Nobody hangs around Mike Andrews when he's itching to displace good energy into a bad idea. At least, nobody smart.

Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking.

It was a Saturday morning in the middle of September. We had been back in school less than two weeks and already it seemed my brains were permanently stuck in the middle row, surrounded by math equations and history dates.

That was my excuse. Plus the fact that it was Saturday morning, the day of the week that makes you want to bust for action at the best of times. Worse for Mike's itch, it was a perfect Saturday. The sky was dusty blue as far as I could see, the air as crisp as the blazing leaves which filled the huge oak tree in Mike's back yard.

A great day in our small town of Jamesville for football. Or street hockey. Or stopping by Old Man Jacobsen's to accidentally shake loose the apples which would fall anyway with or without our help. A great day for anything but taking Mike Andrews' advice.

I said as much.

He grinned back, the grin that has earned more chocolate chip cookies from more grumpy old ladies than should be possible.

"Football? Street hockey? With who?" He swept his arms in all directions. "All I see are you, me, and Ralphy."

Ralphy -- computer genius and bundle of nerves -- hung his head and smiled shyly.

"Unless Joel's nearby," I replied. Joel was my ghostlike six-year-old brother. Mike looked around nervously. He too had a healthy fear of my brother's terrifying powers.

"Joel or no Joel, Ricky, my point is this," Mike said. "We need more players than just the three of us."

"All we need is one more," I said stubbornly. "Four gives us enough for street hockey."

"Sure." Mike's grin became almost devilish. "Lisa Higgins?"

Lisa Higgins is as much trouble as Joel. The difference is that Joel remains largely unseen, while Lisa you notice immediately.

She's twelve, like the rest of us, and doesn't have to be a tiny ghost like Joel to drive us nuts. The first area of concern is her prettiness. It breaks through once in a while when you're trying to treat her like a pal and makes you cough or stutter until you remember again she's only a girl. Long dark hair and eyes like a perfect September sky. When she smiles, it's a beam of sunshine breaking through dark clouds; when she's mad, all you see are the dark clouds.

Worse, she's good at sports, which is what Mike was waiting for me to admit. What she can't do, she'll practice until she's perfect. Once, Mike teased her about throwing like a girl. She spent two months every day after school pitching a baseball into the playground backstop until she could wing it so hard that the next time Mike caught one from her it sprained two of his fingers.

I smiled sweetly back at him. "Good idea, Mike. Lisa for street hockey. We'll give her a call."

His grin wavered.

I let him off the hook. "Ooops. She's not home," I said as I snapped my fingers. Lisa's dad was a lawyer and deputy mayor. "She's with her dad at the library for some stupid public ceremony. Too bad."

"Too bad," Mike agreed quickly. "Now about this target practice idea of mine..."

I shuddered. Then sighed. "Fire away."

"Good one," Ralphy giggled. "Get it Mike? Fire away. Target practice? Fire away?"

Mike didn't hear him. He was lost in thought -- unusual for him and not a good sign. Mike knelt on the grass and squinted in a line towards the car garage that hugged the corner of the backyard.

I sighed again. Maybe it would be worthwhile convincing Lisa to leave the library to make us look bad in street hockey.

Mike stood again and tilted that crooked grin as he surveyed us in mismatched hightop sneakers, torn jeans and a Hawaiian shirt bright enough to burn your eyes. That was Mike Andrews. Freckles, red hair, a perpetual New York Yankees baseball cap, and a low tolerance for boredom. It made a dangerous combination.

"This should be no problem," he said. "My Mom's gone for the day. We can easily hose off the garage before she gets back."

"Hose off the garage?" Ralphy's voice did not carry a trace of its previous giggle. If something in his life is not as regular as the sun rising, it makes him nervous.

"Yes. Hose off the garage. You think we want to leave watermelon on it forever?"

"Watermelon?" This time Ralphy's voice quivered.

"Yes. Watermelon. Are you going to repeat everything I say?"

"Repeat everything --?"

"Forget I asked." Mike began trotting toward the garage. "I'll be right back with a wheelbarrow."

