The Homework Machine (9 page)

POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH

Received a call on Saturday afternoon, March 16. There was a break-in at the house of the Damagatchi boy. Nobody was home at the time. There was a broken basement window. Some minor damage. Nothing was stolen. Didn't look like a professional job. They ran when the alarm went off. It was a prank by a kid, I guess. Happens all the time.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI, GRADE 5

I didn't try to break into Brenton's house. I don't care how many times you ask me. I didn't do it, and you can't prove that I did.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

We have this school paper called the
Grand Canyon Times
. It's not a real paper. Just some stories and poems that kids write and it's stapled together. It comes out a few times a year.

Anyway, there's a gossip column in there. Usually the gossip is silly stuff like guess who likes so and so. Or which teacher wears a wig. Stuff like that. But right in the middle of the page there was an item about the homework machine. I freaked out.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

I freaked when I saw it. Whoever planted that thing in the paper was a real rat. It wasn't me. I
figured it couldn't have been Brenton. I wasn't so sure about Judy or Kelsey.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

After the thing was in the paper, we had to have another stupid meeting. Sam tried to get one of us to confess, but nobody did. We decided that we couldn't meet at recess anymore, and we couldn't be seen talking to each other at school. Judy was totally paranoid that we were going to get caught.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI, GRADE 5

Okay, okay, I was the one who tried to break into Brenton's house. I had to find out what they were up to. What are you gonna do, throw me in jail? I didn't cheat on my homework. And I had nothing to do with the item in the paper. You'll have to pin that on somebody else.

Look, I didn't know if they had a secret machine or not. But it sounded believable. And if they did have a machine, it wasn't fair to the rest of us. Why should I have to sit there for hours doing my homework by hand while somebody else can just push a button and have some machine do it for him? I wasn't the only one who felt that way. I heard other kids talking about it.

BRENTON'S MOM

It was toward the end of March when a stranger knocked at our door one morning. Brenton was at school. This man asked if he could ask me a few questions. First it was simple questions like how many years have I lived in the house and things like that. Then he started asking me what computer equipment we had and what we do with it. I didn't like the whole idea of this stranger asking me these questions and I asked him to kindly leave. I was frightened. I didn't catch his name.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

We had to have another stupid meeting because some guy was snooping around Brenton's house. I wondered if it was that Milner guy who was stalking me. We decided that we had to move Belch. I said I didn't want it at my house. Judy said she didn't want it at her house. So we moved it to Snik's house. What a pain it was carrying all that stuff. The computer must have weighed a ton. We had to put it in a wheelbarrow.

Thinking back on it now, I noticed one weird thing that I never mentioned to anyone. When we unplugged the computer to move it to Snik's house, that little red light didn't go out.

BRENTON'S MOM

I have never known my son to act irrationally. But I must say I was a bit shocked and angry when he gave away all his computer equipment. Sure, my husband gets it for free through his work. But even so, it was thousands of dollars worth of electronics. You don't just give that away. And Brenton loved his computer.

When I asked him why he gave it all away, he sort of shrugged and acted like I couldn't possibly understand. That's not like my son either. I thought he was going through one of those preteenage phases. Maybe this was his way of rebelling against his father. I should have punished him. Should have. You can always say that, can't you? Only later did I find out the real reason he gave his computer away.

SAM'S MOM

I went upstairs to change the sheets one day and there was this fancy computer system sitting on Sam's desk. It was much nicer than the old PC we got from the air force. I asked him where he got it and he said Brenton gave it to him. Well, that didn't sound right. You don't just give somebody something like that. I told Sam he had to give it back, but he said Brenton's father got lots of free computers and he insisted that Brenton didn't want it. I called up Mrs. Damagatchi and she said it was true. She didn't know why Brenton didn't want it anymore. We figured boys will be boys.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

My dad and I had a pretty hot game. My plan from the opening was to get my pieces onto good squares as soon as I could. I did that, and Dad actually made a few blunders. He let his rook get caught in front of his pawns so they couldn't advance. By the time we reached the middle game, I was two pawns ahead. So I brought out my queen and let her have the run of the board.

Dad always told me that one of the best forms of defense is to attack, so I did. After I captured
his rook, he offered to call it a draw. I could have gone for the win, but I guess I just didn't have that killer instinct yet. But I had my first draw.

Dad said I wasn't just a woodpusher anymore. That's what you call a weak player, a woodpusher. We started another game.

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

There were all kinds of rumors swirling around, and I wasn't sure how to handle them. You don't want to punish students based on some silly gossip in the school paper or what somebody wrote in a bathroom stall.

I was talking about it in the teachers' lounge, and one of the other teachers suggested I give the class a surprise test. That would tell me how much the students were remembering from their homework. Normally I don't like the whole idea of giving tests for students this age, but it seemed like a good idea.

I made up a multiple-choice test that covered just about everything we had studied all year. The solar system. The explorers. Arizona geography. Everything. The children were a little surprised when I sprung it on them, to say the least.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

It was totally unfair, I thought. Miss Rasmussen tells us all year long that she doesn't believe in tests. Then, bang, out of nowhere, she hits us with this huge test.

