Fine, Mom said, sighing. But you have got to sort out that brain of yours, Oliver. I cant be having this sort of fuss every evening.

Oliver felt Chriss pinch release. He rubbed his sore side.

Okay, Mom, he said, sadly. Sorry, Mom.

As the sound of cutlery and crockery clinked behind him, Oliver turned from the dining table, his stomach growling, and walked back to his alcove. To block out the smells that made his hunger even more pronounced, he distracted himself by opening his suitcase and taking out his one and only possession, a book about inventors. A kind librarian had given it to him several years ago after noticing that he kept coming in to read it. Now it was dog-eared, well-worn from the million times hed leafed through it. But no matter how often he read it, he never got bored. Inventors and inventions fascinated him. In fact, one of the reasons Oliver wasnt that sad about moving to this neighborhood in New Jersey was because hed read about a factory nearby where an inventor named Armando Illstrom built some of his finest creations. It didnt matter to Oliver that Armando Illstrom was included in the Zany Inventors section of the book, or that most of his contraptions failed. Oliver still found him very inspirational, especially his booby trap device which was designed to scare away raccoons. Oliver was trying to create his own version to ward off Chris.

Just then, he heard the sound of clinking cutlery coming from the kitchen. He looked up to see his family sitting at the table, preoccupied with their dinner, Chris slurping up Olivers helping.

Frowning at the unfairness of it all, Oliver discreetly took his invention pieces out of his suitcase and laid them on the floor before him. The booby trap was in a state of half completion. It was a kind of slingshot mechanism that would activate when a lever was pressed underfoot, catapulting acorns into the face of the intruder. Of course, Armandos version was for a raccoon so Oliver had had to scale it up in order to fit the much larger dimensions of his brother, and hed replaced the acorns with the only thing he had on hand, which was a small plastic statue of a soldier. Hed managed to get most of the mechanism constructed, as well as the lever. But every time he pressed it down to test it, it didnt work. The soldier would not be flung. It just sat there, gun poised.

With his family distracted, Oliver got to work on it. He set all the pieces out, laying the trap. But he couldnt figure out why it wouldnt work. Perhaps, he thought, this was the reason Armando Illstrom was considered zany. None of his inventions worked very well. If at all.