Chapter 1

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DEDICATION For every kid who ever took something apart to see how it worked.

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The park bench on the corner of Pine Street had been broken since September, and nobody had fixed it.

Emmie Washington walked past it every day on her way to school. The bench had three wooden slats across the seat, and the middle one had cracked clean in half. The crack made the bench useless. Nobody could sit on it without falling through.

Emmie's neighbor, Mr. Gutierrez, used to sit on that bench every afternoon. He would bring his little dog, Churro, and watch the kids walk home from school. He always waved. He always said, "Buenos días, Emmie!" even when it was afternoon. And he always had butterscotch candies in his pocket.

But since the bench broke, Mr. Gutierrez didn't come to the park anymore. His knees were too bad to stand for long, and there was nowhere else to sit.

"Why doesn't someone fix it?" Emmie asked her mother.

"The city is supposed to fix public benches. But they have a long list, and our little bench isn't a priority."

"Can we fix it?"

Her mother looked at the bench, then at Emmie. "Do you know how to fix a bench?"

"No. But I can learn."

Her mother smiled. "That's the spirit."

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Emmie told her two best friends about the bench at lunch the next day.

Tomás was good at building things. He spent every Saturday in his grandfather's garage, where they built birdhouses and shelves and once, a go-kart that almost worked.

Hadiya was good at thinking about things. She read books about everything — science, history, animals, machines. She knew that octopuses had three hearts and that the Eiffel Tower grows six inches taller in the summer because metal expands when it's hot.

"We could fix it," Tomás said. "My abuelo has tools."

"We'd need to measure the broken slat and cut a new one to match," Hadiya said. "Pine wood, probably. Standard park bench dimensions. I can look it up."

"So we're doing this?" Emmie asked.

"We're doing this," they said together.

"We need a name," Tomás said. "Every good team has a name."

They thought about it.

"The Fixers," Emmie suggested.

"Too simple," Hadiya said.

"The Inventors' Club," Tomás said. "Because we're inventing solutions."

"We're not really inventing anything. We're replacing a board."

"Inventing is just solving problems. And a broken bench is a problem."

Hadiya considered this. "Actually, that's philosophically accurate. The word 'invent' comes from the Latin 'invenire,' which means 'to find.' We're finding solutions."

"I don't know what you just said," Tomás said, "but I agree."

The Inventors' Club was born.

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Saturday morning, Emmie, Tomás, and Hadiya met at the park with their supplies. Tomás had brought tools from his grandfather's garage — a tape measure, a saw (his grandfather came along to supervise the saw), sandpaper, and wood screws. Hadiya had brought a replacement slat she'd bought at the hardware store with her allowance money, pre-cut to the dimensions she'd calculated. Emmie had brought water bottles, granola bars, and a determination that could power a rocket.

Tomás's grandfather, Abuelo Luis, supervised while the kids did the work. Emmie held the old broken slat steady while Tomás unscrewed it. Hadiya sanded the new slat smooth so nobody would get splinters. Then they fit the new slat in place and screwed it down tight.

The whole repair took forty-five minutes. When they were done, Emmie sat on the bench and bounced up and down.

"It holds!" she said.

"Of course it holds," Hadiya said. "I calculated the load-bearing capacity."

"You're seven," Tomás said. "How do you know about load-bearing capacity?"

"YouTube."

They cleaned up their tools and stood back to admire their work. The new slat was lighter in color than the old ones, but it was solid and smooth and exactly the right size.

That afternoon, Mr. Gutierrez walked to the park with Churro. He saw the fixed bench. He stood there for a moment, looking at it, and then he sat down slowly, testing it, and then he leaned back and smiled.

"Who fixed my bench?" he asked nobody in particular.

"We did!" Emmie called from across the park, where she and her friends had been secretly watching.

Mr. Gutierrez waved them over. When they came, he reached into his pocket and pulled out three butterscotch candies. One for each of them.

"You are good children," he said. "Very good children."

Walking home, Emmie unwrapped her candy and said, "That felt amazing."

"It did," Tomás agreed.

"We should do more," Hadiya said. "There are problems everywhere. We just have to notice them."

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Their next project found them.

Mrs. Park, the elderly woman who lived above the bakery on Main Street, mentioned to Emmie's mother that her kitchen faucet had been dripping for three weeks. She couldn't afford a plumber, and the dripping was driving her crazy.

"Can we try?" Emmie asked her mother.

