Frankie Sparks and the Lucky Charm Read online

  The obvious choice for bait was gold, but she didn’t have any gold. She wondered if leprechauns liked pennies. She had lots of those. She kept them in her piggy bank by her bed. Every time she found one, she dropped it in. When she had enough, she was going to buy a soldering iron, a special tool for connecting things, like in electronics. It was almost as useful as duct tape! Aunt Nichelle, who worked as an engineer, said she’d teach Frankie how to use it. Then Frankie could hook up wires and batteries and lights and stuff. It was hard to save money, especially when Wink’s Magic and Games Emporium sold such cool magic tricks, but she was doing her best.

  Anyway, she didn’t want to lose her pennies, but since leprechauns weren’t real, that wasn’t really a risk. She would plan on using pennies for bait unless she thought of something better. The other two parts of the trap were the bigger challenges. How big did the trap need to be? She knew leprechauns were small, but how small? It wasn’t like anyone had ever measured one!

  Frankie remembered the so-called leprechaun hole under the shed at Maya’s house. Frankie was able to see maybe six inches into the hole. So Frankie decided that the leprechaun mustn’t be any taller than six inches. She wrote that down on her paper. Now she knew that the trap had to be bigger than six inches in any direction.

  Finally, the hardest part. Leprechauns were smart. They wouldn’t fall for any old box and stick. She needed something much more clever. Luckily, Frankie was pretty smart too.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in. When she opened her eyes, she grabbed a new piece of paper and began to draw.

  When she finished, she clapped her hands together.

  She had drawn a treasure chest with its lid open. A small cauldron hung from the top of the chest, filled with gold coins. The cauldron rested on top of what looked like clouds. This was the genius of the trap. She would put a layer of cotton across the top of the chest. It would be stiff enough to stay in place, and even to have the cauldron touch it. But as soon as someone—like a leprechaun—stepped onto it, he would fall right through. The pennies were her bait. And the cauldron would be what caused the top to drop and trap the leprechaun inside. She had met all three of her requirements. Perfect!

  Frankie bit her lip. Well, maybe not quite perfect. She didn’t believe in leprechauns, that was true, but on the one-in-a-million chance that they were real and she caught one, she didn’t want it to get hurt. Plus, an animal might get into the trap by accident. Frankie would add more cotton to the bottom of the box so that whatever landed in it would have a safe, soft landing. She’d add a small dish for water, too. Now the design was perfect! All she had to do was not catch a leprechaun.

  CHAPTER 5 Watching and Waiting

  “TA-DA!” FRANKIE ANNOUNCED WHEN Maya opened her front door.

  “Hi, Frankie!” Maya said.

  “I came right over when I finished.” She carefully held out her invention to Maya. “It’s a leprechaun trap!”

  Maya regarded it skeptically. “That’s going to catch the leprechaun?”

  Frankie opened up the box and explained how it worked.

  “So the leprechaun falls down into the box and then is stuck there?” Maya asked, her doubt turning to excitement.

  “Precisely,” Frankie said. “Pretty genius, right?”

  “It’s fantastic! Let’s go try it out.”

  The two girls went around the house to the backyard, their feet squishing in the fresh grass.

  Frankie regarded the hole under the shed. “Let’s see,” she said. “We don’t want to be too obvious. If we put the trap right by the hole, he’ll surely suspect something. That is, he would suspect something, if leprechauns were real.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it right in front of the hole,” Maya said. “He might never come out again.”

  Frankie knew that the leprechaun could hear them only if he had real ears, which he didn’t, because he wasn’t real at all, but she whispered, “Good point. How about over here?”

  A lilac bush was just starting to bud at the edge of Maya’s lawn. Frankie placed the box under the lowest branches and carefully opened the lid. She made sure that the pennies were in the cauldron and that the cotton batting was placed just so. The trap was perfect. She almost wished leprechauns were real, because her trap would surely catch one!

  “Now what?” Maya whispered.

  “We wait,” Frankie said. “But not too close.”

  The two girls tiptoed across the lawn.