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

Well, the class did pretty well as a whole. I was pleased about that. Brenton got every question right. No surprise there. Sam and Kelsey failed completely. Their grades were the worst in the class. It was like they had never seen the material before. But they had been turning in excellent homework. That made me very suspicious. They should have done better.

What was most surprising though, was that Judy got a C. She's an extremely bright girl who turned in perfect homework every night. There was no reason why she shouldn't have done better. I had no choice but to believe the rumors about cheating were true. I was preparing to present the evidence to the principal.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

I couldn't believe I got a C. I never got a C before in my life! I was so ashamed. Instead of
bringing the test home to show to my parents, I stuffed it in the back of my locker. If anybody asked where it was, I decided I would pretend it was lost.

As it turned out, I never had to pretend anything. After what happened, I felt silly for even caring about what I got on the test.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

Snik was absent the day we got the test back. I thought maybe he stayed home from school because he knew he failed. But he was absent the next day, too. Then Miss Rasmussen came in after lunch that second day and she was crying. She told us that Snik's father was killed. I started crying. I know what it's like to lose your dad.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

I'd rather not talk about what happened to my dad. Is that okay?

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

I was told that Sam's father was driving an armored vehicle with three other soldiers and it was ambushed in the middle of the night. Sam's
father and the soldier sitting next to him in the front seat were killed. The other two soldiers in the back were severely injured.

It was a horrible tragedy, the kind you simply can't prepare for. Sam wasn't the only child who was upset. Kelsey had lost her father when she was younger, and she was distraught. Counselors were brought in to help us all get over our grief. We made cards. We gave Sam lots of hugs when he came back to school. What else could we do? It's not like a wound that will heal in time.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

Brenton and I were very careful about what we said to Snik after his father was killed. He knew how we felt about the war. We didn't want to say anything that might be insensitive. It was just so sad. Snik was the only one who didn't cry. Maybe he got it out of his system at home. We all felt so sorry for him.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

I was so angry! We had met Snik's dad. He came into our class that day and told us what it was like to be a soldier. He was a good guy. Now he was dead. And for what? It wasn't like World
War II, when America had to, like, save the world from Hitler. It was more like Vietnam. It was a war for nothing. And Snik's dad died for nothing. Just like my dad died for nothing when I was little.

It was stupid. I couldn't stop crying. It was like the world stopped turning.

SAM DAWKINS, GRADE 5

Dad and I were in the middle of a game when it happened. I just let the pieces sit there on the squares where they were. I'll never move them, ever. I don't know if there's an afterlife. But if there is, someday my dad and I will finish that game.

MISS RASMUSSEN, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER

It was a difficult time for everyone that first week after we got the news, especially for Sam and his mother.

Mr. Dawkins' remains were flown back home a few days later. Just about everyone in the school attended the funeral.

After what happened, I couldn't bring myself to go to Principal Wilson with my suspicions of cheating. I just couldn't do it. It was getting close
to the end of the year. For better or worse, I decided to let it slide.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

I thought that we wouldn't use Belch after Snik's dad died. It would have been rude to go over his house at a time like that. But Snik invited us over. He needed the company, I guess. And we were all addicted to Belch at that point.

SAM'S MOM

It was an awful time for us after my husband died, of course. But people were so wonderful, coming around to see if we were okay, cooking us dinners, and so on. Sam's friends Brenton and Judy and Kelsey came over every day after school and worked on their homework together up in his room.

One day I walked in without knocking and they all looked at me like I had caught them doing something wrong. But they were just using the computer Brenton had given Sam. I backed out of there and left them alone.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 5

After the funeral, there were a lot of outsiders around. I don't just mean tourists. I'm talking
about official-looking guys with suits or military uniforms. It was creepy.

One day I was riding my bike and one of these guys stopped me. He didn't say anything about Snik's dad. He started asking me questions about computers. My parents always warned me to be careful around strangers. I yelled at the man and told him to leave me alone or I'd scream. I pedaled away as fast as I could go. Now I was really paranoid. The police or FBI were after us for sure.

KELSEY DONNELLY, GRADE 5

Snik was depressed because of his dad, and who could blame him? Brenton's head was up in the clouds somewhere, like always. And Judy was a basket case. I was worried about her the most. She claimed some weird guy stopped her on the street, and he was probably an FBI agent. I thought that maybe she was hallucinating. That girl just can't deal with stress.

Well,
somebody
had to take charge. So I called a meeting. Yeah, me. At my house. The four of us. We had a long talk. There were so many things we had to talk about.

First, I reminded them all that Belch was supposed to make our lives
easier
. But with all the
problems and worrying, it made everything harder. We were spending more time worrying about Belch and trying to keep it a secret than we would have if we just did our stupid homework without the stupid machine.

I reminded them all that we had a pact to keep our secret, and that one of us must have spilled the beans. Which one was it? I knew it wasn't me. They all looked at each other for a long time. Judy said it wasn't her. Snik said it wasn't him. We all looked at Brenton. He just looked down and said real quietly, “It was me. I'm sorry.”

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 5

I guess I can admit this now. I was the one who called in the tip to the police hotline, and I leaked the item to the school paper. This is what I told them, and it was the truth. I had given it a lot of thought. It may not have been morally wrong for me to use Belch for
my
homework, but it was probably morally wrong for Snik and Kelsey, because they were using it as a crutch.