Unleashed

  “Who’s fighting? We’re just standing up for our rights.”

  They returned to their lockers, loaded up their book bags, and started for home. They were less than halfway through the shortcut when they could see that something up ahead was very different. Gone was the sawhorse with the NO TRESPASSING sign. In its place was a five-foot-high temporary wire fence. As they reached the edge of the trees, they noted that it stretched clear across the triangular strip of property, closing off all access to Honeybee Street.

  Mr. Hartman stood in the center of the yard, leaning on a long-handled sledgehammer, glaring at them.

  Cleopatra was raiding the pantry.

  As Savannah hunched over the computer the next morning, scouring the Internet for hints on how to cure a dog of the dangerous habit of chasing cars, her pet monkey brought an endless supply of dog biscuits and milk bones to Luthor, who was tied to a stake in the front yard.

  The leash was not what the Doberman was used to. In the Drysdale house, animals were treated as full family members. The menagerie included two cats, an ever-changing number of rabbits, hamsters, and guinea pigs, a pack rat, and an albino chameleon.

  Luthor devoured the snacks, pathetically grateful to Cleopatra, who seemed to be the only friend who wasn’t mad at him. Savannah was always yelling at him these days, although he couldn’t imagine why.

  A backfire sounded, and his ears perked up like the targeting system of a fighter jet locking on to an enemy plane. A moment later, there it was: the exterminator’s red truck, passing right in front of the Drysdale house. He had to catch up to it. To his canine brain, nothing had ever been more urgent and necessary.

  By the time he reached the end of the leash, Luthor was flying. The stake came out of the ground like a cork popping. He cleared the front hedge with at least a foot to spare, dragging the leash and the stake behind him. Then he was streaking down the street after his quarry, buoyed by a clear sense of purpose, and a hundred and fifty pounds of canine muscle and bone.

  It was always the same. The great bearded face of Ralph the exterminator flashed in the side mirror, his eyes widened in shock and fear as the truck sped up along Honeybee Street.

  It only made Luthor run harder.

  * * *

  “Thanks for the ride, Dad,” Griffin told his father. “It takes forever to get to school now that Mr. Heartless fenced off our shortcut.”

  Mr. Bing eased to a halt at a stop sign. “Don’t get used to it, kid. You’re going to have to wake up earlier and leave yourself some extra time to walk to school. It’s not rocket science. It can be done.”

  “It’s so unfair!” Griffin groaned. “We weren’t hurting anything, or making a mess, or even being loud. We were just cutting across the tip of his property.”

  “And those are the two magic words — his property. He can put a fence on it if he wants to.”

  Griffin made a face. “I’m going to be able to wallpaper my room with my late slips. Couldn’t you just drive me until he moves away, or dies, or something?”

  “I told you before, Griffin,” his father explained patiently, “just because I work at home doesn’t mean I’m not working. I know it seems like I’m tinkering around in the garage, but creating something that doesn’t already exist is really hard.”

  I hope not, Griffin thought, the Invent-a-Palooza on his mind.

  “So I’m happy to help you out when you’re really in a bind,” his father continued, making the turn onto Honeybee, “but I really don’t have the time —”

  The station wagon wheeled around the corner to come front grill to front grill with the exterminator’s red truck. For a terrifying beat, the mouse hood ornament was right in their faces through the windshield. Then, at the last second, Ralph swerved to the right, driving up on the sidewalk. The two vehicles missed a sideswiping collision by mere inches.

  Griffin exhaled. “That was clo —”

  His relief lasted maybe one second. The instant the red truck swerved out of their path, it revealed a second incoming object, smaller but no less frightening. Luthor was hot on the tail of the exterminator, bounding headlong and heedless.

  Mr. Bing slammed on the brakes, and so did Luthor. For a split second, a collision seemed inevitable. And then the two stopped dead, car and dog, a fraction of an inch apart.

  Griffin leaped out of the car. “Luthor, are you hurt?”

  The Doberman turned tail and trotted home at a leisurely pace, dragging his leash and the stake behind him.

