Edison's Gold (2 page)

I
'm about to make you a legend, Noodle.”

Tom Edison IV's unruly tuft of blond bed hair stuck out from behind the wood-framed car as his thin fingers nimbly connected an eight-volt battery to a large bundle of wires. “We're both going down in history with this one.”

Why did Tom always make things a billion times crazier than they had to be?
thought Bernard—aka Noodle—Zuckerberg to himself. None of the other ten soapbox cars at the starting line even had motors.

Noodle tried to calm his nerves by focusing on the thumping rap beats pulsing through the iPod earbuds hidden beneath his scribbly hair, but it wasn't helping. At five feet, ten inches—by far the gangliest in his class—he
looked and felt like an oversize giraffe test-driving a Prius. His knobby knees stuck out the side of the car, and he had to hunch his body just to fit inside this mobile death trap. No wonder people had been calling him Noodle since his first day at Saint Vincent's.

“And you're sure this thing's one hundred percent safe?” he yelled over the music while bopping his head along to the beat.

“Of course it's safe,” Tom said confidently as he peeked his freckled face around the side of the car, although the truth was, he'd never exactly tested the design for the bleach-battery motor he and his dad had formulated exactly three weekends ago in their basement lab.

Tom pulled the engine's rope, and the car coughed to life. Black smoke billowed into the air as every other kid in Mr. Fazool's science class gaped.

“All right, my little Jeff Gordons, remember—today's race isn't about winning.” Fifty yards away, at the other end of the parking lot, Tom's shaggy-haired science teacher, Mr. Fazool, fiddled with the cap gun. “It's about … er, observing the concepts we studied this semester. Kinetic and potential energy, friction …”

All month long, the seventh graders at Saint Vincent's had been working on their cars, sawing down blocks of wood and fastening on plastic wheels, while Tom feverishly constructed his latest invention like a mad scientist.

“Ten bucks that beast stalls right out of the gates.” Strapped into the triple-reinforced car next to theirs sat brown-haired, pigtailed Colby McCracken, Tom's only other friend in class, beaming at him.

“Not a chance, Colb,” Tom fired back. “Prepare to be blown out of the water.”

“You're way too ADD to pull it off,” she said. “I'm sure you messed up the calculations along the way.”

Maybe Tom wasn't the math whiz Colby was—he was more of a big-ideas guy—but he had ambition. And he knew a bleach-powered electric car would be as revolutionary as his great-great-grandfather's first commercial lightbulb.

“On your mark. Get set—”

Bang!
As Mr. Fazool fired the gun early, Noodle's startled foot hit the pedal, blasting his car to life. Its axles glittered against the pavement.

“Ease the brake!” Tom shouted. “You gotta slow down!”

“Yo, I did! I can't!” Noodle's voice echoed as the car whizzed down the parking lot, making windy tracks of burned rubber behind it.

Tom darted after him. What was going wrong? Maybe he should have added more sugar? Or maybe the bleach ionized too quickly?

Either way, that car was moving way too fast.

“Noodle!” he shouted, racing after his now smoking creation. “Stay calm!”

“Tom, you promised me no more malfunctions!” Mr. Fazool had dropped his clipboard and had joined the footrace to catch Noodle.

Up ahead, a school bus turned a corner and was beginning to veer straight into Noodle's path. Tom could see his friend's elbows madly jerking the wheel left and right, but the car maintained a direct crash course toward the bus.

Hoooooooonk!
The bus belched its warning as Noodle narrowly whizzed past its front bumper. The car had a mind of its own now, wheeling past a cluster of gossiping sophomores, then heading directly toward the middle of the campus quad.

“Watch it!”

“Slow down!”

“Sorry!” Noodle's voice was pure fear.

His heart thudding, Tom pumped his legs faster to keep up with the car, which had bumped up onto the sidewalk, and was now fast-approaching a long flight of stairs that led down to the upper school gym. He could barely watch as the car hit the stairs and began tearing down them, heading straight into the pride of the Saint Vincent's Academy campus, its reservoir.

Which was centered by a stone fountain statue of old Saint Vincent himself.

Kids were shrieking and whooping, their phones out to snap pictures, though it was all Tom could do not to hide his eyes as … 
splash!

Nose first, Noodle second, the car hit and then submerged, displacing a wave of water that soaked over the lip of the reservoir and onto the quad lawn.

A hiss, and then, silence. All eyes, even the stony downcast eyes of Saint Vincent, watched Tom's latest bright idea as it sank.

“Someone needs to jump in.”

“I think that dude might be drowning.”

More students gathered around. Nobody was snapping pictures anymore.

“Coming through!” Tom yelled, pushing into the crowd. “Outta my way!” Memories of learning mouth-to-mouth at the Y catapulted through his brain. If anything happened to Noodle, he would never be able to live with himself. He dove in—just as his friend wobbled and sputtered to the water's surface, looking like a wet poodle.

“He lives!” Some kids burst into applause, while others shook their heads, as Tom and Noodle, soaked and somber, climbed out of the water.

“I'm not sure we're going down in history,” said Noodle when he saw their breathless and angry science teacher approaching. “But I sure think we're going down to see Phelps.”

“Hey, Edison,” yelled a blond-haired senior from behind them. Tom turned around and met his smirking face. “Is there anything you don't screw up?”

