by Sue Lange
CHAPTER SIX
Outside the school building, the chill night air nipped at gloveless fingertips and exposed noses. The girls scanned the schoolyard for dark blobs of humanity hulking underneath the trees. They saw nothing. The other Science Society wannabes leaving the school along with May and Elsa gave them added comfort. They weren’t alone. Nevertheless, the girls wrapped their outer wear tightly around themselves and ran the ten blocks to Elsa’s house.
“Enter and be well,” the front door stated when Elsa tapped the code into the lock. “Thanks,” they both answered before going inside.
The girls tossed their outer garments to the bottom of the closet, slamming its door shut over the closet’s assertion that “Your clothing is not properly stowed.” They proceeded to the fridge for the Jetstream. Mom and Dad were both still out.
Sodas in hand, they flopped onto the kitchen chairs and began the giggling and gossiping that sophomores are so famous for.
“Did you see Justin Blaine?” Elsa teased.
“Yeah, he fell asleep again,” May said.
“Boy’s narcoleptic or something. Macabre.”
“Maybe somebody put a spell on him.”
“Yeah, you should rescue him from it.”
“Hm.” May looked dreamily into her can of Jetstream, as if the recipe for a love potion lay in the soda’s secret components. She sighed and looked up at Elsa. “So where was your new boy?”
Elsa shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he got stuck somewhere and couldn’t come.”
“You know he went to practice.”
“We looked; he wasn’t there.”
“Maybe he got sick and couldn’t go.”
“He has health problems,” they said together in the exaggerated accent of Ms. Singh, the biology teacher. When someone skipped class, Ms. Singh always asked whether Tom or Betsy perhaps had “health problems.” The girls giggled until Jetstream Soda threatened to erupt from below.
“What about those creepy anti-Rifs?” May said. “That was close.”
“It wasn’t so bad, you’re just a weenie.”
“Wasn’t so bad? Are you nuts?”
“You’re a weenie. They’re just weird.”
“Oh, yeah. Weird like drug addicts and drop outs.”
“Don’t be prejudiced.”
“I’m not but . . . ” Silence as May worked on a good comeback. Finally she gave up and changed the subject.
“You know who was at the meeting, don’t you?” she said in an obnoxious teasing voice.
“I’m going to kill you if you say Jimmy Bacomb.”
May pouted. “He’s so cute.”
“Well then, put a spell on him for yourself.”
“Oh no, oh no. He’s hurtin’ for you, dahlin’.”
“He’s a twerp and he wasn’t there and you know it cuz he’s a twerp.”
“If he’s such a twerp, how come you always defend him when other people tease him?”
“Shut up.”
Jimmy most certainly had a crush on Elsa ever since the time she had taken pity on him in seventh grade and let him copy answers off her test in Mrs. Dawyer’s history class. No one else ever let him cheat and in fact usually ratted him out with a “Hey Frecklehead’s cheating off me.” Elsa had not only not ratted him out, she had turned the paper at an angle that allowed him to see it better over her shoulder. She had been paying the price ever since. She was quite aware of his feelings and never quite sure what to do about them.
The inane conversation ended abruptly when they heard Lainie Webb’s efficient little Road Runner pull into the garage. A fully electric vehicle, it ran strictly to noise control codes and so would normally have a silent approach. But after an evening at the Pip & Squeak, Lainie’s reflexes were a little slow and she had insisted in driving in manual instead of allowing the car to maneuver by itself.
She gracefully ran into the far wall of the garage. No damage, just a nice good “thunk!” as a box of mailing peanuts, possibly stored there in a moment of genius when somebody realized this sort of thing happened often, found itself between vehicle and far wall. Just after the car hit the peanuts, the auto started whining: “Attention! Object ahead! Attention! Object ahead.”
The girls sighed and stifled their mating gossip and waited for Lainie. The door opened and the woman entered.
