The Perpetual Motion Club (16 page)

“Who said it’s not getting sanctioned?” Elsa said with a clipped voice, quick and churlish.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“Well, that attitude is not helping.”

“Helping what?”

“I don’t know.”

The remaining six blocks were passed in silence. At Elsa’s door, she said, “Thanks for walking me home, Jimmy. See you around.”

“At the meeting?”

“What meeting?

“The next meeting.”

“Oh, yeah. Right. See you then.” She turned and entered the house, muttering, “damn twerp,” and blaming him for all her problems.

***

A week later found Elsa back in Dean Williams’ office, this time in a guest chair opposite the dean’s desk. While the dean excused herself to retrieve the paperwork and notes for Elsa’s case, Elsa perused the artwork on the wall.

A framed cross stitch of a unicorn surrounded by a circle of ivy-covered fence held the words “Though in chains, my heart is free and therefore so am I” at the bottom. Just below them was the name of the author in letters too small to read.

In addition to the unicorn, various accomplishments of Dean Williams’ life were displayed: her diplomas—bachelors’, masters’, doctorate; a couple of little basketball team photos from when she coached at a small high school in Iowa before she came to Northawken; some handwritten letters of esteem from students she’d helped through tough algebraic episodes; the first dollar she earned in education. On her desk sat the tokens of big business, artifacts meant to entice the dean into letting the corporations pitch to her students. A Pepsi Max mug, Disney deskpad, stack of iPad pens, Googleware glass case, and a set of black and white Dell erasers.

“Well, Elsa,” Dean Williams entered the office holding a manila folder. She took her seat behind the desk, tucking her skirt underneath herself. “You’ve certainly done a great job with your presentation.”

Bad sign. If this was good news, the dean would have skipped the softening and come right out with “Congratulations!”

The dean placed the file on the desk before her and folded her hands over it.

“What do you think we decided?” she asked.

“Uh, I don’t really know,” Elsa said hopefully.

“How do you think we should decide?”

“What?”

“Do you think a club with only five members should be sanctioned? I know you’ve tried. I’ve noticed your efforts.”

“Well, I guess I’ve never thought of it that way.”

“Your ideas are sound, Elsa. They make sense. We, actually I, think it would be marvelous to have a perpetual motion club on campus.”

“You do?” Elsa’s eyebrows rose.

“But Mr. Brown was vehemently against it.”

Elsa felt her insides turn to jello. They slunk to her midsection and quivered. Dean Williams fell out of focus.

Elsa could barely see her as she continued speaking. “I disagreed with him. I felt your project was not mere mathematics. It was art, as you said.”

“Thanks,” Elsa mumbled. The sickening, thickening feeling in her gut began to burble.

“Ms. Phelps felt no one seemed interested. I had to agree with that.”

“Yes,” Elsa said. She placed her hands on her stomach to try and hold it back. “Thanks for your help, but I have to go.”

She scraped her seat across the floor as she pushed herself up and out. “Open,” she yelled to the door before flying through the outer office and out into the hallway to the closest girls’ room where she vomited into the sink, not making it to the john. A mass of morning mush splattered over the Frito-Lay decal there. “May I help you?” the SafeChild automonitor asked.

Dean Williams was close behind. “Elsa, are you sick?”

“I’m okay,” Elsa’s face was still in the sink. Her words had a weird hollow sound as they bounced off the ceramic basin. She turned on the water to rinse her mouth and the breakfast down the drain. Dean Williams pulled paper towels from the dispenser to help clean up.

“You know, Dear,” the dean said once all the particles had been removed to the Rubbermaid waste basket. “You shouldn’t feel bad. We haven’t added a new organization in years. We have the language clubs, pep club, Thespians, choirs, cheerleader squads, and the Science Society. No one has tried to start anything new in years. You’re to be commended for even trying.”

Elsa could easily have thrown up again, but vowed to keep everything down. She also vowed to not shed a tear in the odious dean’s presence.

