The Nerds of Rogersville

If you want to read these stories in order, it is complicated because the first ones are buried at the bottom. Following are links that you can click on to get them in order:

http://weblog.xanga.com/Roadkill_Fiction/402657036/bob-the-inventor.html

http://weblog.xanga.com/Roadkill_Fiction/402022020/science-fair.html

http://weblog.xanga.com/Roadkill_Fiction/401370709/bob-the-blues-nerd-or-bb-nelson.html

http://weblog.xanga.com/Roadkill_Fiction/489460052/bob-and-the-promn.html

http://www.xanga.com/Roadkill_Fiction/489459600/item.html

There are partial stories in the other postings, but these five are complete and more or less polished. My favorites are the first one (Campout) and Prom. Science Fair is tedious in places and needs serious surgery. Blues Nerd is fun, but maybe a bit shaky in the premise that people are really going to be that impressed with music being created by an unlikely source.

Let me know what you think.

Tim

Bob and the Prom

“So, what are we going to do about the prom?” I asked.

“Do? I wasn’t planning on doing anything about the prom,” Bob said. “What do you mean, do? Like a booby trap or a practical joke? Exploding punchbowl? Take over the sound system?”

“Bob, we’re in high school now,” I said patiently. “In high school, people go to the prom.”

“Hmm,” said Bob. “I guess we’re people, even if we’re nerds. Do we have to go?”

“Come on, Bob,” I said. “It’s supposed to be fun.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about dancing,” Bob said.

“You learned to play the guitar,” I pointed out. “You didn’t know a thing about music a year and a half ago.”

“Pfaah!” grunted Bob. He stared down at the circuit board on his bench. “I suppose you’re going to expect me to take a date, too.”

“Of course,” I said. “Only losers go to the prom alone. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

“Yeah, right. Who would I take? There aren’t any girls I like,” he said. “Or that like me,” he added as an afterthought, looking into the distance.

“Nora,” I said promptly.

“Nora!” he howled, glaring at me indignantly. “Nora? She’s my worst enemy!”

“Bob, she’s not an enemy,” I said. “She’s a rival. It’s different. Tony’s an enemy. Nora’s just your biggest rival.”

“Right. My archrival. And I suppose you’re going to take Junior,” scoffed Bob.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I was thinking.”

Bob burst out laughing. “I can’t believe you’re saying this stuff!”

“Think about it, Bob. Who else could you really talk to? You and Nora are on the same wavelength. Both top of the class, both science whizzes, state science fair honorees…. And she’s not bad looking.”

“Not bad looking!” scoffed Bob. Then he reflected for a minute. “No, I guess she’s not ugly, if she’d just get rid of those glasses. But she’s such a show-off!”

I laughed. “So are you.”

Bob glared at me. “Et tu, Brute?”

He turned his attention back to the circuit board and was silent for a few minutes. After a while, he said, “Well, you’re right about one thing. Nora is one of the few girls I can respect. But she hates me.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “She always wants to do better than you, and to have the last word, but that doesn’t mean she hates you. Have you ever just talked with her?”

“Mike, she hates me! She puts me down all the time.”

“You do the same thing to her,” I said. “Remember yesterday in science class? And you weren’t even right that time.”

“What are you talking about?” said Bob defiantly. “Oh, that,” he said, a bit deflated.

He ruminated. “You’re really going to ask Junior?” he said after a few minutes.

“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “I think.”

“She’s nicer than Nora,” Bob said.

“She’s cool. I think Nora could be nice if you were nice to her. Nora and Doug are friends.”

“Doug’s so laid-back, he’s even friends with Tony. And Nora’s a pyromaniac. Pushes people into fires and stuff,” Bob said. He absently reached down and scratched his ankle.

“How do you know she was the one who did that? Besides, the girl who pushed you into the fire also pushed you into the river and splashed you with water to put the fire out,” I said.

“How do you know she’s not the one who was beating on me with a stick?” Bob shot back.

I laughed. “Because that was Junia.”

“How do you know?” Bob asked curiously.

“Why do you think Nora calls her the Barbarian Queen?”

Bob wheeled to look at me. “Well, that’s another thing. Would you really take a girl to the prom that beat on me with a stick while I was enveloped in flames?” he asked.

“Well, she didn’t beat on me,” I said. “Besides, that was a long time ago.”

“Pfaah!” snorted Bob. He whirled back around to his circuit board. “Some friend you are.”

“Think about it,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

For all my seeming confidence, the thought of asking Junia or any other girl to the prom was terrifying. I hemmed and hawed and finally asked my sister for advice.

“Sure,” Nancy said. “If you ask nicely, the worst that can happen is that she’ll say no. But I’m thinking she’ll probably say yes, from the way you’ve talked about her. Just be yourself, and don’t make a big production out of it. It’s better if you ask in person, but the telephone is okay if you’re really chicken.”

“But I don’t know how to dance,” I said.

“Does she?” asked Nancy.

I shrugged. “I thought all girls could dance,” I said.

Nancy laughed. “Have you ever watched a dance? Most people don’t really know what they’re doing. They just get out there and move around. There isn’t any right way to dance to rock music. Now if it’s disco, or a waltz or polka or something, there are steps. But they’re easy to learn. I can teach you, if you want.”

“I need all the help I can get,” I said. “And Bob is totally clueless when it comes to those kinds of things.”

Nancy laughed. “Bob at the prom. Now there’s a thought!”

“Did you ask her? What did she say?” I asked Bob eagerly a couple of days later, back in his shop.

“She said she’d go to the prom with me when heck freezes over,” Bob said disgustedly. “I told you she didn’t like me!”

“She actually said that? When heck freezes over?” I said, and burst out laughing.

Bob glared at me. “Some friend you are,” he muttered.

“It’s just a funny expression. Bob, you actually sound disappointed,” I said. “I thought you didn’t even like her.”

“I’m not disappointed. I’m insulted,” Bob said. “There’s a difference.”

“Well, that’s a bummer. I’m sorry. I thought it was a good idea, but I guess not,” I said.

“What did Junior say?” Bob asked.

“Oh, she said yes. But she was really surprised that I asked her. She sounded like you did: ‘I thought we were enemies.’ I said, ‘No, just rivals.’ And she said, ‘Oh, okay. I guess so.’”

“I guess so,” repeated Bob. “That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“No,” I admitted. “She didn’t leap into my arms and smother me with kisses. Good thing, too! But I think we’ll have fun. She’s pretty cool.”

“Blah. I guess I actually am disappointed,” Bob said. “I’ve been wondering what it would be like for the four of us to hang out together without fighting. We’d have plenty to talk about.”

“Yeah, we would,” I said.

“Well, I guess I’ll drown my sorrows in solder,” Bob said. “See you later.”

“Take it easy.”

As I left the shop, I thought heard Bob mutter, “Heck is where people go who don’t believe in gosh.”

Monday afternoon, I went over to Bob’s shop after school. Bob was still working on the circuit panel. He turned when I came in.

“Guess what?” he said.

“You’ve got the fifty bucks you owe me?” I said.

“Right. Hey, Nora told me at lunchtime that she had thought it over and would be okay with going to the prom with me.”

“So heck froze over,” I said. “Great! Congratulations.”

“I think Junior had something to do with it, because Nora said she had talked about it with someone. Maybe she found out about Junior saying yes, and then she didn’t want to stay home alone.” Bob was silent for a minute. Then he said, “I sort of apologized for being sarcastic in science class last week.”

“Good,” I said. Then, “What do you mean, sort of?”

“Well, I said that as much as I hated to admit it, she was right that time.”

“Oh, yeah? What did she say?”

Bob grinned sheepishly. “She laughed and said, ‘So the Supernerd has a sensitive side.’”

“Hmm,” I said, impressed. “Come over to the sensitive side, Luke,” I intoned in my best Darth Vader voice.

I spent several evenings with Nancy, learning rudimentary dance steps. After the fourth lesson, she said, “Well, you’re not Fred Astaire, but at least you won’t be an embarrassment to the family name. Have you lined up a tux and flowers yet?”

“Bob and I are going to go after school tomorrow,” I said. “Any suggestions?”

“Black,” she said promptly. “Black always looks good.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen black flowers,” I said, ruminating. “What kind would they be?”

Nancy burst out laughing. “The tux, you idiot!” she said. “You can’t go wrong getting a black suit and shoes, and a white shirt. If you get something colored, it might look tacky or clash with your date’s gown. And white is so disco.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, regretfully dismissing my fantasy of dazzling the crowd with a gleaming white John Travolta outfit. “What about flowers, though? I’d hate to get something that didn’t work with her dress. Seems like girls are so picky about colors.”

“Well, white always works, with multicolored ribbons. Or you could get a mixture of several colors of flowers. But actually, as long as you go with pale-colored flowers, almost anything should work. They’d be less likely to clash than something really bright.”

“White or pale flowers,” I mumbled to myself. “Black suit. Black shoes.” Aloud I said, “Any other guidance, oh wisest of siblings?”

“Yes. Make sure the shoes fit, and get the suit altered if it’s shaped wrong for you. The people at the tux place will be able to tell you,” she said. She grinned. “I wonder what Bob’s taste in suits is like.” She snickered. She started towards the kitchen, then stopped. “Get your hair cut, too, at one of the good places. It’s worth the extra five bucks.”

I sighed and scratched the visit to Benny’s Barbershop from my mental list. This was going to consume all the money wadded up in the old sock in my underwear drawer, and make a significant dent in my bank account. I would have to look for more lawns to mow.

The first place we visited was Olshan Rentals, on Main Street. When Bob found out what it cost to rent a tux for one night, he was furious. “Forty bucks! I could buy a suit for that!” he exploded. “Come on, Mike. Let’s get out of here.”

I followed him out, looking around at the elegantly dressed mannequins that lined the walls. “Where to?” I asked.

“I’ve seen tuxes at Recycle Sally’s,” he said, throwing his leg over his bike seat. He hit the power switch, and his bike lunged forward, jerking his head back. I swung onto my ten-speed and pedaled hard to catch up.

Recycle Sally’s was an all-purpose thrift store next to the old railroad depot. The building had once been a diner, catering to the train passengers who would dash in for a bite while they waited. There was still a bar with barstools bolted to the floor, and an old kitchen with grease on the walls and the rusty stove hood. The counters and stools were piled with merchandise. Some things had prices on little cardboard tags that hung from string. A lot of stuff wasn’t priced, and you had to find Sally and ask her what she wanted for it.

Sally was sprawled on a threadbare chintz sofa, wearing a faded India cotton wraparound skirt and an army shirt with sergeant stripes. Her sandaled feet rested on a throw pillow. A tag hung just below her left heel. It said, “50¢”. I speculated whether it was attached to her sandals or to the pillow, or maybe even to her ankle. That would be cheap for an artificial leg.

Sally raised an eyebrow over the Russian novel she was reading and said, “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

“Good afternoon, Sally,” Bob said politely. “Do you have any tuxes?”

She put her novel down and eyed Bob speculatively. “A few. They’re in amongst the suits. I don’t know if they’ll fit you, but you’re welcome to try them.” She made a vague directional gesture and went back to her reading.

Bob seemed to know right where to go, so I followed him. The suits hung on a couple of racks in a corner near the entrance to the kitchen. There were a lot of colors and shapes. My eyes lit on an orange leisure suit. I pulled it off the rack and held it against my chest. “What do you think about this one?” I asked Bob.

He glanced at it. “Too short for you,” he said. He thumbed through the rack, pulled out a lime green suit, checked the size, shook his head, and put it back.

“Interesting,” I said, checking out a rose-colored polyester sports coat.

“Most of this stuff seems to be designed for short, stout guys,” Bob mused. He glanced at the waistband on a pair of chartreuse slacks. “42 x 29,” he read. “I’d have to get them seriously altered.”

“Or wear them sideways,” I said. “You could use them for a sail if your bike battery died.”

“She did say there were tuxes,” Bob said. “Oh, here we go.” He pulled out a green velvet smoking jacket. “Wow! Look at this!” He held it against himself.

“It’s a little worn in the elbows,” I said. “What’s the size?”

He looked inside the jacket. “46S,” he read. “I guess that means Short. And the slacks are…” he pulled the waist open, “44 waist. It doesn’t say what the length is.” He pulled the green pants off the hanger and held them in front of him. The cuffs hung just below his knees.

I snickered. “Oh, those are definitely you, Bob. You and your date could fit inside them together.”

“One in each leg, huh?” he said regretfully, looking longingly at the green velvet jacket. He reassembled the outfit on the hanger and moved on.

I actually found a black tux, but it was quite worn, and way too small. All the other suits seemed to be in odd colors, and most were short and wide. Hardly any were tuxes.