"A faucet is more complicated than a bench."

"Hadiya will research it."

Hadiya researched it. She watched four plumbing videos, read a how-to article, and drew a diagram of a standard faucet assembly. "It's probably a worn washer," she announced. "We need to replace the rubber washer inside the handle. It costs about thirty cents."

Abuelo Luis came along again, because none of them were tall enough to reach the shutoff valve under the sink. He showed them how to turn off the water, disassemble the faucet handle, find the worn washer, and replace it with a new one from the hardware store.

"The old washer is flat," Hadiya observed. "It's supposed to be round. When it goes flat, it can't make a good seal, so water sneaks through."

"Like when you don't close a zip-lock bag all the way," Tomás said.

"Exactly like that."

They replaced the washer and turned the water back on. No drip.

Mrs. Park clapped her hands. "You are miracle workers!"

"We're inventors," Emmie said. "We invent solutions."

"Solutions," Mrs. Park repeated, smiling. "Yes. The world needs more of those."

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Word spread. Within a week, the Inventors' Club had a waiting list.

Mr. Chen's garden gate wouldn't close properly. Ms. Rivera's mailbox was falling off its post. The Johnsons' front steps had a wobbly railing. The free library box on Cedar Street had a broken hinge.

"We're only seven," Tomás said, looking at the list of requests they'd taped to Emmie's bedroom wall. "There are nine jobs here."

"We need help," Hadiya said.

"We need more inventors," Emmie said.

Three more kids signed up. Jasper, who was quiet but incredibly good with his hands — he could tie any knot, fix any zipper, and had once reassembled a toaster that had been in pieces. Rosa, who was strong and fearless and could climb anything, which was useful when the job involved reaching high places. And Kofi, whose father was an electrician and who knew more about wiring and circuits than most adults.

"Six inventors," Emmie said at their first full meeting, held in Abuelo Luis's garage. "One for every job and three extras."

"We should work in pairs," Hadiya said. "For safety and efficiency. Two heads are better than one."

"My mom says something like that," Kofi offered. "She says a bunch of people thinking together can solve any problem. She calls it consultation."

"What's consultation?" Emmie asked.

"It's when everyone shares their ideas honestly, and nobody gets mad if someone disagrees, and you keep talking until you find the best answer. Not the loudest answer — the best one."

"I like that," Emmie said. "Let's do that."

They divided into pairs and took on the first three jobs. By the end of the week, Mr. Chen's gate closed perfectly, Ms. Rivera's mailbox stood straight, and the free library box opened and closed like new.

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Then came a problem too big for a pair.

The community center on Oak Street had flooded. Not dramatically — not a river or a burst pipe. The basement had been slowly taking on water for months, seeping through cracks in the old foundation. The center's director, Mrs. Williams, had been putting buckets around the basement, but the water kept coming.

"We can't hold children's classes down there anymore," she told Emmie's mother, who volunteered at the center. "The floor is wet, the walls are damp, and I'm worried about mold."

Emmie told the Inventors' Club. They all went to look at the basement.

It was bad. The floor was covered in a thin film of water. The walls had dark stains where moisture had seeped through the cinder blocks. It smelled musty.

"This is a drainage problem," Hadiya said, pulling out her notebook. "Water is getting in because there's nowhere for it to go. The ground outside is pushing water against the foundation, and the foundation has cracks."

"We can't rebuild a foundation," Tomás said.

"No. But we can redirect the water. If we dig a trench around the outside of the building and fill it with gravel, the water will drain away from the foundation instead of into it. It's called a French drain."

"Can we dig a trench?" Emmie asked.

"We'll need shovels. And gravel. And help."

This was bigger than six kids and an abuelo. They needed the community.

Emmie made more signs. She talked to neighbors. She asked Mr. Gutierrez, Mrs. Park, and Mr. Chen to spread the word. She stood up at the school assembly and explained the problem.

"The community center is where we have after-school programs and holiday parties and summer camp," she said. "If we don't fix the basement, we might lose all of that. The Inventors' Club has a plan. But we need volunteers."

Twenty-three people showed up on Saturday. Parents, neighbors, older kids, and all six inventors. They dug a trench around the building, lined it with landscape fabric, and filled it with gravel. Kofi's father helped install a simple sump pump in the basement corner. Abuelo Luis sealed the foundation cracks with waterproof cement.

It took the whole weekend. By Sunday afternoon, the basement floor was dry for the first time in months.

