Sam the Man & the Cell Phone Plan

by Frances O’Roark Dowell

  When Sam was done printing out all the codes he wanted to try, he stapled the pages together and took them to Annabelle’s room. Annabelle was sitting on her bed, untangling the knots in the laces of her soccer cleats.

  “That looks like a cool book,” Annabelle said after Sam showed her what he’d just done. “But I guess there’s one thing I don’t understand. Why do you have to send messages in code? When I text my friends, I don’t text them in code.”

  “But when your friends text you back, the only person who can see the texts is you,” Sam said. “Because you keep your phone in your pocket, right? And then when you get a text, you take your phone out of your pocket and look at it. It’s not like someone leaves their phone on your desk so you can read the message they sent you. But if you pass someone a piece of paper . . .”

  “Someone might grab it and read it,” Annabelle finished. “I had that happen to me once.”

  “What was the note about?” Sam asked.

  “Soccer practice, so it wasn’t a big deal,” Annabelle said, tugging at her shoelace to make the last knot come out. “Still, it made me really mad when Zeph Bamberger grabbed the note and read it out loud to everybody.”

  “That would make me mad too,” Sam agreed. He was glad Annabelle understood why he wanted to use secret codes instead of regular words for his messages. Sometimes when Sam came up with ideas he thought were good, someone else would point out why they weren’t good at all, and then Sam had to come up with a whole new idea. It was kind of exhausting.

  Sam took the pages back to his room and put them on his desk next to his notebook. He wished there were a better way to send messages than just writing them down on pieces of paper. That seemed pretty boring. But what else was there, if you didn’t have a phone to send messages with? Sam had heard about pigeons that carried messages back and forth between people, but how practical was that? First you’d have to find a pigeon, and then you’d have to train a pigeon to fly from your house to all your friends’ houses, and that could take forever. Plus, what if the pigeon got tired of carrying messages all day and decided to fly away?

  Probably the best thing to do was to start with paper, even if paper was boring. After he and his friends had learned to write to one another in code, they could figure out more interesting ways to send messages back and forth. Sam wondered if anyone ever used squirrels to carry messages. He’d actually never seen a pigeon in his neighborhood, but squirrels were everywhere.

  Sam looked at his little notebook. He liked how it was sort of shaped like a phone. The spiral wire that held the notebook together was at the top instead of the side, which made the notebook easier to slide into his pocket. Maybe people who saw it would think it actually was a phone. Sam liked that idea. In fact, he liked it so much he got another great idea right away.

  Sam put his notebook in his back pocket and went downstairs to his dad’s office, which was really a storage space next to the kitchen that Sam’s family didn’t store anything in. Instead there was a card table where Sam’s dad worked on his laptop. There was also a shelf with papers and the computer magazines Sam’s dad liked to read.

  Looking through the stack of magazines, Sam found an old one he thought would be okay to use. It didn’t take him long to find an ad that had a picture of a smart phone. The picture was bigger than Sam’s notebook, but Sam knew how to fix that. He went into the kitchen to grab a pair of scissors from the junk drawer and then very carefully cut out the picture so it was the right size. Then he got a glue stick from the junk drawer and glued the picture to the front of his notebook.

  There were good things and bad things about the picture, Sam thought while he waited for the glue to dry. One of the bad things was that the phone had the time on its screen. It read 12:45. But if Sam took his notebook out of his pocket at 2:33, everyone would think it was strange that his phone said 12:45. Sam guessed he would just say that his phone’s clock was broken. Or else that he had it on army time, which was different from regular time. Mr. Stockfish had told Sam that, and Sam wasn’t sure what he meant, but that was okay. Nobody else would either.

  One of the good things was that the phone screen had little pictures on it, like a picture of a camera and another one of a little globe. Sam knew the little globe was a symbol for the Internet. So whenever he needed to look up a fact in his notebook, he just had to remember to tap the little globe first.