“Ah! Now we’re talking!” Bob exclaimed. He held up an electric blue coat with glossy satin lapels and long swallowtails.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“No! I think the size is actually pretty close. And look at this! It’s only $17.50!” Bob pulled the coat off the hanger and tried it on. The sleeves hung well below his hands. The tails hung against the heels of his tennis shoes. “See? I can get the sleeves shortened, but it feels pretty good in the shoulders.”

“That color is just like your guitar,” I observed. “A very speical shade of blue.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Bob said. “Too bad we aren’t performing at the prom. Hey, look at the pants!” He unhooked a pair of smudged white slacks from the hanger. They cascaded onto the floor in front of him, about a foot longer than his legs. There was a blue satin stripe down the outside of each leg.

“Is the waist the right size?” I asked.

Bob looked inside. “It says 30,” he said. “I use a 32. They can alter them for me.”

I tried unsuccessfully to picture someone who could fit into the suit.  “Must have been a basketball player,” I said. “A really, really thin one.”

“The shirt even comes with it,” Bob said. He brandished a shiny white silk shirt with a ruffled front.

“Is that a man’s shirt, or is it a blouse?” I asked. The shirt evoked a vague memory of the cover on an old Tom Jones album. I think my oldest sister owned it. She didn’t take it with her to college, for some reason.

Bob looked at the tag. “15-38,” he read. “That’s man’s sizing. I think my dad wears a 16-32. No, he wears 16½.”

“What about a tie?” I asked.

Bob waved a powder blue silk bowtie and matching cummerbund.

“It’s got everything,” he said proudly. “All I need is shoes. Seventeen fifty! Olshan is a scam.”

I watched in morbid fascination as he scanned the shoe racks. He picked up a pair of blue platforms, and I shuddered. I sighed with relief when he put them back down. He bent to pick up a pair of white slip-ons and grinned at me. “Three bucks! And they’re my size!” He sat down on a box to try them on.

I glanced through the suit racks one more time and went over to where Bob was shuffling around in the white shoes. He had the blue jacket on again, with the sleeves pushed up, and was admiring himself in the mirror.

“Are you sure about that color?” I asked. “My sister said it was classier to go with black, so the color doesn’t clash with your date’s outfit.”

“Oh, blue goes with everything. Like jeans,” Bob said.

He gathered up his discoveries and we threaded our way to the cash register. Sally put down her novel and languidly got to her feet. The 50¢ tag stayed on the pillow, and her leg moved exceptionally well for an artificial one. “Did you find everything you need?” she asked.

“Everything,” Bob said smugly.

Sally rang his purchase up slowly and stuffed the garments into a couple of paper grocery sacks. “Remember, there’s no return on purchases,” she said. “Thank you for your business.” She sat down on the sofa and reached for her novel.

“You’re welcome,” Bob said.

“Just $21.76 for the whole outfit!” he gloated as we boarded our bikes. “Now I just need to get it altered.”

“Where are you going to do that?” I asked. “Olshan’s?”

“No way!” Bob snorted. “That den of thieves! I think I’ll go to the laundry. They do altering there, and they can dry-clean it for me, too. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to keep shopping,” I said. “How about if we meet at the florist’s in about an hour?”

“Sure,” Bob said. “See you there.”

His bike jerked forward, the rear tire spinning. Bob bounced from foot to foot a couple of times, then settled into a straight line and disappeared down the street.

I pedaled slowly back to Olshan’s, and with the help of the clerk, chose a black tux with satin lapels, a pleated white shirt, black satin cummerbund, shiny black shoes, and a white bowtie. I put the whole outfit on, and the clerk marked it with pins for altering.

The total came to just over $48. Paying the extra six dollars for shoes bothered me, but I tried to picture my down-in-the-heel black Sunday loafers with the tux. Even with a good polishing, they would look scruffy. I regretfully counted the money out, and headed for the florist’s shop.

Bob was sitting on his bike, sipping a lemonade from the drugstore. The white shoes were in one of his bike baskets. He grinned. “The altering and cleaning is only twelve bucks,” he said proudly. “So I got my whole outfit, tailored to fit me, for less than 35 dollars. Did you find something reasonable?”

“Well, I found a tux I like,” I said.

We went into Coombs’ florist shop. The florist, a nice lady with Gladys on her nametag, looked over the counter at us and said, “Well, good afternoon! Are you here for prom flowers?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bob said.

“All right. Here are the corsages we have designed for this year.” She flipped open a book to show us a bewildering array of pictures of flowers of all hues and shapes.

As I scanned the pages, Bob said, “Do any of them have roses?”

Gladys smiled. “We have a variety of elegant rose corsages. What did you have in mind?”

Bob shrugged. “I don’t know. Red is nice. Yellow roses are cool, too, like in the song.”

“Was your date born in Texas?” Gladys asked, flipping to a page in the middle.

“I don’t think so,” Bob said. “I don’t even know what planet she’s from, or whether she was born, hatched, or cloned. What colors of roses do you have?”

Gladys pointed to a several elaborate arrangements. “We have roses in red, white, pink, yellow, lavender, and sometimes we get some lovely black velvet roses.”

“Black?” I asked, perking up. “What do they look like?”

Gladys went to a refrigerated case in the corner and brought back a vase with a single large rose in it. The petals were black and crinkly, like crepe paper, and had deep red tips.

“Whoa! That is nice,” I said, very impressed.

“They’re rare, though, so we don’t get very many of them,” Gladys said. “They’re a special order item.”

Bob said, “Humph. Not very bright colored. How many roses come in the corsage?”

“Three or four,” Gladys said. She gave the prices.

“I’d like one with four,” Bob said. “Red, yellow, pink, and lavender.”

Gladys looked at him askance, and said, “Are you sure you want to mix the colors? Usually people go with one color, or white and one other color.”

“Positive,” Bob said. “All four colors.”

Gladys made some notes on a card. “Would you like a matching boutonniere? The man’s arrangement usually has two or three buds or small open roses.”

“What’s the difference between the buds and the open roses?” Bob asked.

Gladys led him to the refrigerated case in the corner and pointed. “These up here are buds. They’re still closed, and you can see the tight round shape. These over here are open. They’re a different variety from the bigger roses we use for the corsages, quite a bit smaller, but they’re matched for color.”

“Open,” Bob said promptly. “I guess I want three, in red, yellow, and white. No pink or lavender. The white will match my suit.”

Gladys opened her mouth to say something, then closed it, shook her head slightly, and returned to the counter. She finished writing up Bob’s selection, and turned to me. “How about you, young man? Are you ready to order?”

I was overwhelmed by the choices in the catalog. “Go ahead and pay, Bob. I need more time,” I said.

Bob paid his bill without grumbling. “I saved ten dollars on my tux by going to the thrift store,” he cheerfully informed Gladys. “That makes it easier to handle the cost of these flowers.”

Gladys smiled politely and rang up his order. “You can come by any time the day of the prom,” she said. “Be sure to keep the flowers refrigerated after you pick them up.”

Bob tucked his receipt into a pocket and said, “I’m going to head on home, Mike. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Take it easy,” I said.

After he left, I cleared my throat and said, “I really don’t know what to order. I’ve never done this before, and I have no idea what color of dress my date will have.”

“Well, tell me a little about her. What does she look like?” Gladys asked.

I racked my brain. “Well, she’s maybe four inches shorter than I am. She has shortish red hair, kind of curly, and freckles, and has an okay face, not gorgeous but nice. Especially when she smiles,” I added, then blushed.

“All right. How does she usually dress?”

I thought a while. “Jeans,” I said. “T-shirts or polo shirts. White Adidas. She has a green backpack.”

“Does she wear any particular color of shirt more often?” Gladys pursued.

“Well, today…” I dug around for a memory. “Green,” I finally said. “She has this one green polo shirt that she wears at least once a week. I think it’s Kelly green.”

Gladys smiled. “Good choice for a redhead. I would guess, if she’s getting good advice, she might have a green prom dress, but of course, it’s not the only color a redhead might wear. She might wear white or black or some shades of blue, or even a burgundy.”

Gladys thumbed through the catalog. “These orchids look good with almost anything.” She turned the book to show me a page of exotic flowers in several shades. “White roses are also versatile. We could skip the ribbon and go with more greenery, or provide several colors of ribbon.”

We spent several minutes talking over all the different arrangements that might work. However, my eyes kept straying to the black velvet rose still on the counter beside Gladys’s elbow. I had never seen a more beautiful flower.

Suddenly, I blurted out, “I’ve made up my mind. I’d like a corsage with four of the black velvet roses, and a matching boutonniere with three buds, please.”

Gladys’s right eyebrow rose about an inch. “Okay….” she said slowly. “Those will be lovely arrangements. Are you sure about the color?”

“Yes,” I said. “Can you put some green ferns or something with them, and maybe a little of those white flowers?” I pointed to a corsage on the right-hand page of the catalog.

Gladys nodded. “Sure. Baby’s breath and ferns will make a nice complement. What about a ribbon?”

I thought a minute. “Do you have a red like the tips of the rose?” I asked.

Gladys bent over and pulled a roll of ribbon from under the counter. “This color here is called blood red. It’s the closest match,” she said.

“That’s perfect,” I said. “And some black ribbon, to go with it.”

Gladys did something funny with her lips and bent under the counter again. She unrolled a few inches of shiny black ribbon and layered it with the red. “Like this?” she asked.

I looked at the two ribbons and thought a moment. “It doesn’t look quite right,” I said. “What if you put the black one underneath?”

Gladys moved the red ribbon out and put it on top of the black, overlapping it part way.

“That’s not quite right either,” I said, frowning. “Too much red.” I scratched my head. “And the black is too shiny.”

Gladys stared at the ribbons a minute, then pulled another roll of black from under the counter. It wasn’t shiny. She took a pair of scissors from a drawer and snipped two short lengths of it. Then she sandwiched the red ribbon between the two scraps of black ribbon.

“Yes! Perfect! That’s what I want,” I said. “How much is it?”

Gladys made some notes on her pad. “Well, you need to remember that these roses cost more because they’re special order. You said four roses for the corsage, and three buds for you, right?” She added some figures on the adding machine and quoted me a total about eight dollars more than Bob’s. “We can bring it down a little if you go with three flowers for the corsage or two buds for the boutonniere,” she said.

I gulped. “No, that’s fine,” I said. I fished into my pocket and pulled out the last of my cash, including loose change. After I paid my bill, I had 37 cents left over. I’d have to drain my bank account completely to afford a haircut.

I got home just in time for supper. Nancy looked over at me at supper, and said, “Well, how’d your shopping go?”

“Not bad,” I mumbled. “Got most of it squared away.”

“What did Bob choose for a tux?” she asked inquisitively.

I grinned. “You’d like it. We found it at Recycle Sally’s. I think it belonged to some kind of circus performer.” I described the electric blue tux in detail, including the ruffled shirt and white shoes. My folks and Nancy were quite amused.

“What did you get for yourself, Mike?” my mom asked.

“I got a black tux at Olshan’s, with black shoes,” I said. “White shirt. Pleats,” I said, grinning at Nancy.

“Good choice,” she said. “What did you get for flowers?”

I gulped. “Well, Bob got a corsage with four different colors of roses. I think they were red, yellow, pink, and purple or something. He got red, yellow, and white for himself.”

My family discussed that for a while. Then Nancy asked, “What did you get for Junia, Mike?”

“Oh, roses,” I said. “Hey, I’ve got some serious homework to do tonight. Excuse me, please.”

I woke up at three in the morning in a cold sweat. Black velvet roses! What was I thinking of? They wouldn’t match anything! Black ribbon! This wasn’t a funeral! I tried unsuccessfully to picture Junia in a black dress. She just wasn’t the black dress type. Was she? Would the roses work with white? Would Junia wear white? Had I ever seen her in white? Sometimes she wore a white polo shirt. She had light skin with freckles. Her freckles showed more when she wore a white t-shirt. Blood red. Now that would be a gorgeous color, but no one wore a blood red dress, especially not someone with orangey-red hair. Did they? Blood red and black would not go with green. Kelly green, Kermit green, emerald green. She would wear green, and the black roses would look horrendous. We would get laughed out of the Civic Center, and she would throw the corsage in my face and call her dad to take her home.

I tossed and turned the rest of the night. At school the next morning, Bob said, “You look like they dragged you to school behind the station wagon. Are you sick?”

“Hmmph,” I said. “Didn’t sleep too good.”

“Was it the homework? I could have helped you, if you’d called.”

“No, it wasn’t the homework,” I said grumpily. “I just couldn’t sleep, that’s all. I’ll be fine.”

The bell rang, and we shoved our way into the school. “Had you made any arrangements for getting to and from the prom? Because I have a great idea,” Bob said.

“My sister said she’d take us,” I said.

“My idea’s better than that. Come over tomorrow and I’ll show you,” Bob said. “Cheerio.” He turned down the hall for his chemistry class, and I shuffled gloomily into Spanish.

Junia and Nora were in their usual seats near the windows. I nodded briefly to them and sat down at the back, avoiding any further eye contact.

