Ben Franklin's in My Bathroom! Read online

  Also by Candace Fleming

  FICTION

  The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School

  The Fabled Fifth Graders of Aesop Elementary School

  NONFICTION

  Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

  The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P. T. Barnum

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Hungry Bunny, Inc.

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2017 by Mark Fearing

  All rights reserved.

  SERIES TITLE: HISTORY PALS was published in the United States by Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Schwartz & Wade Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9781101934067 (hc) — ISBN 9781101934074 (lib. bdg.) — ebook ISBN 9781101934081

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Candace Fleming

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  What Nolan Knows

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  To those “Sandblasters,”

  Barb, Penny, and Steph —C.F.

  For my dad, who taught me

  to love history —M.F.

  OLIVE LAY ON HER belly under the kitchen table. She flapped her imaginary tail. “I am the mermaid princess Aquamarina,” she said in a singsongy voice. “I demand that you release me from this dungeon and return me to the sea…before I dry up.”

  I looked up from my book—another graphic novel, this one about pirates—and rolled my eyes. “Can’t you just sit down like a normal person and eat your cereal?”

  She pretended to flap her tail again. “We mermaids do not eat cereal, especially not Sprouts ’n’ Stuff.” She wrinkled her nose. “The sprouts taste like weeds, and the stuff tastes like dirt.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said. I turned back to my book. The panels showed Blackbeard’s victims walking the plank. Argh! Save us! Splash! A ring of sharks circled below. I grinned. You have to love graphic novels. They’re so…well…graphic! I could really see all the gruesome details.

  Olive crawled out from under the table. “I think I’ll have cheesy doodles for breakfast,” she declared in her regular voice.

  I put down my book. “Oh, no you don’t,” I said.

  “Oh, yes I do,” she said. She stuck out her tongue and headed for the snack cabinet. “You’re not the boss of me.”

  “I’m the big brother. You’re only seven.”

  “So? You’re only ten,” Olive shot back.

  “Almost eleven,” I corrected her.

  At that, Olive stuck her thumbs in her ears and waggled her fingers. “Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!”

  I could feel angry words starting to pile up inside me. It was like having a belly full of bats flapping their wings and fighting to get out.

  “Why do you always have to be such a bat…I mean, brat?” I said through clenched teeth. Then, in my best Mom voice, I added, “Why can’t you just listen for once?”

  Olive poked out her lower lip. “You’re a meanie.”

  I knew I was being mean. And I hate being mean. But I couldn’t help it. I just felt so full of bats. I sucked in air, tried to get calm. “Look,” I finally said. “We have just three weeks of summer left. I don’t want to waste them on a bunch of dumb baby-sister drama.”

  In response, she cried, “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!” Then she hopped up onto a kitchen chair. “Princess Aquamarina will now return to her watery world.” She raised her hands in a diving position.

  “Stop!” I grabbed at her.

  Olive twisted away. “Do not touch the mermaid.” She bumped against the table, sending her bowl of now-soggy Sprouts ’n’ Stuff crashing to the floor.

  “Hey!” called a sharp voice from upstairs. Mom came out of her attic studio and stood on the upstairs landing, peering down at us. She had a pencil stuck behind her ear and a worried look on her face. “I can hear you two all the way up here. What’s the problem?”

  I glared at Olive.

  She hopped off the chair. Her hands dropped to her sides.

  “There’s no problem,” I said.

  “Nope, no problem,” Olive said.

  “It sounded like a problem,” said Mom. Her voice was tired.

  “We were just messing around,” I said. “Sorry we got you out of your studio.”

  Our mom is the author-illustrator of the Bumble Bunnies series of children’s books.

  But after twenty-two bunny adventures, she was having trouble coming up with an idea for the twenty-third. And it was due to her publisher in less than a week.

  “I’m blank,” Mom had groaned just yesterday morning. She’d tugged on her hair, a sure sign she was feeling stressed. “Empty. Clean out of inspiration.”

  For the rest of the day, I had thought about my mom’s “blankness” and how awful it must feel. I saw it in my mind all dark and echo-y like a cave, or a cellar, or my great-aunt Helen’s bathroom. I guess that’s what happens when you read as many graphic novels as I do. You start picturing all kinds of images in your head. Anyway, I thought maybe I could fix things.

  So that night, I’d hopped to the supper table wearing a homemade Bumble Bunnies costume complete with floppy construction paper ears, a pink-painted nose, and a fluffy cotton-puff tail. It was so embarrassing I almost couldn’t stand it. But after Dad left, I’d vowed to myself to help Mom any way I could…even if that meant going around dressed like a dumb bunny.

