Sam the Man & the Cell Phone Plan Read online

  For Amy June Bates,

  whose drawings bring Sam to life.

  Thank you!

  —F. O. D.

  This book is dedicated to my pencil.

  —A. J. B.

  * * *

  Chapter One

  * * *

  Sam “Just the Facts” Graham

  Sam Graham was an information man.

  In his room he had three books about chickens, seven books about monster trucks, one copy of Guinness World Records, and a comic book called Everything You Need to Know About the Solar System.

  When his second-grade class went to the library, Sam helped the other kids look things up on the computer. He helped Emily find websites about bird calls, and he helped Will look up statistics on his favorite college football team. When Sam needed facts about his favorite food group, he knew the best thing to type into the search engine box was “frozen waffles history,” because if he just typed “frozen waffles,” all the hits would be commercials, and commercials never had facts in them.

  Sam liked facts. He liked researching facts about interesting topics. He liked sharing the facts he learned with other people.

  Which is why Sam Graham needed his very own phone.

  “A phone? Why on earth does a second grader need a phone?” Sam’s mom asked when Sam told her what he wanted for his birthday. She was sitting at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper on her laptop computer.

  “I like looking things up,” Sam said, taking a bite of his frozen waffle. “It would be nice if I could look up stuff while I was on the school bus or taking care of the chickens in Mrs. Kerner’s backyard. And if I had a phone and there was a chicken emergency, I could call 9-1-1.”

  “You don’t call 9-1-1 for chickens, Sam the Man,” Sam’s sister, Annabelle, told him. “You’d get in trouble if you did.”

  “Well, I could call you or Mom or Dad, then,” Sam said. “Or the chicken hotline.”

  “Is there really a chicken hotline?” Sam’s mom asked, looking over her computer screen at Sam and Annabelle.

  “If I had a phone, I could look it up and see,” Sam said.

  Annabelle took out her phone from her back pocket. “I’ll check.”

  “No phones at the table, Annabelle,” Sam’s mom said. “You know the rules.”

  “But you have your laptop at the table,” Annabelle pointed out. “That’s almost the same as a phone.”

  “In this case, my laptop is really a newspaper,” Sam’s mom said. “So it’s different.”

  “If I had a phone, I could read the paper too,” Sam said. “My phone could be a newspaper or a book or an encyclopedia or a radio.”

  Sam’s dad walked into the kitchen. He had his phone in his hand and was texting someone.

  “And I could text you if I had to stay late for school or needed to come home because I had a stomachache,” Sam continued. “I could do a million things with a phone.”

  “You’re too young for a phone, Sam the Man,” Sam’s dad said, putting his phone on the kitchen counter. “You spend too much time looking at screens as it is.”

  Sam poured some more syrup on his frozen waffle. “Why isn’t Annabelle too young?” he asked.

  “Annabelle is in sixth grade,” Sam’s dad said. “She has Scouts and soccer and swim team. She also has asthma, so it makes me and your mom feel better to know she can get in touch with us if she feels an attack coming on while she’s at school or a game.”

  “Besides, Sam, you have lots of ways to look things up,” Sam’s mom added, closing her laptop and taking her plate to the sink. “You can use the computer in my office upstairs if I’m there to supervise, and you can always check out books from the library. You don’t need a phone to find things out.”

  Sam thought about this. He knew there were lots of ways to look up facts. But he couldn’t take pictures using a book, and he couldn’t pull his mom’s computer out of his pocket if he needed to send someone a message. And what was he supposed to do if he had a chicken coop emergency? Throw eggs up into the air and hope someone came to see what was the matter?

  But he could tell from their expressions that his parents weren’t going to get him a phone for his birthday, even if it was the best idea ever. The problem, Sam thought as he scrubbed syrup off his arm with his napkin, was now all he could think about was how much he wanted a phone. How much he needed a phone. How he would never be happy until the day he finally had a phone of his own.

  There was only one thing to do. Sam would have to come up with a plan.

  He tried to come up with one while he was brushing his teeth. Maybe he could ask Annabelle if he could rent her phone part time, even though he knew she’d probably say no. Annabelle was the kind of sister who would help you out, but she wouldn’t break the rules for you.

  He could look in the school lost and found to see if anyone had lost a phone. Sure, he’d have to give the phone back to its owner, but maybe that person would be so happy that Sam had found their phone, they’d let Sam use it whenever he wanted. They might even let Sam bring it home on the weekends.

  Sam liked that plan a lot, but his parents probably wouldn’t.

  By the time Sam had finished brushing his teeth, put on his jacket, and walked to the bus stop, he’d thought of six different plans, but he was pretty sure none of them would work.

  Sam wasn’t used to coming up with bad plans. It made him feel dumb. It was like when he played T-ball last spring and kept hitting the tee instead of the ball when it was his turn to bat.

  “You look sad, Sam,” Sam’s best friend, Gavin, said when he got to the bus stop. “Did you lose something?”

  Sam shook his head. “I’m trying to come up with a plan for getting a phone, but I can’t think of anything good.”

