The Detention Club by David Yoo Read Free Book Online

and how things had gone so horribly, and it made me feel bummed again. To make myself feel better, I thought about my life before sixth grade started, back when me and Drew were kings. Next thing I knew, I was daydreaming about my family’s trip to Maine last summer.
    We’d rented a summerhouse for a week, and my parents loved hearing the waves out their bedroom window every night so much that when they came home, they bought a sound machine at Target. It’s this little plastic box that you plug in next to your bed, and it has these different settings for relaxing sounds that help you sleep. You can listen to a recording of a rainstorm all night, or crickets, or the one my parents love—the sound of waves crashing on the shore. They got it so it would make them feel like they live next to the ocean year-round, and now they can’t sleep without it. I know this because my dad went on a business trip earlier this year and complained that he couldn’t sleep because he missed the sound of fake waves crashing onto the bedside table.
    I bolted upright in my seat and took out my inventions notebook, because I suddenly had an idea for a new one. Maybe I could make a sound machine for people who miss living in the city! Carson moved here from Manhattan in third grade, and he always used to complain that Fenwick was way too quiet. Even though he’d already been here for a year before I moved in, he was still always whining about how naturey it is out here, because I think it makes him feel cool, being from the city. My version of the sound machine would make sleeping out in the sticks feel like home for city people. There would be three settings on the dial:
    Â 
    Car Alarm
    Opera Singer
    Home Invasion
    Â 
    A city person could set it to “Car Alarm,” and all night long they’d enjoy a deep sleep as the machine imitated the sound of a car alarm outside going off all night long down the street. “Opera Singer” would be that annoying opera singer who practices singing her scales at all hours of the night and who seems to live next door to everyone in the city, according to the movies. “Home Invasion” would be for those nights you really have trouble sleeping out in the country. You turn the dial up and fall asleep to the sound of glass breaking, followed by menacing footsteps coming from the kitchen. “And it will be called . . . the Urban Sound Machine,” I whispered. Apparently I brainstormed the invention for two straight hours, because the next thing I knew, my dad was standing at the door.
    â€œYou look wired,” he said. “I think you’ve worked hard enough tonight. Why don’t you brush your teeth and go to sleep.”
    I hate brushing my teeth—it always puts me in a foul mood when I’m forced to do it—and this time it made me remember how horrible things were at school. Usually I play video games before bed because it helps me have funner dreams, but I felt so depressed that I voluntarily got into bed extra early for the first time ever. It wasn’t even nine p.m., but I just lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to cheer myself up by telling myself that I might have just come up with the invention that would win the competition. And as for the situation at school, at least things couldn’t get worse.
    I was wrong about that last part.

Chapter Eight
    T HE NEXT MORNING D REW AND I stood in the lobby torturing ourselves by watching everyone enjoy each other’s company. Drew looked like he was about to cry. “I know you’re bummed,” I told him, “but it’s going to take a little time. We’ll figure out how to change things around, but it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s like grass seeds . . . you don’t just plant them and then immediately watch the grass sprout, right? You have to be patient, and water the seeds every day, and then eventually the grass