The Homework Machine (6 page)

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

Sometimes, when I was sitting at home playing video games or watching TV or just hanging out, I would think about the other saps in my class who were doing homework right then. Ha! Suckers! This is the life. I felt like I won the lottery or something.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI, GRADE 5

I had been watching those D Squad jerks from across the room. I knew something was up way back in December. One day I saw Snikwad, who is relatively cool, walking home from school with that dweeb Brenton Damagatchi. What was up with that? No way the two of them could be friends. Not in a million years. It didn't make sense. I was suspicious. Something was up. I just didn't know what.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

I thought that I would just try Brenton's machine a few times and then go back to doing
my homework the old-fashioned way. But I realized that I
liked
not having to work so hard on my homework. I liked the extra free time I had. It was so easy to just slip the homework assignment into the scanner and watch the finished homework come out the other end a few minutes later.

It was like microwave popcorn. My mom told me that when she was a girl, they popped popcorn in a big pot on the stove with oil, and it was greasy and hard to clean up. Now she makes popcorn in the microwave, and she says she would never go back to the old way. That was how I was starting to feel about homework.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

My dad said that if we played a game of chess every night, I would get better and better. So we started playing every night.

The first thing Dad told me is that wars aren't won or lost because of guns and soldiers and shooting. They're won or lost because of strategy. He said the way to win is to build a strong position by slowly accumulating advantages. Like, you want to try to control the four squares in the center of the board.

It was little things like that. Stuff you don't normally
think of. Like, when your king is in the middle of the board, he has eight squares he can escape to. But when he's at the edge of the board, he has just five squares he can escape to. And if he's in the corner, he only has three squares. He's just about dead.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

I was hanging around doing nothing and my mother starts in giving me a hard time. “When are you going to do your homework, Kelsey?” And all that. So I told her I did it already, over at Brenton's house.

Well, she doesn't believe me, of course. She says, “If you're lying, you're grounded, young lady.” So I showed her my homework and she looks it over real carefully. Finally she says I did a good job and if I kept it up like that she would let me pierce my belly button. Ha! It was great.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

After we finished doing everybody's homework, they went home. They didn't usually hang around, and that was fine with me. I had my own projects to work on.

Every so often I would ask Snik if he wanted to play a game of chess, but he always turned me
down. He said he had a dentist appointment or he wasn't feeling well or something. I knew that it was just an excuse. He didn't like me enough to get together unless we were doing our homework. That was fine. As I said, I really don't need or have time for friends. But it did please my mother to think they were my friends, and I like to please my mother. After a while, I stopped asking Snik to play.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

Every so often I would stay after we finished our homework. Unlike most boys, you can talk to Brenton about things other than sports and motorcycles and dumb things like that. I could bring up something about, say, classical music or politics, and he would be able to discuss it. Nobody else was like that. Brenton knows about everything. He's like an encyclopedia.

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

It was getting close to the holidays and I noticed that the kids in the D Squad were doing remarkably well. I certainly expected it from Brenton and Judy, but Sam and Kelsey were working on A's in all their subjects, which was a surprise. Their parents thought I was a miracle worker.

In the back of my mind, I suspected that Sam and Kelsey might be copying off Brenton and Judy. But I wanted to believe that all my lessons about hard work were starting to pay off. Now, of course, I realize I was just fooling myself.

KELSEY'S MOM

When Kelsey brought home her end-of-the-year report card with all A's and B's on it, I just about fell off my chair. She had always been a C student. I figured there had to be some kind of mistake. I thought Miss Rasmussen switched the report cards around or something.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

My mom said that because my report card was so good, I could get my belly button pierced. We drove over to the place, but I chickened out at the last minute. It was too scary. I couldn't go through with it.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

So I thought of a great idea. You know how McDonald's and Burger King and all those other fast-food joints are in just about every town? Well, what if there was a Belch in every town? Kids
could go there after school to get their homework done. That would be cool.

Kids could ride in with their bikes, drop off their homework assignment at the first window, and then ride up to the second window a few minutes later to pick up their finished homework. We could call it McHomework.

Just think of it! There are millions of kids in the United States. If each of those kids paid a dollar a day to get their homework done, we would be rich. We would be richer than Bill Gates!

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

Snik told us about his harebrained idea to franchise Belch and have kids ride their bikes up to the drive-through window like it was a fastfood restaurant. I told him he was out of his mind. If any parents ever found out about Belch, it would be all over. Nobody would
ever
let their kids go to a place like that.

He admitted I was right and said, “Well, it was a good idea while it lasted.” Yeah, and it lasted about three minutes. I also reminded him that we had a pact to keep the whole thing a secret.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

Sometime in October, I noticed a subtle shift in the way the other students were acting toward me. It appeared that they were no longer calling me “dork” or “nerd” or “geek” and they had started to refer to me as “dude.”

