CHAPTER 2

Bigger

Renata liked to make things.

She was good at it. And she liked making them all by herself. That way she didn’t have to “cooperate” with others, the way adults always insisted. She didn’t have to “compromise” or “respect other people’s opinions.” She could do things just the way she wanted.

“I like my own opinions, thank you very much,” she said out loud.

In her room was the model of the Golden Gate Bridge that she had made out of Popsicle sticks. It had taken three hundred and twelve sticks and four bottles of glue.

In the bathroom was her model rainforest. She had stuck a bunch of miniature plastic trees onto an old tea tray. She had made vines out of strips of green plastic cut from a garbage bag. When she took a shower, she brought the rainforest in with her.

On the back porch was the catapult she had made out of a plastic cup, a broken piece of hockey stick and a rubber band. She used it to toss peanuts at the squirrels.

Renata scratched her head. Scratching her head helped her think. All these other projects were small. Maybe it was time for something bigger. And then she remembered the refrigerator box.

Her parents had bought a new refrigerator. She had a hard time understanding why a new refrigerator got them so excited. “Look!” her dad had said. “It makes ice cubes!” “Amazing,” her mom had sung. “It keeps lettuce crisp!” What interested Renata was the big cardboard box that the refrigerator had come in. She had asked her parents not to throw it out.

The box was in the basement. Renata went down and then pushed it up the stairs. On the side was the name of the refrigerator brand, Super Cool. Getting through doorways wasn’t easy, but at last she pushed it into the middle of the living room. Of course she had to move aside the coffee table and a bunch of other stuff.

She lay down beside the box. Lying down was also good for helping her think.

I know! she thought. A submarine!

A submarine like the ones that marine biologists used to study the ocean. The box was definitely big enough.

First of all, she needed a porthole to be able to see out. A porthole was a round window. But where would she find one of those? Then Renata remembered that the popcorn popper had a clear plastic dome on it. After you made popcorn, you could use the plastic dome as a bowl. Perfect!

She went into the kitchen to get the dome and then looked in a drawer for a pair of scissors. It wasn’t easy to cut a hole in the box; she had to stick one point of the scissors through the thick cardboard and then use it like a saw, moving slowly around in a circle. Then she put the bowl over the hole and stuck down the edges with good old duct tape. She crawled into the box. Yup, she now had a nice porthole to look out.

Next up: a control panel.

In her closet, Renata kept a plastic bucket of discarded stuff—old switches and dials and buttons; the insides of broken radios and electronic games. She dragged the bucket inside the box and used glue and tape to make a control panel on one side. She thought it looked pretty good. She went back to her closet and found the screen of a toy television and taped it on the wall across from the control panel.

Hmm, thought Renata. Close.

But something was missing. Once more she went to her closet, but this time she came out with a plastic steering wheel. The wheel had once belonged to a dump truck that was big enough to sit on. She wasn’t sure if submarines had steering wheels, but she couldn’t think of anything else to make it go where she wanted.

Something was still missing. Of course—a propeller! She went into the kitchen and got two big wooden spoons from a drawer. She lined them up facing in opposite directions and taped them together. Then she attached it to the back.

Renata sat inside the box. “Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all.” In fact, it looked so good that she almost wished she could show it to someone. But of course that would mean having a friend over, and a friend was nothing but a pain in the neck. By herself, she could do whatever she wanted with it. And what she wanted to do was sit in the box and read another book on undersea life.

Ding-dong! Ding-dong!

The doorbell rang. Renata hated to be interrupted when she was working. Besides, she wasn’t supposed to open the door to strangers. She ignored it.

Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!

Such an annoying sound! She crawled backward out of the box and went to the front window. She peeked through the curtains.

Oh no, she thought. Not Livingston Flott! He was going to spoil everything.