  When he was pretty sure the glue was dry and the picture was stuck to the notebook, Sam practiced putting his notebook into his pocket, pulling it out, and tapping on the cover. Yes! It worked perfectly.

  Now all Sam had to do was fill his notebook with information. And he also needed to write Gavin a message in secret code. He wished there was a way to send messages that seemed more like he was sending real texts. Maybe all of his friends could get notebooks like Sam’s. Then they could write their messages in their notebooks and pass them around. Sam would have to get another notebook, because he wouldn’t want to pass his information notebook around. But that was okay, because Sam really liked little notebooks. Also, it would look like he had two phones.

  Sam took his notebook upstairs and got one of his books about monster trucks out of his bookcase. He sat down at his desk and opened his notebook to the first blank page and opened the monster truck book to its first page.

  A monster truck is a very large pickup truck with very big tires, Sam wrote in his notebook. You can go to monster truck shows and watch the monster trucks run over small cars. Monster trucks are the best kind of trucks.

  Sam looked up and smiled. When he got his notebook filled up with information, it would be even better than a phone.

  He couldn’t wait.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  Code Busters

  I thought you said your parents wouldn’t let you have a phone?”

  Gavin pointed at the notebook in Sam’s hand and shook his head. “I mean, didn’t you say they were allergic to phones?”

  “No, I didn’t say that,” Sam said, trying not to giggle. Gavin really thought his notebook was a phone! “ You said your family is allergic to cats.”

  “Oh, right,” Gavin said. “That’s different from your parents being allergic to phones. But you did say you weren’t allowed to have a phone. So where’d you get that one?”

  Sam leaned closer to Gavin on the school bus seat and held his notebook right in front of his face. “It’s not really a phone. It’s a notebook I made to look like a phone.” He opened up the notebook to show Gavin what he’d written in it so far. “Right now you can use it to find out facts about monster trucks and chickens, but pretty soon it’s going to have everything in it.”

  “Everything?” Gavin sounded doubtful. “Everything is a lot of things.”

  “It will have everything that’s interesting,” Sam told him. “So it probably won’t have, like, different types of grass you can grow in your backyard or stuff like that. But if you want to know about frozen waffles, you can find it here.”

  “I like frozen waffles,” Gavin said, nodding. “And I’d be interested to know more about them.”

  “I almost forgot!” Sam said, opening up his backpack. “I have something to give you.”

  “A frozen waffle?” Gavin said.

  “No, a message!” Sam handed Gavin a folded-up sheet of paper. “I thought of a way we can text each other even if we don’t have phones. You’ll need to get a notebook like the one I have. And you’ll have to learn some secret codes.”

  Gavin unfolded the note. “Sam, this doesn’t make any sense. It says “7-4-11-11-14 6-0-21-8-13. 19-7-8-18 8-18 0 12-4-18-18-0-6-4 8-13 18-4-2-17-4-19 2-14-3-4 5-17-14-12 18-0-12.”

  “It’s in code!” Sam told him. “You can try to figure it out, or I can give you the code-buster book I wrote last night. Well, I copied and pasted it from the Internet and then printed out a copy for you. That’s almost the same as writing it.”

  Sam reached into his back
pack again and pulled out the book he’d made for Gavin. He’d printed out three different codes and sample messages on a sheet of paper and folded the paper in half long-wise so it looked like the world’s longest, skinniest, shortest book.

  “It’s the first code on the sheet,” Sam told Gavin, handing him the code-buster book.

  “So if I see a zero, that means it’s really the letter A?” Gavin asked, reading the paper.

  “Right,” Sam said. “And if you see a twelve, that means it’s an M. It’s really easy once you get it.”

  “Cool!” Gavin said. He pulled a pencil out of his backpack’s front pocket. “I’m going to get to work on it now!”

  Gavin was still decoding the message when the school bus pulled up in front of the school five minutes later. Sam realized that it was a lot more fun to write a message in a secret code than to watch someone decode it. He also realized that until everyone had memorized the secret codes, they had better keep their messages short.