Bob was sitting on the floor in the middle of his shop with his welding helmet flipped back on his head. He was surrounded by pieces of alloy tubing, half a dozen bicycle frames, a green patio glider lying on its back, and several 26” bike wheels. He was scribbling something in chalk on the floor and muttering to himself.

“Hey,” I said unenthusiastically.

He continued scribbling for a couple of minutes, then looked up and said, “Hey!”

Bob was the picture of good cheer. He had gray smudges on both cheeks, probably from his filthy scorched welder’s gloves. His eyes glowed with the fire of a creator.

“What are you working on?” I asked, trying to see his sketch.

“Transportation,” Bob said. “Trying to figure a way to get four of us to and from the prom at night.” He whistled tunelessly and selected a piece of pipe, sighting down it to see how straight it was.

“Nancy offered to drive us,” I ventured.

“Pfaah! Getting driven on dates is junior high stuff,” Bob snorted.

“We never went on dates in junior high,” I pointed out. “Matter of fact, we haven’t gone on dates in high school, either.”

“That’s beside the point,” Bob said. “Neither of us has a driver’s license, and it’s tacky to be driven to a date. So I’m designing something to get us all there.”

“What have you come up with?” I asked.

“Watch and be utterly amazed,” Bob said cheerily. “Oh you of little faith. I’m designing a rickshaw, only instead of being pulled by a coolie, it will be pulled by Ethel here.” Bob reached out to pat his bike, then realized it was six feet away across a pile of bike frames.

“Since when are you calling your bike Ethel?” I asked grumpily. “You’re making a trailer to be pulled by your bike?”

“Exactly,” Bob said smugly. “Upholstered seats, adjustable footrest. Stereo music for your listening enjoyment. Cupholders and ice chest for your beverage of choice. In the unlikely event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, a Halloween mask will fall from overhead. Please place it over your mouth and nose and breathe normally.”

He pushed pipes and junk out of his way and got to his feet, gesturing dramatically at a smudged chalk drawing partly obscured by a bike wheel.

I examined it dubiously from the edge of the circle of debris. “Can your bike pull that much weight?”

Bob drew himself up to his full 5’10”. “Sir! You impugn my inventive genius! With the proper gearing, Ethel is capable of pulling the average family station wagon.”

“Yeah, right. At 12½ miles an hour,” I said wearily. It had been another bad night of obsessing about black roses.

“We shall see,” Bob said briskly. “First thing to do is get the frame built. Then we build the structure onto that. Help me out of here, will you?”

He picked up a bike frame and tossed it carelessly to one side, while I dragged a tangle of bike wheels and pipe out of the ring.

“The heart of the rickshaw is this glider,” Bob said, wading through the opening. He tugged on it fruitlessly. It was embedded in a tangle of pipe and bike parts. I worked my way around to the other end of it and began pulling junk off of it.

When we finally had it upright, Bob said, “I was thinking, we take the seat off the glider and weld it to a frame of tubing. We can put a bike wheel on each side, either with one long axle, or a short one welded onto each end. The frame will be V-shaped and attach to the trailer hitch on the back of the bike.”

We set to disassembling the glider with wrenches and screwdrivers. It was slow going. After a while, Bob ran into a rusted screw. “This stinking thing! The head is stripped, and it’s so rusted I can’t get it loose!” He threw down his hand tools and said, “This is ridiculous!”

He stomped around the pile of junk and rummaged in a corner until he came up with an old red grinder with a cut-off wheel. “Let’s do this the quick way.” He grabbed a pair of safety glasses from his desk, and an extension cord from a coil hanging from the ceiling.

The grinder made short work of the remaining bolts holding the glider together. In about five minutes, the seat was sitting free on the floor, surrounded by the remains of the base.

“That’s better,” Bob said, flipping up his glasses. “Now, let’s get the frame built.”

We argued a little about the best shape for the frame. Finally Bob said, “Let’s just get started. If we don’t like it, we’ll cut it and redo it.”

He picked up a piece of tubing, laid it alongside the glider seat to get a length, and cut it with the grinder. He cut another one just like it, then took two real long pieces of pipe and lay them perpendicular to the two cut pieces. Then he started welding.

In a short time, we had a frame built that was square at the back, about as wide as the glider. It was triangular at the front. The glider seat was then set onto the frame so we could figure out how to weld it into place.

We had a long argument about whether the seat should face forward or backward. We also argued about whether the frame should sit on top of the axle, or should hang under it so the seat would be closer to the ground. I was also worried about how bumpy the ride would be.

Finally we broke for lunch. We biked over to Bob’s house in silence.

“Man, you’re in a bad mood today,” Bob said, as we began assembling sandwiches.

“Sorry, man. I’m just tired. Haven’t slept well for a couple of days.” I moodily bit into a dill wedge.

“Lovesick or what?” Bob asked.

“Pfaah!” I snorted, nearly spitting out my bite of pickle. “I don’t think so!”

“Well, you’ve been awfully moody the last few days. You shouldn’t take things so seriously. You were the same way when we were doing our blues performance, and when we did the science fair with our centrifuge. It’s not like anyone’s going to notice you more than anyone else,” Bob said.

“Humph!” I said. “We always seem to get noticed. And look at the kind of stuff that happens to us. Yogurt and ink all over the place, singing in front of the whole school, you hanging from the stage ceiling, both of us getting pounded on by thousands of irate Girl Scouts.”

“Well, yeah,” Bob said. “We have created a lot of good memories, haven’t we? I wonder, Master Frodo, if we shall ever be put into words told by the fireside or read out of a great big book with red and black letters years and years afterwards.”

I thought back to Bob in sunglasses and his blue guitar with the dots on the neck. “Yeah, I guess we’re a little part of Rogersville history, for better or for worse.”

“I just want to spread cheer and sunshine wherever I go,” Bob said. “Leave the world a better place than I found it.”

“Yeah, right!” I snorted. “Cheer and sunshine, that’s you to a T.”

“Look,” said Bob, setting down his sandwich. “What I’m good at is building stuff. Coming up with cool ideas and turning them into machines. You’re pretty good at making them easier to use and smoother to operate. Neither of us is the suave,” (he pronounced the word “swave”) “debonair type, and we’re not studly jock types, either. But you aren’t going to make a total fool of yourself with Junior, and even if you do, well, so what? You’ll both get over it. She wouldn’t even be going if you didn’t invite her. So let’s focus on what we do pretty well, and don’t sweat the other stuff. If we can build this trailer and make it work, who else is going to be able to say that they rode to their first prom in an electric rickshaw?”

I looked at Bob with grudging admiration. “Whoa! Where’d you get all this wisdom all of a sudden, Mr. Electric Blue Tux?”

“Never underestimate the depths of the Nelson intellect,” Bob said. “Pass the pickles. My mom was talking just last night about going to a party with my dad for their first date. Dad had mismatched socks because he got dressed in the dark because he had forgotten to pay his apartment electric bill, and his electric shaver wouldn’t work for the same reason, so he had stubble all over his chin. Then at the party, some idiot spilled beer on both of them. A couple years later, they got married, and soon produced the greatest genius Rogersville has ever known.”

“I didn’t know you had any siblings,” I said. “Hand me that mustard, will you?”

When we got back to the junkyard, things went a little more smoothly. “Look,” I said. “If we put the trailer up on the wheel axles, that makes it fourteen inches off the ground. Then the bench on top of that… that puts the bench up about thirty inches off the ground. If we hang it lower….”

Bob butted in. “How about if we use A-frames of bent tubing to hang the frame about eight inches off the ground?” he said. “We set the bench on it, so it’s about two feet off the ground. The footrest will be the back edge of the frame, about sixteen inches below the seat. If we face the seat backward, no one will have to climb over anything. You just step up eight inches, turn around, and sit.”

“Now you’re talking,” I said enthusiastically. “I think looking backwards will be all right. It’s like riding on the back during a hay ride. At the speed we’ll be going, no one will get dizzy.”

Bob quickly cut and bent the tubing and we hung the trailer between two bike wheels. We chose trail bike wheels because of the fatter tires, to make the ride smoother. The bike axles took a little engineering, but Bob had experience from making the trailer for the submersible, so it didn’t take very long. The triangular yoke took the same kind of trailer hitch as the other trailer. By midafternoon, we had a simple, fairly elegant trailer frame.

“Now to put the bench on it,” Bob said.

“We don’t want it too upright,” I said. “It needs to lean back a little to be comfortable.”

Bob took a couple of boards and propped up the front edge of the bench. “Try that,” he said.

By trial and error, we settled on an angle that felt pretty comfortable. Bob measured the distances from the front and back edges of the seat to the floor and jotted it down with chalk. Then we set about attaching the bench to the trailer frame.

It was trickier than it sounds, because I was adamant that we not just end-weld the base of the bench to the frame pieces. “It’s likely to snap off!” I insisted. “Just think about the whiplash your neck goes through every time you accelerate.”

“Pfaah!” Bob snorted. “I’d be in a collar if it was as bad as you say. The submersible trailer has held up, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t have a tall load of three people holding on for dear life.”

We finally worked it out that the bench base would stand on one piece of framing and then another piece of metal would be welded to the sides of the base for additional support. Bob set the seat into the frame and began figuring out the lengths and angles. Before too long, he had bench up in place. The base was welded onto a couple of pieces of square tubing that were in turn attached to the frame.

“Now for the reinforcements,” he said, picking up a length of angle iron.

“Hold on a minute,” I said. “Let me check it out first. We don’t have the trailer attached to the bike.”

“Good point,” Bob said.

He hooked the front of the trailer to the hitch on the bike. I climbed up into the bench. “How’s it feel?” Bob asked.

“Like I’m going to pitch off on my face,” I said. “Lifting the front of the trailer changed the angle completely.”

Bob whipped out his tape measure and checked the heights. He grunted. “No kidding.” He made some marks on the frame pieces, then lit into them with the grinder.

After a few minutes of cutting and welding, he said, “Try that on for size.”

I climbed back into the throne. “Very comfy,” I said. “Sew her down.”

Bob cut some lengths of angle iron and finished securing the bench. “All right!” he said as he finished. “Ready for a test run.”

We cranked open the garage-door end of the shed and turned the bike so it was facing the right direction. I climbed back into the seat, and Bob straddled the bike. He turned to look at me. I gave him the thumbs up.

The bike snapped forward, the back wheel skidding on the slick concrete. Bob struggled to keep it upright, and I lurched on the trailer seat, nearly falling on my face. Then we were rolling through the parking lot towards the gate.

A scrap truck chose that moment to enter the gate, which was only wide enough for one truck, so Bob made a quick left. The weight of the trailer yanked his back wheel sideways. It skidded, spitting up gravel, and I was sure Bob was going to wipe out. He put his left foot down and bounced along a ways, slewing back and forth, until we were going in a straight line again. Then he turned more gradually back into his shed and cut the power. We lurched to a stop, the trailer’s momentum pushing the bike sideways again.

“Well, it certainly has the power,” I said. “But twelve and a half miles an hour is too fast for this kind of rig. How come you took the rheostat off, anyway?”

“It was hard on the motor,” Bob said. “It made it heat up when it wasn’t at full speed. I started smelling smoke, so I took it off and went back to the switch.”

“Humph. What about gearing it down?” I asked.

Bob looked at the bike a while, then snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it,” he announced. “Sprockets. Get one of those ten-speeds and take the crank off. I’ll take off the sprockets I already have.”

He took the back wheel off the bike and the sprocket off the motor, while I struggled to take the crank off an old, heavy ten-speed from the pile.

“I’m probably going to need more chain, too,” Bob said. “Get me a couple that are the same size, while I dig up my chain tool.”

I already had one chain lying at my feet, so I compared it to the one from his bike. It was slightly different. I checked around through the pile of junk and finally found two chains that matched.

Meanwhile, Bob rummaged through toolboxes, muttering more and more audibly to himself as he found everything but the chain tool. He had just reached the level of intelligible swearing when he suddenly said, “There you are, you stupid….” His voice dropped to a calm, quiet murmur, and he returned to where I had laid the matching chains side by side.

By suppertime, we had a smaller sprocket on the motor shaft, and a wheel with five sprockets on the back of the bike. The chain was on the biggest of these.

“Time for another test drive,” I said.

Bob looked at his watch. “Man, I’ve got to go! I’ll drive it home, and we’ll work on the trailer thing tomorrow.”

I helped him close up the shop. He hopped onto his bike, waved to me, and flipped the power switch on, steeling himself against the usual whiplash.

It was really funny to watch. His head actually went forward, because the bike made a much gentler lunge than usual. It immediately settled into a plodding gait. Bob rolled slowly across the parking lot and out the gate.

I hopped onto my bike and pedaled in pursuit. I caught up with him just a hundred yards down the road. He was plodding along at a geezer’s pace, fuming and muttering.

“Seven miles an hour!” he shouted at me. “Seven stinking miles an hour! I could walk this fast!”