  Savannah came running out of the Drysdale house. Even at this distance, Griffin could hear her shrill voice, scolding her wayward dog. If she had seen how narrowly her Sweetie had avoided a tragic accident, she would have broken down completely.

  Mr. Bing was white-faced and shaking. “Starting tomorrow,” he breathed, “you walk.”

  Griffin sat back on the long cafeteria bench. He’d never get to Step 2 if he couldn’t think of something to invent. He was known around Cedarville as The Man With The Plan. There was nothing, he believed, that couldn’t be accomplished with the right strategy.

  But for Invent-a-Palooza, all the planning in the world couldn’t replace a flash of creative inspiration.

  “Okay,” he said to Ben. “What should we invent?”

  “We?” As Ben took a bite of his sandwich, a tiny piece of roast beef fell from his lips. Ferret Face leaned out and snapped it up. “I didn’t see my name anywhere on that sign-up sheet.”

  “Fine. What am I going to invent with the help of my best friend? It doesn’t have to be that great. It just has to be greater than whatever Vader comes up with.”

  Ben frowned. “What does your dad say? How does he come up with his ideas?”

  “He says you look at the world and you find something that’s harder than it needs to be. Then you find a way to make it easier or better. So what’s something in your life that’s hard?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” Ben replied honestly. “It’s hard to wake up in the morning. It’s hard to get to school with no shortcut. It’s hard to get ferret fur out of your belly button. It’s hard to be best friends with The Man With The Plan.”

  Griffin rolled his eyes and turned to Logan. “How about you? What would make your life easier?”

  In response, Logan emitted an agonized “Yeow!” that echoed off the cafeteria’s rafters.

  Heads jerked in their direction. A lunch lady came running from the food line. “Are you all right?” she demanded, her hairnet askew.

  Logan beamed proudly. “That wasn’t screaming; it was acting. That cry of pain is from having a bandage removed that isn’t Ouch-Free.”

  The lunch lady glowered at him. “Holler like that again, buster, and you will not be ouch-free.” She stormed back to her post.

  Logan looked pleased, but thoughtful. “There must be some way to squeeze a little more suffering into my performance.”

  “For crying out loud,” said Griffin, “they’re removing a bandage, not cutting off your head!”

  “The point is,” Logan explained, “when they take off the Ouch-Free bandage, I don’t cry out at —”

  Suddenly, Logan burst forth with a “Yeow!” that was three times louder than the first one. He leaped to his feet and did a frantic dance. An ice cube dropped out of his shirt and hit the floor.

  He wheeled to find Darren Vader standing over him, fingers still glistening with meltwater.

  “What did you do that for?” Logan bawled.

  Darren spread his arms in a gesture of innocence. “You try to help a guy rehearse, and this is the thanks you get. You were brilliant, man! I really believed you were hurting.”

  “All right, wise guy!” called the lunch lady from the food line. “You’re gone!”

  Logan turned furious eyes on Darren. “You got me kicked out of the cafeteria!”

  “Way to suffer for your art, Kellerman. You can thank me later.” Darren plopped his tray down in the spot Logan vacated. “How’s the inventing coming alo
ng, Bing?” He gazed at Griffin’s near-blank paper. “Diddlysquat. Real impressive.”

  “Like you’re burning up the track,” Griffin snorted, snatching his paper away.

  Darren beamed. “As a matter of fact, my invention is well under way, and even you’re going to have to admit that it’s awesome.”

  “I’ll admit that when you win,” Griffin replied readily. “Or when pigs fly. Whichever comes first.”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Darren proposed. “If I win the contest, you have to make a speech in front of the whole cafeteria about how great I am, and how you stink. And the speech will be written by me.”

  “Only if it works both ways,” Griffin countered. “If I win, I get to write the speech for you. And trust me — when it comes to the subject of you stinking, I’m Shakespeare!”

  The bell rang to signal the end of the period.