  “Yeooow! A zombie kangaroo!” Olive had screamed when I appeared in the doorway. Then she put up her hands. “Don’t eat me, mate,” she’d said in this ridiculous Australian accent before bursting into giggles.

  I wanted to say that even a starving zombie wouldn’t eat her tiny raisin brain, but I let it go.

  By then, my mom was laughing, too.

  But I wasn’t. My costume wasn’t supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be inspirational. It was supposed to give Mom some confidence for Bumble Bunnies number twenty-three. Geez, if I’d wanted to be funny I would have put rubber vomit on their plates right next to the peas.

  I guess my mom could see that my feelings were hurt. She came over and hugged me. �
�Oh, Nolan, my Mr. Fix-It,” she said. “I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s really very sweet. Thank you, honey.”

  “Yeah, sure, Mom,” I said, trying to act cool. But inside I’d felt terrible. It seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make things right…not the way Dad used to.

  I was still feeling sort of bad about it this morning, which explains why I was watching my annoying little sister. I wanted Mom to have some peace and quiet. I thought maybe it would cure her “blankness.”

  You can see how great that worked out.

  “Argh,” Mom groaned. “I have to get back to it. Can you kids handle things without me today? Nolan is in charge.”

  Olive sniffed. “So the bunny gets to be boss?”

  “I got it under control,” I said, elbowing her in the ribs.

  Mom looked down at us with laser eyes for a second. Then she nodded and disappeared back into her studio.

  I turned to my sister. “You heard Mom.”

  “Hmph! I don’t take orders from rabbits.” She flounced back to the table. “Hey, who’s going to clean up this mess?”

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it!” Olive raced to the door and yanked it open.

  A package wrapped in plain brown paper sat on the stoop.

  “IT’S FOR YOU,” SAID Olive, pointing to my name written in big block letters on the package’s side.

  “But…” I shook my head. “It’s not my birthday or anything.”

  Stepping out onto the porch, I looked up and down the street. No sign of a mailman. No delivery truck speeding away either.

  I turned back to the package. Other than my name and address, it was completely blank. No return address. No shipping labels. Not even a single stamp.

  “Come on, already. Open it!” said Olive. She swooped it up and ran inside.

  At the kitchen counter, I tore away the brown paper wrapping.

  “It’s a…It’s a…Aw, it’s just an old box,” said Olive.

  It was more like a case made of dark wood, and so pitted and scratched I was pretty sure it was some kind of antique. It had a hinged lid held shut by a brass latch. And engraved on its side in gold block letters were the words PROPERTY OF H.H.

  “Who’s H.H.?” asked Olive.

  I shrugged. “The box’s owner, I guess.”

  “So why’d it get sent to you?”

  “It must be a mistake.”

  Olive grabbed at the box. “Let’s see what’s inside.”

  “Hold on a minute. Be careful.”

  Olive turned the latch. The front fell open to reveal…

  “A bunch of junk,” she said.

  Built into the box were wires and coils and metal plates. In one corner was a dial printed with a weird combination of letters and numbers:

  In another corner a shiny stone glinted in a tiny brass box. Above it, a wire no thicker than a cat’s whisker hung from a miniature lever.

  And in the middle, attached to a tiny post, sat a pair of old-fashioned headphones.

  “What is it?” asked Olive.

  I studied it. I’d seen something like it last year when my class had taken a field trip to our local history museum. “We learn from the past how to live in the present.” That’s what my teacher, Mr. Druff, had said. He’d even made us write it down in our social studies notebooks.

  “It’s a crystal radio set,” I said now. “It was invented in the 1920s about the same time as bubble gum, the lie detector test, and frozen peas.”

  Mr. Druff’s dumb history saying wasn’t the only thing he’d made us write down that day.

  Olive made a face. “That thing’s a radio?”

  “An old-timey one,” I explained. “Before factories started making radios, people made their own. I guess it was a pretty simple thing to do. They could actually pick up broadcasts from faraway places like Paris and New York City.”

  Boy, would Mr. Druff be proud.

  “Nerd,” Olive said under her breath.

  Then a part of my brain hesitated, told me to use caution. Who had sent this? And why to me? And why—

  “So what are we waiting for?” Olive said. “Turn it on!”

  “Hold up. I…I don’t know how this thing works. Or even if it works.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” said Olive. She jiggled a few wires. “Testing, testing. This is Olive Veronica Stanberry. Testing, testing.”

