FRANKIE WAS THE FIRST ONE to get the classroom job of hermit-crab keeper. At the end of the day, she made sure Lenny had his lettuce and his water was full. She tipped the extra shell so that he could easily climb into it if by chance he needed a change overnight. Then she packed up her things and waited for walkers to be dismissed. Maya walked with her, since they were having a play date. When they came down the school stairs, Frankie was surprised to see not only her mom, but also her dad and her aunt Gina waiting.
“Aunt Gina!” she exclaimed, and gave her aunt a big hug. “What are you doing here?”
“No reason,” Aunt Gina replied. “Just wanted to see my favorite niece and her best friend in the whole wide world.”
“I’m your only niece,” Frankie reminded her for the hundredth time.
As they walked home, Frankie and Maya told Aunt Gina all about Lenny.
“He’s really cute,” Maya cooed. “He pops his head out and looks around like a turtle.”
“But he can actually move really fast.”
“And he makes little lines in his sand. We want to teach him how to write messages.”
“That would be impressive,” Frankie’s dad said.
“And entirely impossible,” Aunt Gina added. “But good luck to you!”
Frankie and Maya ran up the steps of Frankie’s house, through the front door, and straight to the kitchen to get a snack. But Frankie stopped when she saw a big box covered with a blue blanket sitting on the kitchen table. It looked an awful lot like the aquarium covered with fabric that Ms. Cupid had brought into class.
“What’s that?” Frankie asked, not daring to hope what might be under that blanket.
“You did a lot of work on your project, Frankie,” her mom explained. “You did a lot of reading and writing, and we know that’s not easy for you. We’re really proud of you.”
“Plus, your invention was quite clever,” Aunt Gina said. “In fact I brought it to one of my friends in the library. We have a 3D printer there. He took your prototype and made this!” She whipped the blanket off the box. It was a clear glass aquarium with a multilevel climbing structure inside. It had tubes and slides and ladders, but Frankie could hardly pay attention to it all because there, hanging from the side, was her Automatic Rat Feeder 3000, only instead of being made out of a toilet-paper tube and a yogurt cup, it was made out of bright blue plastic. For the first time ever, one of her prototypes had been made into a real invention!
“I can’t believe you made that for me!” Frankie exclaimed.
“That’s so cool,” Maya agreed.
Then things got even cooler. A small white rat crawled out of one of the tubes.
“Meet our new family member,” her mom announced.
Frankie’s eyes grew wide. “For real?” she asked.
“For real!” her mom answered.
“What are you going to name her?” Aunt Gina asked. “I’m quite fond of the name ‘Gina’ myself.”
Frankie shook her head. She looked at Maya and smiled. “I’m going to name her Buttercup.”
Buttercup wiggled her nose in the air, and so did Frankie. So did Maya. Then Frankie’s parents and Aunt Gina joined in too, wiggling their noses in the air like a family of genius rats. Buttercup was right at home!