Mrs. Williams stood in the dry basement and shook her head in wonder. "I've been asking the city to fix this for two years. And six seven-year-olds and their neighbors did it in a weekend."

"We're inventors," Emmie said. "But today we were also builders, diggers, and puddle fighters."

"You were community," Mrs. Williams said. "That's the best invention of all."

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The Inventors' Club decided to hold an Invention Fair at the community center to celebrate its reopened basement.

Each member presented a project. Emmie showed the bench repair, with before-and-after photos. Tomás demonstrated faucet repair using a clear plastic pipe so the audience could see the washer. Hadiya had built a model of the French drain system out of a fish tank, sand, and gravel — she poured water in one end and everyone watched it flow through the gravel instead of flooding the sand.

Jasper showed how to fix a zipper using a pair of pliers and patience. Rosa demonstrated safe ladder technique for reaching high places. Kofi gave a talk on basic electrical safety that his father said was better than most apprentice lectures.

But the best part of the fair wasn't the presentations. It was the audience.

Mr. Gutierrez sat in the front row with Churro on his lap, eating butterscotch candy and applauding every presentation. Mrs. Park brought homemade rice cakes for everyone. Mr. Chen stood by the door, welcoming people in and out. Ms. Rivera told anyone who would listen about her perfectly straight mailbox.

These were the people the Inventors' Club had helped. And they had come to celebrate not just the kids, but the fact that their neighborhood felt different now — more connected, more cared for, more like a community where people looked out for each other.

Kofi's mother, who had come to watch her son's presentation, said something that stuck with Emmie.

"You know what you children have really invented?" she said. "You've invented a way for neighbors to know each other. Before your club, most of the people on this street just waved hello. Now they talk. They help. They care. The benches and faucets were just the excuse."

Emmie thought about this on the walk home. Was that true? Were the repairs just the excuse? Had the real invention been something bigger — a way to bring people together?

She thought about Mr. Gutierrez, who used to sit alone on his bench, and now had a whole club of kids who checked on him every week. She thought about Mrs. Park, who used to eat dinner by herself, and now came to the community center potlucks. She thought about the twenty-three people who had shown up to dig a trench for a building that wasn't their own, just because somebody asked.

Maybe Kofi's mother was right. Maybe the best inventions weren't things. They were connections.

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School had started again, and the Inventors' Club was busier than ever. New requests came in every week — a squeaky gate here, a stuck window there, a bird feeder that had fallen down.

But one morning, walking to school, Emmie noticed something that stopped her in her tracks.

"FIXED WITH LOVE BY THE INVENTORS' CLUB"

Emmie hadn't put it there. Neither had Tomás or Hadiya. She asked every member of the club. None of them had done it.

"It was me," said a small voice.

Emmie turned around. A girl she didn't recognize stood on the sidewalk — younger, maybe six, with pigtails and a gap-toothed smile.

"I'm Lily," the girl said. "I live on Birch Street. I saw you fix the bench. I want to be an inventor too."

Emmie looked at the sign. It was neatly carved — someone had helped Lily make it, clearly — and it was beautiful.

"Do you have a problem that needs fixing?" Emmie asked.

Lily nodded seriously. "The swings at Birch Street playground are broken. The chains are all rusty and one swing fell off completely."

"That sounds like a job for the Inventors' Club." Emmie pulled out her notebook and wrote it down. "Would you like to help us fix it?"

Lily's face lit up like a sunrise. "Really?"

"Really. Every inventor starts somewhere. I started with a bench."

They walked to school together, the older girl and the younger one, talking about swings and chains and rust and the particular satisfaction of fixing something that was broken.

Behind them, Mr. Gutierrez sat on his bench with Churro and his butterscotch candies, watching the children go. He patted the solid, smooth seat beneath him — the seat that three seven-year-olds had fixed on a Saturday morning because they noticed a problem and decided to solve it.

Sometimes the biggest inventions start with the smallest fixes. And sometimes the best thing you can build is a reason for people to care about each other.

The Inventors' Club was proof of that.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Crimson Ark Publishing publishes fiction for readers of all ages, drawing on the spiritual principles and rich cultural heritage of the Bahá'í Faith. Our stories explore themes of unity, justice, courage, and the transformative power of love — through characters and communities that reflect the beautiful diversity of the human family. Every book is an invitation to see the world not only as it is, but as it could be.

Visit us at crimsonarkpublishing.com