Ellie, Engineer by Jackson Pearce
Ellie sniffed and wiped her nose on the hem of her otter dress. She couldn’t just sit here and let everyone be mad. She had to do something—and do something fast, before being mad got settled into everyone’s bones. She stood up, tightened the loop holding her hammer in her tool belt, and jogged after Toby. By this point, he had a pretty big head start, and apparently he was a fast stomper. She turned onto his street just in time to see him opening his front door.
“Toby! Wait!” she yelled, but he didn’t hear her (or maybe, she worried, he was so mad he was pretending not to hear her). Ellie sped up and crashed through Toby’s front door without even knocking. “Toby?” she shouted in the foyer.
“Huh? Ellie?” Toby answered. He sounded confused, and he also sounded like he was in his bedroom. Ellie went up the stairs two at a time, which Kit’s mom always said was unladylike, but an emergency was no time to be ladylike anyway. “Stop, Ellie!” Toby called.
“No, wait! We have to talk!” Ellie shouted back. She grabbed hold of the doorknob.
“Stop!” Toby yelled again. But it was too late. Ellie pushed open Toby’s bedroom door.
At this point, Ellie remembered two things: Toby had a room security system, and Toby had never told her what great thing he’d found to put in the bucket for his security system.
She felt the door catch the string and looked up just in time to admire how well the bent nail was holding—before the bucket tipped forward and its contents rained down on her head.
“Look out!” Toby yelled from behind her.
“Ahhhhhhh!” Ellie screamed. Because the thing Toby had filled the bucket with was . . .
Bugs.
Roly-polies, mostly, but also fat, fuzzy caterpillars and some black beetles and at least one of the big grasshoppers with giant mirror eyes. They chirred and skritched as they hit her and the ground and began to hurry away, like they all had very important bug meetings to get to.
Ellie wasn’t typically afraid of bugs—in fact, they were pretty incredible engineers, especially ants—but a surprise bug shower was enough to make just about anyone freak out. She scrambled and dusted off her dress and her hair and her dress again, and how were there so many bugs?
“I can help! Wait!” Toby shouted, and ran over to her. He had a broom in one hand and began to knock it against her legs. Ellie shook her head fast, and roly-polies confettied to the ground.
“What’s going on up here?” Toby’s mom shouted, coming up the stairs. “Is something wrong—ahhhhh!”
Toby’s mom was quick for a grown-up. She looked from Toby to Ellie, then grabbed hold of both of their arms in a crazy-tight mom-grip.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” she yelled, pulling them toward the steps. “It’s an infestation! Toby, get your brothers—we have to call an exterminator!”
“Wait, Mom!” Toby said, trying to pry her hand free. “It’s not an infestation!”
“There were hundreds! Thousands, maybe!” his mom said, shaking her head. “Where’s my phone?”
“It was a security system!” Ellie said. “You don’t have an infestation. Or, at least, you didn’t. I guess you might now.”
Finally, Toby’s mom stopped. She turned around and faced the two of them. “What?”
Toby sighed. “Ellie helped me build a security system to keep Devon and Connor out of my room. It was a bucket—”
“That he was supposed to fill with something like Ping-Pong balls—” Ellie interrupted.
“But I decided Ping-Pong balls wouldn’t freak the twins out enough, so I filled it with bugs. They mostly stayed in the bucket, and I only got the safe kind! I swear, there’s not a single spider in there. Though maybe that’s a way we could get rid of the bugs? Some types of spiders can eat over a dozen bugs in a single day—”
“You filled my house with bugs on purpose?” Toby’s mom shrieked.
Ellie was pretty surprised Toby’s mom didn’t ground him for the rest of his life. Instead, she said she needed to take a long bath, and when she got out she’d better not see so much as a single bug leg in her house. Ellie figured she needed to stay and help, since the security system part was her fault, even if the bug part totally was not.
“I guess I didn’t think it through, huh?” Toby said, trying to grab some of the caterpillars from the ground with his hands. “This will take forever.”