I grinned. “I guess it’s my turn to leave you in the dust,” I said. “See you Monday.”

I settled into a comfortable rhythm and soon left him far behind.

Monday morning I was at the bike rack when Bob rolled up. “I bet you had to leave half an hour early to get here in time, didn’t you?” I said.

He grunted. “No way. I hit eighteen miles an hour coming over here. Look.” He gestured to the back of his bike, and I saw that it now had two sprockets of different sizes on the motor shaft, with a shifter from a ten-speed bike crank to move between them. The back wheel still had five sprockets, and there was now a derailleur to keep tension on the chain and shift gears.

“I should have done this a long time ago,” Bob said. “Now I can start in low if I want, as long as I remember to shift down before I stop. It took a couple of hours to fine-tune it yesterday, though. It’s a little jumpy.”

“Awesome,” I said. “That should make a huge difference. Did you try it with the trailer?”

“With the trailer on, it still tops out at 12 ½ miles an hour,” said Bob. “It acts up in the higher gears.”

We pushed into the throng and went to our classes. Junia smiled wanly at me. She looked miserable, like she hadn’t slept. Nora came in as I sat down, and they held a whispered conversation as class began. Nora glanced back at me once. Were they talking about me? Was Junia having second thoughts?

In English class, I overheard some girls talking about dresses and flowers, and my stomach began to sink again. Black velvet roses! What was I thinking of? Was it too late to change my order? I should have gone with an orchid, or white roses. The trailer seemed like a pretty stupid idea, too. What a geek I was, showing up on a rattletrap trailer behind a junky electric bike, with black flowers!

By noon I was under a cloud of gloom. I poked at my cafeteria beanie-weenies while Bob rambled cheerfully about the trailer and the gearing. Finally he looked at me, and said, “What’s your problem, anyhow? You look like you’re coming down with something.”

“Humph,” I said.

Bob scrutinized me for a while, and shook his head. “It’s fear,” he pronounced. “I can see it in your eyes. Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Smith is a coward. He is terrified of girls, of doing something stupid, and of failure. Hecklers, form a line on the right. Scoffers on the left.”

“Shut up,” I said, throwing a biscuit at him.

One of the monitors saw what I did and came over. Bob smiled at her and said, “Isn’t he nice? He’s sharing his lunch with me.”

We listened to her lecture, me grimly, Bob amiably. When she had left, Bob said, “I don’t think it’s Junia you’re scared of, is it? You’re really afraid of making a fool of yourself. That’s what it is.”

“Humph,” I said noncommittally.

He stuffed his mouth with apple cake. With his cheeks full, he said, “Mike, this isn’t like a test. It doesn’t go on your record, and unless you do something really remarkable like light methane on the stage or fall into the punchbowl, you aren’t going to stand out. So get over it. Everyone else will. Do you really think you’re that much more important than everyone else?”

“Blah,” I said as the bell rang for our next class.

After school, I said to Bob, “I have to do something. I’ll see you in a little while.”

I hurried home and dialed the florist shop.

“Coombs Flowers. This is Gladys,” she said.

“Uh, hi. This is Mike Smith. I was wondering if it would be possible to change my flower order.”

There was a pause. “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

“Mike Smith. I ordered flowers on Friday.”

“Oh, okay. Just a minute, let me look that up.”

I heard rustling in the background. After several minutes, she came back to the phone.

“You ordered the black velvet roses, is that correct? For the prom this Friday?”

“Uh, yes. That’s right.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Smith, but that order went in on Saturday, and there’s no way we can change it now. The flowers are already on their way here.”

My heart sank down into my stomach. “Thank you,” I said.

I put the receiver down and shambled out to my bike. For better or for worse, I would be getting the black velvet roses.

During that afternoon and the next, Bob and I rigged the trailer with taillights and changed out the little bike headlight for a big spotlight. Bob welded a rack behind the bench. We put a boombox on it, powered by a truck battery set underneath it. Bob made a cradle for an ice chest, and swiped a package of plastic cups and a couple of six-packs of soft drinks and mineral water from his mom’s pantry.

“I’ll get a bag of ice on Friday when I run my other errands,” he said. “You can bring snacks if you want.”

We wired cupholders scavenged from junked cars to the two arms of the bench, and bolted a board across the back of the frame for a footrest. Bob cut fenders for his bike from sheet metal, in case there were any puddles. The metal came from a big blue sign advertising feed or something. We made fenders for the trailer wheels too, because it was easy to rub your arm on them or catch dirt thrown up from the road if you were on either end of the bench. After Bob had welded all the fenders in place, I went over them with the grinder to try to make them the same size and shape, and to round the corners a little.

“Looks like a Volkswagen Thing now,” Bob observed, admiring my handiwork.

I rolled up a clean tarp and bungeed it behind the bench, just in case. Bob had a rain poncho on his desk, still in the package, so I tucked that in with the tarp.

“The forecast says we aren’t going to get rain for weeks,” Bob said.

I grinned. “No telling what could happen when you’ve been dancing. Remember when we were building drama sets last fall?”

Bob flung a welder’s glove at me, and I ducked.

When we were done with all the improvements we could think of, we sat on the floor and contemplated our chariot. “Not much to look at,” Bob observed.

I cast my eyes over the gray tubing, the green seat, the pine board, the blue fenders, and the rusty chrome bike wheels. “No,” I said. “A paint job would help.”

Bob snapped his fingers and jumped to his feet. He ran to one corner of the shop and began burrowing through piles and boxes. He turned triumphantly with a can of spray paint in his hand. “Someone left two cases of these cans in a junked car,” he said.

“What color are they?” I asked.

He looked at the can. “This one is matte black,” he said. He rummaged some more, then held up the other can. “Wine red,” he said.

I felt a shiver run up my back. “Oh, man! I know just the color scheme,” I said.

I noticed that Junia seemed quiet and depressed all week, and I wondered if she was having second thoughts about going with me. On Thursday I approached her at lunch and said, “Hey, we’ll be by to pick you up tomorrow night at around 6:45, after we get Nora. Is that all right?”

She smiled mechanically and said, “That will be fine.”

She didn’t say anything else, so I said, “All right then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Friday was a blur. I was numb through my classes. School ended early that afternoon. I rode into town and sat in line at Fantastic Sam’s for a haircut. Jim and several other football players were there, too. I did my best to ignore their banter, and stared sightlessly at a celebrity magazine. They paid no attention to me, fortunately.

I finally got into one of the chairs. A girl named Judy wrapped a plastic sheet around my neck, and said, “What kind of cut do you want, hon?” She had bright red lipstick, and was chewing gum. At least she didn’t pop it while she chewed.

“Uh, I don’t know,” I said. “Not too short. I just want it to look good.”

“Okay, hon,” she smiled. Her perfume reminded me of Thanksgiving dinner. Cloves or something.  “I’ll see what I can do. Do you want a shampoo and blowdry?”

“Uh… I guess so,” I said.

She led me over to a corner and sat me in a deep recliner. My head hung uncomfortably into a ceramic sink, or was it a toilet? She zapped my head with scorching water out of an attachment like the one in the school cafeteria for blasting the dirty food off the plates. Then she rubbed shampoo that smelled like beer and vinegar into my hair, scrubbed it into a lather, and vigorously worked my scalp over with her sharp fingertips. She rinsed the shampoo off again with the sprayer, then rubbed conditioner in. The conditioner smelled comforting, like my mom’s Sunday perfume, and the final rinse was done with lower water pressure.

My neck was sore when I went back over to the barber’s chair. Judy rubbed my head and neck with a fluffy towel. She combed out my hair and divided it into quadrants, each held with a big clip. Then she set to with scissors and comb, humming to herself and chewing her gum. I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

Comb and snip, snip and comb, one quadrant after another. Then she combed everything together and combed and snipped some more.

Finally, she took a buzzer and trimmed the hair off my neck and squared up my sideburns. Then she took a blowdryer and directed a hurricane of scorching air at my face. She rolled my hair around a weird round brush and blasted it with the hot air, and pushed it this way and that. Finally she set the dryer back in its holster, spun me around to face the mirror, and said, “Well, hon, there you go. What do you think?”

I stared at the unfamiliar head in the mirror. My hair looked like it had been lifted off of one of the posters on the wall and set on my head. It was parted about where I usually parted it, but everything was smooth, flowing lines and curves.

“Whoa. It’s great,” I said. I started to get up.

“Would you like hairspray?” Judy asked.

“Oh. Yeah, that would be good,” I said, thinking about riding in the rickshaw.

She zapped my hair all around, pushed it a little more with the brush, whisked my neck and collar with a little brush, and whipped off the plastic sheet. “That’ll be fourteen dollars.”

I delved into my wallet and paid without comment. There was one lone dollar left in my billfold. I stared at it a bit gloomily and started to put the wallet back in my pocket. Then, on impulse, I took the dollar out and tucked it into Judy’s tip jar.

She beamed. “Thanks, hon. You have a really nice time at the prom, okay?”

I biked over to Olshan’s and tried on my tux. It fit perfectly. I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked a lot like the dude on the GQ magazine on the counter, down to the glum expression. I took the garments back off, pulled my jeans on again, and gave everything to the clerk, who folded and hung and bagged it all.

I rode over to the florist’s with the outfit slung over my shoulder. There were several people picking up orders, so I waited until they cleared out, then approached the counter.

Gladys smiled at me. She looked tired. There was a young lady helping her, who had slumped onto a stool as soon as the other people left.

“You’re here for the velvet roses, aren’t you?” Gladys said. “Mr. Smith, right?”

I nodded abjectly.

She leafed through the invoices and pulled one out. “Four roses on the corsage, three buds on the boutonniere, black and red ribbon.” She went over to a big refrigerated case and pulled out a couple of boxes.

As she brought them back to the counter, she said, “I must say, they are absolutely stunning. Out of all the flowers we have put together this week, I think we’ve gone back to look at these more than any others. They’re just lovely.” She smiled at me and glanced at the girl on the stool, who nodded.

Gladys set the boxes down and opened the little one. “This is yours,” she said.

I glanced inside. The buds were tiny, nearly all black, tied tightly together, the stems wrapped in something green. There was a sprig of baby’s breath and a few fern leaves bundled with them.  The stem was tucked into a little plastic vial, and there was a wicked-looking pin with a round black head tucked into the padding.

“And this corsage… well, it’s breathtaking,” Gladys said, opening the big box.

I looked, swallowing the lump in my throat. There they were, four roses, with crinkly black petals with blood-red tips. They were indeed stunning, and I forgot my fears while I looked at them. They were the prettiest flowers I had ever seen. The ribbons were layered just like we had agreed, and the roses were framed with sprigs of baby’s breath and fern leaves.

“Do you know what color your date is wearing?” the girl asked.

I shook my head. “No idea,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’ve been worried that I made a terrible mistake choosing black roses. What if they don’t match her dress?”

The girl smiled. “It won’t matter,” she said. “She’ll be thrilled getting a corsage like that, even if it doesn’t match.”

I felt much better as I signed my invoice and left. I pedaled home, thinking about my hair that felt stiff in the breeze, and the beautiful roses in the boxes in my bike rack.

When I got home, I put the flowers in the fridge in the garage. I ate a few bites, ignoring my family’s comments about my haircut, and then shaved and took a shower, careful not to mess up my hair. I splashed on a generous dash of cologne.

It took a while to get dressed. Finally I came downstairs, resplendent in the black tux.

My dad made an incoherent exclamation, and Nancy whistled. “Whoo, boy, Junia’s going to be impressed!” she exclaimed. “What a remarkable transformation. From Supernerd Sidekick to Joe Cool in two hours.”

“Impressive indeed,” Mom said.

“Thank you, thank you,” I said, bowing to my minions.

“Are you sure you guys don’t want me to chauffeur you?” Nancy asked. “I don’t have anything going on, and I’m curious to see Bob’s blue outfit. Not to mention the archrival female nerds.”

“Well, you could drive me to Bob’s,” I said. “We can handle it from there.”

“Sure,” Nancy said. “Are your flowers in the fridge? I didn’t see them there.”

“No, they’re in the garage,” I said. “I’ll get them on our way out.”

“Could I see them?” Mom asked curiously.

“Well….” I hesitated. “I guess so.”

I brought the flowers in, and opened the bigger box on the coffee table.

There was silence for several seconds. Then Mom said, “Oh! I’ve never seen such beautiful roses!”

Nancy said, “They’re incredible! Mike, they’re just gorgeous!”

Dad didn’t say anything, just beamed at me.

I swallowed. “It was kind of an impulse decision. I don’t know if they’ll go with her dress or anything. I tried to get my order changed, but it was too late.”

Mom said, “They’re just lovely. She’ll love them. It’s a beautiful corsage.”

Nancy opened the little box and they exclaimed over the buds. Then Nancy pinned it onto my lapel and adjusted the angle. “It goes great with your tux,” she commented.

