” Rosie asked Simon as she unlocked the glass door to the greenhouse.
“Super fast,” he answered and pulled the little shovel from his back pocket.
“Great,” Rosie said
. She opened the door. “I told Mr. Willow that I was going to poke and nudge the Frisbee with a tomato stake to get it off the roof. I’m going to look busy, but I’m not actually going to knock it off until you’re done.”
Simon nodded.
“And Molly,” Rosie explained further. “You stand outside and do a lot of pointing and gesturing. Act like you’re going to catch it. And spy on Mr. Willow. But don’t look like you’re spying.”
“How do I do that?”
Simon said, “Just spy casually.”
He didn’t see the puzzled look on my face. He was already gone.
Rosie went into the greenhouse right after him.
Simon started to dig frantically. And Rosie started poking the Frisbee closer to the edge of the roof so it would eventually topple over toward me. I could tell she was missing on purpose a lot.
After a few minutes, Simon called, “Five done! Five to go!”
The Frisbee was about three feet from the edge. I glanced over my shoulder as casually as I could. Mr. Willow wasn’t shooting baskets anymore. His arms were crossed against his chest. He stared in our direction.
And so did Katie.
“You guys,” I called and turned back around. “I think we’re running out of time.”
“MR. WILLOW IS staring at us!” I scream-whispered.
“Eight!” Simon yelled.
“I can see him!” Rosie scream-whispered back. “He’s walking this way. And Katie’s with him! She can’t find out what we’re doing! Hurry, Simon!”
“Nine!”
“He’s halfway to us now,” Rosie said urgently—but quietly. She gave the Frisbee a good, accurate nudge and it jumped to the edge of the screen roof. About half of it hung over. “Simon, we have to go! Now!”
“Ten!” he yelled.
I felt Mr. Willow’s hand on my shoulder as I stared up at the Frisbee teetering on the edge. Rosie and Simon hustled out of the greenhouse door.
Katie stood next to Mr. Willow.
She totally wanted to know what we were doing, I could tell.
“Why did you just yell ‘ten!’ like that, Simon?” Mr. Willow asked. He didn’t sound curious. He sounded like he was accusing Simon of something. It felt like we were in trouble.
I froze. I couldn’t move a muscle.
“Uhh,” Simon said. He didn’t have an answer. I noticed that his hands were in his pockets. He was trying to hide them because they were dirty.
Rosie had an answer though. I knew she didn’t like fibbing, but she couldn’t give away our science fair project—especially with Katie standing right there.
“He said it would take me at least twelve pokes with the tomato stake to get the Frisbee down,” she answered and turned her back toward Mr. Willow to lock the door. I saw her wrist twist as she wiggled the key. She turned back around and continued. “But I won. I got it here in ten.”
She handed the keys back to Mr. Willow.
Mr. Willow reached up and grabbed the Frisbee for us.
“Okay, you three,” Mr. Willow said as he and Katie headed back toward the basketball hoop. “Move away from the greenhouse if you’re going to throw it some more.”
We said we would.
When Mr. Willow and Katie and the other girls were shooting baskets again, Simon asked the question that was on my mind too.
“Rosie,” he said. “How are we going to get back in here tomorrow night before the science fair? We’ll need the key again.”
“No, we won’t.”
I asked, “Why not?”
Rosie said, “It’s not locked.”
“But we saw you lock it,” Simon said.
“No,” Rosie said and smiled. “You—and Mr. Willow—saw me turn my wrist. I never actually put the key in the handle.”
Rosie is the best. The absolute best.
FRIDAY AT SCHOOL, we painted nine Styrofoam balls to look like the planets of our solar system. But that was just our pretend project. Obviously, our real project was about fireflies. We just didn’t know if it would work.
So we did a fake project at school. We worked on the actual project at home.
After dinner, just when it started to get dark, Simon and Rosie came to my house. We went out to my backyard. We caught as many fireflies as we could.
You can collect a LOT of fireflies in a whole hour.
And we got a ton.
We each had a mason jar with a wet cotton ball inside. That’s where we put the fireflies when we caught them. Simon collected the most.
At 7:30, my mom called to us from the back door. It was time to go to the science fair.
Simon, Rosie, and I climbed into the back seat of our car. Their parents were going to meet us at the school.