“Getting nippy out there,” Lainie said in way of greeting. She pulled the scarf from around her neck and head and tossed it onto the counter, and then bent over her daughter and kissed the forehead there. She eased into a seat next to May and gave her a peck as well.
“Yeah,” the girls both said and then Elsa continued, “We froze our butts off coming home.”
“So, now you’re drinking soda to warm yourselves up?” Lainie pulled her arms out of the coat she was wearing and pushed it over the seat back.
“If I had a real mom, she’d have hot cocoa waiting for us upon our arrival,” Elsa said.
“You know where the stove is.” The mother, red-faced from the cold or maybe the bar, leaned an elbow on the table and placed her chin in her hand. She looked across to Elsa and took a deep breath to clear a bit of a fog. “And how did your meeting go?”
Both girls shrugged.
“It was slice,” May said, before Elsa could say it was boring.
“Ugh—‘slice’,” Lainie said. “Such a commercial word.”
“It was interesting then.”
“That’s worse, but never mind. So you’re joining up?”
“Yes,” May interrupted just as Elsa was saying, “I doubt it.”
“What—why? I think we should discuss this,” Lainie said. She reached from her seat to open the fridge and extract a Jetstream. “You know, if I had a dutiful, loving daughter, she’d have heated some milk for me upon my arrival.”
Elsa stared at Lainie’s back. “Why would I join?” she said.
“Because it will look good on your resume.” May and Lainie said it together. Lainie shot May a wink.
Elsa snorted, tilted her head back, drained her bottle and then slammed it down onto the tabletop with an exaggerated “Ahhhh!” just like in the commercial. “Big deal,” she defiantly said after her exhibition of fine table manners. “Mom says with my grades I could go anywhere. Right, Mom?”
“Yes, but grades aren’t everything anymore. They’re looking for well rounded individuals these days.”
“So I take science classes, study science on my own, and join the Science Society,” Elsa said. “How well rounded is that? I think what they mean by well rounded is a genius as well as an Olympic gold medal winner. Have you seen me on the parallel bars? It’s not pretty. Let’s face it. I’m not ever going to be well rounded.”
“Oh, Elsa, that is so not true. Why do you always say such things about yourself? More importantly, why wouldn’t you want to join when you love science?”
Elsa inhaled, collected her thoughts. Why exactly didn’t she want to join? She wasn’t sure she had a reasonable reason.
“Science, yes,” she began her rebuttal. “But the Science Society is about…computer technology.” She gathered steam as her argument formed in her head. “Science and computer technology are not the same thing. I’m not interested in programming: if, then; repeat until, blah, blah, blah. When do you get to go out and build something? Do something fun?”
“Well, you’re setting yourself up for a tough time. I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”
“What? I thought this was a free country. Didn’t you tell me you fought for choice! This is so macabre.”
“Elsa, why hold yourself back? You have the potential to do anything you want.”
“What I want is to not join the Science Society. I wanna, I don’t know, try . . . other things.
”What ‘other things?’ That’s what the college entrance board will be wondering.”
“College! I’m only a sophomore.”
“Nowadays, kids need to start thinking about college the day they enter kind
ergarten.”
“You always said it’s terrible how parents push kids to mature so early. That’s what you always said.”
“We’ve never put pressure on you, but now you need to start thinking about your future. You need an activity. You’re not interested in working with those anti-Rid kids—“
“Rif, mom. Rif! Anti-Rif.”
“Whatever, at least—”
“They’re all drug addicted drop outs. They almost raped us tonight.”
“What!” Lainie stood up, her eyes wide, her brow pinched. “Did you call the—”
“Well, not really,” Elsa backpedaled. “They came up to us and . . . sort of . . . ”
“What?”
“Lit May’s cigarette.”
“Elsa, if you’re having trouble with kids teasing you again, you need to tell me. It’s against the—”
“Mom, I’m not in grade school anymore. I’m all growed up. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, right, perjuring yourself with a false rape story? Lying to the—?”
“We’re not in court.”