I said, “Nancy, we need to get going. I told Bob I’d be there by now.”

We gathered the boxes and bustled out to the car. When we got to Bob’s, he had the chariot in the driveway and was making final adjustments to the seat cushions.

Nancy pulled up beside him and stuck her head out the window. “Well, now, there’s something we don’t see every day!” she exclaimed.

Bob turned and bowed. “The new and improved Nerd Chariot,” he said proudly.

Nancy glanced down at the trailer. “I was talking about Bob the Nerd in tails,” she said. “Blue tails. Very impressive.” Then she looked at the trailer and Bob’s bike more carefully. They had been repainted in matte black, with the bottom edges and wheel rims highlighted in blood red. “Are you really going to pick up your dates in that?” she asked, aghast.

“That’s right,” Bob said. “We built it this past week. It’s quite a luxury ride. I would offer you a road test, but we’ve got to get going. Come on, Mike!”

Nancy stared as we finished our preparations. Bob’s corsage box was on the bench, so I put mine with it. There was ice around the soft drinks in the ice chest. I had forgotten to get snacks, but it was too late now. Bob had several cassettes in a plastic bin screwed down beside the stereo, and he put in a tape of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

I sat down next to the boxes, and said, “Right ho, Jeeves. To the Nerd Queen’s castle, and make it snappy.”

Bob flipped on the power, and we took off remarkably smoothly. He shifted up as we turned into the road. By the time Nancy passed us, we were going 12 ½ miles an hour.

“So how does the suit fit?” I asked Bob after she was gone.

“Oh, okay. A little snug in the seat and the waist,” Bob said. I noticed he was sitting rather stiffly on the bike seat.

“Did they do a good job with the alterations?” I asked.

Bob said, “I’m not sure. I don’t know much about those kinds of things. On the sleeves and the cuffs, it looks like they folded all the extra back inside instead of cutting it off. I’ve got about six inches of blue going up the insides of my sleeves, and about a foot going up the pants legs. It feels like I’m wearing a stovepipe around my calf. It’s a good thing they weren’t bell-bottoms.” He looked at his ankle. “They didn’t put many stitches in, either. I hope they hold up.”

“What did they do with the shirt?”

Bob held out one hand and grimaced at his coat sleeve. “I thought they would cut the sleeve off and reattach the cuff, but they didn’t. They just folded a section just above the wrist to the inside and stitched it off, kind of down inside the cuff. It looks pretty bad. I can’t take my coat off or it’ll show.”

He straightened up and grinned back at me. “But first impressions are everything, and I look good!”

“Right you are, Sergeant Pepper.”

Nora’s family lived in a big white house at the end of a long, straight driveway. Bob drove up the driveway and came to a stop. He scratched his head. “How shall we turn around?” he asked.

“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “Did you remember to downshift?”

“I did before I turned into the driveway,” he said.

As Bob bounded up the porch steps, I took hold of the bike handlebars and pushed. It was very heavy, with the weight of the trailer added to its own mass. I struggled to move it in a tight circle in the little turnaround the Slattens used for their cars. I let the bike lean sideways a bit too much and almost dropped it, but it finally started to roll.

Bob pushed the doorbell and stood patiently, his corsage box under his arm. He straightened his tie with the reflection in the storm door and glanced at his sleeves. After a minute, he pushed the button again, and this time we heard deep chimes resonate: “Bong, bong, bong, bong...” like Big Ben on the quarter hour.

Somewhere in the depths of the house, we heard Nora’s voice: “I’ve got it! Stay in the living room, Dad.”

I had the bike halfway turned when the front door opened. I turned to watch. The storm door opened, and Nora stepped out.

Bob goggled at her, his mouth open. Nora’s glasses were gone. Her brown hair was up on the back of her head, and she actually had on lipstick and eye shadow! She wore a beautiful shiny white dress that left her shoulders bare. I could see a fancy gold necklace and earrings from where I was. I looked at her feet. White pumps.

Nora stared back. She ran her eyes over Bob’s electric blue suit with the tails and the ruffled silk shirt. She looked down at his white shoes.

Suddenly she smiled. Bob struggled to regain his composure. His jaw snapped shut. “Uh, hi,” he said.

Nora chuckled. “Hi,” she said.

Bob shuffled his feet. “Um, you look very nice,” he said. “You smell good, too.” He blushed red.

Nora laughed. “Thank you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you self-conscious before, Bob.”

Bob grinned. “Well, I thought for a minute that I had the wrong house.”

Nora looked him over again. “That’s a remarkable suit,” she said, then laughed. “Positively spectacular, actually. Can you turn around so I can see the tails?”

Bob obligingly spun around on his heel. His tails flew in a circle around him.

Nora chuckled again. “Very cool,” she said admiringly. “Do you mind if I share this moment with my parents?”

Without waiting for an answer, she turned and went back inside. I pushed the bike the rest of the way around and pulled it onto its stand. I heard her call, “Mom! Dad! You’ve got to see this! Go ahead and bring the camera, Dad.”

Bob scuffed his white shoes together. He caught me looking at him and shrugged wryly. I leaned on a fender of the chariot and watched.

Nora emerged again, followed by her folks. “Mom, Dad, I believe you know Bob already?”

Bob politely shook hands. I could see Nora’s parents discreetly surveying his attire, Mr. Slatten in admiration and Mrs. Slatten with tactfully concealed amusement.

“How about a picture?” suggested Mr. Slatten.

“Where?” Bob said. “Oh, Nora, by the way, here are your flowers.” He proffered the box.

Nora opened it. “Oh, my! Thank you! They’re gorgeous! Look how colorful, Mom!”

She held the box out to her mother, who admired the roses. “Let’s put them on you. They are a nice splash of color, aren’t they?” Mrs. Slatten took the corsage carefully out of the box and pinned it on Nora’s dress.

Nora looked really happy. Her dad said, “You guys stand together and I’ll get a picture.”

Bob obligingly turned to face him. Nora stood next to him and took his elbow. Her dad snapped a couple of pictures. Then Bob said, “Well, are we ready to go?”

“I guess so.” Nora stepped down off the porch, then stopped short. “Whoa. Is that what we’re going in?”

“Yep.” Bob walked proudly over to the bench and said, “Just hop up here and make yourself comfortable.”

Nora walked a circle around the black and red chariot. She caught my eye and smiled. “Hi, Mike.”

“Hey, Nora,” I said.

Her dad followed her. “Did you build this?” he asked Bob.

“Yes, specifically for the occasion,” Bob said.

Nora laughed. “I can’t believe it. When did you do it?”

“Last weekend,” Bob said. “We finished it Wednesday.”

Mr. Slatten examined the hitch and looked at the lights. “Looks sturdy. I’m glad to see you have good lights on it,” he said. “I’m a little concerned about you all being on the road in this after dark. But with these taillights and the headlight, you should be in good shape. Does it have turn signals?”

Bob flipped a switch, and the right tail light began blinking. Mr. Slatten smiled and said, “All right. Just drive carefully.”

Nora said, “Cool paint job.” She chuckled, then laughed as she examined the bench. “Did this come from a porch swing or something?”

“A glider,” I said. “Used to be green.”

She stepped up on the footrest and sat down. “It’s comfy. Is that Vivaldi you’re playing?”

“Summer, I think,” I said. “Would you like a drink?” I flipped open the ice chest.

“Maybe later, thank you,” Nora said. “I just had dinner.”

Nora’s dad snapped a couple of pictures as we rolled down the driveway. Bob killed the power at the street, waiting for a car to go by, then pulled out and pointed us in the direction of Junia’s house.

Junia lived in a big white farmhouse just outside of town. It took ten or fifteen minutes to get there, even at 12 ½ miles an hour. Nora chattered cheerfully to me and occasionally called up to Bob, whose tails fluttered in the breeze.

“I was really afraid he would bring an all-white corsage,” she confided to me. “I really like this dress, but if I had white flowers, it would look totally blah. These colors are so bright!” She looked down and touched the yellow rose.

She turned to call out to Bob. “Hey, Supernerd! What happens if your tails get into the chain and sprocket?”

They were flapping dangerously close to that equipment. Bob looked back. “I guess we would make a sudden stop.” He grabbed one of the tails and tucked it under his leg.

“Where are your glasses?” I asked.

“I got contacts,” Nora said. “I’ve been getting used to them after school. Nice haircut, by the way.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Nora chuckled. “I wonder what Junia will think of the chariot.”

Mention of Junia put butterflies in my stomach. I started worrying about the black flowers again. I stewed in silence the last five minutes to her house.

A gravel driveway made a big loop across the front of the Schmidt’s house, so Bob stopped right in front of the porch steps. I grabbed my box and trudged up to the front door.

It opened as I knocked. Junia’s dad said, “Come in, come in, Mike! Junia will be just a moment.”

“Hi, Mr. Schmidt,” I said, following him into the foyer.

Mr. Schmidt was short and round, nearly bald. He had a fringe of reddish hair around his dome, and a ruddy face. He and Mrs. Schmidt made quite a pair. She was taller than he, and had the poise of a classical musician. They always seemed quite happy together.

Mrs. Schmidt came down the big staircase. “Hi, Mike. Junia will be a couple of minutes. Fred, take him into the living room and sit down. She’ll be right down.” She whisked off into the kitchen.

Mr. Schmidt cocked a wry eyebrow and gestured in the direction of the living room. We went in, and I sat on the sofa while he sank into an overstuffed chair. “Can I get you anything? Cigar? A whisky to steady your nerves?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I said. “I just ate, and there’ll be refreshments at the prom.”

I miserably pondered the possible reactions to the black rose corsage. Well, it was finally time to find out. Maybe I should have taken him up on the whisky. How would Junia react if she came in and found us smoking cigars? Black flowers. Mom and Nancy seemed to like them. Were they just being nice? Blah.

Mr. Schmidt asked me a few questions about school. I answered unenthusiastically, looking around the room. There was a spinet in the corner, a cello in its case on the floor, a couple of clarinets on the end table, sheet music in piles along one wall. Mrs. Schmidt’s baby grand piano must be in a different room. There a big family room at the back of the house, wasn’t there?

Mrs. Schmidt came bustling in and immediately set to straightening up. “Spring recital is almost here,” she said with a smile. “All the little prodigies getting ready for Symphony auditions.” She gathered the sheet music into tidier stacks.

Jus then, Junia came into the room. I stood up, and my jaw dropped. She looked back at me, smiling uncertainly. Her hair and face looked prettier than I had seen them before. She had carefully styled red curls, a hint of green eye shadow, lip gloss… but it was her dress that made my head spin. It was crumpled black velvet, with a deep wine-red undertone.

“Hi, Mike,” she said. “Nice tux.”

“Uh, thanks,” I croaked. “Your dress is beautiful!”

She blushed and looked down at it. “It’s not really my color, but when I saw it, I liked it so much that I just had to have it. Kind of an impulse decision. Probably a mistake. I’ve been regretting it ever since.”

I wordlessly held out the corsage box, still feeling stunned. Junia stepped forward, took the box, and opened it.

Her eyes opened wide. She stared at the corsage and said, “Oh….” She glanced up at me, then looked back at the corsage. “Oh my. How did you know? Did Nora say something, or Mom?”

I shook my head. “Just an impulse decision. I’ve been regretting it ever since. Until now.” I grinned crookedly.

Junia held the box out. “Mom. Look.”

Mrs. Schmidt looked in, and her eyes opened as wide as Junia’s. “Oh, my,” she echoed. “Well. There are unexpected depths in you, Mr. Smith.”

She reverently lifted the black velvet roses out of the box and pinned them on Junia’s shoulder.

Mr. Schmidt chuckled. “Well, now. That’s something. What a match. Just goes to show, here you were wearing those rosebuds on your lapel and it didn’t even register with me.”

Junia and Mrs. Schmidt turned and looked at my boutonniere. “Sure enough!” Mrs. S. exclaimed. “Well, well.”

Junia and I stood and looked at each other for a moment. She had a nice face, especially with lip gloss, and she smelled a little bit like vanilla. “Shall we?” I said, proffering my elbow.

She grinned and took it, and we walked out the front door.

Nora and Bob were engrossed in conversation. I led Junia up to the rickshaw. She stared down at it. “Interesting!” was her first reaction. Then, “Oh, I like the color scheme!”

“Sit down, Junia,” ordered Nora. “Wow, that dress looks gorgeous on you.”

Junia gestured to her corsage, and Nora examined it, her eyebrows rising. “Hmm. Very nice! Is he clairvoyant, do you think, or did someone tip him off?”

Junia sank into the middle of the bench and waved to her parents. “Well, I didn’t tell him, and my mom says she didn’t. Did you?”

“You know better than that,” Nora said.

“Tally ho, Jeeves,” I called to Bob as I squeezed into the remaining space on the bench. “Is there anything I can get you ladies? Soft drink? Mineral water?”

