Trouble at Table 5 #3 Read online

  Dedication

  Dedicated to Jacob (IASPOWYA)

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 A Strange Light

  Chapter 2 It’s Annoying!

  Chapter 3 Stuck in My Head

  Chapter 4 The Firefly Problem

  Chapter 5 Dodgeball and Electric Eels

  Chapter 6 Rosie Twirls Her Hair

  Chapter 7 Simon Picks a Name

  Chapter 8 The Tricky Thing

  Chapter 9 Frisbee Time

  Chapter 10 Running Out of Time

  Chapter 11 Catching Time

  Chapter 12 Table 5’s Turn

  Chapter 13 Mr. Willow’s Decision

  Fun and Games!

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  IT WAS BEDTIME on Tuesday.

  But I wasn’t in bed.

  “Mom! Dad!” I called from the top of the stairs.

  “Yes, Molly?” Mom called back.

  “There’s a strange light outside!” I spoke loud enough to reach all the way to the living room. Mom and Dad like to read down there at night.

  “What’s strange about it?” Dad said loudly.

  “It’s like a long, straight beam of light,” I answered.

  “What color is it?” Mom asked.

  “Just white,” I said. “It’s pretty far away. It’s not like blue or red or anything.”

  “What else is strange?” asked Dad.

  “It shoots across the sky every six seconds,” I yelled.

  “Well, it’s an even number, anyway,” Mom called. “That’s good, right?”

  “Right,” I called back.

  My parents know I like even numbers way more than odd numbers. Because with odd numbers, there’s always something left over. And what are you supposed to do with something that’s left over? That just doesn’t make sense to me.

  Dad called, “We’re on the way!”

  When they got to my room, Mom, Dad, and I watched the light move across the sky from my window.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Looks like a searchlight,” Dad said.

  “What’s a searchlight?”

  “It’s a real powerful beam of light,” Dad started to explain. “You know the spotlight the school uses for the holiday play every year?”

  “The one up in the balcony?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Dad said and nodded. “A searchlight is like that, only a hundred times—maybe a thousand times—more powerful.”

  “How come it moves in a circle like that?” I asked. “How come it goes around once every six seconds?”

  “It must be on a rotating platform,” Mom answered. She pointed her index finger up in the air and turned it slowly.

  “Why is it there?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dad answered and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s kind of an old-fashioned thing, to be honest. I haven’t seen one in years. Searchlights are used to attract people.”

  “Like if there was a traveling circus in town,” Mom said, helping out. “They would use a searchlight to get people to come to the circus. The idea was that people would be curious about the light in the sky, follow it, and then have fun at the circus.”

  “Great example,” Dad said.

  “A circus would be awesome!” I exclaimed. “Do you think that’s what it is?”

  “I doubt it,” Dad answered. “There aren’t too many traveling circuses anymore.”

  “Bummer,” I said. “Then what is over there?”

  “I don’t know,” Dad said. He pulled down the window shade while Mom fluffed my pillows. “But it’s bedtime now.”

  But I didn’t get into bed. No way.

  “Do you really think I can go to sleep without knowing exactly where that searchlight is?” I asked. “And why it’s there?”

  It was quiet for two seconds while Mom and Dad looked at each other.

  Then Dad laughed.

  “All right, Molly,” he said. “We’ll take you there. Get a hoodie to put over your pj’s. It’s chilly for a June night. And put on some sneakers.”

  “Yay!” I yelled and jumped up and down four times. “Thanks, Dad!”

  YOU’VE ALREADY READ 534 WORDS. OFF TO A GREAT START!

  WE DIDN’T TALK much as we drove. Dad concentrated on getting us to that searchlight. Mom helped by watching the light and telling him when to turn. I was busy looking out the window. Sometimes when I look out the car window, I’m so busy that I forget to blink. And I have to say in my brain, “Blink, Molly, blink.”

  We got to the searchlight.

  It wasn’t a cool traveling circus.

  It was a boring car dealership.

  Dad parked, turned to me, and asked, “How many signs did we pass?”

  “Thanks for asking,” I said and smiled at him. “We passed thirty-three signs.”

  “Thirty-three?” Mom asked. “That’s an odd number. Do you want to drive around for a minute so you can finish on an even number?”

  “No,” I said and shook my head. “I want to see the light now.”

  The searchlight was strapped to the back of a big truck. There was a large red metal box on the ground next to the truck. A bunch of thick rubber cables ran from the red box to the searchlight. We walked closer. The metal box hummed and vibrated.

  “What’s the big red box for?” I asked.

  “I think it’s a generator,” Dad said. “It runs on gasoline. That searchlight needs a lot of power. If it was just plugged into an outlet, it would probably knock out the electricity in the whole town.”

  “Like during that big storm last year?”

  “Exactly,” Mom answered.

  We stopped about ten feet from the searchlight. The circular motion was calming and rhythmic. I could feel my head rotate on my neck slightly as I watched it turn and turn.

  “Why is it here?” I asked. “At a car dealership?”

