Ben the Inventor Read Free Page A

“We should have put the weeds down before they arrived.”
    Jack laughed. “Yeah, they must think they are the fastest-growing weeds ever.”
    â€œStupendous Weeds!” Ben said, cracking up.

    â€œStupendous Weeds!” Jack grabbed him by the shoulders and pinned him down, half hugging him and half wrestling with him. After a minute, he let Ben go. He sat back on his heels and gave a long sigh. “I sure hope our plan works. ’Cause I really, really, really don’t want to move.”

    Ben and Jack watched from a safe distance as the bald man drove away. Then they snuck up to Jack’s house and peeked through the fence. The real estate agent was still there. She was picking up all the weeds and piling them in one corner of the yard. Ben thought it was funny to see someone gardening in a suit. But, from the look on her face, she didn’t find it very amusing at all.
    â€œLet’s get out of here,” he whispered. He and Jack dashed across the speed bump and into Ben’s backyard.
    Ben flopped down on the grass, laughing. “Whew. That was great.”

    Jack rolled on top of him and pinned him down again. He liked to wrestle. “Yeah,” he said. “That was fun.” Then he stopped smiling. He sat up and looked at his watch. “The open house is in one hour. The weeds will be cleaned up by then.”
    For a minute, Ben had forgotten they weren’t just playing. “I know,” he said. “We need another plan. Plan C.”
    It was lucky he and Jack were good at coming up with plans. Inventors were smart like that.

Chapter Eight
    â€œOkay,” Ben said. “What kind of things would make someone not buy a house?”
    â€œUm, if it was falling down or something like that?” Jack said.
    Ben shook his head. “We can’t make your house fall down. Anyway, even if we had dynamite or something, it would be a bad idea. You still have to live in it.”
    â€œI didn’t mean we should really make it fall down. I meant, we could make people think it was falling down.”
    â€œHmm.” Ben thought about that. “How?”

    Jack stood up. “We go to the open house.”
    â€œCan we? Are kids allowed?”
    â€œMy mom told me anyone could go,” Jack said. “She thinks all the nosy people in the neighborhood will be there.” He frowned. “She’s been cleaning like mad. She even made me take down my Star Wars posters and hide them under my bed.”
    â€œWow.” Jack’s bedroom walls had always been covered with Star Wars posters. Ben couldn’t even picture it without them. It made him think about how awful it would be if Jack moved. Someone else might get his room and make it look completely different.
    There was no way he could let that happen. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll go to the open house.” Then he had a great idea. “In disguise!”
    â€œFire-bellied toads!” Jack said.

    Ben and Jack dragged the costume trunk out from under his bed. It was filled with all kinds of stuff. There was a robot costume from when Ben had loved robots more than anything. There were the Viking costumes he and Jessy had made together. His old Halloween costumes were in there too. There was a skeleton costume, a devil costume and even a shark costume.
    But there was nothing that seemed quite right for an open house.
    Jack tried on a fake mustache. “What do you think?”
    â€œGoofy.” Ben put on a construction hat. “How about this?”
    â€œWe’re not going to look like grown-ups,” Jack said glumly. “We’re too short.”
    That gave Ben an idea—a Stupendous Idea. “Jack! I know. I can sit on your shoulders. We can pretend we’re one person.”
    Jack’s face lit up. “Cool.” He pulled a long black cloak out of the trunk. “This will hide me. All that will show is your head.”

    By twelve