  I snorted. “It’s not a two-way radio, doofus. You don’t talk to it. It talks to you.”

  “I know that,” retorted Olive, although her suddenly pink cheeks told me she hadn’t known. “I was just…you know…checking it out.”

  She took hold of the little lever, brushing the cat-whisker wire across the stone.

  Nothing happened.

  She did it again.

  “Forget it. It doesn’t work,” I said.

  “But I wanted to hear Paris,” grumped Olive. “Buenos dias, amigos!”

  “That’s Spanish, not French,” I corrected her.

  “Whatever,” she whined. “I still wanted to hear it.” She poked out her lower lip and stomped her feet so loud we almost didn’t notice that the stone had started glinting.

  “I think it’s alive, Nolan,” she said.

  I shook my head. “It’s probably just a reflection or something.” What other explanation was there?

  Olive reached out and brushed the cat whisker over the stone a third time.

  It glowed brighter. Whiter. Crystal white.

  “It’s working!” cried Olive.

  My heart started beating faster. Squinting into the light, I looked at the radio from every angle. There didn’t seem to be anything unusual about it…except that glowing stone.

  From the headphones came an electrical hum.

  “Quick, put them on,” said Olive.

  My hand hovered over them. Part of me didn’t want to do it. I had this strange feeling that I was standing on a cliff, about to jump into…What? It’s just a junky old crystal radio, I told myself. What could be dangerous about that?

  I fit the headphones over my ears.

  “Do you hear anything?” demanded Olive. “Do you?”

  I shook my head.

  She turned the dial a click. “How about now?”

  Khhhhh!

  “Static,” I said.

  She turned it another click.

  Khhhhh!

  She turned it a third click.

  Khhhhh…

  Then a voice.

  Faint. Tinny. Punctuated by static: “Early to bed…khhhhh…early to rise…khhhhh…Haste makes…khhhhh…”

  “What’s going on? Can you hear anything? Let me try.” She snatched at the headphones.

  Suddenly, chairs, tables, walls, ceilings, everything blurred and fell out of focus, hard edges dissolving into nothingness. I looked at Olive. Only she and I appeared to remain solid.

  “What’s happening?” she cried.

  I reached out for her. Tried to grab her. Missed.

  My stomach lurched. For one second I got that feeling you get when you watch a 3-D movie without the glasses. Off-kilter. Out of whack. There was a loud POP! like a gazillion soap bubbles all bursting at once.

  Then the room snapped back into focus.

  The feeling passed.

  And Olive screamed.

  I whirled.

  In the doorway between the kitchen and family room stood a short, round-faced man. He wore a brown coat and knee-length silk pants, and his fringe of long, graying hair was tied back with a ribbon. Squarish little glasses perched on his nose. An odd-shaped fur cap sat crooked on his head. Looking around with a dazed expression, he reeled slightly and gripped the back of a kitchen chair for support.

  I blinked

  I blinked again.

  Olive pointed, unable to speak.

  “You’re…you’re…,” I finally blurted out. “You’re…B-B…Benjamin Franklin!”

  “DO MY SENSES DECEIVE me?” Benjamin Frank
lin muttered to himself. “Zoons, but I must be dreaming.” He pinched himself. “Wake thee up, Ben.”

  He slapped his cheeks. “Rouse thyself.”

  He shook his head. “I am most assuredly awake.”

  Lifting his fur cap, he scratched his head like it would help him think. “Could this all be a hallucination brought on by bad ale, or bilious fever, or…” He snapped his fingers. “Steak and kidney pie! Oh, but I should never have eaten it all. A full belly makes a dull brain.”

  He was so busy pondering that he didn’t seem to notice Olive and me standing there.

  That is, until Olive stepped up and poked him in the tummy. “You aren’t really Benjamin Franklin, are you?”

  He jumped, startled, and stared at my sister before drawing himself up. “Young lady, there are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self. Yet even in my discombobulated state, I can assure you that I am unquestionably Benjamin Franklin.”

  “Okey-dokey,” said Olive. She turned to me. “He’s real.”

  “None of this can be real,” I said. “You must be a hallucination.”

  “It is scientifically impossible for all three of us to be experiencing the same hallucination,” he replied.

  I shook my head. There had to be some explanation for what was happening. There just had to be. “I know,” I finally said. “You’re a ghost.”

  He pinched himself again. “As you can see, I am most decidedly flesh and bone.”

  Olive’s eyes sparkled. “We brought back Benjamin Franklin! With that radio thingy. We really, truly brought him back!”