Ellie frowned, looking around his room. “Maybe I can build something . . .”
“A bug trap? Will it hurt them?” Toby asked, looking concerned.
“Of course not,” Ellie said. She grabbed two comic books from Toby’s desk and stared at them for a moment. These’ll work, I bet, she thought, pulling out her notebook. She drew:
“Hey! That’s great!” Toby said. Then, a little quieter, “Sorry I dumped bugs on your head.”
“Sorry I lied to you about The Presidents. And to The Presidents about you.”
“It’s okay,” Toby said.
“It’s okay about the bugs too. Or, at least, it will be. Once we build this. And once I take a shower.”
Together they rolled up two magazines into tight tubes, put two ends together so it made a V, and taped it all up so it’d stay that way. Then Ellie emptied two pencil cups from Toby’s desk, and stuck them to the wide ends of the V. She ran it across the floor, and just like she’d hoped, the bugs tumbled down the side of the V and into the cups. Toby, meanwhile, caught the flying and jumping bugs with a net. After an hour, which was still before Toby’s mom got out of her bath, they’d dumped all the bugs (or, at least, all the ones they could find) outside.
“Well,” Ellie said.
“Well,” Toby answered. He shuffled his feet and looked sad.
“I guess I’ll . . . see you?” Ellie said.
“Yeah. Around. I guess,” Toby answered. “Have fun at the party tomorrow. Drink lots of tea for me.”
“Okay,” Ellie said, and she meant it, even though she didn’t really like tea that much.
“And thanks for teaching me about engineering,” Toby added.
“Anytime,” Ellie said, but as soon as she said it, she realized she was lying again, without even meaning to. After all—was she really going to be able to build with Toby “anytime”? What if it made Kit mad? What if it meant she couldn’t build with The Presidents? She sighed, waved at Toby, and started home.
One fewer person mad at her, but somehow, Ellie didn’t feel any better.
When Ellie got home, she got ready for bed super early—getting ready for bed always made her feel better, even if she wasn’t tired enough to actually go to bed. After taking a shower (with lots of extra shimmery body wash, on account of the bugs), she put on her favorite pajamas, the ones with the toast and purple stars on them, even though they were really more wintertime pajamas. Then she went to her bedroom window. Kit’s window, which was right across from Ellie’s, was open, but the curtains were closed. Ellie picked up the flashlight she kept by her bed and flash-flash-flashed it at Kit’s window. This was their code—three flashes was “Come to the window.” Two flashes was “Come over.” One flash was “Hey” or “Bye” or “Haha you’re trying to sleep but I’m flashing this light at your window.”
Nothing happened.
Ellie flashed another three times, then three again. Finally, Kit appeared at the window. Her hair was all fluffy and her eyes were still sad.
Ellie waved, then ducked down and grabbed her walkie-talkie, holding it up so Kit would know to turn hers on. Kit sighed (Ellie could tell by the way her shoulders went saggy) but picked up her walkie and turned it on.
“Come in, Kit. Over,” Ellie said into her walkie. You had to say “over” when you finished talking on a walkie-talkie, though Ellie wasn’t exactly sure why.
“Kit here. Over,” Kit answered. She sounded as unhappy as she looked.
Ellie took a big breath. “Kit, I promise, promise, promise I wasn’t leaving you out on purpose. And you’ll see what I mean soon. You have to believe me, Kit. I’m your
There was a long silence. Kit blinked at Ellie from across the yards.
“Oh—right. Over,” Ellie finished.
“I believe you,” Kit said. “But you could have told me that to start with. You still lied to me. Over.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Over.”
Kit didn’t say anything.
Ellie didn’t say anything either.
“I guess,” Kit said slowly. “I just worried that maybe you wanted to play with Toby now because he’s a boy, and sometimes you like Boy Stuff. And I usually like Girl Stuff, like tea parties. Maybe you don’t want to be my friend anymore. Over.”