  “No one in second grade has a phone,” Gavin said. “Well, Hutch did for a little while, remember? His mom put tracking devices in his jacket and lunch box because Hutch was always losing them. He was supposed to use the phone to track his lost stuff.”

  “But he lost the phone,” Sam said, nodding. “I remember.”

  “I don’t think you need a phone,” Gavin said. “But if you really want one, you could tell your parents you’d pay for it. You’re good at making money.”

  “I still don’t think they’d let me have one,” Sam said.

  “So then why are you trying to come up with a plan to get one?” Gavin asked.

  Sam saw the bus coming down the street and picked up his backpack. “I don’t know. I just really want a phone.”

  “I feel the same way about cats,” Gavin said, lining up with Sam for the bus. “I really, really want a cat. But I’m allergic to cats, and so is everybody else in my family. So I’m never going to have a cat, even though I want one more than anything.”

  “No one is my family is allergic to phones,” Sam said. “In fact, I’m the only person who doesn’t have one. It’s not fair.”

  “Life’s not fair,” Gavin said as they stepped onto the bus. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have a cat allergy.”

  “I guess,” Sam said. He was about to say something else when he slipped on a piece of paper on the bus floor. He didn’t fall, but he did bump into the boy in front of him.

  The boy turned around and said, “Watch it!” He was carrying a box, which he showed to Sam. “I made a robot for the third-grade science fair, and I don’t want to break it.”

  “Sorry,” Sam said. He wished he could peek inside the box to see what the boy’s robot looked like. He wondered if it would be hard to make a robot, one that walked and talked and did all kinds of interesting things. Maybe next year Sam would make h
is own robot for the science fair.

  Or—

  Sam turned around to Gavin. “I’ve got it! I’ve come up with a plan!”

  “What is it?” Gavin asked.

  “I’m going to make my own phone!” Sam told him. “It’s going to be great!”

  “Make a phone?” Gavin sounded confused. “How do you make a phone?”

  Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. But I know how to look it up.”

  If there was one thing Sam was good at, it was looking things up.

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  How to Make a Phone of Your Own

  I’ve never heard of anyone making a phone,” Mr. Stockfish said. “Well, except for Alexander Graham Bell. Oh, and my brother, Archie. He used tin cans and a piece of string.”

  “Did it work?” Sam asked.

  “Not really, but we pretended it did.” Mr. Stockfish glanced at the chicken in his lap. “Do you think Leroy’s eyes look funny today?”

  Sam and Mr. Stockfish were sitting by the chicken coop in their neighbor’s backyard, which they did most afternoons. Mrs. Kerner had a flock of chickens that Sam took care of. Sam also took care of his own chicken, Helga, and Leroy, who belonged to Mr. Stockfish. Spending time with Leroy in Mrs. Kerner’s backyard was one of Mr. Stockfish’s favorite things to do.

  Sam leaned over and looked at Leroy. “Her eyes might be a little more yellow today than usual, but that’s probably just because the leaves in the trees are turning yellow.”

  “You think Leroy’s eye color is affected by the color of the leaves?”

  “My mom says that when I wear my blue shirt, my eyes look more blue,” Sam explained. “Usually they look gray.”

  Mr. Stockfish looked at Leroy’s eyes more closely. “Maybe you’re right, Sam. Maybe it is the leaves. She’s not acting sick.”

  “She’s moving around a lot and seems like she’s interested in our conversation,” Sam said. “I think if she was sick, she would seem more bored. If I had a phone, I could look up how to tell if a chicken is sick.”

  “But you already know,” Mr. Stockfish pointed out. “You just told me.”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Sam argued. “I just know from spending a lot of time with healthy chickens how a healthy chicken looks.”

  “How much time do you think a phone has spent with healthy chickens?” Mr. Stockfish asked. “Or any chickens at all?”

  “If I had a phone, I could ask it,” Sam said. “Phones have little voices in them that can tell you things.”

  “Your brain has a little voice in it that can tell you things too,” Mr. Stockfish pointed out. “It sounds like it might even be able to tell you how to make your own phone.”

  “I learned about how to make a phone by searching the Internet,” Sam said. “First I have to get all the right ingredients. You need, um—” Sam paused and pulled a small notebook out of his back pocket. “I made a list. You need something called ‘indium tin oxide’ for the screen and small amounts of rare earths. Do you know what rare earths are? I didn’t have time to look that up.”

  “Rare earths are metals,” Mr. Stockfish said. “They’re used to make computers.”

  “I bet my mom could order some online,” Sam said. “Plus a battery, because phones use batteries.”

  Mr. Stockfish patted Leroy on the head. He seemed to be thinking. After a moment he said, “Sam, you have your brain and a notebook. You’re good at looking things up. I don’t understand why you need a phone. You already have everything a phone has.”

  “I don’t have a camera,” Sam said, pretending to take a picture of Leroy by clicking an invisible button on an invisible phone.

  “Your eyes are a camera,” Mr. Stockfish said. “They take pictures that you keep in your memory.”

  “I don’t have a keypad to type texts on,” Sam said. He tapped a message on the palm of his hand. “I have fingers, but no keypad.”

  “You have a notebook and a pencil,” Mr. Stockfish said.

  “I don’t have a whole library of information,” Sam said.

