Frankie Sparks and the Lucky Charm Read online

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  “What?” Frankie asked.

  “If you want the trap to fail, stomp on it. If you can stomp on it and it doesn’t break, then it’s fail-proof.” He swung his fist, clutching his paintbrush, down onto the table as he spoke. Little drops of green paint went everywhere.

  “It’s not that simple,” Frankie said. “Even if a leprechaun were big enough to squash it, which it’s not—”

  “How do you know?” Luke asked.

  “I just do. Leprechauns are small,” Frankie answered.

  “Have you ever seen one?” he asked.

  “Of course I haven’t,” she told him. “They aren’t real.”

  “Then how do you know how big they are?”

  This question was a real conundrum. Her mind had just started to spin on it when Lila said, “I believe in leprechauns. And fairies and elves and all of those magical things.”

  “Not me,” Ravi said. He put down his paintbrush. He had been working on a watercolor of the river that flowed through the town. “If they exist, why haven’t we seen them? Why is there no evidence?”

  “Exactly!” Frankie said.

  “Also, rainbows don’t really have ends. It’s just light going through water droplets. That’s why you have to stand in a certain spot to see them. If you tried to move to get to the so-called end, the rainbow would just disappear.”

  “Exactly!” Frankie said again.

  Suki, from her table, said, “I believe in leprechauns. Last Saint Patrick’s Day there were little green footprints on our counter.”

  Luke laughed. “At my house the water in the toilet turned green! I think a leprechaun—”

  “Luke,” Ms. Burman said from the front of the art studio. Frankie often wondered how teachers were able to hear everything going on in their rooms. Maybe they had some sort of hearing enhancer.

  While Frankie wanted to pursue this line of thought and figure out how a teacher might make a secret hearing enhancer, something else was going on. It was in her stomach. She didn’t feel sick. Frankie had a pang. She didn’t like having pangs, because usually they came when she had done something wrong.

  She looked at Maya. Maya was weaving gold and green strips of fabric together. It was, Frankie realized, a leprechaun blanket. The pang got a little sharper. Maya really and truly believed in leprechauns. So did Lila and Suki. Lila might just be saying so to push Frankie’s buttons, but Frankie was pretty sure that Suki was telling the truth. And Suki was smart. Could the other girls be right about leprechauns?

  Ms. Burman crossed to the center of the room. “I see we’ve all gone a little wild for leprechauns today,” she said. “You know I don’t mind when you follow your imaginations, but it can’t be a distraction.”

  Frankie sniffed. She couldn’t deny that she was distracted. The pang in her stomach was growing into a knot. But it wasn’t a guilty knot, she realized. Those made her feel sad and antsy. This one was a little scarier.

  “Let’s keep our conversations to our own tables, okay?” Ms. Burman said.

  That was fine with Frankie. Everyone jumping in was just making her more confused. On the Yes, leprechauns are real side were Maya, Lila, Suki, and Luke. On the No, leprechauns are not real side were just her and Ravi. It was true that Ravi was very, very smart. He was also, quite proudly, a cynic, meaning he didn’t believe much of anything without proof. Normally that made him a good companion, but… Her thoughts trailed off into a tangle.

  She sighed.

  “What’s wrong?” Maya asked.

  Frankie, though, turned to Lila. “What makes you so sure that leprechauns are real?” she asked.

  Lila, though, just shrugged. “I believe it, that’s all. It’s nice to believe in things.”

  This time it was Maya who said, “Exactly.”

  Frankie’s whole stomach dropped. What if she was wrong? What if leprechauns really did exist? Or, what if they didn’t exist? What if she was about to ruin something nice for her best friend?

  CHAPTER 8 Possible Fails

  FRANKIE WAS STUMPED.

  She sat at the kitchen table with her leprechaun trap in front of her.

  She had so many questions, and not enough answers. What if leprechauns really were real? What if they were just so smart that they’d never been caught? What if everyone else was right, and she was wrong?

  She stared at her trap. She used to think it was the best leprechaun trap ever built. Before, it was sparkles and sunshine; now it looked drab and useless. She picked it up and brought it into the living room. Her parents were sitting on the couch together. Her mom was reading the newspaper, and her dad was reading a book about beekeeping.