  “What are you two up to?” Maya’s brother, Matt, yelled from the back porch.

  “Shh!” Maya yelled. “You’ll scare it away.”

  “You’ll scare it away!” Frankie whisper-yelled at Maya.

  “Scare what away?” Matt asked.

  Frankie and Maya both waved their hands frantically, trying to tell him to be quiet.

  “What?” he yelled again.

  “The leprechaun!” Maya finally said, as softly as she could. “We’re going to catch it.”

  Matt snorted. “You two? Catch a leprechaun?”

  “Would you stop yelling about it?” Frankie told him.

  “Yeah! If he hears, he’ll never come out,” Maya added.

  The two girls stood with their hands on their hips, glaring at Matt.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his hands. “I just think you two have no idea what you’re getting into, trying to catch a lep—”

  “Matt!” Maya said.

  “Trying to do you-know-what to you-know-who,” Matt said. “They’re tricky, and a lot smarter than you.”

  “No one’s smarter than Frankie Sparks,” Frankie said, puffing out her chest. “Or Maya,” she added quickly.

  “Yeah!” Maya said.

  “Well, if you’re so smart, how come Opus is licking your trap?” Matt asked.

  “What?” Frankie exclaimed. She and Maya ran over to the dog while Matt laughed.

  “No!” Maya said. “Not for you!”

  If dogs could shrug, then Opus would have shrugged. He pressed his head against Frankie’s hand so that she would pet him. The two girls and the dog went back across the lawn and sat under the old oak tree. They could see the trap and the hole, but they were far enough away, they thought, that the leprechaun wouldn’t be bothered by them. If he saw them, he would probably just think they were having a picnic or looking at clouds or counting acorns, all the things they normally did in Maya’s backyard.

  They watched and they waited.

  They waited and they watched.

  They waited. They watched.

  Nothing happened.

  “Are leprechauns nocturnal?” Maya asked.

  “No. They come out for rainbows,” Frankie said. “So they must be out during the day, not the nighttime.”

  “Good point.”

  They watched and waited some more.

  When a whole hour had passed, Maya said, “I’m hungry. And my mom made double fudge brownies. Let’s go inside and have a snack.”

  Frankie was also feeling pretty hungry. “Okay,” she said. “I mean, if leprechauns are real, we don’t have to see it get trapped, right? It will just get trapped.”

  “Right, we don’t have to sit around and wait.”

  The two friends went inside and ate double fudge brownies and drank milk. Then they decided to play a game of checkers. Then they put on their magic-show costumes and pretended they were part of a traveling circus and talked to each other with made-up accents.

  Another hour went by before they decided to check on the trap again.

  They crept up to the lilac bush.

  The leprechaun trap was untouched.

  “Just as I thought!” Frankie said. “There’s your proof. I made a perfect leprechaun trap, and no leprechaun was caught.”

  Maya crouched down low. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at little divots in the grass.

  “Just little bumps,” Frankie said. “Like from the rain or something.”

  “It didn’t rain. I
think they look like footprints,” Maya said. “They seem a little green to me.”

  “Maya!” Frankie said, exasperated. “You said yourself the trap was fantastic.”

  “Sure,” Maya said. “But what I’m realizing is that just because your trap didn’t catch a leprechaun, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The only way to be sure would be if you had a foolproof trap. Especially when it comes to leprechauns. They’re tricky. They’re all about fooling.”

  “It is a foolproof trap.”

  “Are you sure?” Maya asked.

  Frankie was about to say yes, but then she realized that she wasn’t absolutely, positively, no doubt about it, 100 percent sure. “No,” she admitted. “But I will be. If I prove to you that this is a foolproof trap, will you believe me that leprechauns aren’t real?”

  Maya thought about this for a second. She didn’t take such types of deals lightly. “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

  She reached out her hand, and the two girls shook on it.

  Now all Frankie had to do was prove that her trap was foolproof. Easy-peasy, right? Frankie wasn’t so sure.

