Starcrossed: Perigee - A paranormal romance trilogy (6 page)

"It's a star gate, Simon" he said, his voice high pitched and thin.

The boy scoffed. "Balloons and stars? Aw, how pretty! You gonna hang fairies from there too?" He laughed at what he thought had been a hilarious joke. He leaned over the table, his weight making the folding table's legs creak.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?" I asked.

"Just looking to see if he brought along a tiara to wear. You know, to go with the fairies and stars."

Michael's face reddened, and he opened his mouth to say something, but he obviously couldn't think of a proper retort. I knew his pain. He was like me - never able to think of a scathing reply until it was too late. I felt for the poor little kid. I just wanted to deck the nasty creep.

Aric let go of the balloons, straightened and tapped the boy on the shoulder.

"Is that your display?" he asked, pointing to the massive volcano in the center of the room, which was now listing to the left at an alarming angle. "Because if it is, I think you'd better go rescue it."

The boy looked across at the volcano, threw Michael the dirtiest of looks, then raced off to save his exhibit.

"I hope it falls over all together," I said, handing Michael another star to thread.

"No! Don't say that!" Michael's outburst was unexpected.

"Why not? He's an ass and deserves it."

Michael shrugged and looked uncomfortable. He made a show of concentrating on threading his star.

"Just... because."

Aric caught my eye and shook his head slightly. I didn't press Michael about it.

We continued hanging the stars, and Aric managed to fix the balloons. Once we'd finished, we stepped back and admired our handy work. The green plastic container may not have been very impressive, but the 'star gate' of balloons with its cardboard and fishing line galaxy looked pretty darned spectacular. Michael was beaming from ear to ear, the confrontation with Simon forgotten.

Aric shoved the various tools back into the plastic bag, and placed the bag on the floor out of sight of the prospective audience.

"So, how about some ice cream before the science fair starts?" he suggested. I checked my watch - we had an hour to kill, and there was an ice cream store just a five minute walk down the road.

Michael was all for it, so we headed for the store and bought ice cream, deciding to take it back to the school to eat in the school's playground area. Aric and I perched on the railing of a monkey bars and watched Michael scurrying all over the playground equipment, somehow managing to hang on to his half eaten ice cream. You would never know that in less than half an hour he would have to stand up in front of an audience and talk about quantum mechanics.

"Are you sure he knows what to say about that thing you guys built? I mean, it looks great and all, but if he can't say something scientific about it, well, it's all pretty useless."

Aric, having finished his ice cream, jumped down from his perch on the monkey bar, and strolled to a nearby trash can where he deposited the empty stick. "Of course. He knows a very basic version of it. He's got palm cards if he forgets." He hoisted himself gracefully back on to the metal bar and made himself comfortable.

"What did you think of that Simon kid's volcano?" he asked.

I wrinkled my nose. "I hated it. A piece of crap," I said loyally, even though I thought it was actually incredibly impressive.

Aric looked down at me and smiled. "Really? You really thought it was crap?"

I shrugged. "Well, no, it was well done, but I don't want to say anything nice about that horrid little weasel."

Aric watched Michael climb to the top of a rock climbing board.

"It's well done because Michael was actually the one who made it."

I turned to him in surprise. "What?!"

"That was Michael's project and that lazy little bastard forced him to hand it over and give it to him. Apparently he's been bullying Michael for quite some time."

I jumped down from the monkey bar, furious. I was ready to go kick that kid's ass, cause a storm, tell the teacher, whatever had to be done. Aric put a placating hand on my shoulder.

"Hold on there, it's all being taken care of."

I was so angry on Michael's behalf, I could barely spit any words out.

"You... have... I...!" I swallowed and squared my shoulders. "Have you told the teacher about this?"

"He doesn't want me to. He says the bullying will only get worse if parents and teachers get involved."

"Then what are you going to do?"

