Quite Contrary (49 page)

Making that connection was Dad’s super power. I didn’t have it. I didn’t even have a hint of it, like I was going to grow into it.

The bell rang. I was sitting in my chair in History class, and I hadn’t heard a word. I’d read the whole chapter ahead of time because World War I was such a bizarre war, but that wasn’t the point. I’d been wrapped up, brooding the whole time. This was tearing me apart.

I slipped out into the hall and laid my back against the cement block wall of the hallway. I had to do something. I had Geometry next, across the street in Upper High. I’d always kind of known it would be easy to skip out on that class, because nobody was tracking that I’d been to the other school that day. It hadn’t been important until now.

I walked around the school to the science lab. I’d left the parts in there. It would work. I couldn’t do the math, but it ought to just work. It was the most obvious thing in the world. If the antenna was the right length and you touched it, it would zap you.

I stopped in front of the classroom. I could see kids at their benches through the door’s window. Of course,a class was taking place now. There’d be a science class every period.

“You are entirely unable to leave this invention thing alone, aren’t you?” Ray asked from behind me.

I flinched. Of course, there was one person who would track whether I’d been to Geometry, because he took the course with me. He’d even guessed where I would come.

I turned around to see Claire standing right next to Ray. They were both missing class to talk me out of being an idiot.

“It’s driving me crazy, okay? I just need to try. I need to fiddle with it until I’ve proven to myself I can’t do it and I don’t have any choice but to let go.” I hunched my head down between my shoulders. Guilt clawed at me, but I’d be in more trouble going to class late than skipping it anyway. I wasn’t walking away from this.

“Were you able to get hold of your Dad’s notes?” Claire held her hands clasped behind her, the picture of innocent concern. Even her dark blonde hair just made her look more sincere and charming than if she’d been a pale blonde. Claire was so much better looking than me; her power would come out any minute.

That was crazy thinking, getting mad at Claire for being such a good friend. I was just so frustrated. “It was like Dante’s Calculus Inferno. There was no way,” I whined.

“You’re not Brian Akk, and you don’t have to be. You’re Penelope Akk,” Claire reminded me. I wanted to pop her for that gentle, talking-me-off-the-roof voice—so imagine if she hadn’t used it.

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t get to the parts now. I just can’t let it go!” I growled.

“If you get an hour to show yourself that it doesn’t work, will that help you?” Ray asked.

He knew something. “Yeah, it will.”

He started grinning again. I must be seriously flipping out if he’d been frowning this long. He did know something. “Come on,” he told us, and we followed him down to the other end of the hall, past the computer science lab to the… other computer science lab.

I’d never actually been in this one. He pulled the door open, revealing a lab empty of kids or teachers. Half the computers were in bits. This wasn’t a schoolroom.

“Miss Petard lets me help her with hardware repairs when I’m ahead of the class,” Ray explained grandly. That “when” would be “all the time,” but he didn’t say it.

“I can’t steal the school’s computer parts!” I squeaked in horror.

“You don’t have to,” he promised, as smug as if he’d been waiting for that objection. He stepped over to a set of shelves, scooped up a pile of cards and drives and cords, carried them over to the nearest table, and dumped them on it. “All broken. She never throws anything away. You just need the parts, don’t you?”

Claire, bless her as the best friend a girl could have, heaved a toolbox onto the table.

I grabbed a screwdriver and opened up the casings. A length of copper wire, any battery, it wasn’t a complicated device. It had to… what was the word? Modulate? It wouldn’t be exactly the same signal constantly. It had to work in a pattern. I needed… I didn’t know the name of the part I needed. I tried to pry some electronics off of a circuit board with a screwdriver, and it snapped in half.

“FRACK!” I didn’t quite swear.

“What are you looking for? Maybe we can find it,” Claire asked.

I shook my head. “I’ve got what I need here. I just need to rearrange things.”

“You can’t rearrange a circuit board. They’re made that way in a factory. You’d have to recycle the whole board and start from scratch. We don’t carry blanks.” Ray was trying to be gentle, but it was useless because he was wrong. Or he was right, kind of.

Recycle. I’d have to recycle the whole board.

“I need… metal cutting tools,” I begged. Was I begging? My voice sounded so quiet. Yes, I needed those tools. I couldn’t let this go.

“I don’t think there are any in a computer lab, Penny,” Claire warned.

Ray’s eyelids lowered, and his grin widened. He’d thought of something. “There aren’t, but nobody’s using the shop classroom in the morning.”

“There’s a shop class?” Claire and I asked simultaneously.

“It’s downstairs,” Ray told me, grabbing our hands and pulling us out the door.

“There’s a downstairs?” Claire and I asked simultaneously.

He dragged us down to the corner stairway. There were the stairs going up, like I’d expected, and there were stairs going down. I’d been to Northeast West Hollywood Middle for three years, and I’d never had any idea these were here.

It was like a sign. The tools I needed were down there. I skipped down the stairs ahead of Ray and ran down the short, blankly white hallway. One of the doors said “Shop,” and I flung it open. I walked inside and was surrounded by ugly, crude versions of all the mad machines in Dad’s workshop that I’d have to find the names of.

I knew what I needed. Gears, lots of gears. I found them. Magnets, electricity. I flipped on a saw and sliced pipe into thin slices, then squeezed them in a vice. It was obvious, wasn’t it? You could recycle anything. Even energy, sort of.

Stop trying to find words. I didn’t know what I meant, but I could see it.

I twisted the top segment into place. It looked like a centipede. I sighed, put the soldering iron into its brace and turned around to lean against the table until my muscles stopped shaking.

Ray and Claire stared at me like I’d made a second head instead of—

“What is this thing?” I asked, looking at the contraption in my hands. Large portions of it had no cover plates. There was just no way I’d made gears that tiny, much less fit them together.

“Shouldn’t you know?” Claire asked me. She and Ray really looked scared. No wonder. Was that a psychotic break? I felt so tired now, but relaxed. Well, if I’d stressed out so badly I’d made this ridiculously intricate piece of modern art, my parents would be sympathetic. Therapy wouldn’t be so bad.

“I think it’s just—” I started, absently twisted it in my hands. It resisted, but turned, like a crank. And just like a crank, it kept turning. Then it flipped, grabbed my hand with its many legs, and crawled up my arm.

Claire squealed, but I wasn’t afraid. I’d made it. I knew it wasn’t going to hurt me. That was about all I knew.

Ray got there before either of us. “Penny, you made that. You have super powers!” he announced.

My eyes stung. He was right. He was so right! I lunged forward and grabbed both of them and squeezed them in a hug. I felt a little electric feeling as Ray’s not-as-skinny-as-I’d-have-thought chest pressed against me, and he must have felt the same about Claire, but… forget that!

“I have super powers!” I crowed, my voice squeaking like a mouse. “Just like Dad’s … ! Almost like Dad’s.” I saw Dad work all the time. He had to do research, lots and lots of research, and he knew exactly what he was building ahead of time and what it did when he finished.

“I made this,” I said, pulling back and holding up my hand as the little automaton crawled up that arm and fastened itself around my wrist like a bracelet. “I have no idea what it does.”

“It’s an inscrutable little machine, isn’t it?” Ray admitted, leaning down to peer at the snowflake gears.

Who cared about the details? I was a superhero!

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