I
t was not an ideal way to end the last day before spring break.

Sitting in Headmaster Phelps's wood-paneled, leather-smelling office on a Thursday afternoon, Tom chewed his fingernails down to the nubs. Partly from nerves, but also because he was one of those fidgety kids who couldn't sit still for longer than two-minute intervals. Even when he was in trouble, his mind was a distracted flurry of explosions and ideas. This was probably the reason he'd been summoned to this very office three times in just as many months.

Experience had taught Tom that the best thing to do when being lectured was to stare straight ahead with an appropriately remorseful look on his face, and at all costs
avoid eye contact with his no-nonsense mother, who'd been called out of Highland Elementary, where she'd been substitute teaching.

Last time he had gotten into this kind of trouble, Phelps had threatened to take away his scholarship. Then, Tom had sworn to his parents—and truly believed—that he was turning over a new leaf and that his days of detentions were over.

How had he managed to mess up so spectacularly? Again?

“Steven, you've known Tom since he was in first grade.” His mom tried her best to sound composed as she attempted to placate the quietly smoldering Dr. Phelps. Tom knew it was going to be a far less diplomatic conversation once they got home. “He's always cooking up his little inventions—”

“Little inventions? June, you're a teacher. Don't pull the wool over your own eyes. Your son's out of control. Just last week, he invented a way to destroy half the football field.”

Tom piped up in his own defense. “That's a quick fix. All those mowers need is a GPS installed, and they'll—”

“And how would you ‘quick-fix' your bionic lunch
lady?” The angry blue vein pulsing on the side of Dr. Phelps's head was a good indication for Tom to keep his mouth shut. So he did.

Phelps just didn't get it. Once Tom had ironed out all the kinks in those auto-mowers, he knew he could save the maintenance staff hours of labor on a sweltering hot day.

And then, he'd be a legend.

“This is your third strike, Tom.” Phelps held up three chubby fingers to clarify. “So I want you to use this spring break to mull over a better academic fit. Maybe take a tour of Astoria Junior High, what do you think?”

Tom saw the panic flicker in his mom's eyes. “But Tom is the third generation of Edisons to go to Saint Vincent's,” she protested. “Our family name has always—”

“Frankly, June, the Edison name, such that it is, is not what it was.”

Tom bit hard on his tongue. It was bad enough when kids at school teased him for not having the Edison gene every time one of his inventions went spastic, but now his own principal thought he was a loser.

Dr. Phelps stood up from behind his desk. “I'm very sorry, but I'm handing the matter over to the academic
policy board. We'll let you know if we think Tom should be allowed to return to Saint Vincent's after spring break.”

“Well, it might not even matter anyway,” said his mom on her way out of the office, though Tom wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that.

A
rright, invention number five-one-six. Do not fail me.” It was later that evening, and Tom was back to the drawing board. He usually found the best cure for a bad day was losing himself in a new project.

Working quickly, he hooked the robot's CD-player body to its spatula arm. His latest project, Nanny Golightly, was a huge improvement on his auto-mowers, and potentially the invention to put the Edison family back on the map.

Once Toys “R” Us bought the prototype, Tom was planning to take everyone—Noodle, Colby, his parents, and his little sister—on an all-expense-paid trip to Switzerland, where all the coolest stuff had been invented.
Everything from the electronic wristwatch to the computer mouse to Ovaltine!

“Naa gooo righh!” Tom's three-year-old sister, Rose, cheered him on from the corner of his room, where she liked to craft her own creations out of building blocks and dismembered doll parts.

Downstairs, he heard the sound of his father opening the front door.

“Time for me to pay the piper, Rosie.” Tom dropped his wrench, then tiptoed to the top of the stairs. If he could hear his parents' conversation first, he'd be better prepared for the talking- to that would definitely be coming his way later.

“So?” His mother's voice. Nervous.

“It's official. They laid off my division this morning.”
Uh-oh
. Job conversations were tense business in the Edison household these days. Tom's dad had been working for Alset Energy's Bronx plant as a mechanical engineer for more than ten years, but over the past few months Curt Keller, its CEO, had been cutting people's jobs right and left. It was an unfair policy, picketers cried, and all because Keller had failed to pay fines for loads of infractions against the Clean Air Act.

“Well, it's not like we didn't see it coming,” said his mother. “You officially said yes?”

Yes? Yes to what?
Tom leaned farther over the banister to listen.

“My first day's in two weeks.” Aha. His dad must've gotten a new job. That was potentially good news. Maybe they'd all go out and celebrate at Giovanni's and forget all about Tom's trip to the principal's office.

“Tom's up in his room. We had a run-in with Phelps this afternoon. Third strike, if you're counting.” No luck. He could always count on his mom to cut right to the bad news. She was the family's anchor, while Tom and his dad usually kept their heads above the clouds.

“Not sure it matters,” said his father. “Given the circumstances.”

Given what circumstances?
Tom thought. Their conversation was growing more confusing by the second. He was more than happy to skip his punishment, but something about his dad's weary tone made him nervous.

“I'd better go up and deliver the news.” As soon as Tom heard his dad scuffling toward the stairs, he darted back into his room and jumped onto the bed, grabbing the latest issue of
Popular Mechanics
.