The dean continued blathering. “Let me ask you something,” she said.

Elsa was beginning to get angry. The interview and decisions were over, too late for questions. Why did the dean insist on turning the knife in her heart?

“Yes,” Elsa said coldly.

“Why didn’t you join the Science Society?”

“Because I have the Perpetual Motion Club,” Elsa answered and turned to exit the room.

“As a conciliation, Mr. Brown has decided to extend the invitation to you again. He was impressed with your efforts.”

Elsa spun on her heel. “That’s a lie! He was laughing at me the whole time. He didn’t even hear what I said.”

She turned and left the room and ran out of the building and to home—the long way, around the reservoir, just to make sure the dean didn’t follow her this time. And to make sure she didn’t run into anybody like May or jWad or Jimmy. Especially not Jimmy who would insist that it didn’t matter, when it absolutely did matter. She had counted on sanctioning the club to solve her problems with her mother. God. Her mother would gloat. Even Dad wouldn’t be that helpful. He’d take both Lainie’s and Elsa’s side, trying to keep peace long enough to get a good night’s sleep and then be off in the morning before Elsa and Lainie started through all this again.

But mostly Elsa took the long way home to avoid any chance encounters with the asshole, Jason Bridges. All she needed right now was someone who had no more brains than a basketball sneering at her.

She’d run away. Somewhere that was so far away they’d never find her. To the mountains. To the desert. Or downtown. But she was not shedding a tear. She was never in a million years giving that witch Williams and that prick Brown the satisfaction.

By the time she’d made it home she was blubbering, her sweatshirt was soaked with nasal mucous, her eyes were swollen from crying and her face was bloated.

“Welcome home, Elsa” the door stated after she thumbed the lock. She entered and heard her father’s voice on his cell in the kitchen. Without hesitating she walked to him, fell on the floor with her head on his lap, bawling.

“Er, I’ll call you back, John,” he said before setting the phone down. He kissed the top of Elsa’s head as her body heaved but said nothing.

Finally she cried herself down. He stroked her head as she heaved a final time and said, “Can I transfer to another school?”

“Come here,” he said, pulling her to her feet. He sat her on his lap as if she wasn’t too big for that and said. “What happened?”

“I hate everybody.”

“May?”

“No, not her.”

“Jimmy?”

“Who cares about him. He’s a tw—”

“Twerp, so I’ve heard. Come on, Elsa, what’s wrong? I can’t help you if you don’t, you know, explain.”

“The school is not sanctioning my perpetual motion club.”

“Perpetual . . . ? Oh, yes.” He took a deep breath through his nose. His shoulders lifted as he sorted through his brain notes to come up with fatherly advice. Something to comfort his daughter and at the same time be intelligent enough to not lead her down a path of destruction. It was hard going because he barely remembered what the perpetual motion club was about.

“Well,” he began. “Do you really need the sanctioning? I mean, what’s the purpose of it?”

“Don’t you remember? I need it for my resume because of the Science Society invitation.”

Then it clicked. “Oh, yeah, right. Well, you can still have a club. You can still put it on your resume.”

“Yeah, but mom won’t shut up about it. She’ll keep nagging me because it’s not a real club and I need to join the Science Society.”

She said the last phrase, the I-need-to-join-the-Science-Society part in the exaggerated whiney voice that you use when you’re trying to denigrate the speaker you are imitating. With that annoying phrase, James Webb finally understood the dynamic of Elsa’s plight. It did not help him come up with better fatherly advice, but at least he understood the problem.

“I think you should just go forward as planned. New organizations often don’t get respected until they’ve shown they can meet their goals. What are your goals?”

“Goals?”

“Yes. Reasons for existence? Don’t tell me you don’t have any. An organization is not an organization unless they have goals. Putting something on your resume is not a goal. What does the club do?”

“We’re working on a FutureWorld entry.”

“That’s it! That’s your goal.”

“So what.”