“You definitely need an activity. Your imagination is . . . I suppose I could sign you up for catechism.”
“No way,” Elsa yelled. “I’m . . . ”
“What?”
“I’m gonna . . . ”
“Yes?”
Elsa jumped up to rinse out her empty soda can, her mind panicking, searching for a way out. “I’m starting my own club,” she suddenly blurted.
Everything came to a stop. Just as Lainie was about to forward her position more, put down her motherly foot and insist on getting her way, Elsa’s illogical statement stifled further argument.
“Club?”
“What club?” May asked quietly. She didn’t want to interpose in the mother/daughter quarrel, but couldn’t help herself.
Elsa turned from the sink and looked from May to Lainie whose faces were at a loss. “The Perpetual Motion Club,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I did not understand the directive,” the sink stated, not knowing how to handle what it thought was an order.
In that moment of mother/daughter tension, a tension shown throughout the world to be a coagulating force capable of changing hearts and minds, moving mountains, and otherwise just pushing things along, in that crest-falling moment without the benefit of star-gazing, time-stretching, or calculus-inventing, the Perpetual Motion Club was born.
The Club came about not because of months spent mulling over the topic, going nuts to solve a problem. The Club was born not because there was a gap in the extra-curricular program at Northawken High and a pool of eager students anxiously seeking something to fill that void and their blank resumes, but because Elsa needed a retort, a trump card, something to shut her mother up.
Funny thing though, as soon as she said it, Elsa actually went for it. She liked the idea. She may not have had much faith in perpetual motion, but she certainly had a lot of faith in a perpetual motion club. Especially since it would get her out of the Science Society meetings which she was sure now that no tall, new boy would ever in a million years attend.
“What?” May said. She looked over at Lainie. Lainie sat blinking, her soda bottle poised mid-air and threatening to spill over her front.
“Perpetual Motion Club,” Elsa said, leaning away from the sink so as to not confuse it further. She tossed her bottle to the recyclable bin underneath and turned to May. “We’re starting it.”
Silence as Lainie returned her bottle to the safety of the tabletop. She looked toward May who had no idea what Elsa was talking about but wanted to cover her pal’s back if at all possible. May was intimidated by her best pal’s parents, but had to follow the unwritten and all-important rule to get her best pal’s back whenever called upon to do so.
“Well,” May answered. “We don’t actually have any officers yet, but . . . ”
“It’s a non-hierarchical organization: no officers, just elders.”
May’s eyes widened at the word ‘elders.’ “Slice!” she said.
Lainie turned to where her daughter stood leaning against the sink. “It’s not the same,” she said, tightening her lips. “The Science Society is a recognized entity. Every high school has one. College administrators recognize it. Anyone who gets accepted into it is on a faster track to get into a good school.”
“Oh Mom! Don’t start with that. You mean to tell me nobody gets accepted into school unless they’re a member of the Science Society?”
“Not good schools.”
“I’m not going to a good school. I’m going to—”
“Elsa,” Lainie said calmly. Her teeth ground across each other so she could choose her words carefully. She stood up and very quietly, very deliberately, said, “You are not going to Community College.”
Elsa tightened her lips just as Lainie had. “Oh, so now all of a sudden it’s okay to be privileged,” she burst out. “I heard you telling Jackson Sayles he was lucky to get into Northawken Comm.”
“Jackson Sayles is a convicted felon. All he has is a GED. You are a gifted student. You have potential and responsibility. Your place in society is different than Jackson Sayles’ place. Do you want to end up in jail?”
“Oh, so we’re not all created equal.”
”We’re all created equal. What we do with ourselves after we’re created is the difference. You are just . . . lazy.”
Lainie’s clenched jaw and pinched eyebrows positioned against the word “lazy” angered Elsa. She’d performed as the dutiful child—cleaning up after herself, receiving excellent grades in school, never getting into trouble, and now she was “lazy?” No different than a convict? Why? Because she had her own ideas? Because she was discovering the walls and halls of school were opening and the world beyond them was wide with possibility? After how many years of her obedience to the unwritten rules of school and parents, why call her lazy now, now that morning had broken and Elsa had come up with an idea.