  “Too bad, Vader,” Griffin said in amusement. “Looks like you have no time to eat your lunch. I guess when you spend forty minutes loading your tray —”

  In answer, Darren picked up his order of spaghetti and meatballs, squeezed the Styrofoam plate to form a chute, and dumped his entire lunch into his open mouth. He was still chewing and swallowing as they made their way through the halls, half his face stained with sauce.

  “The garbage disposal has already been invented,” Griffin informed him.

  Darren awarded him an appreciative belch. “Nice one, Bing. You’re still going to lose, but it was a good joke.”

  Ben sidled up to his best friend. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Griffin. If you have to stand in front of the whole school and say nice things about Vader, it’s going to break your spirit.”

  “It’ll never happen,” Griffin promised.

  “To me,” Darren added.

  “Maybe neither of you will win,” said Ben. “There are a lot of middle schools in Nassau County.”

  Darren was confident. “I guarantee that nobody out there has what it takes to beat my idea.”

  “Except me,” Griffin put in.

  As they passed the main office and the bulletin board, the Invent-a-Palooza sign-up sheet came into view. They all saw it at the same time — there was a third name added to the list under Darren and Griffin.

  “Hey!” exclaimed Darren. “Who’s horning in on our contest?”

  They approached the bulletin board. The third name was written in pencil, and so faintly that it was difficult to make out from a distance. But when they got closer, they could read the neat, precise signature perfectly.

  Melissa?” Griffin was shocked and a little dismayed. Once he had his Invent-a-Palooza idea, he’d been planning to ask for Melissa’s help with it. She was a bona fide computer and tech wizard with mad skills Darren could never even dream of.

  Now not only was Griffin losing those skills, but they would be out there working against him and Darren.

  “Uh-oh,” said Ben. “It looks like both you guys are going to be making speeches about Melissa.”

  Darren brayed a laugh in Griffin’s face. “Tough break. Looks like your chief nerd is going into business for herself.”

  Griffin opened his mouth to defend Melissa, but for some reason, the words did not come — not even as a retort to Darren, which should have been automatic. The fact that she was entering this contest against him felt almost like a slap in the face. She had been a member of his team since the very beginning. It wasn’t so much that she had no right to enter, but why did she even want to? And why wouldn’t she warn him first?

  “Come on, Ben,” Griffin said. They abandoned Darren, who was still licking spaghetti sauce from the corners of his mouth.

  “Where are we going?” Ben asked. “Social studies is that way.”

  “We’re not going to social studies,” Griffin said grimly. “We’re going to talk to Melissa.”

  Ben slowed down. “Wait a minute. You’re not going to give her a hard time about this, are you? It’ll freak her out. You know how shy she is.”

  “She wasn’t very shy when she put her name up on that sign-up sheet,” Griffin reminded him.

  “Yeah, okay, that was kind of a surprise,” Ben admitted. “Still — free country, right?”

  But Griffin was already wheeling around the corner to the hall where Melissa had her locker. There she was, stowing books and sneaking a glance at the messages on one of the handheld devices she’d custom made for herself.

  The curtain of hair parted and one eye peered out. “Hi, Griffin.”

  “Melissa, what were you thinking, signing up for the Invent-a-Palooza?”

  The girl looked worried. “I thought it would be fun.”

  “It could be fun,” Griffin agreed, “if you were on my team, like you always are.”

  At that moment, Pitch came around the corner, breathing fire. “Well, it’s over. The word just came in from Coach. No wrestling.” She noticed the distressed expression on Melissa’s face. “What did I miss?”

  Ben jumped into the silence. “Griffin’s a little bent out of shape over the contest.”

  “I’m not bent out of shape,” Griffin amended. “It’s just that, well, we normally do things as a team —”

  “It’s okay,” Melissa said quickly. “I’ll take my name off the list. I’ll quit.”

  “Hold up.” Pitch turned to Griffin. “How is it your business if Melissa wants to enter?”

  “It isn’t,” Griffin admitted lamely, “except that I was kind of counting on her help with my entry.”

  Pitch’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I get it. Because your entry matters, and hers doesn’t. And why is that? Because you’re a guy, maybe?”