  Frankie said, “May I present, for the very first time, the world’s most amazing leprechaun trap!”

  Her mom raised her eyebrows. “Leprechaun trap? Why do you want to catch a leprechaun?”

  “I don’t!” Frankie said.

  Her mom looked confused, but her dad said, “I knew you would figure it out. Frankie is trying to prove that leprechauns don’t exist, so she made a trap to catch one.”

  “And when I don’t catch one,” Frankie added, “even with the world’s most amazing leprechaun trap ever, then that will be proof that they don’t exist. At least that was the plan.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m starting to worry. Almost everyone at school thinks leprechauns are real. I’m starting to have doubts.”

  “So now you think they might be real after all?” her dad asked.

  Frankie nodded glumly.

  “I’m not sure how that changes anything,” her mom said.

  “It doesn’t?”

  “You made the trap to prove that leprechauns didn’t exist, right? You had a theory that they were just fantasy. Now you have a question: ‘Are leprechauns real?’ ” her mom explained.

  Frankie could see where her mom was going with this. Either way, the trap would answer the question. As long as it worked.

  Her mom picked up the trap. “So you’ve brainstormed, designed, and built. Have you tested it yet?”

  “We tried it at Maya’s, but we didn’t catch anything,” Frankie told her.

  “That’s your first piece of evidence.”

  Frankie nodded.

  “What happened with the trap at Maya’s?” her mom asked. “Anything notable?”

  “Opus was interested in it,” Frankie said.

  “Well, that’s good news,” her dad said. “One creature is attracted to your trap, so probably others would be too.”

  “Although,” her mom mused, “that might actually be a problem. You want to catch a leprechaun, not a squirrel.”

  “I guess that’s another way it could fail,” Frankie said. She explained what Aunt Nichelle had said about anticipating failure, and Frankie told them about all the work she had done in art class.

  Frankie’s mom shook her head. Frankie felt that pang again. Was her mom disappointed in her now too?

  “What?” Frankie asked.

  “Why are you so down in the dumps, Frankie?”

  “I told you, I—”

  But her mom stopped her by shaking her head again. She said, “You’ve identified your problem: You want to know if leprechauns exist or not. You’ve made a plan: Identify all the possible ways the trap could fail, and fix them. You’re not stuck, Frankie. You’re ready to roll.” Her mom paused. “But you don’t look ready to roll.”

  Frankie slumped down onto the couch between her parents. “Maya really, really believes in leprechauns. If I prove they don’t exist, I think she’ll be sad.”

  “That’s a different kind of problem,” her mom said.

  Her dad put his hand on her knee. “Maya is in on the plan, right?”

  Frankie nodded.

  “Well, then I think you need to trust Maya,” her dad said. “You may be disappointed to be wrong, but finding out one way or the other is more important to you, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” Frankie said.

  “Maya wants to kn
ow too,” her mom said. “And she must know that she could wind up sad about the outcome.”

  “But maybe ask her one more time, just to be sure,” Frankie’s mom continued. “After you’ve perfected your trap, of course.”

  Frankie smiled. Her parents were right.

  She took the leprechaun trap back from her mom and hurried to her lab. In her invention notebook she wrote down all the ways she had thought of that her trap could fail. One by one she solved them.

  Possible fail # 1: Leprechaun might have tiny scissors. She searched through her recycled materials bin until she found a plastic box from the baby spinach her dad liked. The shell box fit inside her leprechaun trap with just a little room to spare. She filled that extra space with sand. Now, even if the leprechaun had sharp enough scissors to cut the plastic, the sand would spin in around him.

  She felt her heart soar a little.

  Possible fail # 2: Subject can reach cauldron and remove bait without stepping on clouds.

  Frankie took the cauldron out. She shortened the string that held the cauldron up and removed some of the pennies so that the leprechaun would need to reach in deeper to get the bait.

  She kept going and going, and as she solved each possible problem, she hummed a little song to herself.

  Possible fail #7: Animals attracted to trap.

  …

  Possible fail #13: Leprechaun is able to climb walls and push open lid.

  …

  Possible fail #17: Some other way the leprechaun manages to get out.

  Frankie realized that even with her great big brain, she might not be able to think of everything. She needed a way to make sure that if a leprechaun did manage to break out of the trap, there would be evidence of it. She took down her super special inventing tool, the one she reserved for only the most important inventions: glitter.