He smiled at me, then over at Michael, who was hanging from a high bar like a chimpanzee. He didn't answer, but his smug smile, and the steel in his eye told me he already had things sorted. I thought I imagined his voice in my mind. Just one word - '
karma
'. I watched Michael slide down a fireman's pole and land lightly in the sand, springing up instantly and dusting the sand from his spindly knees. I was intrigued as to what Aric had in mind. And if whatever that was didn't work out, I would personally go and sort the little creep out myself.

Aric turned back to me and grinned. "You need to calm down. You're literally foaming at the mouth." He wiped his thumb gently over my lips in what I thought was an intimate gesture but I was left blushing as he held up his thumb to reveal a blob of ice cream that had dripped on to the corner of my mouth.

"Oh!" mortified, I turned away from him and wiped my mouth and chin with the palm of my hand. He must think me a total slob. I took the time it took to walk to the trash can and discard the ice cream stick to compose myself. When I turned back again, he was leaning casually against the monkey bar, watching me intently.

"What?" Humiliation had a way of making me crabby.

His eyebrows arched, and he shrugged. "Nothing!" He said with a grin, and my heart did its little happy dance.

I groaned inwardly.
You are pathetic, Lucy,
I admonished myself.
Stop acting like a lovesick loser!

Lovesick?
Love
-sick? Was I falling in love? Was it possible to fall in love with someone when you'd only known them a short time? I risked a sideways glance at him, and he was still watching me with those amazing, strangely colored eyes. I slapped myself mentally. It was impossible to fall in love so quickly... that only happened in books and movies.
Stop being an idiot!
I lectured myself.
This is real life. Any girl would feel all fluttery when faced with a guy like him.
Trying hard to ignore his handsome face and those compelling eyes, I stalked past him and made a show of checking the time on my watch.

"Come on. It'll be starting soon. We should look for Uncle Tom." I called Michael, and we headed for the auditorium.

* * * * *

Michael's talk started off wobbly, but gradually, as he got into it, his voice strengthened until he was speaking with impressive authority, considering his age and the subject matter. Due to time constraints the teachers had organized a number of children to give their talks simultaneously, so audiences gathered depending on their interests, or if they had a child speaking. At first Michael's audience consisted of his teacher, the principal, and our immediate family. It seemed the clay volcanoes were getting most of the attention. As Michael tried to explain his concept of String Theory, Luke wandered off to watch an 'erupting' volcano, while Aunt Janet gave non-verbal signals for Michael to stand up straight, project his voice, put his shoulders back. She even pointed to her gritted teeth - presumably reminding him to smile. He ignored her and concentrated on Uncle Tom, who stood right in front, arms folded across his chest, nodding encouragingly, and trying not to look confused.

"And so, as we know, all matter is made up of tiny little vibrating strings. So tiny we can't even see them. But if we could, this is what they would look like." He held up a piece of skipping rope, one hand at each end, and began to jiggle it, working it into a steady pulsing wobble.

"Strings can vibrate in an infinite number of ways. The way a string vibrates determines the type of matter it makes." He demonstrated by wobbling the string up and down, and it made an entirely different pattern. I was impressed - no palm cards, and the language he was using was very advanced for a ten year old. I didn't think I could even speak as well, and I was nearly eight years older than him.

"Scientists think all these strings need to be connected somehow, not end to end, but by something which connects them, sort of like a conductor. They call this connection a membrane - 'brane' for short." He dipped the wire circle into a bowl of dish washing liquid, and blew a big bubble on to his hand.

"Imagine this bubble is the membrane. See the shiny, slippery surface? Every string is floating around on that surface, all connected by the surface of the bubble, or the membrane. That one bubble is our universe." He popped the bubble, and the audience, which had increased in size as Michael's enthusiastic voice began to carry across the room, laughed at the casual destruction of our 'universe'.

He dragged the big plastic bowl closer to him. It was half filled with water.

"Now I want to talk a little bit about dimensions. We all think we know what dimensions are, but they can be a hard thing to understand really."

He held up a piece of paper. "We'll use this as an example to explain something that's two dimensional. It's flat - you can see it only goes this way or that, not up or down. No depth."

