The Perpetual Motion Club (18 page)

“Tsk. So now when it’s important and means something, now I should follow along with the crowd.”

“I’m not a lawyer, honey, just a dad.”

And that was that.

The following day, Jimmy gave her a present too. A hand-made beret he’d sewn himself in her favorite blue/yellow Penn State color scheme. It had a huge tassle in the style of the day which hung off the side and lay next to her check. She immediately placed it on her head and wore it home after which she put it on the top shelf of her closet and never took it out again.

***

Elsa soon forgot the problem with her mother. She was lighthearted and filled with hope. She had serious working capital and Jason was poised to become her friend. Of course Jason was poised to spend the rest of his life in prison, but that wasn’t part of the equation she was ciphering at the moment. Besides, there was something niggling her subconscious in regards to Jason’s predicament. Something was off and as soon as she hit on it, the whole situation would be turned around. She figured.

For the next several weeks she concentrated on the perpetual motion work. Soon she had a working model of a piezo-chemo-generator mounted on a piece of 4X8 decorator floor board she found at Home Depot. They’d marked it as priced-to-go because it was a sample of last year’s hot pattern and now that it was this year they no longer wanted it trashing the store. They had slapped on a full-length store logo and practically given it away.

On top of the flurry of activity that helped lift Elsa from her dark predicaments, she learned that Gerry Martin was scheduled to visit the Red Rapids Convention Center again. The news thrilled Elsa further even than when Jason Bridges started acknowledging her presence. She immediately called a meeting of the Perpetual Motion Club and when it came around she played to a packed house. May, jWad, and Christine all came. Even Jimmy was there. Elsa hadn’t had the heart to really kick him out. Besides, she forgave him. If anything maybe he could be a spy in the world of the anti-Rifs and turn up some information about Jason’s brother’s murder. The missing key in that bit of mystery that never quite left her thoughts.

The members caught some of Elsa’s perpetual motion enthusiasm for the first time when she placed a strange device on the bar top. They oohed and ahhed over the piece of handicraft perfection. With no solder drips, exposed wires, or handwritten stickies, it could have been used for furniture back in the days when building materials were actually beautiful instead of merely disposable.

“And once I finish calibrating the hookup valves . . . ” Elsa explained, manually working a miniature pulley device that provided the work of lifting a small bag of stones, “ . . . it will work. I’ve got plenty of time to do all that before FutureWorld.”

It was obvious that if Elsa wasn’t a genius she was at least handy with power tools. Everyone clapped.

Elsa held up her hands to quiet the audience. “I have an announcement,” she said, before anyone could get into questions of annoying depth such as ‘how does this thing work?’ when she’d just explained it, with a demonstration no less. “Gerry Martin is coming to Red Rapids next weekend and we’re going to go.”

General groans all around.

“Is Jason coming?” May asked in her favorite sing-song style.

“No!” Elsa answered instantaneously. Then she composed herself and, mimicking the sing-song chant, added, “He’s not going to be invited.”

“How much is it?” jWad asked, “because I ain’t—”

“It’s half-price for students. You still have your Northawken ID card, don’t you Jethro Wadmer?”

“Hey, that’s my hegemonic imperialist name.”

“Yeah, okay, white boy,” Elsa answered. “Maybe you should hold off buying guitar strings this week so’s you can afford to go.”

“I’m a drummer,” jWad scowled.

“I have to work,” Jimmy said, cutting into the argument.

“Work? I didn’t know you had a job.” Elsa swung her attention over to him. “Oh, I remember. Your other friends need help with their graphics.”

He hung his head revealing the Artsmart logo on his beret and said, “No.”

“No?”

“I mean, maybe.”

Elsa’s knee jerk reaction was to kick him back out of the club. But she held her tongue. Jimmy Bacomb wasn’t worth giving a second thought about. All she wanted right now was to move forward. What difference did it make to her if he stayed or went? He was a twerp.

