Edison's Gold Read Free Page B

sweetheart.” Hoisting Rose over her shoulder, Tom’s mother hurried from the room. “Just another one of your brother’s crazy inventions.”
    Alone now, Tom and his dad remained silent, staring down at Nanny’s decapitated head.
    Disappointment crushed Tom like a boulder. So close, so close.
    â€œRight.” His father cleared his throat. “As I was saying, there’s lots of cool things in Wichita. You’ll see—”
    â€œBut Dad, what about our other inventions? Like the Clorox battery? I tested it today, and except for a few little kinks—”
    â€œSon.” Mr. Edison raised a weary hand. “Our weekend projects are fun, and a wonderful way to spend time together, but this is life. And in life, there’s a time when I have to realize who I am … and what I’m not.”
    â€œBut you can’t give up! You’re the best inventor I know!” Tom was on his feet. His mom was a lost cause, but if hecould just get through to his dad, maybe there was still hope for the family. “There’s gotta be loads of other jobs here,” Tom continued. His eyes were getting wet and stingy at the edges. “We could start our own invention business.”
    â€œSon—”
    â€œI’ll quit school and devote myself full-time to—”
    â€œSon!”
    Tom’s mouth snapped shut. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had ever raised his voice. “Inventions don’t pay the bills. At least mine don’t. Right now, I need to do what’s best for this family.”
    â€œBut if we worked together—”
    â€œEnd of discussion,” said his dad, cutting him off. “We all need to make the best of this situation. For each other.”
    Tom stayed silent and kept his eyes fixed on Nanny’s dinged head, until his father left the bedroom.
    Sitting there on the floor, he came to a sad realization.
    This was the worst day of his life.

T om’s basement laboratory consisted of one crooked card table pushed into a dark corner next to the washing machine. His work space and the shelves above it were crammed with books, tools, thingamajigs, and defunct inventions of Edisons past and present: stock ticker, phonograph, and a framed old photograph of Tom’s famous double-great-grandfather or T.E. 1, as the family sometimes referred to him.
    â€œWhy does nothing in my life ever work?” Tom asked the unresponsive photo.
    He had devoured so many biographies of Thomas Edison, however, and knew enough family lore to imagine exactly how his double-great would’ve answered.Something along the lines of,
Discontent is the first necessity of progress
, or the old guy’s favorite gem,
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless
.
    Tom liked to have pretend conversations with T.E. 1. while he worked. It made him feel like he wasn’t alone in his quests and kept him from ever feeling too sorry for himself. Like when Edison was Tom’s age, for example, he got scarlet fever and lost most of his hearing. That was probably as bad as moving to Kansas.
    Everything that had happened the day before—Wichita, the runaway car, Wichita, Dr. Phelps, the failure of his last two inventions, Wichita—all melted away as Tom fell into work. Reassembling Nanny had been the only thing he wanted to do since he’d woken up on this first official morning of spring break.
    She was his only chance, he was sure, to keep the family put and restore the Edison name.
    â€œAll right, Nanny, expect some minor discomfort here.” Tom yanked a thin copper wire from the robot’s broken glass eye, which he’d originally swiped from an old telescope. Scanning the shelves and tables for a replacement,his own eyes zoomed in on a dusty science-kit telescope, balanced precariously on the very top of the bookshelf. Its dusty lens was calling to