  “So are we the only ones who are going to do this?” Gavin asked Sam as they walked down the hallway to Mr. Pell’s second-grade classroom. “Or are we going to get other people to do it too?”

  “I thought maybe the members of our detective club might want to send messages,” Sam said. “Like if we’re working on a case and find clues we don’t want anyone else to know about.”

  “That’s a great idea!” Gavin said. “It will make our secret detective club even more secret. So where can we get notebooks like yours?”

  “School store—fifty cents,” Sam told him. “I’m going to get another one, so that I have a message notebook and an information notebook.”

  “You really are making your own phone,” Gavin said, sounding impressed. He hung his backpack above his cubby outside of Mr. Pell’s classroom. “Now all you need to do is figure out how to call someone.”

  “I don’t really like talking on the phone, so I don’t mind not having that part,” Sam said as he put his lunch in his cubby. “But I wish I had a camera. I’m going to ask my mom if I can use her old camera.”

  “Or you could just get another notebook,” Gavin said, opening the door to their classroom.

  Sam followed Gavin inside. “What do you mean?”

  “You already have one notebook that’s like the computer part of a phone, right? And next you’re going to get a notebook you can send messages with.” Gavin plopped down at his desk and turned to look at Sam. “So why not get another notebook to draw pictures of the things you see? Drawing a picture isn’t as fast as taking a picture, but a picture is a picture, am I right?”

  Sam guessed Gavin was right. Still, three notebooks was a lot of notebooks.

  “If you made your message notebook and your camera notebook look like your information notebook, it would look like you had three phones,” Gavin said. “I don’t even know any grown-ups with three phones.”

  “I don’t know any grown-ups with two phones,” Sam said. “Most people just have one.”

  Sam sat down at his desk and checked the board. Checking the board was the first thing they were supposed to do every morning after they sat down in their seats so they would know their schedule for the day. Today they were doing math first, then they were going to Miss Fran’s classroom to do art. Sam wondered if Miss Fran could teach him how to draw pictures that looked like real photographs.

  Sam wouldn’t mind using his mom’s old camera if she’d let him, but the fact was, his mom’s old camera wouldn’t fit in his pocket. Another notebook would. Sam had four pockets in all, so if he wanted, he could have four notebooks. But what would he use his fourth notebook for?

  Maybe nothing, he thought. Or maybe he could write a story in the fourth notebook. His mom could read books on her phone, and Sam thought it would be nice to be able to pull a notebook from his pocket and read a story whenever he wanted.

  All of a sudden Sam had a lot of plans. Did he have too many plans?

  Sam shook his head. There was no such thing as too many plans.

  He was pretty sure he had exactly the right number.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  Showdown at the School Store

  At lunchtime, Sam and Gavin decided to use their milk money to buy notebooks instead of milk, which is why they had to stop at a water fountain on the way to the school store.

  “Too bad I had a peanut butter sandwich today,” Gavin told Sam after he’d spent what seemed like a whole minute taking a drink. “By the time I was done eating, I thought my mouth was going to stay glued together forever.”

  “It was a good thing I had that apple,” Sam said, leaning down to reach the fountain spout. “Having an apple is almost as good as having apple juice.”

  “If you chew it long enough, it’s the exact same thing as having apple juice,” Gavin said. “Except for the peel. Peels aren’t very juicy.”

  There were three kids ahead of them in line when they got to the school store, which was really just a closet with the kind of door that had a top half and a bottom half. When the school store was open, the top half of the door was open, but the bottom was closed. When the store was closed, both halves of the door were closed.

  “I can’t wait until I’m in fifth grade and can work at the store,” Gavin said to Sam as they waited in line.

  “I don’t know if I want to work in the store,” Sam said. “Annabelle says it doesn’t pay anything and all your friends will stop by and ask you for free stuff.”