"Don't say it," I warned Ralphy as Mike creaked the door open and stepped out of our sight.

He did anyway. "Wheelbarrow?"

Mike returned almost immediately with, yes, a wheelbarrow. A huge, old-fashioned wheelbarrow with long, thick wooden handles. He moved it to the corner of the yard farthest from the garage. Without speaking, he spun around and went back, then emerged with a shovel.

He waved us over. We joined him, reluctantly. We were as far away from the garage as possible without leaving the yard. The bushes along the fence poked our backsides.

"This is the deal," Mike said as he handed me the shovel. "We need a hole. Be careful with this top layer of sod. We'll need to put it back in place when we're finished."

I held the shovel away from me and lifted one eyebrow in his direction. "I do enough yard work at home," I said.

"You have to dig. I'm the one going into the grocery store garbage bin to find the rotting watermelons they throw away."

"Sure, Mike. I'll be happy to dig. Right down to China," I said. "But whatever you do, don't tell me why. Or even how big the hole should be."

My sarcasm bounced off his pumpkin-sized grin. "Ralphy will explain. I'll be back in a flash."

He hitched his jeans before going, then stopped to grab his skateboard from the back porch and hit the ground running.

"Ralphy Zee," I began threateningly. "You did know about the wheelbarrow."

"Not everything," he protested.

Ralphy responds quite well to threats. He's skinny with straight hair that points in all directions. A wrinkled, too-large shirt always hangs out the back of his pants or gets caught in fences whenever we take short cuts. The only time he isn't nervous is in front of a computer. There he becomes graceful and confident and serene -- a swan on water. Anywhere else, and he's an awkward duck on land.

"I didn't think he'd take it seriously," he rushed on as I continued my glare. "I was just talking experimental physics. How was I to know he'd really want to try it out against a garage."

I groaned. "Experimental physics. Spill the rest, pal."

He did. By the time he finished, I was grinning. It wasn't such a bad idea. And, best of all, it was Mike's garage. There was no way I could get into trouble on this one.

When Mike rejoined us, carrying two potato sacks bulging with watermelons, Ralphy and I were nearly ready.

There was a hole in the ground deep enough and wide enough to bury most of the wheelbarrow. We tilted it upright and slid it down. All that stuck out of the ground were the two thick wooden handles, each one pointing straight at the sky.

Lost in his world of scientific experiments, Ralphy became a general. "OK, guys. Dump dirt back into the hole and pack it so that the wheelbarrow becomes steady as a rock."

While Mike and I diligently packed earth against the submerged wheelbarrow, Ralphy zipped to the garage and struggled back with an old tractor tire tube that was bigger than he was.

Mike looked at me. "I know, I know. But we'll replace it before next summer. It's not as if we can do any river rafting until then anyway."

I shrugged. At this point, I was all for experimental physics.

Ralphy ignored us. He pulled a jackknife from his pocket -- razor sharp, of course, because Ralphy is a perfectionist -- and began slashing the wide rubber of the tire tube.

While he did that, Mike wandered over to the garage and tacked a cardboard target onto the side wall.

As they worked, I could hear the far-off sounds of somebody using a squeaky microphone. Hah, I thought, Lisa Higgins is stuck listening to a boring speech, and we're having fun with experiments.

Ralphy dug into his pockets and found some lengths of thick string.

"Now comes the tricky part." He stuck the ends of the string in his mouth to keep his hands free. "Making sure these rubber bands stay attached to the handles."

Rubber bands? Sure, and roaring lions were only house cats. Ralphy was working with a wide strip of tire tube long as a car.

It took him another five or ten minutes, long enough for some parade music to drift our way. I thought of Lisa and gloated silently again. If she only knew the fun we were having.

Ralphy finished and stepped back to survey his work.

"Experimental physics at its best," Mike announced.

Two solid wood handles stuck out of the ground. One end of the huge rubber band was secured to one handle, the other end to the second handle. The long loop of the rubber between rested limply on the ground. Waiting for action.

Ralphy beamed and admired. I grinned inside. The three of us were looking at the world's largest slingshot.