“What do you have in your backpacks?” my dad asked us from the front seat.
“Just some final supplies for our project,” I answered quickly. Simon’s backpack was stuffed with most of the clear soda bottle tubes. Mine was jammed with a couple of the tubes and three jars full of fireflies. And Rosie’s backpack held the rest of the tubes and all the magnifying glasses.
“You still don’t want to tell us what it is?” Mom asked.
“Not really,” I said. “It’s a surprise.”
“Okay,” Dad said and smiled at me in the rearview mirror. “No problem.”
After we parked, Mom and Dad headed toward the school right away.
But we didn’t.
“Aren’t you guys coming?” Mom asked.
“We have to, umm, go over our presentation one last time,” I said.
“Makes sense,” responded Dad. “We’ll meet you in your classroom.”
I nodded. And we waited for them to go inside. We got really lucky then because no other cars pulled into the parking lot.
We sprinted across the playground, heading straight to the greenhouse. The glass door was unlocked—just as Rosie had left it. And we got to work. There was just enough light for us to see.
A couple of fireflies escaped on the first few holes, but after that we got pretty good at it.
“I don’t know, you guys,” Rosie said doubtfully when we were done. “I think this might have been a bad idea.
I don’t think it’s going to work.”
“Maybe we should wait here a few minutes,” I suggested. “To see if any fireflies come.”
“There’s no time!” Simon yelled. “We have to go!”
We raced back to school—and hurried into the classroom.
The science fair was about to start.
ONLY TWO MORE CHAPTERS TO GO! HOW DO YOU THINK THE STORY WILL END?
OUR PLAN WAS pretty simple.
We had already asked Mr. Willow if we could be last—and he said yes. It was Simon’s job to stand near the window and look out at the greenhouse every now and then. If it seemed to be getting brighter or glowing, then we’d know our firefly project had worked. And we could go outside and show it to Mr. Willow.
If it didn’t, then we would show our bogus backup solar system project.
Rosie and I were super nervous. We wanted Mr. Willow to go slow to give more fireflies a chance to find the magnified light and be attracted to it.
It took about thirty minutes for Mr. Willow to look at all the other tables. There was a model of a volcano, a Mentos and Diet Coke geyser, a daffodil that had turned blue, and some other cool projects.
Mr. Willow said Katie’s solar system model was pretty good.
“I knew she’d copy us,” Rosie whispered.
I smiled and said, “But she didn’t copy the right thing.”
We kept looking over at Simon as Mr. Willow got closer and closer to our table.
Simon kept shrugging his shoulders. He came over once to say it was too far away to tell. He thought maybe the greenhouse was glowing a bit—but maybe not. It was so bright in the classroom, it was hard for Simon to see outside.
Mr. Willow was about thirty seconds away from our table. We looked over at Simon one last time.
He shrugged again.
“What should we do?” I whispered to Rosie.
“I don’t think we should risk it,” Rosie said. I could tell she was disappointed.
“If we don’t know it worked, we better just show our dumb solar system balls.”
“It might have worked,” I whispered.
“We can’t risk it,” Rosie whispered back.
“It could have worked.”
“We can’t.”
“Maybe it worked.”
“We don’t know,” Rosie whispered and grasped the poster board that covered our Styrofoam planets.
Mr. Willow, our classmates, and all the parents gathered around Table 5.
“Okay, Table 5,” Mr. Willow announced. “I’m expecting big things here.”
Rosie looked down at the poster board. She knew what was behind it. I could see the frown on her face. She was embarrassed. She didn’t want to lift it up—but Rosie knew she had to.
And then Simon yelled, “Wait!”
“WHAT IS IT, Simon?” Mr. Willow asked.
“Can we turn the lights off for a few seconds?” Simon asked loudly.
Mr. Willow tilted his head. He was curious. “Sure,” he said.
One of the parents flipped the light switch.
Rosie and I snapped our heads to the left and looked outside.
It took a couple of seconds for our eyes to adjust. When they did, we could see the greenhouse.
It was glowing—and blinking.
It wasn’t, like, as bright as the sun or anything, but it was definitely glowing.
“It worked!” Rosie whispered to me and squeezed my left hand. I squeezed hers back. And then Rosie pointed toward the window and in a louder voice said, “That’s our science fair project!”