Bob flipped the switch, and we rolled down the drive.

Junia grinned at me. “I’ll bet you had something to do with the paint job, didn’t you?”

“Well, believe it or not, they were the only two colors Bob happened to have,” I said. “But yeah, the roses gave the inspiration.”

The Civic Center parking lot was packed. Bob drove a circuit around, ignoring the stares, and finally settled on a spot way back in the corner. “I don’t want to attract pranksters,” he explained as he came around to help the girls off the trailer.

We ambled across the parking lot, greeting the other late arrivals and chatting. Bob was the soul of amiability. He seemed to have put it on his with swallow-tailed coat. He made it most of the way to the entrance of the Civic Center before he got into an argument with Nora.

As we mounted the steps, he said, “I apologize, Nora. I’m right, but I apologize anyway. We can argue some other time.”

Nora laughed. “I’m sure we will. I accept your apology, and cheerfully dismiss your initial assertion. Do give the nice gentleman the tickets and let’s go inside.”

A big guy in a dark brown tux approached us. I recognized him from the football team. I fished my tickets out of my inside pocket.

Bob turned pale. “Tickets!” he whispered. He patted his pockets and searched his coat frantically.

“No ticky, no entry,” growled the ticket collector.

There was a table behind him, with a girl sitting at it. I went around the ticket guy and approached her. “Hi, Katie,” I said. “Here’s my tickets. Bob forgot his, but I’m sure you remember Bob. We bought ours at the same time.”

Katie took my tickets and grinned. “We have a guest list, just in case. Shall I tell him, or shall we give him a hard time?”

Bob was already having a hard time. He was arguing vociferously with the ticket guy.

Katie laughed and said, “Oh, Biff, lighten up and come look at the guest list.”

Biff backed away from Bob, never taking his eyes off him. “What about the guest list?” he muttered.

“Bob Nelson and date. Right here. Let them by,” Katie said.

Biff grunted. Bob straightened up his coat and offered Nora his elbow again. “I guess we showed him,” he said, turning toward the door.

Nora snickered. Junia laughed, and Bob grinned. “Thanks, buddy,” he said as I rejoined them.

The Civic Center was decorated with swaths of tulle, vases of flowers, garlands of greenery. There was a long refreshment table along one wall. Ahead of us was the stage, where a small jazz ensemble was playing. Several couples were dancing. Most people were milling around, talking animatedly. Nora waved to a girl with a camera, who came over.

“I see you’re on duty tonight, Cammie,” Nora said.

Cammie pushed some hair back from her face and smiled. “Yeah. I’m supposed to get the highlights, and pictures of all the bands. Jerry is here someplace, too. Are you going to write about it?”

Nora shook her head. “I don’t have an assignment. I think Kitty and Chris are handling it.”

“Good. Well, have a good time.” Cammie smiled and walked away.

We stood and looked around. “Hey! There’s Hiroshi!” Bob observed.

We pushed our way over and said hi to him and his date. Both were dressed in black. She was a petite Asian girl, a member of the Youth Symphony, so Nora and Junia and she struck up a conversation while Hiroshi and Bob and I looked at each other and tried to think of something to say.

Hiroshi looked Bob over. “Cool outfit.”

“I wish there had been a top hat with it,” Bob said. “I looked for one. Spats would have been nice, too.”

“And a white cane,” Hiroshi said. He glanced at the girls, then started and said, “Whoa! Was that Nora that came in with you?” He stared in fascination at the girl in the elegant white dress who was talking animatedly to his date. “I thought you must have invited someone from out of town. Wow, she looks great!” He laughed.

“She got contacts,” I said.

“Junia looks good, too. That dress is a knockout,” Hiroshi said.

Just then, the student body president got on stage and announced a band change. “Thank you, Wizards of Jazz. Now, let’s give a warm welcome to Ollie Gustavson and his Punk Polka and Perloo Society!”

We stared in fascination as a chubby guy in Bavarian leather shorts and a Tyrolean hat sprang onto the stage, carrying a shiny red accordion. He was followed by a tall, morose looking guy with waist-length hair and a black bass guitar, a tuba player (mostly obscured by his tuba), and a tiny guy who looked about four feet tall and carried an assortment of drumsticks.

“Wonder what rock they crawled out from under?” Hiroshi said.

The performers set up quickly. Then Ollie shouted into the microphone: “One! Two! One two three four!” and lit into a wild and breathtaking tune on his squeezebox. His fingers flew over the keys. The tuba player huffed and puffed to keep up. The drummer bounced around like Animal from the Muppets.

It was gripping music. I found myself tapping my foot. I felt a tug at my elbow and looked down. It was Junia.

“Do you polka?” she asked.

“A little,” I said.

We pushed our way out onto the dance floor. No one seemed to know what to do. Most people were staring in stunned silence at the stage.

I took Junia’s right hand in my left and put my left hand on her waist. She grinned and said, “Ready?”

I nodded, and we took off. It was a lot faster than the polkas I had danced with Nancy, so I shortened my steps to compensate. Junia seemed to know exactly what to do.

We bounced around in a little circle. I say “bounced” because it was a lot like a mosh pit; people were still staring at the stage and each other, so we bumped into a good number of them. However, in a minute another couple joined us, and then I saw Hiroshi and his friend nearby. Hiroshi spun around and decked a guy about half his size. As we whirled, I saw him stop to help the guy to his feet.

Then I saw Bob and Nora shuffling around behind us. Bob was having some trouble with his feet, and Nora was laughing and trying to give him instructions.

By the end of the song, the floor was a mass of bobbing couples. The song ended, and we laughed and clapped, and then another one started before we could catch our breath. This one was slower, kind of a punk country polka, if such a thing exists, and featured vocals by the tall, melancholy bass player, who complained about the indignities inflicted on him by his baby before she left.

“Sounds like one of your songs!” shouted Junia. Her face was pink from exertion. She looked like she was having a blast.

After the next song, Nora wanted to trade with Junia. I gathered that Bob had accidentally steered her into a couple of painful collisions, and she needed a break.

We swapped back after that song. Ollie launched into a Jerry Lee Lewis rockabilly tune, singing into a microphone over his squeezebox. It was quite bizarre on that instrument, and very lively. We wore ourselves out dancing to it. Then the band did three or four more sedate songs. After that Ollie said, “Thank you all. Thank you,” and his band left the stage amidst loud applause.

A country swing band came on as Hiroshi ran interference for us to the refreshment table. We made sure the girls had drinks, and then I drank five cups of punch in a row.

“Bob, I need to talk to coach about you. Did you know you almost decked Jim out there a couple of times?” Hiroshi said.

Bob sniffed the air and looked around. “Oh, is he here? Sure enough.”

Hiroshi grinned. “Yeah. You sent him into Moose the first time, and then the next time, you pushed him into me. I moved out of the way. He would have fallen on his can if Lisa hadn’t held him up.”

I looked at Bob. “I dare you to ask Lisa to dance.”

“Pfaah!” snorted Bob. “She’s not my type.”

“Come on. I double-dog dare you,” I said.

“What’s the matter? You chicken?” asked Hiroshi. He tucked his hands into his armpits and flapped his elbows. “Moo! Moo!”

“Moo who?” asked Hiroshi’s date, turning around.

“Moo goo gai pan,” Hiroshi said. “Ancient Chinese dish, very popular in Japan.”

“I’m Korean,” said the girl.

“Sorry,” Hiroshi said. “Gentlemen, I should have introduced you before. This is Kim. Kim, this is Bob, and this is Mike.”

“Hi,” we chimed.

Kim’s eyes widened. “The Bob and Mike?”

Bob grinned. “I see our fame precedes us.”

Kim held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you. I’ve actually seen you before, Bob. You were in a play, and afterwards I guess it was Mike that had to rescue you from the stage ceiling.”

Bob turned pink. “Oh, you know how we method actors are. Anything for art,” he said modestly.

“Hiroshi also told me about the Great Perfume War,” Kim went on.

I looked over her shoulder and saw Jim and Lisa a few feet away, talking to Moose and another cheerleader. Hiroshi saw them too, and nudged Kim. “Shh,” he cautioned, gesturing with his head.

Bob cleared his throat. “I think I saw you in a symphony program one time,” he said. “Didn’t you play a flute solo?”

She looked at him, obviously impressed. “That must have been our Christmas concert. I’m surprised you remember,” she said.

“Well, Hiroshi broke one of my ribs with his elbow, nudging me,” Bob said. “And he got his finger tangled in the hair of the lady in front of us when he was pointing you out. It burned you into my memory.”

“What else happens at a prom, besides dancing and refreshments?” I wondered aloud.

Junia said, “They’re taking pictures over in that corner, where they have the bower set up. Later on there will be a dance contest, and they’ll make the freshmen dance the Bunny Hop, and there’s a special waltz for seniors, and some stuff like that.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

Junia looked up at me. “Student council, remember? We know everything because we plan it.”

“Powah. The lady has powah,” Bob intoned. “Shall we immortalize this moment, before we get any sweatier?”

“Sure,” I said. Then I swallowed as I thought about my empty wallet. “Do we have to pay up front?”

“I think you pay when you look at the proofs next week,” Junia said.

“What’s the Bunny Hop?” Bob asked.

No one answered. We made our way over to the improvised studio.

It took a while to get through the long line. The photographers were very creative, and when they saw Bob’s outfit, they insisted on several flamboyant poses. Nora was quite amused, and had no trouble smiling for the pictures. The challenge was to get her to stop laughing while Bob made dramatic, sweeping gestures and struck pretentious attitudes.

Then they made me and Junia pose in a very close, romantic huddle, to show off her roses. “Sheesh, you’d think it was a wedding picture or something,” I complained, as we had our heads and arms tilted this way and that.

“Ah, you like it, you like it,” said Hiroshi, grinning. “You’re going to buy a 10 x 12. It’ll be your favorite picture.”

Finally the ordeal was over. The country swing band was just wrapping up. We watched a group of teenage guys with long hair, eccentric clothes, and guitars in several hues ascend the stage.

“A rock band, finally,” Hiroshi said. “That’s more like it.”

“How did you manage to polka, anyway, Bob?” I asked. “I didn’t think you even knew any kind of dancing.”

“I’m a keen analytical observer,” said Bob. “I watched you and figured it out.”

“With a little help,” said Nora.

“With a little help,” conceded Bob, “and the usual scientific process of trial and error. The families of casualties will be duly compensated by the War Department.”

“But can the man rock and roll? That’s the real question,” Hiroshi said, his teeth gleaming.

“Rock and roll is easy,” Bob said. “Merely a rhythmic series of bodily movements, which may or may not be stylized. In the case of punk rock or New Wave, they can be completely random, as long as they follow the beat.”

The band struck up a country rock number, something by the Doobie Brothers, I think. Couples on the dance floor began gyrating and shuffling.

“See? You have everything out there from fancy disco moves to people bouncing up and down,” Bob said, gesturing. “Nothing to it.”

“Well, get out there, and let’s see you engage in stylized or random rhythmic bodily movements,” Hiroshi challenged.

“Just so long as they’re publicly acceptable,” put in Nora. “Ready?”

“Certainly,” Bob said.

As the others headed towards the dance floor, I looked over at Junia. “This I gotta see,” I said. “Do you dance to rock and roll?”

She shrugged. “A little. But I do want to watch what happens.” She grinned.

We followed the others. There was a little room on our end of the dance floor, so we crowded in. Hiroshi and Kim started dancing. They were both pretty good. Junia and I started shuffling, not very enthusiastically, not really looking at each other.

Then Bob started to dance. He shuffled right, twitched his shoulders, shuffled left, jumped a couple of times, shuffled again, spun around. Nora, who had begun to dance a little side-to-side shuffle, stopped and stared at him, mouth open. Bob shifted his feet around, shaking his head. He waved an arm in a big circle, slid sideways four times, swung the other arm, twitched his shoulders, slid back, hopped in place, raised a foot and hopped again. Nora was laughing by now. Hiroshi had danced up behind her and was also watching Bob.

“The dude’s got rhythm,” I observed to Junia.

Junia was enraptured. She forgot all about dancing and just stared in fascinated amusement.

Nora started to say something, then closed her mouth, grinned, and started to dance like Bob, shuffling, shaking her head, jumping, swinging her arms. Since Bob’s movements were  so unpredictable, she had a hard time following him, but she kept rhythm with the music and twitched and shuffled and moved as best she could.

Junia shook her head. “Can you believe Nora dancing like that?” she said. “Look at her go!”

Other people nearby noticed Bob’s dancing too. Most of the dancers close by stopped dancing and turned to look. Soon there was a circle around Bob and Nora, just watching them.

Bob had one foot in the air and was wiggling it around while he hopped on the other foot when the song ended abruptly. He brought his foot down slowly as the clapping started.