After Jimmy declined to go, a litany of excuses from all the members bombarded her. In the end she convinced May, jWad, and Christine to show up, but it was not easy. May agreed to go after Elsa threatened to not validate her membership if she so much as considered not going. Once May agreed, jWad followed. Elsa promised before the event they could visit the big city’s notorious Browning Street where all the head shops and music stores were located, so jWad actually ended up looking forward to the trip.

She didn’t pressure Jimmy because truth be told he’d been making her uncomfortable lately. She’d forgotten about the beret he gave her almost immediately, but somewhere in the back of her mind a light had gone off and she preferred to stay in the dark where Jimmy Bacomb was concerned. It was as if he knew all about her feelings for Jason and was losing a lifetime of respect for her. It made her uncomfortable, and sad in a way.

She moved on from Jimmy to Christine who said “I’m going,” as soon as Elsa looked at her. Threatening May was enough to have an effect on the sickly girl. “I can’t wait,” she asserted before sneezing into her Kleenex.

The meeting ended on an optimistic note. Things looked up even more the next day when jWad texted that he’d snagged a CarboStick sponsorship.

“Great,” Elsa texted back. “What is a CarboStick? Low-protein diet health food?”

“Drum kit thing. Sticks are made of graphite. I’m buying a car with the stipend.”

“VCool. Did you mean to text May with this news?”

“No. I got wheels for our fly by for the high buy.”

Elsa blinked rapidly for a few seconds, but then caught the significance of jWad’s apparent musical talent and what it meant for the Perpetual Motion Club. She would not need to bargain with her mother for transportation to Gerry Martin’s exposition. It would never have been forthcoming anyway. Problem solved.

With things moving along so well, Elsa felt sure that soon all other problems would be solved. Even Lainie would come around, maybe even discuss the subject, or perhaps acknowledge Elsa’s undaunted enthusiasm for it. Of course that wouldn’t happen until Elsa won FutureWorld.

The goal had turned into her personal holy grail at this point. Winning that trophy, the bronze beaker, would return her mother to her. Jason Bridges would see her for what she was. Her father would be exonerated. The sponsors would start paying attention. Maybe she’d even get a logo or two to wear. Even Jimmy would return to his normal admiration of her, as if she cared.

Point was, all that prologue—the problems of her current situation—would be just so much scrap paper for the incinerator. After the FutureWorld competition, life would begin. Possibly the right schools would drop hints about junior year fast-tracking so she’d graduate a year early. She’d be even with Jason then. He’d take her to the prom (if he was out on bail). They’d both get scholarships to MIT. Did MIT have a basketball team? No matter, she’ll cross that bridge when she came to it.

So Elsa prepared and planned. She needed vital information—the secrets of free energy—for the final strokes of her PMM. Only one person could help her with that: the Queen herself. Each night for the entire week before the date at the Red Rapids Center, Elsa imagined herself at the rally.

She pictured the big theater filled with the eager students of perpetual motion. Up front the revered maestro would speak on the mysteries, the missing pieces in the puzzle, what it was that wasn’t friction that needed to be overcome. Gerry Martin would entertain questions, and reveal amazing information. It would be just like the free MIT courses online. Only instead of emailing comments, the students would raise their hands and speak when called upon. Detailed discussion would ensue. It wouldn’t just be the quick answers you get online where the distance of hyperspace separates expert from questioner. Elsa imagined overhead projections of torque and moments of inertia, the right-hand rule of electron flow, and dielectric constants.

She visited Gerry Martin’s webpage daily for the latest updates on her ideas and lectures. Always a piece was missing, something too big to elaborate on in the space of a website. Only an auditorium was big enough for the Big Idea.

