Dear Mr. Henshaw / Дорогой мистер Хеншоу. 7-8 классы - Клири Беверли. Страница 9

Next I went to the library for books on batteries. I got some easy books on electricity, really easy. I never thought about batteries before. All I know is that when you want to use a flashlight, the battery is usually dead.

I finally stopped writing my story about the giant wax man, which was really stupid. I wanted to write a poem about butterflies for Young Writers because a poem can be short, but it is hard to think about butterflies and burglar alarms at the same time, so I studied electricity books instead. The books didn’t say how to make an alarm in a lunchbox, but I learned a lot about batteries, switches and wires, so I think I can do it myself.

Back to the poem tonight. The only rhyme I can think of for “butterfly” is “flutter by.” I can think of rhymes like “trees” and “breeze” which are very boring, and then I think of “wheeze” and “sneeze.” A poem about butterflies wheezing and sneezing seems silly, and anyway some girls are already writing poems about monarch butterflies that flutter by.

Sometimes I start a letter to Dad to thank him for the twenty dollars, but I can’t finish it. I don’t know why.

Today I took my lunchbox and Dad’s twenty dollars to the hardware store and looked around. I found a switch, a little battery and a doorbell. While I was looking around for the wire, a man asked if he could help me. He was a nice old gentleman who said, “What are you planning to make, son?” Son. He called me son, and my Dad calls me kid. I didn’t want to tell the man, but when he looked at the things I was holding, he smiled and said, “Trouble with your lunch, right?” I nodded and said, “I’m trying to make a burglar alarm.”

He said, “That’s what I guessed. I had workmen in here with the same problem.”

He said that I needed another battery and gave me some tips. After I paid for the things and was leaving, he said, “Good luck, son.”

I ran home with all the things I bought. First I made a sign on my door that said:

Then I went to work to connect one wire from the battery to the switch and another to the doorbell. It took some time to do it right. Then I fixed the battery and the switch in one corner of the lunchbox and the doorbell in another. I closed the box just enough so I could put my hand inside and push the button on the switch. Then I took my hand out and closed the box.

When I opened the box, my burglar alarm worked! That bell inside the box was ringing so loudly that Mom came to my door. “Leigh, what is going on in there?” she shouted.

I let her in and showed her my burglar alarm. She laughed and said that it was a great invention.

I can’t wait until Monday.

Today Mom packed my lunch, and we tried the alarm to see if it still worked. It did, good and loud. When I came to school, Mr. Fridley said, “Nice to see you smiling, Leigh. You should do it more often.”

I put my lunchbox behind the partition and waited. I waited all morning for the alarm to go off. Miss Martinez asked if I had my mind on my work. I pretended I did, but all the time I was really waiting for my alarm to go off so I could run back behind the partition and catch the thief. When nothing happened, I began to worry. Maybe something broke on the way to school.

Lunchtime came. Still nothing happened. We all took our lunches and went to the cafeteria. When I put my box on the table in front of me, I understood that I had a problem, a big problem. If I opened the box now, the alarm might go off.

“Why aren’t you eating?” Barry asked me.

Everybody at the table looked at me. I wanted to say that I wasn’t hungry, but I was. I wanted to take my lunchbox out into the hall to open, but even there I couldn’t open it quietly. Finally I held my breath and I opened the box.

Wow! My alarm went off! It was so loud that everyone in the cafeteria looked around. I looked up and saw Mr. Fridley standing by the garbage can smiling at me. Then I turned the alarm off.

Suddenly everybody seemed to notice me. Even the principal came to look at my lunchbox. He said, “That’s a great invention you have there.”

“Thanks,” I said, happy that the principal liked my alarm.

Some teachers came to see what was going on, so I had to show again how my alarm worked. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had problems with the lunchbox, because all the kids said that they wanted alarms, too. Barry said that he wanted an alarm like that on the door of his room at home. I began to feel like a hero. Maybe I’m not so medium after all.

But one thing bothers me. I still don’t know who the lunch thief was.

Today Barry asked me to come home with him to see if I could help him make a burglar alarm for his room because he has little sisters who take his stuff.

Barry lives in a big old house that is cheerful and messy with many little girls around. Barry didn’t have the right batteries, so we just looked at the models that he puts together.

I still don’t know what to write for Young Writers, but I was feeling so good that I finally wrote to Dad to thank him for the twenty dollars because I had found a good use for it even if I couldn’t save it to buy a typewriter. I didn’t say much.

I wonder if Dad will marry the pizza boy and his mother. I worry about that a lot.

This week some more kids came to school with lunchboxes with burglar alarms. At lunchtime, our cafeteria rang with the sound of burglar alarms. This didn’t last very long, and soon I didn’t even set my alarm. Nobody stole anything from my lunchbox anymore.

I never knew who the thief was, and now I am glad about it. If he had been caught, he would have been in trouble, big trouble. Maybe he was just somebody whose mother packed bad lunches. Or maybe he packed his own lunches and there was never anything good in the house to put in them.

I’m not saying that stealing from lunchboxes is right. I am saying that I’m glad I don’t know who the thief was, because I have to go to school with him.

Tonight I was looking at a piece of paper and trying to think of something to write for Young Writers when the phone rang. Mom told me to answer because she was washing her hair.

It was Dad. I felt sick, the way I always do when I hear his voice. “How’re you doing, kid?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said, thinking about my burglar alarm. “Great.”

“I got your letter,” he said.

“That’s good,” I said. I was so surprised by his call that I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then I asked, “Have you found another dog to take Bandit’s place?” I think what I really meant was, Have you found another boy to take my place?

“No, but I ask about him on my CB,” Dad told me. “He may be found.”

“I hope so.” This conversation was going nowhere. I really didn’t know what to say to my father. It was a shame.

Then Dad surprised me. He asked, “Do you miss your old Dad?”

I had to think a minute. I surely missed him, but I couldn’t say it. My silence bothered him because he asked, “Are you still there?”

“Sure, Dad, I miss you,” I told him. It was true, but not as true as it had been some time ago. I still wanted him to drive to our house in his big truck, but now I knew I couldn’t hope for it.

“Sorry I don’t visit you more often,” he said. “Is your mother around?”

“I’ll see,” I said. By then she was standing by the phone with her hair wet and a towel. She shook her head, because she didn’t want to talk to Dad.