Free The Detention Club by David Yoo Page B

Mr. Coffee machine wired to your security system, except it’s a teakettle in your bedroom. The water in the teakettle is always close to boiling on a hot plate at all times, and when the alarm gets tripped, instead of an alarm blaring inside your house, startling you out of bed, the alarm system instead triggers the hot plate to full blast. This quickly brings the teakettle to a boil, and you get woken up instead by the soothing sound of a teakettle’s whistle. Then you just calmly get out of bed, lock the bedroom door so the burglar can’t get inside the room and take you hostage, and then relax in bed drinking hot tea with the lights on while you wait for the local police to arrive and reset the security system.
    I pictured a young couple nervously drinking their tea as they hid in the locked bedroom waiting for the police, and I figured, well, maybe one of them smokes cigarettes, especially when they’re nervous. Wouldn’t it be convenient, then, if cigarettes were self-lighting? I figured you could add the match-strike strip on the side of a cigarette box, and then add some chemicals to the tip of the cigarette, and then just rub the end of the cigarette against the box, and voilà, you’re smoking away your worries while sipping hot tea!
    This one fit under the category of “environmental/eco-friendly” inventions, according to Ms. Schoonmaker’s letter, because if it really caught on, it would save:
    tons of trees (matches)
    gallons of gas (butane from lighters)
    I glanced over at the clock by my bed. At this point, I’d spent nearly two hours coming up with ideas for inventions! I flipped through the six pages of diagrams and notes I’d already filled the notebook with and couldn’t believe how much work I’d gotten done. “This notebook’s writing itself!” I said out loud.
    On Wednesday I showed up early to the AV room in the back of the library after school, and Sunny was already sitting there, scribbling furiously in her notebook. I sat down at the other end of the long table. “Class hasn’t started yet, so what could you possibly be taking notes on?” I asked.
    â€œI’m working on my ideas,” she said, not looking up. “You should be, too.”
    â€œActually, I’ve been working on them all day,” I said.
    â€œYou’re lying—how could you? You have classes all day.”
    â€œI guess classes are easier for me than they are for you, after all,” I said.
    She frowned at me.
    A minute later the other students filed in. There were eight of us in the class: me, Carson, and Angie were the three sixth graders in class; Leigh and Graham were seventh graders; and Sunny, Sam, and Courtney were in eighth. Carson was really smart, but I was just relieved that his buddy from Hemenway—the one with the gigantic head—wasn’t selected. That kid was the only person in my grade that I worried about, intellectually.
    Ms. Schoonmaker then showed up, carrying a folder and a tiny cup of steaming espresso. I love the smell of coffee, but I’ve always hated the smell of espresso. It’s bitter and strong and smells like adults. This tiny cup filled up the entire room with the gross smell within seconds.
    â€œGood afternoon, future inventors!” she said. “Well, there’s not a moment to spare. In late October we’re going to have an inventors’ fair of our own, where you’ll present a prototype—that is, a working example of your actual invention—to the student body. Then a committee will decide which one of you will represent the school at nationals in the spring.
    â€œThis room is going to be your official inventions workshop,” Ms. Schoonmaker went on. “I’ve set up these cubbies where you can store your projects. During your free time before or after school, you can come to the workshop to work on your inventions. But right now we’re going to