  CHAPTER 6 Expert Engineer

  FRANKIE’S EYES GREW WIDE AS Aunt Nichelle placed a huge slice of lemon meringue pie in front of her. The way the meringue was piled up seemed to defy gravity. Of course, if anyone could defy gravity with a pie or anything else, it was Frankie’s aunt Nichelle. She was a rocket scientist—and a really great baker.

  They were finishing up their Sunday dinner. Once a month Frankie’s family went over to have dinner with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. Frankie’s cousins were still babies, pretty much. Frankie didn’t mind playing with them for a little bit, but she much preferred spending time with Aunt Nichelle and hearing what she was working on.

  All through dinner Frankie had been thinking about how she could prove her trap was foolproof. Now, though, her brain was finally distracted. She scooped up a bite of pie and let it dissolve in her mouth. Delicious! It was like taking a bite of the summer that was on its way.

  “Good?” Frankie’s uncle Charlie chuckled.

  “Mm-hmm.” Frankie nodded, her mouth too full of pie to say a real word.

  “Well, finish up, because after dinner I need a young inventor to help me with a problem,” Aunt Nichelle said.

  Frankie ate so fast that the pie disappeared like in one of her magic tricks.

  Aunt Nichelle brought Frankie into her home office. “Some of my colleagues are working on space gardens,” Aunt Nichelle said. “We want to be able to grow food up in space so that the astronauts can have fresh fruit and vegetables.”

  “That’s cool!” Frankie said. “They’ll still get space ice cream, though, right?”

  “If they want it,” Aunt Nichelle said, wrinkling her nose. Frankie loved space ice cream, which was basically a block of ice cream–flavored foam that melted in your mouth. Aunt Nichelle called it an insult to taste buds.

  “They’ve had a lot of luck with greens, and potatoes seem to be doing well. Now they’re working on juicier vegetables.”

  Aunt Nichelle called up a file on her computer. She showed Frankie pictures of the space gardens, where different types of lettuce grew. The soil was all contained in boxes so it wouldn’t fly around in the outer-space greenhouse. The water was piped right into the boxes too.

  Then Aunt Nichelle showed her a video of a tomato bursting in a zero-gravity environment. The goo and seeds from inside went everywhere. “You see the problem?” Aunt Nichelle asked.

  “What a mess! Can’t they put a box around it like they do for the soil and water? That way if one tomato breaks, it will be contained,” Frankie said.

  “Smart girl!” Aunt Nichelle replied. “That’s what they’ve been trying. It seems to work pretty well. They’re figuring out a way to clean out the box so that when they open it, any mess doesn’t fly out. After all, each tomato plant produces many tomatoes, and our workers don’t want to give up on a whole plant just because one tomato explodes.”

  Frankie nodded. “So what do you need my help with?”

  “I need you to tell me all the ways a tomato might break.”

  Frankie thought about this for a second. Sometimes she helped in her dad’s nursery, so she knew a lot about plants. The tomato plants were some of her favorites because they smelled—and tasted—so good. “Sometimes the tomatoes get too heavy and the stem breaks. Sometimes they just grow with cracks in them. Sometimes people bump them. Little kids like to squeeze them—not like there would be a lot of kids in space. Or animals. They steal them sometimes and make a mess.”

  “Good list,” Aunt Nichelle said. “Anything else? Think big. Think wild!”

  Aunt Nichelle always told her to “think wild,” because sometimes in the wildness there was a good idea. “Well, here on Earth, a hurricane could knock them down. Or an earthquake. So, I guess… Wait. Is there turbulence in space? If there is, then that could knock the tomatoes off the vines. And then they’d fall—” She stopped herself. “Well, they wouldn’t fall; they would float up and then hit the roof of the box and maybe break.”

  Aunt Nichelle laughed. “Now you’ve got your thinking cap on.” She was writing down everything Frankie said.

  “Do you think the lack of gravity could make them burst somehow?” Frankie asked. “Like maybe they would grow differently or something?”

  “We’re definitely looking into that.”

  “Why do you want to know all the ways that a tomato might break, anyway?”