Elsa accepted the unfairness with the poise of the truly stubborn. “Thank you,” she said, standing away from the sink. She cocked her head and smiled. “I’d love to hear details about that, but I’ve got to go and prepare for a meeting.” She stepped over to May and pulled her arm, lifting her out of her seat. “C’mon, I’ll walk you home.”
“Bye, Ms. Webb,” May said as the two girls retrieved their outerwear from the closet and exited out the front door.
Lainie said nothing. She remained frozen in her stance by the table, staring at the empty space by the sink where Elsa had just been defying her.
***
Outside in the fall night, May pulled her cape tight around herself. “So just elders, huh?” she said enthusiastically. “This is going to be a great coven.”
Elsa ignored the statement and continued her own thoughts. Although she hadn't bothered to zip her coat, she felt no pain as her brain raced along.
“We’ll have regular meetings, just like that stupid Science Society,” she explained more to herself than May. “And we’ll visit Gerry Martin’s website and we’ll have field trips out in the real world.”
“Oh, yes! We can go to Salem.”
“I was thinking more of the Museum of Spectacular Science. And we’ll get other members. Anybody who wants to join can. No rules, no invitations, no secret rites.” The thought of other members was an abstract one. She couldn’t imagine herself actually asking anyone.
“What is it going to be about, though?” May gave her a skeptical look bordering on annoyance. She pursed her lips and blew out rhythmic puffs of vapor, entertaining herself. Finally she rifled through her back pack and extracted the real thing, lighting up as they walked along.
“Perpetual Motion,” Elsa said. She glanced for a second over at May knowing May would stand with her even if the club had nothing to do with pentacles and chalices, but also knowing that, despite the evening’s Bhaskara demonstration, there was a good chance May had no idea what perpetual motion was. ”We’ll build
a perpetual motion machine, a PMM. Enter it into the FutureWorld competition. It’ll win easily because nobody’s ever done it before. If we win FutureWorld nobody—”
May stopped walking. “You’re kidding! That’s just stupid. Mr. Brown himself said that perpetual motion is a hoax.”
Elsa turned and dramatically tilted her head sideways in an impatient “please!” look with accompanying eye rolls. Meanwhile she racked her brain for an answer.
“Lots of people are working on it for real,” she said. “They’re not all fakes.”
Then she hit her stride. “The problem is that they need to be more innovative. Old Man Brown hasn’t kept up with what’s going on with the new scientists like Gerry Martin. There’s crazy new physics out there. Quantum mechanics, string theory. Brown doesn’t subscribe to the right chatzines.” She stepped forward to emphasize the next line: “He doesn’t know.”
“Oh, and you do.” May exhaled smoke as she said it. “Anyway, I’m joining the Science Society and you should too.”
“Really? You haven’t even been invited yet.”
“If I get invited.”
Elsa grunted and said, “I’ll make a deal with you. Join my perpetual motion club. Try it out and see what you think. If you don’t like it and still want to join the Science Society after you get invited, I’ll join with you.”
May turned and said, “Really?”
Elsa said, “Yeah. For sure. It’ll make my mom happy anyway. I don’t really like Brown. He’s so, I don’t know, smug, or something.”
“Mr. Brown is great. He’s so funny.”
“Yeah, yeah. But you promise you’ll join my club now, right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
They’d reached May’s brownstone by now. May leaned over for a quick hug and then ran up the steps and was gone. Elsa turned back toward her home and suddenly felt the cold biting at her midsection under the sweat shirt. She zipped up her coat and walked home considering the potential of the new idea. She popped a quick dose of iHigh which immediately incited visions of table top working models, room-sized machines, social media announcements going viral and eventually finding their way to the iphone of the tall, new boy.