“So what? If you complete your entry and show it in FutureWorld; you’ll be a club even if you’re not sanctioned. You just need a little PR. You can get that if you’ve got an entry in Futureworld. After that you won’t need any piddly sanctioning.”

Elsa reluctantly began to lighten up. She stood and leaned to kiss her dad’s cheek. “I suppose,” she said.

James rose to his feet and hugged his daughter tight.

“Your mother loves you, no matter how much she nags about joining the Science Society.” He said the last phrase, the “joining-the-Science-Society” part in the whiney voice she had used earlier.

She laughed, slapped at his arm. Hugged him again, then asked what he wanted for supper.

“Oh, nothing. I’m just home for a few minutes, I have to get back. I’ll grab something on the way. Where’s your mother?”

Elsa looked at him and shook her head slowly. How would she know where Lainie was, she’d just gotten home herself.

***

The next day, she avoided May and everyone else in the club. As much as she wanted to believe her father’s optimism, she was not at all sure she could pass that on to the others. Not yet, anyway.

At the end of the painful day, after popping her seventh stream of iHigh, just as she was shutting her locker, she saw Jimmy. Too late to sneak out, she ran through excuses in her head. Then she felt stupid. What did she care what Jimmy thought? He was a—

“You hear about Jason Bridges?”

She leaned against her locker in the most are-you-kidding stance she could muster. What the eff did she care about basketball stats? How could Jimmy think she’d want to hear anything about that asshole.

Before she could return a snide response he interrupted. “He’s been arrested.”

A jolt of negative energy shot through her. “What?”

Jimmy nodded, his face blank. “For his brother’s murder.”

Another jolt. “What?”

“The kid down by the river. It was his little brother.”

“That can’t be right. He, he plays basketball. He doesn’t . . . He wouldn’t . . . ”

Jimmy watched her struggle a moment before stating the obvious. “Nobody would.”

Elsa watched Jimmy’s face, waiting for a punch line. When she realized it wasn’t coming, she turned to go. He followed.

“Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy,” the doors stated as they passed through them with the rest of the crowd.

“Where did you hear this?” she asked him when they were out in the yard.

“Everyone’s talking about it. It’s on the news, look,” he pulled her up to the InterConnect at the edge of the sidewalk just beyond the doors. He hit “start” and the browser showed up.

Shuffling past the Miller, Toro snowblower, and Swanson chicken dinner ads he finally hit GoogleNews and selected “local.” He inserted the zip code and a few seconds later Jason’s face showed up under the words “Teen Basketball Star Arrested for Murder of Brother.”

Elsa walked backwards away from the machine eventually tripping a freshman running to catch a bus. She barely heard the freshman say, “Hey asshole, watch where you’re going,” before stopping to watch the box from ten feet away. She kept thinking the truth would somehow shoot out and then everything would make sense.

Jimmy clicked the machine off and walked to her.

“I can’t believe it,” she said to him.

“It doesn’t mean he did it. He’s only arrested.”

They walked together across Lambert and home. Halfway there, Elsa finally calmed. “It’s them damn anti-Rifs. Why do you hang around with them?”

“It’s not them. Why can’t you see that? Why are you so smart and so dumb at the same time?”

“Why are you just dumb all the time?” she said and then ran ahead.

He called to her. “You’re right, I’m dumb. And you’re going to think I’m even dumber when I join them.”

She stopped, turned and ran to him. With her face inches from his, she said, “Go ahead and join. I’m kicking you out of the Perpetual Motion Club.”

Then she ran at high speed home, not hearing his, “Elsa, don’t be like this.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Everything was in disarray, upside down, and completely unfathomable. Northawken High had rejected the notion of a perpetual motion club. Jason Bridges, the light of the world, had been arrested for his brother’s murder. Jimmy had joined the anti-Rifs. Everything Elsa Webb held dear was broken. She existed on a steady diet of Jetstream and iHigh as she contemplated the misery of existence.