Free The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester by Barbara O'Connor

work gloves.
    Owen didn’t answer.
    In fact, Owen didn’t answer any of the gazillion questions Viola asked.
    He didn’t answer when she asked where Travis and Stumpy were.
    He didn’t answer when she asked if he had called the railroad company yet.
    And he didn’t answer when she asked if he was going to the pond to visit that sad old frog of his later that day.
    Owen wasn’t going to say one word to Viola.
    But then . . .
    . . . she went and said something that made him change his plans.
    “I know how to get that submarine down to the pond.”
    Owen stopped his sawing.
    He studied Viola.
    Her big fly-eyes peering at him through her thick glasses.
    Her freckly white legs.
    Her know-it-all face.
    “How?” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
    Owen sat on a patch of moss beside the Water Wonder 4000 and listened to Viola going on and on in her schoolteacher voice.
    About the ancient Egyptians.
    About pyramids.
    About simple machines.
    Blah.
    Blah.
    Blah.
    “Are you even
listening
to me, Owen?” she said, jabbing a finger at him. Her eyes were red and watery. Every few minutes, she wiped at her nose with a balled-up tissue.
    “Look, Viola,” he said. “I don’t even know what theheck you’re talking about. What do Egyptians have to do with anything?”
    So Viola explained it again.
    “Some people think that the Egyptians moved those big stones for their pyramids by rolling them on logs.” She went to the front of the submarine and squatted down. “See, we get some logs and we put them under the front.” She patted the ground. “
Then
, we pull the submarine over the logs, which will be easy because the logs will roll.”
    She stood up and brushed dirt off her knees. “Then, as it rolls along, we take logs from behind it and move them back up to the front again . . . until we get to the pond.”
    A lightbulb went on.
    Owen got it.
    He snapped his fingers. “
Roll
it to the pond! Yeah!” He jumped up and ran over to the submarine. “And the pond is downhill from here, so that’ll make it even easier.”
    Owen couldn’t control himself.
    He beamed at Viola.
    Viola beamed back.
    Owen sure was glad Travis and Stumpy weren’t here to see all this beaming.
    “Now we just have to get some logs,” Viola said, rubbing her watery eyes and scratching at the pink rash that had appeared on her neck.
    Owen’s beam disappeared in a snap.
    “How are we supposed to do that?” he said.
    “Well, um . . .” Viola looked up into the trees. “We could . . . um . . . well . . . let’s see . . .”
    Owen never would have believed this day would come . . .
    . . . the day Viola didn’t know everything.
    It figured.
    All those times she had irritated the heck out of him by knowing everything and now here was the one time he
needed
her to know everything and she didn’t.
    And then, a lightbulb went on again.
    “Pipes!” he said.
    Viola stared at him through her thick glasses. “Pipes?”
    “Yeah, you know, pipes. Like water pipes.” Owen jerked his head in the direction of the new subdivision out by the main highway. “They’re putting in a water line over on Sycamore Road and there’s tons of PVC pipes just laying there in the ditch.”
    “That’s perfect!” Viola said.
    They beamed at each other again.
    “There’s only one problem,” Viola said.
    Owen rolled his eyes. Here was Miss Know-It-All again.
    “We can’t do it by ourselves,” she said.
    “Why not?”
    “Look, Owen,” she said. “Even if we could get enough pipes down here, we’d need help pulling that thing.” She flung her arm in the direction of the submarine. “We’d need two people pulling and two people moving the pipes from the back to the front.”
    Dang it!
    Viola was right again.
    “We need Travis and Stumpy,” she said.
    “No way,” Owen said. “They’re quitters.”
    “Then we’ll have to find somebody else.” Viola squeezed her lips together and came close to making that smug face that Owen hated.
    He