  “Well, when you’re inventing something, it’s a good idea to think of all the ways that things might go wrong. You want to identify all the possible ways that your invention might fail, and then you can address those possibilities.”

  Frankie thought about this for a minute. “Like trial and error?”

  “Exactly,” Aunt Nichelle said. “But in this method you’re anticipating the errors, not waiting for them to just happen.”

  Frankie thought some more. “That’s what I need to do with my leprechaun trap!” she exclaimed.

  “Your what?” Aunt Nichelle asked.

  Frankie explained about the trap and how Maya wanted proof that the trap hadn’t failed. “I need to anticipate all the ways it could fail, and improve my design so that my trap is undoubtable.”

  Aunt Nichelle grinned and tapped Frankie on the nose. “That’s why, my dear, you are my favorite inventor. Now let your creativity run wild and come up with all the ways that leprechaun trap might fail.”

  To let her creativity run wild was not something Frankie needed to be told twice. It was how her brain operated most of the time. However, it was time to go home and go to bed. Her brainstorm would have to wait until the next day.

  CHAPTER 7 The Pang

  IN ART CLASS FRANKIE DREW leprechauns and leprechaun traps. Just like Aunt Nichelle had told her, she let her mind go wild, imagining all the possible ways a leprechaun could escape her trap.

  She drew a little leprechaun using tiny scissors to cut a hole out of the box. You can’t catch me! she wrote in a speech bubble. Then she drew herself and a thought bubble: Curses. Foiled again!

  Maya peered over her shoulder. “Whoa! I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think leprechauns travel around with tiny scissors?”

  “I bet some of them do,” Frankie said. “I have to think of every possibility.”

  Lila Jones, who sat at the art table with them, said, “I bet they have tiny gold scissors.”

  Frankie figured that was probably true, but she never liked to admit when Lila was right. So she colored the scissors in using her pencil.

  “What if the leprechaun was an inventor like you, Frankie?” Ravi asked. “He might have tape with him and string and a tiny little notebook to write things down in.”

  Frankie grinned. “Yeah, and a tool belt, too.” She really wanted a tool belt. She was thinking of making one for herself, but she would need to learn how to use the sewing machine. In the meantime, she drew a new leprechaun—a g
irl—and gave her a tool belt. This one said, There’s no trap I can’t outsmart!

  Ms. Burman, the art teacher, came and peered over her shoulder. “I didn’t know you were working on a comic.” Ms. Burman tapped Frankie’s paper. “What happened to your sculpture of Mae Jemison’s rocket?”

  “I’m taking a break from that,” Frankie replied. “This is a new project. An urgent project.”

  Ms. Burman always let them decide for themselves what they were going to work on. She talked a lot about the process of making art and how each artist approached each project in a different way, so she let them work at their own pace on their own projects. For Frankie, art was a lot like engineering, so she loved being in Ms. Burman’s studio.

  “Urgent art?” Ms. Burman asked.

  “I designed a leprechaun trap, and now I’m making it foolproof,” Frankie said. “These are all the ways it could fail.”

  Ms. Burman nodded. “You’ve certainly given a lot of movement to that leprechaun character. And I love your use of color.”

  “Thanks,” Frankie said.

  Ms. Burman grinned. Frankie was pretty sure that Ms. Burman had light-bulb moments, just like she did. “I think a really neat project would be to share these drawings along with your trap. It would be a view into the engineer’s mind!”

  Frankie liked that idea. “Okay! Once I’m done not catching a leprechaun, I’ll bring the trap in.”

  “Not catching?” Ms. Burman asked.

  “It’s my leprechaun,” Maya explained. “But Frankie doesn’t believe in it.”

  “So you’re trying to prove it doesn’t exist by not catching it?” Ms. Burman asked.

  “Correct!” Frankie replied. “That’s why the trap needs to be foolproof.”

  “Well, keep me posted,” Ms. Burman said. Then she went over to another table, where Suki was working with William on a model of the Parthenon.

  Luke, who was sitting at the table behind Frankie, leaned back in his chair. “Just stomp on it,” he said.