  “You have your brain,” Mr. Stockfish said. “And the ability to think. You didn’t need a phone to convince me that Leroy is healthy.”

  “A phone knows a lot more than my brain does,” Sam said. “But I have to stop arguing with you now because I need to fill up the chickens’ waterer.”

  “See, you didn’t need a phone to tell you that,” Mr. Stockfish said. “All you needed was your eyes and your experience.”

  “Okay, okay,” Sam said, ducking into the coop with the hose. “I get it. But I’m still going to try to make my own phone.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, Sam,” Mr. Stockfish said as he put Leroy on the ground. “I’ll go turn the water on for you.”

  Sam put the end of the hose into the waterer’s top. “Ready!” he called to Mr. Stockfish. “I’ll tell you when to turn the water off. And please don’t say that a phone couldn’t tell you when to do that.”

  “Okay, I won’t say it,” Mr. Stockfish said. “But it’s true.”

  Sam listened to the waterer going glug glug glug as the water from the hose filled it up. He thought about all the different things he would need to make his own phone. He knew that phone cases were made out of aluminum, and they had aluminum foil in the kitchen drawer next to the stove. But was that the right kind of aluminum? He also knew that if he wanted to use his phone to talk or to listen to monster truck podcasts he would need a speaker, but he wasn’t sure how you made a speaker. Maybe he could use aluminum foil for that, too.

  Sam pulled out his notebook again to check his notes. He would need to make something called a processor chip. For that you needed silicon, and Sam wasn’t sure what silicon was. He didn’t know what micro-capacitors were, either, but phones needed those, too.

  Don’t worry about it, Sam told himself. He could look everything up. He was good at looking things up, remember?

  But then Sam had a terrible thought. What if he looked everything up, figured everything out, and made his very own phone . . . and his mom and dad still wouldn’t let him use it? After all that hard work!

  Sam shook his head. That’s exactly what would happen. He’d work for hours and hours—maybe even for days!—to make a phone, and then his parents would take it away.

  But what was he supposed to do? Make a phone his parents wouldn’t mind him using? What would that kind of phone even look like?

  Sam glanced at his notebook. He knew his parents wouldn’t mind if he used a notebook. If he wrote down everything that he needed to know in a notebook, it might sort of be like having a computer in his pocket. After all, he knew a whole lot.

  What else? His mom had an old digital camera that she never used anymore. Maybe she’d let Sam have it. That could be kind of like having a phone with a camera in it. He just wouldn’t have the phone part.

  But what if Sam needed to make an actual phone call? What if he needed to send somebody a message?

  He would need some sort of message machine. And he would need . . . he would need . . . he would need a secret code! Yes, Sam would need a secret code and a way to send it.

  “Sam, I think the waterer is filled up now,” Mr. Stockfish called. “In fact, it looks like the water is spilling over the top.”

  Sam looked down. Not only was the waterer filled up, but water was spilling out and his shoes were wet. “Okay, I guess you could turn off the hose now,” he called to Mr. Stockfish.

  Sam pulled the hose out of the coop and coiled it back up. When he was done putting it away, he went to sit in the lawn chair next to Mr. Stockfish.

  “Do you know anything about secret codes?” he asked.

  Mr. Stockfish bent down and scooped Leroy back into his lap. “Of course I do. I used to be in the army, and working with codes was part of my job.”

  Sam leaned back in his seat and smiled. He was pretty sure he’d just come up with a brand-new plan.

  * * *

&nbs
p; Chapter Three

  * * *

  Sam the Man and the Secret Code Plan

  When Sam got home, he went upstairs to his mom’s office. “I need to do some research,” he said after knocking on the door. “Can I use your computer?”

  “Come on in, Sam,” his mom said. She was sitting at her desk, typing on her desktop computer, which had a humongous screen and a keyboard that you plugged into the back. “My laptop is over by the chair. What are you going to look up?”

  Sam thought about what he should say. When you were looking up secret codes, should you keep it a secret? He guessed it was okay to tell his mom, who would probably come over and look anyway. Sam’s mom was very nosy when Sam was using the computer.

  “Mr. Stockfish said that when he was in the army, he helped send secret messages using special codes.” Sam sat down in the chair across the room from his mom and picked up her laptop. “He also said that there were codes that weren’t secret. Did you know the army has its own alphabet?”

  Sam’s mom turned around to look at Sam. “I think so. ‘Alpha, Bravo, Charlie’ is A, B, C, right?”

  “Yep,” Sam said. “And D is ‘Delta.’ But I forget after that.”

  “You could probably find some codes on the Internet that you could print out,” Sam’s mom said.

  Sam thought that was a good plan. In fact, he could make his own code book. Then he would have a lot of different ways to send messages to his friends. They’d have to know the codes too, but Sam could make them copies of the code book.

  Sam found an Internet site that had a bunch of codes that kids could use. Some of them he didn’t understand, but there were a few that were really cool. There was one where you gave each letter of the alphabet a number, so that A was zero, and B was one, and C was two, etc. When you needed to send a message, you wrote it out in numbers instead of letters, so that nobody but your friends who knew the code could read it.