When Todd got home from Isaiah’s after school on Thursday, Amy was sitting on the family room floor, surrounded by books. It wasn’t unusual for Todd to see Amy lost in a book, but it was unusual to see her reading three at one time.
“Do we have something due at school?” he asked uneasily. They were doing a big project on myths and legends in language arts, but Todd didn’t think they had to hand in anything for another couple of weeks.
“I’m learning about handwriting analysis. You know, how you can tell someone’s personality just by looking at his handwriting. Here, write something for me, and I’ll tell you all about yourself.”
Todd made a scoffing noise. To him, it was another piece of fake science, like astrology or palm reading. Or feeling the bumps on a person’s head. Todd had once read that back in the nineteenth century, people thought you could analyze someone’s character by looking at the shape of his skull. Maybe you could tell by the shape of someone’s skull whether he had been in a bicycle accident or fallen down the stairs when he was a baby, but Todd didn’t think you could tell much else.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“When you’re someone’s twin, you don’t have to say anything for her to know what you’re thinking.”
“That’s why the whole thing is so bogus,” Todd said. “You’ll look at my handwriting and see everything that you already know from living with me for ten and a half years, plus the nine months before that.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll just go by what the books say. I got three of them out of the library on my way home. You should read them. They’re fascinating. Like, look at this one.” Amy opened the closest book to a page full of signatures. “This is from a famous murderer. See the strange way he crosses the t’s in his name? That shows he’s an outlaw. He thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”
“So everyone who crosses his t’s in a strange way is a potential murderer?”
“No, but don’t you think it’s interesting that a murderer wrote that way? Look at this one: it’s three times bigger than anybody’s else’s. Do you think this person has a big ego or a small ego?”
“Okay, big, but—”
“She was a famous movie star. The more you learn about this stuff, the more sense it makes.”
Either that, or the more weird you became. “What got you started on this?”
“Because this is—ta—dah!—our new Mini-Society project. Violet and I are going to analyze people’s personalities from their handwriting.”
As a science, handwriting analysis might be completely bogus, but as a Mini-Society project, it did sound brilliant.
“It’s better than pinecones,” Todd admitted, “but I guess we’d better not tell that to Mom.” When Todd got home, the kitchen table had been entirely covered with pinecone creations, even pinecone pets with little felt ears, goggly eyes, and ribbon tails. The pinecone pets had actually been pretty cute. They might have given Crayon Critters a run for their money as a Mini-Society sales item.
“Let me practice on you,” Amy said. “Copy this for me. In cursive.”
Mildly curious now, Todd wrote the short paragraph Amy showed him on the piece of unlined paper she provided, and waited for her verdict.
“Your line spacing shows that you’re logical and organized,” Amy pronounced. “Your overall style is kind of bare and simplified. That shows you’re realistic and objective. The way you close up all your o’s and a’s shows that you don’t like to reveal much of yourself to others.”
“I’m so glad I had my handwriting analyzed, Madame Amy! I never would have known any of this otherwise!”
“And,” Amy said, suddenly sounding worried, “you’re depressed.”
“I’m depressed?”
“Your lines slope downward. That means you’re depressed. Has your writing always looked this way?”
Todd didn’t know. He had never studied the slope of his lines before.
“Are you depressed?” Amy asked then.
What should he say? “Well, sort of,” he finally replied. “I mean, aren’t you? With everything that’s been going on around here? But listen, I still have math homework for tomorrow. I better go.”
As he walked away, he knew Amy was watching him. He straightened his shoulders so she wouldn’t think his back looked depressed, too. Halfway up the stairs, he ran his hand, once, quickly, over his head, feeling for any stray lumps or bumps. If the downward slope of his handwritten lines showed that he was depressed, there was no telling what the shape of his skull might show.
“Give your money away?” Ms. Ives asked Isaiah. At least, Todd thought, she hadn’t been holding a full pot of melted crayon wax when he’d told her his plan. “But, Isaiah—I don’t think—it isn’t really—Mini-Society isn’t going to teach everyone about economics if successful students start giving their money away to less successful ones.”
“In real life, some people give their money away,” Isaiah pointed out.
Ms. Ives hesitated. “Well, that’s true. But, Isaiah, are you sure? Your flag design won our election fair and square, and your Crayon Critters have sold so well. Do you really want to give all your money away?”