Then another song began. It was something I hadn’t heard before, very catchy. Bob started twitching and jumping. Nora joined him. Behind her, I saw Hiroshi dancing kind of like Bob, jumping around randomly as if it were a New Wave song. Kim was laughing at him. I looked at Junia. She looked back at me, smiling, and I started dancing, alternating shuffling and hopping and twitching. It was a lot of fun. Junia started bouncing around then, stomping her feet and shuffling and bobbing. Every now and then we would turn to see what Bob was doing. It was always something unusual. At one point it looked like he and Nora were doing an Indian war dance around Hiroshi and Kim.

The band transitioned into a New Wave number without stopping, and then everyone on the floor was bobbing and bouncing and jerking and twitching.

We took a break for a drink a couple of songs later. The girls went off to the restroom or somewhere. I took off my coat and hung it on a chair. Bob was sweating profusely.

“Why don’t you take your coat off?” I asked.

He looked around, then whispered, “I can’t!”

“Why not?” I asked.

He grinned. “Pants are split. Right down the back where they let them out for me. It started when I got back on the bike at Nora’s.”

“Whoa, baby,” I exclaimed. “That’s got to be distracting.”

Bob looked around. “Have you seen any of the other guys? Eddie, Doug, any of them?”

I shook my head. “Tony’s over there,” I said, gesturing. “I don’t think Eddie and Doug were coming. Mac’s here somewhere.”

When the girls came back, they pronounced themselves too tired to dance for a while, so we made a circuit of the hall, greeting people and chatting, nibbling on refreshments.

The rock band left, and the jazz band resumed the stage for some quiet background music. The student body president took the microphone and announced a series of games and contests. Some of them were fun, some hokey. We watched and laughed as people gathered on the stage or on the dance floor and did silly things.

Then the dance contest was announced. Everyone was urged to be good sports and participate, so we all joined the milling crowd on and around the dance floor, dancing to a long disco medley. A spotlight played over the dancers, controlled by one of the judges. When it settled on a couple, Neil and another tall basketball player, both wearing top hats and white tails, walked over and escorted them off to the side. I wasn’t very inspired, and neither was Junia, but we obediently danced until we were cut. Then we stood and watched.

When the floor had been thinned down to about eight couples, we were delighted to see that Bob and Nora were still out there. Watching Bob dance disco was pretty funny. I guess he had watched Saturday Night Fever, because he postured like John Travolta, pointing up and down, strutting in a circle, twitching his hips and shoulders. He did some Blues Brothers moves too, jogging with his knees up like Dan Aykroyd. He probably would have turned a handspring if he’d known how. He wore a look of intense concentration, like he was staring at the dots on his guitar neck. Nora actually knew some pretty good disco steps, so she tried to do stuff that worked with Bob’s capering. She was laughing a good part of the time, both from watching Bob and from self-consciousness.

Two of the couples were escorted off. The spotlight settled on Bob and Nora. Bob darted around in a circle, trying to avoid it. Nora followed close behind him. Neil approached him, then stopped and stared, a strange expression on his face.

Something weird was happening with Bob’s outfit. His right hand had disappeared, and his right arm appeared to be longer than the other one. He struck a Travolta pose with his back arched, pointing down and then up with his right sleeve, down and up, and the electric blue tube grew and grew, flopping with the movement. One of his white pant legs was longer than the other, too. The fabric was bunched up on his ankle. He did kind of a can-can kick, and the cuff slid slowly down over his shoe.

The other bouncer joined Neil, and also stared. I saw Cammie close by. Her camera flashed several times as Bob danced on one foot, waggling the cuff in the air as he spun around. It reminded me of the rain dance he did when the stage backdrop fell on his toes. Then he tried to strut in a circle, walking on his long pant leg, but he tripped and fell to his knees. He shuffled around on his knees in time with the music with his arms in the air, looking like a pathetic pilgrim in a moment of glory, while Nora stared at him in what looked like alarm. Finally Neil and the other bouncer took Bob by the arms, picked him up, and carried him off the dance floor. Nora followed behind, laughing.

There was a lot of cheering and booing by people who wanted to see more. Bob bowed and waved his floppy sleeve. Nora blew kisses. Then they came over to where we stood. Bob swung his right foot wide and shuffled to keep from tripping over the long cuff as he walked. He was panting and disheveled. His shirt ruffles were wilted, and the knees of his white pants were gray with sweat and dust. His one visible white shoe was covered with scuff marks.

“You should have had Olshan do the altering,” I said to Bob.

“Nah,” Bob said. He gazed absently at his long right sleeve. “It was worth every penny I paid. This has been quite a night.”

“Saturday Nerd Fever,” I said.

“It’s not over,” Junia said. “There’s still the Bunny Hop and the senior waltz.”

“What’s the Bunny Hop?” Bob asked.

Hiroshi came up and said, “They’re starting to serve an ice cream punch.”

“Just in time. I’m dying.” Nora fanned herself. Her hair was starting to come loose. She had a tendril hanging over her right ear, which she absently pushed back. Eye shadow was streaking on one side, and her eyes were starting to get bloodshot, probably from her new contacts. The corsage on her shoulder was hanging sideways.

“You’re having a blast, aren’t you?” Junia asked, straightening up the flowers.

Nora grinned. “I’ve never had so much fun.”

We pushed our way to the refreshments table and got cups of punch cooled with ice cream and sherbet. The dance contest was coming to a close. The winners were led onto the stage to receive their awards. We moved away from the table to make room for all the other thirsty people who now turned away from the dance floor.

An announcement was made, and Ollie and his punk polka band climbed onto the stage. Ollie was carrying a violin as well as his accordion.

“More polka,” Nora murmured. “I’m wiped out.”

“I think they’ll probably do the Bunny Hop now,” Junia said.

“What is the Bunny Hop?” Bob asked again. “Why won’t anybody tell me?”

“Shh!” said Nora, as the student body president started to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we need all the ninth graders on the dance floor at this time,” she said. “All freshmen come forward. It’s time for… the Bunny Hop!”

We reluctantly went out on the dance floor. “What’s the Bunny Hop? Tell me!” Bob hissed to Nora.

“Watch and learn, Einstein,” she hissed back.

A motley group of freshmen, not quite two dozen of us, stood self-consciously on the floor while the spotlight played over us. Tony was there. He stayed well away from us. Then Ollie began to play the Bunny Hop on his accordion, with his band adding percussion, tuba, and bass accents.

We all looked at each other. Then Nora said, “Come on!”

She grabbed Bob’s empty sleeve and pulled him behind her. Junia and I crowded behind, with Hiroshi and Kim behind us. The other kids lined up behind Kim. Each of us put our hands on the waist or shoulders of the person in front, and we did the Bunny Hop.

Bob had no clue what was going on, but he watched Nora, and pretty soon he had the hang of it. We kicked right, kicked left, hopped forward, hopped back, and hopped forward three times. Bob began to kick enthusiastically, making his right cuff flap wildly. After a few kicks, the left cuff began to come undone, too, and by the end of the song, both of his shoes were covered by the legs of his formerly white pants. The cuffs flapped beyond his toes every time he kicked. We circled the dance floor, kicking, flapping, and hopping, with the spotlight playing over us, until the music finally ended.

After some cheering, jeering, and laughter, the senior waltz was announced. Ollie put down the squeezebox and picked up his violin. He began to play something by Strauss, which seemed pretty weird right after the Bunny Hop.

Bob pushed his sleeve up and bent over to tug his pant legs up over his shoes. He rolled them up several times, creating cloth sausages around his ankles. “What happens now?” he asked, straightening up.

“I think the band will be doing waltzes and slow dances for a while, and then that’s it,” Junia said.

“How late did you guys want to stay?” I asked.

Hiroshi looked at Kim. “Maybe for a waltz or two?”

“Do you want to waltz?” I asked Junia.

She looked up at me. Her hair was less tidy than at the beginning of the evening, but her cheeks were glowing, her eyes were a deep green, and the black roses still looked very elegant. “One or two,” she said.

Maybe Hiroshi was right about the 8 x 10 photo, I thought to myself.

When the seniors were done, Ollie started playing The Tennessee Waltz on the violin, with the bass player singing in his melancholy voice. We filed out onto the dance floor. The waltz was the first step Nancy had taught me, and I had it down pretty well. It was soothing and relaxing after all the earlier frenzy.

“Have you had a good time?” I asked Junia.

She smiled and nodded. “Funny to see people in a different environment. Nora’s having such a great time. I never would have imagined it. Even on campouts, she’s usually about the same as she is at school, but here…. And Bob is such a kick! He’s loony! Just plain nuts!” She laughed.

“Did you talk Nora into coming with him?” I asked.

Junia grinned. “Sort of. I felt pretty odd coming with you and without her.” She colored slightly. “She took pity on me.”

“I was impressed that she told Bob she would go with him, after telling him no so strongly,” I said. “That took guts.”

Junia nodded again. “She’s nicer than she comes across in class, for sure.”

Over Junia’s shoulder, I could see Bob and Nora having what appeared to be a good-natured argument while they waltzed. Bob’s sleeve was covering the hand he had on her waist. One of his ankle sausages was hanging lower than the other.

“Bob waltzing with Nora. Who’d a thunk it?” I mused.

“Nerds of a feather,” said Junia.

We danced another waltz without saying anything. When it was done, Hiroshi and Kim decided to stay a while longer. I went and found my jacket, and the four of us made our way out the door and across the parking lot.

“It’s cooled down a lot,” Nora observed. “The breeze has an edge to it.”

“Feels like rain coming,” Junia said. “It’s not supposed to.”

“You never know what will happen when Bob’s been dancing,” I said.

The bike and trailer appeared to be intact, but when I dug into the ice chest for some mineral water, I found that the drinks were gone. Bob dug out a pocket flashlight and we looked around. The cassettes were still in their case, the stereo in its perch, the tarp in its bungee cords. All the batteries were there.

“Everything else seems to be okay,” Bob said.

We backed and turned the chariot together until it was pointed the right direction. Then the girls and I clambered into the bench seat, and Bob straddled the bike. “Ready?” he called.

“Carry on,” I said.

He hit the switch, and we were off. It took a while to get out of the parking lot, because other people were leaving, too, but finally we were on the road, headed out to Junia’s house. A couple dozen cars whizzed past us, and then the traffic thinned out. The breeze was getting colder. I thought I heard a rumble of thunder in the distance.

“Do you smell that?” asked Nora, sniffing.

“What?” I asked. The air smelled fresh and crisp.

“Rain,” she said, settling back into the seat.

We heard it a minute later, a hiss in the distance. I felt a drop hit my hand, and another hit my cheek. I squirmed around in my seat and began fishing for the tarp.

“Bob, don’t forget there’s a poncho here,” I said, struggling to pull the tarp from its moorings.

Bob coasted to a stop by the roadside. I tossed him the poncho. He tore into its packaging while I unfolded the tarp. The girls and I spread it over ourselves. It was pretty big, so I made sure it hung over the stereo and tapes. I was glad to see that the fenders kept the tarp out of the wheels. We held it up so we could see out the back. Raindrops flashed red as they fell past the taillights.

Bob apparently managed to get the poncho unpacked, because a minute later, we felt a jerk as the motor started up. The trailer lurched, then jerked to one side. I heard an angry whine from the bicycle’s rear wheel for a couple of seconds, and then the motor stopped. Bob muttered something, and grunted. I stuck my head out from under the tarp and turned to look. The bike was leaning dangerously to one side, and Bob was struggling to right it. The big spotlight shone at a crazy angle into the ditch.

“Forgot to downshift,” Bob said. “Can you give me a hand?”

I scrambled out of the shelter of the tarp and ran to help Bob lift the bike upright.

“Pick up the back of the bike by the frame, here, and I’ll run it enough to shift it down,” Bob ordered.

I obediently hefted the bike an inch or so, gripping it by the metal frame that the motor sat on. Bob flipped the power on, and began fiddling with the derailleurs as the wheel spun. After a minute or so, he had the chain on the smaller motor sprocket and one of the larger ones on the wheel.

“Thanks,” he grunted.

I squeezed back under the tarp, quite soaked by now. “Sorry, girls,” I said. “Technical difficulties.”

“Merely to be expected,” Nora said.

“Don’t be mean, Nora,” Junia said.

“Sorry,” said Nora. She giggled. “At least he hasn’t gotten his tails into the sprocket.”

We began to move forward again, smoothly this time, and soon were moving at 12 ½ miles an hour through the splashing rain. I warmed up quickly. The tarp was keeping us out of the weather, except for our feet. I could faintly smell the girls’ perfumes. I knew I didn’t smell of cologne anymore. I wondered what it was like for Bob in his poncho, up front, with the rain in his face.

“Music, anyone?” I asked. “I can still reach the stereo.”

“The rain sounds nice on the tarp,” Junia said.

“Yeah. Reminds me of camping,” Nora said. “The kind of camping where your tent leaks on the edges of your sleeping bag and you have to curl up in a little ball to get any sleep at all.”