  Glitter was beautiful, but one sprinkle, and you’d find it everywhere for days. Ms. Cupid didn’t allow it in her classroom, and Ms. Burman made you fill out an application to use it.

  Frankie unscrewed the glitter cap and sprinkled the glitter all along the bottom of the box. If a leprechaun escaped her trap, he would leave a trail of glitter behind him.

  “Wait!” Frankie said out loud. “One more thing!” She ran up to her bedroom, and nearly tripped over piles of books and dirty clothes. She dug through a box on her bedside table. “Aha!” She’d found just what she was looking for—the rainbow necklace charm she had won at last year’s spring fair. She brought it back down and glued it to the top of the box. Every good leprechaun trap needed a lucky charm, she thought.

  Now she had a truly foolproof trap. Amazing!

  It was time to bring it back to Maya’s.

  CHAPTER 9 Catching a Leprechaun

  ARF! OPUS BARKED WHEN FRANKIE came into the backyard. Maya was back to trying to teach her dog tricks. This time she was trying to get him to roll over.

  “Is that the trap?” Maya asked.

  “Yep! New and improved. Now we’ll know for sure whether or not there are leprechauns.”

  “I like the little rainbow,” Maya said.

  “That’s the lucky charm,” Frankie explained. “Even science needs a little luck from time to time.”

  Together the girls set up the trap, and then they went onto Maya’s back porch to watch and wait. They were quiet. Maybe a little too quiet.

  “Maya,” Frankie said. “Are you mad that I don’t believe in leprechauns?”

  “No,” Maya said. “Not mad, really. You’re just so sure about everything.”

  Frankie was confused. Maya was saying that like it was a bad thing. Still, Frankie admitted, “I’m not so sure about leprechauns anymore. You, Lila, Suki, and Luke all believe in them.”

  Maya laughed.

  “What?” Frankie asked.

  “Well, while you were starting to wonder if they were real, I was starting to think they were make-believe.”

  That was pretty funny, Frankie thought.

  “But do you really want to know the truth?” Frankie asked. “Even if they might not be real?”

  Maya nodded. “Do you really want to know?” Maya asked. “Even if they might be?”

  “If my trap caught a real-life leprechaun—well, then that would prove that I’m the world’s greatest inventor!”

  They left the trap there for three days. Each day Frankie checked in with Maya. They inspected the trap. Everything worked just the way it was supposed to, but no leprechaun and no glitter trail.

  On the third day, Frankie crouched down next to the trap. She inspected it on all sides. No damage. No glitter. No leprechaun. A grin spread over her face. “We did it!” she said. “I made a foolproof trap, and it didn’t catch a leprechaun. So now we can say for sure that they don’t exist.” She held up her hand to Maya for a high five.

  Maya, though, shook her head. “I still don’t think we can, Frankie.” She picked up the trap. “You made an amazing trap. The best one ever. If there were a trap that was going to catch a leprechaun, it would be this one.”

  “Yeah?” Frankie prompted.

  “Just because it didn’t catch a leprechaun doesn’t mean they aren’t real.”

  “But that was our plan,” Frankie said.

  “I know,” Maya said. She looked about as disappointed as Frankie felt. “Remember when we were trying to get Opus to go through the hoop?”

  Frankie nodded. “He went every which way but through.”

  “Right. We had the hoop. Opus just wouldn’t jump through it.”

  “So you’re saying that we had the trap, but the leprechaun just didn’t come to it?”

  Maya nodded. “It’s okay, Frankie,” Maya said. She handed Frankie the trap. “You did your best.”

  It didn’t feel like doing her best. Frankie had never faced a problem she couldn’t solve with inventing. She said good-bye to Maya and moped her way home.

  When she got home, she flopped onto the couch. She felt like she was a pancake on the road that had been run over by an eighteen-wheeler.

  She had built the trap. She had tested the trap. She had thought about all the ways it could fail. And she still couldn’t prove whether leprechauns existed.

  “How’s my favorite inventor?”

  Frankie looked up. She was surprised to see her aunt Nichelle standing in the doorway of the living room. “Aunt Nichelle! What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see how the leprechaun experiments were going,” she said. She sat down gently next to Frankie.