“Not all of it. I’ll keep some for myself. I just want to share it.”
Todd could see the wheels turning inside the teacher’s
head. Was this the way Mini-Society was supposed to work, or not? Then her face cleared. “All right. You can be our Mini-Society’s first philanthropist.”
“What’s a philanthropist?” Isaiah asked.
“The word literally means someone who loves his fellow man, or human beings. Someone who shares his wealth with others.”
Isaiah gave a big smile. “That sounds like me.”
“All right,” Ms. Ives said again, as if to convince herself she had made the right decision. Todd thought she had. After all, it was Isaiah’s money. What good was money if you couldn’t do what you wanted with it, including giving it away?
“I’ll make an announcement,” Ms. Ives said. “Class!” She definitely sounded more confident than she had a few weeks ago. She hardly ever ended her sentences with question marks now, except when something really unusual happened, like the richest person in the class deciding to give his money away.
“Isaiah has just informed me that he wants to share some of his money with the rest of the class. This isn’t part of the Mini-Society curriculum, but I’ve decided to let him do this if it’s what he really wants.”
“I did the long division,” Isaiah said. “If I divide ten thousand minis twenty-five ways, you’ll each get four hundred minis.”
Everyone cheered. “Can we get it now?” someone asked.
“Isaiah?” Ms. Ives asked him.
“Come and get it!”
There was a stampede as the whole class crowded around Isaiah’s desk to get their four hundred minis. Todd could tell from watching Ms. Ives’s face that she was sorry she had allowed so much class time to be taken up with having Isaiah count out four hundred minis for every single student, but it was too late to stop the process.
Finally all the students were back in their seats again. Isaiah was beaming. And if Isaiah kept on earning heaps of minis by selling Crayon Critters with his new assistant, Todd knew that Isaiah would be giving away even more.
That night, as Todd’s dad was making dinner (curried shrimp with basmati rice), Todd sat at the kitchen table doodling a design for a new Crayon Critter wax-pouring system. Pouring liquid wax from a full pot into little chicken molds was messy and dangerous. A funnel would give Todd more control over the flow of the wax, but he needed two hands to hold the heavy pot, and then someone else would have to hold the funnel and risk getting his hands spattered with hot wax.
What they needed was a pot with a built-in funnel—sort of like a teakettle, but with a removable lid. The lid would have to clamp on securely so that it wouldn’t fall off during the pouring.
Todd felt his dad’s eyes on his paper. “What’re you working on?” his dad asked.
“I’m trying to help Isaiah with his Mini-Society business,” Todd told him. He explained the problem about the pouring. He didn’t tell his dad that he was Isaiah’s official assistant
in the business. He didn’t want to hear how surprised his dad would be that he hadn’t come up with any project of his own. But his dad was so lost in his own problems these days that he had never even asked Todd what he was making.
“I have some scrap metal down in the basement,” his dad said. “We could probably weld something together after dinner. If you have time,” his dad added, sounding suddenly tentative and hesitant.
“I have time,” Todd said, trying not to sound too eager. This would be the first engineering project his dad had worked on since he lost his job.
When dinner was served, Todd hurried through the curried shrimp. He thought he had an idea for how to rig up the clamps.
“Where are you two off to?” Todd’s mother asked as Todd and his father shoved back their chairs at the same moment and bolted toward the basement stairs.
“We’re just fiddling with something,” his dad said. Todd was grateful that his dad hadn’t said more. He didn’t like to talk about his ideas until he was pretty sure they were going to work out.
By the end of the evening, Todd and his father had the world’s best wax-pouring contraption. Too bad Todd couldn’t have a Mini-Society business of his own selling custom-designed wax-pouring devices. But he knew he’d have exactly one customer for that business. Even Amy wouldn’t buy a custom-designed wax-pourer just to show Davidson family solidarity.
Still, there was nothing like dreaming up an idea and making a drawing of it and then building it, out of real solid metal that you could hold and touch, and watching it do exactly what you needed it to do.
Todd wondered if now his dad would feel even worse that he wasn’t an engineer anymore. But his dad still was an engineer. You didn’t have to have a job as an engineer to be an engineer. More than anything, though, Todd wished that his dad could find another job doing what he loved.
“That was fun,” Todd said carefully.
“It sure was,” his dad said. But he didn’t say anything else.