  Dad said quietly, “You’re about to find out.”

  Because I was mesmerized by that rotating light, I hadn’t noticed that a woman had walked up to us.

  “I’m Hannah,” the woman said. She had a name tag on her shirt. “We’ve got a big sale going on this week. Great cars. Zero percent financing. Are you interested in upgrading to a new model?”

  “No, I’m not,” Dad answered politely.

  Mom said, “Our daughter saw the searchlight and was curious about it.”

  Hannah leaned down to look at me. “And what is your name?” she asked.

  “Molly Dyson.”

  “Well, Molly Dyson,” Hannah said and smiled, “what do you think of our big light in the sky?”

  “I think it’s annoying,” I said. “I’m awake because I had to find out what it was. And it’s Tuesday. It’s a school night. My friends Rosie, Simon, and I have to come up with a project tomorrow for the science fair—and make it work by Friday night. So I should really be sleeping.” Hannah seemed a little surprised at my answer. She said, “I’m sorry about that, Molly.”

  “May I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “Did you know that you can spell your name backward and forward?”

  “I did know that,” Hannah answered.

  “Can I ask you another question?”

  “Sure.”

  “When are you going to turn the light off?”

  “We’re open late this week because of the sale, Molly. We close at ten o’clock,” Hannah said. “We’ll turn it off a little before then.”

  “Okay,” I said and took Mom’s hand. We turned around to go to the car. “Bye.”

  Dad laughed. Every now and then h
e laughs a little bit at me. He just thinks I’m funny sometimes.

  I STOOD AT my window and watched the searchlight make its circular pattern across the sky, flashing by my window every six seconds.

  Just like Hannah promised, the searchlight went off right before ten o’clock.

  I hadn’t realized how much brighter the night was with the searchlight. Now that it was off, I could see how dark it was. There was no moonlight or starlight—it was cloudy out.

  Oh, and there were fireflies. In our backyard. A bunch of them.

  How could something so little blink so brightly?

  The searchlight needed a big red gasoline-powered generator to shine its light.

  Fireflies don’t have generators.

  The searchlight is used to attract people.

  Fireflies use their light to attract other fireflies. I thought. I didn’t know that for sure.

  There was something there. Right at the edge of my mind. Something needed to be figured out. Something needed to be done.

  I climbed into bed.

  But I didn’t fall asleep for quite a while.

  Something was stuck in my head.

  Fireflies.

  I HOPED THAT the fireflies would get unstuck by school the next day. I knew I should really be thinking about the science fair.

  But the fireflies didn’t get unstuck.

  “There’s something I have to talk to you guys about,” I told Rosie and Simon on the way to lunch. “It’s important.”

  We hustled through the cafeteria line, got our food fast, and sat at a table by ourselves. For lunch that day we had chicken nuggets, a banana, and a scoop of mashed potatoes.

  I like bananas because they’re the same color on the outside and the inside. The outside is dark yellow and the inside is light yellow. No problem.

  I don’t like fruits that are one color on the outside but a totally different color on the inside. Like watermelon is green on the outside, but red on the inside. Or apples are red on the outside, but white on the inside.

  It just doesn’t seem very honest.

  You know what I mean?

  So I like bananas. I broke mine into eight bite-size pieces.

  “Rosie,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Here it comes,” Simon said.

  “What?” I asked. “Here what comes?”

  “Simon and I could tell something was bugging you,” Rosie said. “We just figured it was the science fair. I know you’re worried about coming up with a project. We are too.”

  I smiled. They knew me so well.

  Simon asked, “So what is it?”

  “It’s not the science fair,” I answered. “It’s fireflies. I want Rosie to tell me everything she knows about them.”

  “First of all, fireflies aren’t flies at all,” Rosie began. I knew she’d have good information. She’s so good at science. That was one reason why we weren’t, like, totally panicked about the fair on Friday. We had Rosie on our team. “They’re beetles. When they flash their light, that’s called bioluminescence.”

  I asked, “What else?”

  “It’s okay to catch fireflies, but you shouldn’t keep them for more than a day. And you don’t need to poke holes in the jar. Lots of people do that, but you don’t have to. You just need to drop something wet in the jar. They like moist air. Their light can be yellow, green, or orange.”

  I took a banana bite and asked, “Why do they flash their light?”

  “To attract a mate,” Rosie answered.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Awesome,” Simon said. “I’ve always wanted to learn about the romantic habits of fireflies.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh,” I said and smiled. He was kidding me. “It’s not the romance part that’s important anyway. It’s the attraction part.”

  Simon and Rosie just stared at me. I needed to explain.

  “Last night, Mom, Dad, and I tracked down a searchlight in Bucktown,” I said. I pushed my tray to the side. “It was at a car dealership. They use the light to attract customers. After we got home, I watched out my window until they turned it off. When the searchlight went out, it got really dark. I saw a bunch of fireflies and I started wondering about something. And it got stuck in my head.”

  “Here it comes,” Simon said.

  Rosie nodded.

