Free The Homework Machine by Dan Gutman Page A

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.
    T HE
G RAND C ANYON T IMES
    â€¦ and rumors are flying around the canyon that certain people in grade five have invented a mysterious machine that does their homework for them! Can you believe that? Where can we get one of those and how much does it cost? …
    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. Ifigured 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.

Chapter 8
April
    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