Ellie’s eyes went big. That was ridiculous! Besides, like her dad was always saying, “There’s no such thing as Girl Stuff or Boy Stuff. There’s only Ellie Stuff and Not-Ellie Stuff.” Building was Ellie Stuff. Tea parties were Ellie Stuff. Kit was Ellie Stuff. But Toby, now that she’d spent the day with him, might be Ellie Stuff too.
“I would never stop being your friend,” Ellie said. “For one, all of our clothes match, so it’d be weird if we matched all the time but weren’t friends. But also, just because I do something with Toby doesn’t mean I don’t want to do things with you. And also also, I like building, so it isn’t Boy Stuff. And Toby likes tea parties, so they aren’t Girl Stuff.”
“Toby likes tea parties?” Kit said skeptically. She fiddled with the cord on her curtains.
“Yep. He’s sort of sad he wasn’t invited to yours tomorrow. Your mom only invited the girls,” Ellie said.
“Oh. Well. Maybe . . . maybe Toby can come. I guess you’re allowed to bring a guest to a party,” Kit said. “Well—if he makes up for not letting us play soccer. Because that was pretty jerk boy of him.”
“True,” Ellie said. “Okay. I’ll tell him. See you tomorrow?”
“Yep. Oh wait—over. We’ve been forgetting to say ‘over.’ Over,” Kit said.
“You’re right. Okay. Tomorrow. Over.”
“Bye. Over.”
“Bye. Over.”
Ellie put the walkie-talkie away, then lay in bed for a moment, thinking. What could Toby do to make up for being a jerk boy? He could apologize, of course, and Ellie knew he would—he’d apologized to her, after all—but Ellie knew Kit needed something bigger than an apology. In fact, Ellie had a feeling Kit still needed something bigger than an apology from her. Was a doghouse with a snake sprinkler big enough? Ellie wasn’t sure.
She reached for her nightstand, where her tool belt was sitting, and pulled out her notepad and the flat pencil. She waggled the pencil over the page, waiting for an idea, a way to fix everything, to come to her.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Unless . . .
Ellie had an idea—an idea that was either really good (like putting a big, flat piece of wood in her favorite climbing tree to lie down on) or really bad (like trying to build a real merry-go-round and taking apart the lawnmower to use the engine, but then not being able to put it back together . . . and also the merry-go-round caught fire and the fire department had to come and she got super grounded). Ellie got out of bed and hurried down the hall to where her mom was reading a book in the good chair.
“Mom, I need to use some of my phone calls.”
“Huh?” her mom asked, looking up at her.
“I’ve cleaned my room and not slammed any doors for weeks now, and I even ate that white chicken chili sauce every day last week,” Ellie said. “I need to call Taylor, Madison, and McKinley. Except really, only McKinley, since they’re probably all having a sleepover at her house.”
“It’s after dinner,” her mom said, shaking her head. “Maybe tomorrow morning.”
“It’s an emergency! It’s for the project I’m building for Kit’s birthday,” Ellie explained. “Please? I never use my phone calls! I have at least seven and I only want to use one!”
“All right, all right,” her mom said, and handed Ellie her cell phone. Ellie hurriedly called McKinley. Mrs. Caplan answered, but when Ellie explained it was about Kit’s party, she put McKinley on the phone.
“Hey,” Ellie said. “Don’t hang up! I know you’re all there, and I know you’re all mad at me. But look—I need your help with the doghouse. Kit needs your help. Tomorrow, come two hours early to the party, but come to my house instead of Kit’s, okay?”
“Huh? Why?” McKinley said. She didn’t sound convinced.
“Because, we have to finish the toy bin! I know you’re mad at me, but this is for Kit. Okay?”
McKinley grumbled, and Ellie heard Madison tsk-ing in the background. “Fine, we’ll be there,” McKinley said.
“Perfect!” Ellie said. She hung up the phone and grinned. This was worth all those foods with sauces. Ellie dashed upstairs and began to leaf through her notepad.
This was going to be a really big build.
Ellie woke up early and went to Toby’s house. She knocked hard on the front door. Toby’s mom came to the door, looking sort of bleary.