It was difficult to explain. I certainly had not changed. The only difference in my life, as far as I could see, was that I was often in the company of Snik. So my hypothesis was that other kids thought I was cool because I was with someone who they perceived to be cool. I had become cool by association.

This was easy to test, using the scientific method. I had been compiling data for months. When I plugged it into the computer, the results confirmed my hypothesis.

I showed my graph to Snik. He laughed and said, “If you ask me, you're still a dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork, dork.”

I believe that will change the results of my experiment.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

I couldn't stop thinking about red socks day and how cool it was. So I tell the others we should start a fad, and they say what kind of fad, and I say I don't know, something really stupid. We start batting around some ideas like green socks day or pink socks day or no-socks day and they all sound lame. Been there, done that.

I say we could do a thing where every time Miss Rasmussen says the word “class” we all drop a pencil on the floor. Or something like that. But Judy gets all bent out of shape because she thinks we'll get in trouble.

Kelsey says we should do something really twisted, and I think it was Brenton who said he always thought it would be interesting if everybody came to school wearing our clothes inside out. No harm in that. We all agree that would be
the greatest, so Brenton does his thing with the computer like last time and we go home.

The next day, like every kid in America comes to school with their clothes inside out. It was awesome.

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

It was the last day of school before Christmas vacation, I believe. I walked into the class and they were all just sitting there with their hands folded on their desks, grinning these little grins. Then I noticed their clothes.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

Miss Rasmussen just stood there and looked at us. Then she said she had to go to the office. I thought for sure that we were all going to be in big trouble. Maybe we would all be suspended. It was going to totally ruin the holidays.

A few minutes later, she walked back in the class, and she was wearing her clothes inside out! It was the greatest. She's pretty cool for a teacher. We gave her a standing ovation.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

After inside-out day, I got another IM from that Milner guy. He asked me if the same kid who
started red socks day had anything to do with inside-out day. He was creeping me out. I told him it was none of his business, and if I ever heard from him again, I would call the police. I also said my dad would find him and beat him up. So he types back, “Kelsey, you don't have a dad.” How did
he
know I didn't have a dad? How did he know my name was Kelsey? That
really
creeped me out. I was going to tell everybody about it, but then all that stuff happened with Snik's dad.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

My dad was sent overseas. It was during the vacation, I remember. We got the call around New Year's Day. Kind of put a damper on the celebration. He had been in the air force for years and we always knew he could be called away at any time, but I guess we just hoped it wouldn't happen. Me and my brothers and my mom were pretty upset.

But he was a soldier, right? You do what you're ordered to do. You know when you sign up that you're going to defend your country one way or another. I understood. I don't really want to talk about it.

Before he went away, my dad gave me his chessboard and some books about chess. He told
me to practice up, so when he came home I would be able to give him a good game.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

I was very upset when Snik's dad was sent to the Middle East. We're not best friends or anything, but even so. Snik was all gung-ho G.I. Joe about it. He said, “My dad is going to shoot guys,” and that kind of silly macho talk. I was against the war, and I didn't want to see the dad of someone I knew get hurt.

I didn't discuss it with Snik very much. I didn't want him telling me that people who were against the war were traitors and all that. But I'm sure he was thinking about his dad all the time. How could you not?

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

I have always thought that instead of fighting wars, the leaders of the two sides should play a game of chess against each other. Whoever wins the game wins the war. Nobody has to die. War is not the answer. Chess is the answer.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

When I heard that Snik's dad had to go to the Middle East, I just started crying. I couldn't stop.
It was like something opened inside of me. Everybody gathered around me and asked me what was wrong. That was the first time I ever told anybody at school that my dad died. I didn't want Snik's dad to die too.

We probably have air force bases in Hawaii and Southern California and cool places like that all over the world. But
he
had to get sent to the one place where there was a war going on. Talk about bad luck.

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

When Sam's father was sent overseas, I noticed a change came over him. He didn't crack many jokes anymore. He stopped making fun of people. He was more businesslike, grim even. I tried to talk to him about it, but he obviously didn't want to. I wanted to comfort him. Sometimes you just can't help.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

By January, we were using Belch every day. I had stopped doing my homework on my own entirely. I never even thought about doing it that way anymore. It was so much easier just using Belch.

My mom used to smoke cigarettes when she was younger. I asked her how she started. She said that she tried a cigarette one day just for the fun of it when she was out with some friends who smoked. She didn't like it that much, but a few days later she was with the same people and she had another one. She just wanted to fit in, you know?

Little by little, she started smoking a cigarette here and there, and soon she started thinking about having a cigarette when she wasn't smoking one. Before she knew it, she was smoking a pack of cigarettes every day, and she was addicted to them. I think I was becoming addicted to Belch almost the same way.