  “Searchlights are big and bright and made to attract lots of people,” I said and stopped. I leaned toward my best friends. “I want to make firefly light bigger and brighter to attract lots of fireflies.”

  FOUR CHAPTERS DOWN. YOU MUST BE SUPER FOCUSED!

  GYM CAME RIGHT after lunch. It was a dodgeball day.

  You know what dodgeball is, right? It’s when two classes run around and throw balls at each other. Mr. Gumposer (we call him Mr. Bulldozer) picked Katie Cunningham and Burt Glass to be captains. They chose the teams. Katie picked Rosie first, which was kind of weird because Rosie isn’t very good.

  In the first couple of minutes of the game, Rosie, Simon, and I all got hit. We were the first three out. We did it on purpose—we had things to talk about. We sat together near the stacked gym mats by the basketball hoop.

  “Okay,” I said, looking around at the fifty-seven remaining kids playing dodgeball. “Anybody have any ideas?”

  Rosie shook her head, but Simon spoke up quickly.

  “I came up with something,” he said confidently.

  “Awesome,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Okay, we need a light that’s big and bright to attract lots of fireflies, right?” Simon asked quickly. He talked fast. He had that glazy look in his eyes.

  Rosie and I nodded. Ten more kids had been hit in dodgeball.

  “Okay, we go to the city zoo,” Simon began. “When we get there, we head straight to the electric eel tank in the Sea Life exhibit. When nobody’s watching, I’ll climb up to the top of the tank. Will you two hold my ankles so I don’t fall in?”

  We said we would—although I could tell Rosie, like me, was a little worried about where Simon’s idea was going.

  “Great, thanks,” he said and continued. He spoke even faster. “I’ll reach into the tank and grab an electric eel. We’ll hurry home and put it in a bucket of water in Molly’s backyard. It will light up! Electric eels are real bright, I think. Then all the fireflies in the surrounding area will be like, ‘Hey, look at that crazy-big light down there in Molly’s yard! Let’s go check it out!’ There you go. Problem solved.”

  I looked out at the dodgeball game. Half the kids had been eliminated. We were running out of time.

  “Umm, Simon,” I said. “It’s a great idea and everything, but—”

  I didn’t say anything else.

  Because Rosie interrupted me.

  “You can’t grab an electric eel!” she yelled. The dodgeball game was loud, so only Simon and I heard her.

  “I can’t?”

  “No!” Rosie exclaimed. “You’ll get electrocuted!”

  “Oh,” Simon said and paused.

  Apparently, he hadn’t thought of that. “Right. Umm, bad idea.”

  “Plus, it needs to be firefly light,” I reminded him. “It’s not just any light that fireflies are attracted to. It’s firefly light.”

  “Oh, so we need to make their actual light—you know, on their butts or whatever—brighter?” asked Simon. Rosie and I both nodded. “Well, how in the world are we going to do that?”

  Rosie answered, “That’s what we need to figure out.”

  But we weren’t going to figure it out right then. The first dodgeball game was over—and the second was beginning.

  “Come on,” Simon said. “It’s time to get hit in the head with a ball.”

  SCIENCE IS THE last subject on Wednesdays. Simon, Rosie, and I sat at Table 5 while Mr. Willow wrote the science fair schedule on the big whiteboard.

  Simon poked me with his elbow and nodded his head toward Rosie. She was twi
rling her hair. That meant she was trying to figure something out.

  “Mr. Willow?” Rosie called from Table 5.

  Before even turning around, he said, “Yes, Rosie?” He knew it was Rosie. Rosie asks lots of questions during science.

  Here are some examples of what Rosie has asked Mr. Willow:

  “Why is the sky blue?”

  “Will time travel ever be possible?”

  “Why do we throw salt on sidewalks when it snows?”

  This time, Rosie asked, “How does a magnifying glass work?”

  Mr. Willow explained that a convex lens bends outward. And two convex lenses put together with both sides bent outward creates magnification. He drew the shape of it on the whiteboard. It sort of looked like a flying saucer.

  Mr. Willow asked, “Why do you want to know how a magnifying glass works?”

  “Just curious,” Rosie answered and glanced at Katie Cunningham at Table 3 real fast. “Can you magnify light? If I shine a flashlight through a magnifying glass, will the light get bigger?”

  “Hmm,” Mr. Willow said and paused. This was apparently a tough question. “It wouldn’t get bigger. The light would actually be more concentrated. Narrower and brighter, like a laser beam.”

  “Brighter?” Rosie asked. It sounded like she liked that answer.

  “Brighter.”

  “Thank you,” Rosie said.

  Mr. Willow nodded and began to talk about the science fair some more. And Rosie started to twirl her hair again. When Mr. Willow finally finished, we were able to talk to Rosie.

  “Did you figure out my firefly problem?” I asked, leaning in closer.

  “Did you come up with an idea for our science project?” Simon asked.

  “Both,” Rosie said. “We’re going to build something to attract fireflies. It will be our science fair project—and it will get the fireflies out of Molly’s head.”