"We've all heard of 3D - you can go see 3D movies now. It means you can see an extra dimension - not just a flat screen - you're able to see depth as well. This table is 3D - I can walk around it, go under it and over it."

He leaned importantly over the table, running his hands over the surface and side to demonstrate.

"We're all familiar with these dimensions, but scientists are saying that there are other dimensions besides the ones we all know. Time is another kind of dimension, but guess what - " He paused for effect, and the audience seemed to actually will him to go on.

"There are eleven dimensions in all! Eleven!" he said triumphantly, as though this was absolutely marvelous news. "We, as humans, in this universe, can only really see three of them, four if you count time, but scientists say there are eleven, and the eleventh one is the most exciting of all of them, because that's where there exists parallel universes!" His voice was so elated it was hard not to be caught up with his enthusiasm, and nearly the entire crowd had gathered to listen to his spiel.

"The eleventh dimension exists so close to us, and yet we can't see it. All around you, existing just like us, are other universes, countless universes, floating like these bubbles, in the eleventh dimension." He blew a heap of bubbles on to the surface of the water in the green bowl.

"See that one there?" he said, pointing to a nondescript bubble in the midst of all the others. "Imagine that's our universe, in there with all the others floating in the eleventh dimension." People were pushing forward, as though they really were hoping to see our own universe in hyperspace. "The other universes may have different universal laws, laws of nature. They may have different worlds, civilizations, species, and we just can't see them."

"Now, those bubbles look pretty happy there next to each other, pretty quiet and peaceful, but scientists think they might be rolling about on crazy waves, occasionally crashing into each other." Putting a hand on either side of the bowl, Michael tipped the water from side to side. The bubbles really only swooshed from left to right, hardly crashing, but we got the picture.

"The moment two universes crash together, you get the Big Bang, and that's how another universe is made. That's how our universe began too."

There was murmuring among the crowd as they pondered this theory.

"All this is called M Theory. Membrane Theory. It is such a cool theory which explains so much, some people have decided the M should stand for Magic, or Mystery, or Majesty, but for this talk it's going to stand for Michael's Theory." There was a smattering of laughter.

He pointed to the bubbles. "This is what interests me the most. See the bubbles, those universes? See how some of them touch each other?" He pointed to the bubble he'd decided was our own universe. "Look at how those membranes touch each other, rub up against each other. How cool would it be if you could find a way to get through there, to visit other universes!"

He gestured at the balloons and stars. "We don't know what is in those other universes, who lives in them, how advanced they are. What if they've found a way to get through to us? What if they have already made some kind of star gate and they can travel to any universe they want? What if we could make a star gate and travel in and out of the other universes?"

There was more murmuring from the audience as people agreed it was an intriguing idea. I was impressed with Michael's alacrity - his enthusiasm and clarity of speech. I wasn't sure if he'd grasped the concept properly, but what he had said made sense to me.

When he finally finished his speech, he was rewarded with a big round of applause from the audience. Aric clapped him on the back then gave him a 'high 5', telling him he 'rocked it bro'. Uncle Tom beamed from ear to ear, while Aunt Janet fished out her digital camera and captured the occasion with a photograph.

Simon the bully was standing alone by his volcano which, after some clumsy, hasty repairs, didn't look quite as impressive as before. He scowled at the attention Michael was receiving; he was clearly feeling upstaged, and he didn't like it at all.

"Ladies and gentleman," he hollered like a carnie at a fairground attraction. "Come and witness the awesome power of nature - the ultimate in destructive forces! The might of a volcanic eruption!" He smirked triumphantly, (and in my opinion, prematurely) at Michael as the audience shuffled away from the star gate and headed to the big volcano.

Once the audience was in place, Simon didn't have a lot to say. He knew very few facts. After muttering something like 'volcanoes are powerful' and 'volcanoes have lava', his speech petered out. It didn't seem as if he'd done much research - the only effort he'd put into the project was the act of bullying Michael into making the volcano for him. The situation grew awkward as he stood, tongue-tied, trying to think of something to say.