Saturday’s engagement was shaping up to be the biggest event of the year according to Dr. Martin’s emailed announcements. Her current tour was ending with the Red Rapids performance in which she promised to unveil a working PMM—her latest, greatest invention. She had advice for those in Elsa’s position: Do not let others dissuade you from your beliefs. Modern science does not have all the answers. It is not complete. It is merely a process. Every day new geniuses might be born who will one day throw current scientific thought on its head. Galileo did it. Kepler did it. The history of science is filled with those who have not gone along with the crowd. They become legends because of it. You will become that legend if only you
BELIEVE
. The word “believe” was in all caps, bolded. It blinked on and off to show how important believing was. Elsa believed. And she was beside herself with excitement for Saturday night.

The week dragged on. Finally Friday came.

As she walked home, a thousand thoughts swirled through her mind. The world outside her head barely existed. She almost missed it when someone behind her called her name. Not exactly her name. A voice said “Ethel,” in a slightly projected way. She was sure at first it was part of the thoughts swirling in her brain. But then it came again out in the real world: “Ethel.”

No one else besides Elsa was walking on the sidewalk. No one was hanging in a window. No car was driving by with its windows rolled down. The call must have been for her. She turned to see a lone Jason Bridges. Her mind was so fuzzy, she almost didn’t recognize him.

“Hi,” she said, forcing herself to not gush. She smiled a little, doing her best to be coy. The smile widened into a grin much too quickly. She so wanted to ask how the police investigation was going, but she sensed it would be impolite.

Jason walked up to her and asked, “What you up to?” as if there was no police investigation going on. Fortitude.

Her heart jumped a few meters skyward.

“Nothing,” she said, forgetting completely the thing that had occupied her mind for the previous eight months, the subject that even Geometry could not dislodge. Those thoughts slowly started dissipating the moment Jason called not-quite-her-name, but close enough. Instead of remembering important things, she chose instead to revel in a fantasy starring Jason Bridges who hoped she might hang out with him because he no longer had his sycophantic friends and sexy but vapid girlfriends. He was now searching for the true meaning his life needed. Elsa, or Ethel rather, could provide that true meaning if only she’d come out of her shell and get drunk with him.

“You know your mom’s my lawyer,” he said. Bam! Right off the wall. A fantasy-killing statement. Not only did it have nothing to do with what she’d be dreaming about, but it made no sense.

He was ahead of her now, as she cogitated on the sidewalk, unable to move forward. “But you said . . . ” she ran to catch up.

“I guess,” he answered, knowing she was referring to that day in the hall at school. “But you said she was a real lawyer, remember?”

The thoughts in Elsa’s head collided with each other. Her mother Jason’s lawyer. How did that happen? Without her knowing about it? As if she needed to be consulted. As if Lainie and Jason were required to submit their plans for her approval.

“Why? I mean, when?” she asked.

“Budzynski found me a lawyer, but when he told Coach I couldn't play ball, even on my own, while this is going on, Budzynski stopped paying the guy. He figures I'm going to lose my touch without practice. I'm no good to him anymore.”

“Oh.” And then: “She’s a good lawyer. She’ll do a good job.”

For half a second she considered asking Jason to the Red River outing, but then she remembered the last conversation they’d had. The way he had said she was “not that kind of girl.” She still wasn’t sure what that meant, but she definitely knew she wasn’t going to set herself up to hear him say “sure,” and then not show up. She laughed a little to herself, then remembered where she was. “Well, gotta go!” she said abruptly and then took off running. At the corner of Beat Lane, she turned quickly and waved, then resumed her journey home, leaving Jason to his thoughts. Thus came the end of the fantasy and the happy return of anticipation for the great Gerry Martin.

One interesting thing occurred to her in the midst of all the giddy planning: her mom was Jason’s lawyer. She’d have intimate knowledge of the police investigation. The niggling feeling Elsa had about Jason’s predicament moved to the forefront for a short moment. Maybe she could seriously help Jason. All she had to do was get the last bit of information she needed from Gerry Martin, build her perpetual motion machine and her mom would be back on her side. And she’d be more than happy to share Jason’s secrets with her. Things were wrapping up quite nicely.