“Can I help you?” she asked. “Oh. You didn’t bring more bugs, did you?”
“Nope, bug-free! Is Toby here?” Ellie said.
“He’s asleep, I think,” Toby’s mom said.
“I’m awake,” Toby said, surprising them both. He was at the top of the stairs, wearing pajamas with fish on them. He still had pillow lines on his face. “Ellie? Is something wrong with the doghouse?”
“Nope—but meet me at my house in fifteen minutes—and bring the other neighborhood boys. We have work to do!” Ellie said triumphantly. Toby’s mom blinked at Ellie, like she wasn’t totally sure Ellie existed. But Toby spun around and ran upstairs. Ellie, meanwhile, returned home and raised the garage door. The doghouse was inside. She opened her notepad and tore out all the bits of the doghouse design, then untucked The Presidents’ drawing from where she’d hidden it away in the back.
“Ellie! We’re here. What’s going on?” Toby called as he and the neighborhood boys jogged up the drive.
“Whoa,” Dylan said when he suddenly saw all the pages. Ellie had laid them out on the ground, one right after another (all while trying not to look too closely at Dylan’s hair, which was still a little bit red from the paint trap).
“That’s a lot of doghouse,” one of the McClellan twins said.
“We get to help build it now?” the other McClellan twin said.
Ellie nodded. “Everyone will need to help if we’re going to pull this off. A few more people should be arriving—there!” Ellie pointed. A van had just pulled into Ellie’s driveway. Madison, McKinley, and Taylor hopped out. They were already dressed for the party, which meant they were wearing their fanciest dresses and lots of pretend jewelry. Madison even had some pretend gold and silver tattoos on her hands.
“What are these girls doing here?” Dylan said. “Wait! McKinley Caplan got me in big trouble!”
“You got yourself in trouble for Ding Dong Ditching. And what are all these jerk boys doing here?” McKinley asked, crossing her arms.
“Everyone is here to help build the doghouse for Kit!” Ellie said. “Look, I’m sorry I lied to you, Madison and Taylor and McKinley. And Toby, you already know I’m sorry. And McClellans and Dylan, you don’t even know what I’m talking about, but it doesn’t matter. Because we can either all be mad that boys are here or that girls are here, or we can get to work and finish what we started together. Kit deserves a really amazing doghouse, and we can make it before the party if we get to work now.”
“We’re not even invited to the party,” Toby said, looking sad.
“I’m inviting you,” Ellie said. “I’m allowed. I’m invited, and that’s how it works. You can bring a guest to parties. So Toby, you’re my guest. And Dylan, you’re Madison’s guest. See?”
“I’m not sure that’s really how it works,” McKinley said.
Ellie ignored her and pointed at the sketches. “Here’s what we need to do.”
She divided up the w
They all stepped back.
“Is it done?” McKinley asked. There was a little bit of dirt smudged on her nose. Dylan’s hair was sticking up with sweat. Everyone was a little out of breath.
Ellie looked at the doghouse. Was it finished? Sometimes this was the hardest part of a build—knowing when it was complete. It was a pretty amazing doghouse, she had to admit. There wasn’t another one like it on the block, to say the least. Ellie suspected there wasn’t another one like it anywhere, which made it even cooler.
But still, Ellie was worried. She was worried about Kit forgiving her for the lie. She was worried Kit still wouldn’t see that boys and girls could all like the same stuff or different stuff or some of both and it didn’t matter; they could be friends anyhow. She was (really) worried Kit’s mom would freak out when she and the other girls brought a bunch of boys to the ladies’ tea party.
You can worry about it or you can do it! she thought to herself, which was something her mom always said.
“Let’s get it to Kit’s house!” Ellie said.
They loaded the doghouse onto Toby’s wagon, then threw a bunch of strips of wrapping paper over it to make it look more like a present. It looked more like a wrapping paper monster, all uneven and lumpy and on a wagon, but it was still a nice touch. Before they started off, Toby ran back to his house and returned wearing a suit jacket and a top hat.