  “Not so good,” Frankie said. “I built the best trap I could, but it didn’t catch the leprechaun. I thought that was what I wanted, since it would prove they didn’t exist. But maybe there aren’t any leprechauns around here. Or maybe there is one and it just didn’t happen upon my trap. It’s hopeless!”

  “Whoa,” Aunt Nichelle said. “Slow down.”

  Frankie took a deep breath.

  “What did Newton say?” Aunt Nichelle asked.

  Frankie sniffled. “ ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.’ ” It was kind of a family motto.

  “Right,” Aunt Nichelle said. “Without Darwin, your aunt Gina wouldn’t be able to understand rodents. Without Grace Hopper, your mom wouldn’t be able to do her work with robots. Without Henry Ford, Uncle Irwin wouldn’t be able to design those race cars. And without numerous scientists and astronauts, I couldn’t do my work.”

  “I know,” Frankie said. She wasn’t sure how this was supposed to make her feel better.

  “Well, those people were the pioneers,” Aunt Nichelle said. “Just like you.”

  Frankie looked up at her aunt with just a hint of hope in her heart. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Frankie, I don’t know of anyone else who has brought serious science to the idea of leprechauns. You are a pioneer. And sure, maybe you didn’t find the answers you were looking for, but you laid the groundwork.”

  Frankie sniffed again. “You mean
it?”

  “I do.” Aunt Nichelle picked up Frankie’s trap. “This is really impressive, Frankie. You should be very proud of yourself. I mean, the next person who wants to study leprechauns should definitely start with this trap. You’ve thought of everything.”

  Frankie smiled, and Aunt Nichelle gave her a kiss on the top of her head.

  “Wait, Aunt Nichelle. How will people know about my trap?”

  “That’s the last step of the design process, Frankie. You know that.”

  Aunt Nichelle was right. Frankie did know that. And she knew what she needed to do next.

  CHAPTER 10 Wonder On

  FRANKIE AND MAYA WENT INTO the school library the next day and said good morning to Ms. Appleton.

  “Good morning, girls!” Ms. Appleton said. “How are two of my favorite wonderers?”

  “Awesome,” Maya said.

  “Splendiferous,” Frankie agreed. She handed Ms. Appleton the index card she had worked on the evening before. Aunt Nichelle had read it over and helped her fix the spelling mistakes, but all the ideas had been Frankie’s.

  “Another ‘I wonder’ solved?” Ms. Appleton asked.

  “Not exactly,” Frankie said.

  Ms. Appleton looked at the card. She read it aloud.

  “ARE LEPRECHAUNS REAL? THAT IS A TOUGH QUESTION! TO FIND OUT, I CREATED A SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT. MY GOAL WAS TO SEE IF I COULD CATCH A LEPRECHAUN. IF I DID, THEN OBVIOUSLY WE WOULD KNOW THAT LEPRECHAUNS DO EXIST. IF I DIDN’T, I THOUGHT THAT MEANT WE WOULD KNOW THAT THEY DIDN’T EXIST. BUT LEPRECHAUNS AREN’T THAT SIMPLE. WE DIDN’T CATCH A LEPRECHAUN, AND AT FIRST I THOUGHT THAT MEANT I’D PROVED THAT LEPRECHAUNS DIDN’T EXIST. BUT THEN MAYA POINTED OUT THAT MAYBE IT JUST MEANT THAT NO LEPRECHAUNS HAD COME TO THE TRAP. I THOUGHT MY EXPERIMENT WAS A FAILURE. THEN I REALIZED THAT MY RESEARCH WAS JUST A STARTING POINT. IT RAISED SOME GOOD QUESTIONS, LIKE, ‘WHAT IS THE BEST BAIT FOR LEPRECHAUNS?’ AND ‘DO LEPRECHAUNS HIBERNATE?’

  “SOMETIMES EXPERIMENTS ANSWER QUESTIONS. SOMETIMES THEY JUST RAISE MORE QUESTIONS. AT FIRST THAT WAS FRUSTRATING TO ME. NOW I HOPE THAT IF ANYONE ELSE WONDERS ABOUT LEPRECHAUNS, THEY WILL USE MY EXPERIMENTS TO HELP THEM ASK QUESTIONS AND FIND ANSWERS.”