  “I wouldn’t do it for the money,” Gavin said. “I’d do it because I really love how pencils smell.”

  When Sam reached the front of the line, the boy working behind the counter asked, “What do you want, peewee?”

  “Not to be called a peewee,” Sam said. “Especially since I’m tall for my age.”

  The boy laughed. “Okay, Mr. Tall Guy, what can I get you?”

  Sam put two quarters on the counter, which was just a ledge attached by hinges to the lower half of the door. “I would like one notebook, please. The little kind of notebook that’s held together at the top, not the side.”

  The boy reached behind him, pulled something out of a box, and slapped it on the counter. It was a small blue notebook, but the spiral wire holding the pages together was on the side, not on the top.

  “That’s not the right kind,” Sam said. “I want the kind where you can flip the pages over the top, not over to the side. I know you have that kind, because I already have one I bought here last week.”

  “What’s the difference?” the boy said. “Paper is paper.”

  “Sir!” Gavin said, stepping up so he was standing by Sam’s side. “The customer is always right, sir!”

  “You guys aren’t customers, you’re pipsqueaks.” The boy looked over Sam’s and Gavin’s heads. “Who’s next?”

  “We’re next,” Sam insisted. “We’re right now.”

  “Sorry,” the boy said. “You have to be at least as tall as my chin to get notebooks that have the top spiral. Too bad, so sad, goodbye.”

  Sam didn’t know what to do. Peeking over the boy’s shoulder, he could see a stack of little notebooks—his kind of little notebook—on a shelf. “All you have to do is get two of those notebooks on the shelf behind you,” he said. “We don’t even care what color.”

  “I’d like green, actually,” Gavin said. “But red’s okay too.”

  “Next!” the boy said, ignoring them.

  The kids in line behind Sam and Gavin started to grumble. “Maybe we ought to come back another time,” Gavin whispered to Sam. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “He’s the one who should get in trouble,” Sam whispered back. “He can’t not sell us a notebook if we’ve got the money.”

  “Notebooks are now twenty dollars,” the boy behind the counter announced. He looked at Sam. “Do you have twenty dollars?”

  Now Sam was getting mad. Not only was this boy being a jerk, but once Sam and Gavin bought their note
books, they were supposed to meet Emily, Rashid, and the other members of their detective club on the playground. Pretty soon it would be too late and they’d have to go back to their classroom.

  Sam looked around. He wished some big kid in line would come forward and make the boy behind the counter do the right thing. But everybody in line behind him looked annoyed, like they wished Sam and Gavin would just go away. Sam looked at the boy inside the store. He was acting like Sam and Gavin didn’t even exist. Fine, Sam thought. He’d just have to take care of this himself then.

  Sam’s thoughts were braver than he was. “Give me your quarters,” he said to Gavin in a shaky voice that matched his shaky knees. But when Gavin started to ask why, Sam’s voice got a little stronger. “Just give me your quarters, okay?”

  Gavin handed Sam two quarters. Sam took his own two quarters from the counter, so that he had four quarters in his hand. With his other hand, he grabbed the doorknob and pushed open the bottom half of the school store door. The boy in the store had to take a few steps back, which gave Sam room to step in.

  “I’m putting these quarters on the shelf and taking two notebooks,” Sam told the boy, whose face was turning a dangerous shade of red. “I’m getting a green one for Gavin and a blue one for me.” He reached past the boy and took the notebooks.

  “You’re in big trouble, kid!” the boy yelled as Sam scooted back out into the hallway. “Big trouble!”

  Now Sam’s knees were wobbly instead of shaky, like they had turned into Jell-O. He’d never gotten in trouble at school before. He wondered if he’d get kicked out.

  “Run, Sam!” Gavin yelled. “He’ll never catch us!”

  Sam and Gavin took off down the hall. There was a thumping noise in Sam’s ears that made it hard to hear anything else. Was the boy about to catch them? He didn’t want to turn around to look, but finally he did.