  Griffin stared at her. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Pitch was bitter. “It’s easy for you to pretend these things aren’t important. Nobody ever told you that you can’t wrestle, or suggested maybe you should go out for cheerleading.”

  Now Ben was confused. “Who said anything about cheerleading?”

  “When you’re born male,” Pitch explained resentfully, “no one ever lectures you on what you can’t do. Like running for president. Or wrestling. Or being an inventor. Let me tell you something: Melissa is going to invent something so amazing it’ll leave you and Vader in the dust!”

  Melissa looked haunted behind her curtain of hair. “I really don’t want to make trouble….”

  “That’s another thing girls aren’t supposed to do,” Pitch snarled. “Don’t rock the boat. Don’t make a fuss. Keep the peace. That ends today. Anything boys can invent, girls can invent better. Come on, Melissa. Let’s get out of here and start working on your idea.”

  Melissa shut her locker, and Pitch dragged her off, gesturing animatedly with both hands.

  Ben watched them go, stunned. “What just happened?”

  “So much for getting any help from Melissa.”

  “That’s all you got out of that?” Ben exploded. “Two of our best friends just accused us of discrimination!”

  “And they lumped me together with Vader,” Griffin added in an annoyed tone. “Just because we’re both boys! You want to talk discrimination — how about that?”

  Ben thought it over. “And I’m a guy, so that includes me. I’m nothing like Vader! When did I ever drink a whole plate of spaghetti and meatballs?”

  Griffin was disgusted. “Not only am I up against Vader, I’m up against Melissa, too.”

  “She’ll be tough to beat,” said Ben. “She’s a total genius.”

  Griffin nodded soberly. “She’s already forgotten more about technology than we’re ever going to know. Now I really need a plan.”

  * * *

  Daylight was fading, but Melissa did not turn on the lights in her bedroom. She sat amid the blinking indicators on the various computers, printers, modems, routers, signal boosters, tablets, webcams, and handheld devices that stood and sat all around the room. It was a comfortable place for her to be, bathed in the dim glow of screens, immersed in the underlying hum of a
ll these electronics.

  Equipment was easy to understand. It did what it was programmed to do. Its quirks could be debugged, its short circuits repaired. It was not nearly so easy to understand people.

  Melissa had never had any friends before Griffin had recruited her for his team. She had been with Griffin, Ben, Savannah, Pitch, and Logan through all their operations and adventures. And now it was all in jeopardy. Griffin was mad at her for entering, and Pitch would be mad at her if she backed out. She was caught between a rock and a hard place, with a very real chance of losing the friends she had come to treasure.

  And the worst part of all was that she didn’t even have an idea for an invention. She could make a computer do whatever she wanted it to; she could think in programming code; she understood robotics; she could design and build complicated electronics, hydraulics, and pneumatics. In short, if you told her what to do, she could do it better than anybody.

  But that original idea, the spark, just wasn’t there.

  What could she invent? She kept telling herself that there must be some need she could fill, some problem she could solve. It had to be so obviously worthwhile that Griffin and Pitch would stop bickering and start supporting her on it.

  But what? There were plenty of problems in the world, but nothing she could solve with a gadget, even a brilliant one.

  A commotion outside drew her attention to the window. The exterminator’s red truck weaved down the block at an unsafe speed, its driver obviously in a great hurry. Only a few feet behind it, a black-and-tan blur raced along, trying to catch up. Behind that ran Savannah, waving her arms. The window was shut, so the scene had no audio. But it had been played out so many times before that Melissa could imagine the sound track: the backfire of the engine, Luthor’s barking, and Savannah’s voice calling, “Luthor! Sweetie! Come back!”

  She felt bad for her friend. Savannah had so much animal knowledge, yet it didn’t seem to be working on the one animal who meant the most to her. That had to be as frustrating as Melissa not being able to quarantine a simple computer virus. But this was worse, because a broken computer could be replaced. If Luthor was hurt or killed because of his dangerous behavior, Savannah would never get over it.