“Speaking of camping,” I said. “There’s something I’ve been wondering about for a long time.” I paused, thinking about bikes in a tree, wet clothes tied in knots, Bob floundering through a bonfire, a dim figure swinging a big stick.

After a while, Nora said, “Yes?”

“Uh….” I paused again. “Never mind,” I said finally.

We sat in silence, listening to the rain on the tarp, the hum of the bike motor, and the swish of the wheels.

“This has been one of the best evenings of my life,” said Nora, out of the blue.

After a minute, Junia said, “Who’d a thunk it?”

This is my very latest writing. I finished it on Wednesday. It has to do with the disruption of familiar patterns among the honors students when a new and intriguing student arrives.

Bob, Art, and Girls

“Why would anyone name their daughter Mabel?” Bob wondered aloud.

“Well, for that matter, why would anyone name a girl Nora or Junia?” I said. “What’s so weird about the name Mabel?”

“She just doesn’t look like a Mabel,” Bob said. “She’s got green eyes.”

“What should a Mabel look like?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Long plaid skirts. Curly hair and funky glasses like my aunt Bertha had in college back in the Fifties. She’s smart, though. I will say that.” Bob hefted his backpack into the basket on his bike.

“Your aunt ought to be smart, if she’s related to your mom,” I said. “Wasn’t your mom a Phi Beta Kappa or something?”

“What has my aunt got to do with anything?” Bob said. “I don’t know anything about her brains. I was talking about Mabel. She knows a lot about physics. More than I do.” He mused a minute. “Come to think, I guess she must be smart. She and Mom were on the college debate team together.”

“Mabel’s not near old enough to have gone to college with your mom,” I scoffed.

Bob gave me a withering glance. “Whoever said she did? Besides, quantum physics was only beginning back in the Fifties. And my aunt studied music.” He threw a leg over his bike and pushed it off its stand.

“Doug said that she’s joining youth symphony,” I remarked. “Oboe or something.”

“Aunt Bertha’s way too old for youth symphony,” Bob said. “And it’s the flute that she plays. Or is it timpani? Who are we talking about now?”

I sighed. “The problem, Bob, is that you’re smitten. You’ve been swept off your feet. What are you doing tomorrow? Besides thinking about Mabel.”

“I’m going to the library,” he said. He glanced back at his bike chain.

“What about our art project?” I asked. “When are we going to do that?”

Bob looked up at me. “Why don’t you do some brainwork for a change? If you get a brilliant idea, call me tomorrow night, and we can work on it Sunday afternoon. See ya.”

He pushed his bike forward as he flipped his power switch. His bike was in high gear, so the back wheel spun, grabbed, and yanked him forward. His feet flew in the air, his head jerked back, the bike wobbled, and he bounced off the curb into the street, hopping from foot to foot to stay upright. A group of freshmen happened to be crossing the street at that moment, and they scattered like quail as he swerved through their midst.

“Brainwork for a change,” I muttered. “Who is it that makes all his ideas work? Pfaah!”

{{{{{{{{{{

“So what are you doing tomorrow?” Mom asked me at supper.

“I don’t know. Homework, I guess,” I said. “Got to come up with a project for art class.”

“Aren’t you and Bob taking that class together?” Nancy asked.

“Yeah, but Bob’s got a major crush on this new girl, so he’s going to the library to read up on quantum physics,” I said.

“I thought Bob had something going with Nora, what with the prom and all,” Nancy said.

I snorted. “Are you kidding? They still fight like cats and dogs.”

“What does quantum physics have to do with Bob’s attraction to the new girl?” Dad asked.

I frowned. “She kept talking about string theory in science class. Bob didn’t know anything about it, and for once he had nothing to say. She swept him off his feet. He was practically incoherent when we were leaving school. ‘She doesn’t look like a Mabel. She’s got green eyes. She knows so much about physics.’ And he kept comparing her to his aunt, for some strange reason.” I sighed.

“Mabel? Her name is Mabel?” Nancy laughed. “Well, at least she should fit in. What’s she like? Mabel sounds so old-fashioned.”

I thought a moment. “She has real straight blond hair, cut kind of short, and has about four earrings in one ear, and she does have green eyes, and wears kind of cool clothes. I don’t know how to describe them exactly, but they look like what what’s-her-name wore in that movie. Sort of trendy, interesting colors. Not just jeans and stuff. And she talks about quantum physics and string theory.”

“Doesn’t sound very old-fashioned,” Mom remarked.

I said, “Her family just moved here from Kansas City. I don’t know why they came in the middle of the semester. Her father’s job or something. She’s going to be in youth symphony, too. Oboe or flute or timpani. I can’t remember.”

Mom laughed. “That’s quite a spread. Sounds like a friend of mine in college who played piccolo and kettledrums.”

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ

Saturday morning moved very slowly. I got my chores done, finished my regular homework, and sat on the porch swing to stare at the description of the art project. Something big, any form of visual art, with a theme related to your personal interests. Should incorporate the principles and skills learned during the semester. Should convey a message of importance without being moralistic. Need to work with a partner and produce something that combines your strengths.

Something big. That was vague. Any form of visual art. Well, I was discovering a knack for drawing, but my best drawings were the tiny sketches I doodled in the margins of my notebook. Bob’s idea of art was an exquisitely detailed drawing of a circuit. He wanted to be a sculptor, but his attempts with clay looked like what little kids made with the church nursery Play-Doh.

Principles and skills. My drawing had improved, and I’d learned a lot about composition and perspective, but I couldn’t seem to draw anything bigger than two inches square. Message of importance. Crime does not pay. Buckle up for safety. Eat your vegetables. Smoking is hazardous to your health. Just say no. If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer. Coke is it. Ho hum.

I sighed and gazed off across our yard, which was turning brown from the autumn cold. I wished I could paint like Junia, who filled large sheets of expensive watercolor paper with gorgeous blues and greens and reds. She was learning to draw with ink, so her paintings were beginning to look like illustrations in a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book.

Impulsively, I went inside to the study and dialed Junia’s number. Her mom answered.

“Hi, Mrs. Schmidt. This is Mike. Is Junia there?”

“Oh, hi, Mike. Yes, she’s right here.”

Junia came on. “Hello?”

“Hi, Junia. It’s Mike. How are you?”

“Uh, fine. How are you?”

“I’m okay. Hey, I wanted to ask you, what are you and Nora doing for an art project?”

She paused. “Well, I’m not sure. We’re having some problems with that, because we haven’t figured out how to combine watercolors and oils.”

“Yeah, that would be awkward. I guess you’d both have to paint on paper, for starters, since watercolors don’t work on canvas. Doug’s real good with oils, too, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s been teaching Nora a lot. Have you and Bob figured out what you’re going to do?”

I snorted. “Bob’s at the library studying physics.”

Junia laughed. “That figures. He was speechless in class yesterday, for a change.”

“You should have heard him after school,” I said. “Anyway, that’s where he is.”

After a minute, Junia said, “Nora’s reading up on physics, too.”

“That doesn’t surprise me too much,” I said. “What about you?”

“If Nora finds something really fascinating, I might read it,” Junia said. “But I’m not all that interested.”

“Same here,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve been trying to think of a project that Bob and I can do together, but I’m floundering. Seems like all I can draw is the size of a postage stamp, and Bob mainly likes to draw machines and diagrams. And he’s no help right now anyway, off in Lalaland.”

“Maybe you should draw postage stamps,” Junia said, and chuckled. “You could do a commemorative series. Actually, if you put enough small drawings together, that would constitute a big project. Look at Beatrix Potter’s books.”

“Beatrix Potter? Oh, yeah, Peter Rabbit and all that. Hmm. That’s a thought.”

We chatted idly for a few minutes, then hung up. I returned to the porch swing and spent the afternoon drawing The Adventures of Timmy the Squirrel, who underwent a series of undignified mishaps before coming to a tragic end under the wheels of a school bus.

fffffffffff

I went over to Bob’s on Sunday afternoon. He was sitting on his bed, surrounded with books about physics, and listening to a blues album.

“This is really cool stuff, Mike,” he enthused. “There’s all kinds of fascinating concepts: quarks, antimatter, relativity, black holes, the Big Bang.... Einstein was a huge pioneer, but he was just the beginning.”

“Hmm. So are we going to build a particle accelerator in your shop, or what?”

Bob grimaced. “Unfortunately, there isn’t much we can do with it ourselves, although there’s enough information out there that we could design our own nuclear bomb. But it’s neat to find out about it. I might get to work in this field someday. Maybe I’ll figure out cheap and simple ways to use the technology.”

I yawned. “Right now, though, we have the problem of our art project. I spent the afternoon ruminating yesterday, and drew a very cool comic book, but drew a blank on a big project with a message. Seems like real artists have something I’m missing.”

“I was thinking of designing a supercollider using ordinary household junk,” Bob said. “Sort of as a spoof.”

“That would be cool, but what’s the message?” I asked. “And how would we combine forces to do it?”

“The same way we always have,” Bob said. “We’ll actually build this sculpture, out of junk, bolted and welded together, but its purpose will be esthetic rather than functional. And the message doesn’t have to be anything that profound. It could be as simple as, junk is cool. Ugly is beautiful.”

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Nerds have feelings too. When have you ever built something just for show? And how are we incorporating what we learned in class? We wouldn’t be working with any of the media we’ve studied,” I said.

“Hmm. That is a problem,” Bob said. “Did you know Mabel’s real good with pastels?”

“No, I wasn’t aware of that. Thanks for enlightening me,” I said. “You have a way of penetrating to the heart of any situation and making it crystal clear.”

“Thank you. Thank you. You’re too kind. You know what? Maybe instead of building a supercollider, we should just draw what we would build,” Bob said. He flipped open a book and showed me a diagram. “This is what a real one looks like.”

I scanned the drawing. It showed a building shaped like a doughnut with equipment in big square sections at certain locations on the doughnut. “Okay. The problem with this, though, is that I really have no interest in a supercollider or a particle accelerator. This project would actually be about you and a girl who caught your attention because she knows more than you do about quantum physics and has green eyes.”

“Pfaah!” snorted Bob. “You’re nuts.”

We sat in silence for a minute. “Come to think of it, Junia has green eyes, too,” I said.

“Yeah, but she’s a redhead,” Bob said.

“Thanks for pointing that out,” I said. “Once again you have incisively cut to the heart of the matter.”

We bickered a while longer, and then I went home and drew another episode in the short life of Timmy the Squirrel.

fffffffffff

When I got to lunch the next day, Bob was sitting with Mabel, animatedly discussing one of the physics books with her. I looked around glumly. Nora, Junia, and Doug were sitting at another table. There was an empty seat next to Doug. I approached them.

“Mind if I sit here?” I asked.

Junia smiled, and Doug pulled the chair out. “Make yourself at home,” he said.

I put my tray down and sat. “How are you doing?”

“Good,” said Doug. “We were just talking about the art project. Seems like everyone is kind of stymied.”

“It’s so open-ended,” Nora complained. “The toughest part is to have to work in teams. Art seems to me like a really personal thing.”

“Music is art,” Junia mused. “And music is great whether it’s a solo or an ensemble or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”

“Yeah, but at least with an orchestra, you’re all looking at the same music, with parts created for each instrument and somebody directing. This project is like trying to write music with someone else. I can’t imagine that working,” Nora said. She poked at her noodle casserole.

“Seems like it’s a lot tougher than coming up with a science fair project and working on that together,” I said. “I wonder why she’s given this kind of assignment? Where do you ever hear of great works of art produced by Rubens and Rembrandt in tandem?”

“The Brothers Hildebrandt illustrated the Tolkien Calendar a few years ago,” Junia remarked.

“Yeah, but that’s kitsch,” Nora said. “It’s totally commercial.”

Doug gasped. “How can you say that? They managed to grasp the very essence of the Lord of the Rings and bring it to life. Madam, you have pierced me to the quick.”

“Shut up!” said Nora, grinning.  “I’ll pierce you all right.” She poked him with her fork.

“But how do you work with someone who uses a different medium from yours?” Junia asked. “Like watercolors and oils. They don’t mix.”

“I have an idea,” Doug said, putting his chin on his hands. “Maybe we’ve been looking at this the wrong way. We’ve been assuming that we have to produce one piece of work, like one canvas, with your brushstrokes and your partner’s. What about a set of paintings, for instance, that show how each of you approach the same theme differently?”

“Whoa. That could be kind of cool,” I said.

Nora and Junia looked at Doug, then at each other. “That sounds interesting,” Nora said. “So the whole set of pieces would be the art project, rather than one big painting or drawing or sculpture or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Junia said. “Then it wouldn’t matter what medium you worked in. You’d be showing different views of the same subject.”

I sighed. “I don’t know how my postage stamp pictures would ever fit into a major project, though. Whenever I try to draw a whole page, things end up all different sizes, and I can’t seem to get the eyes to line up on a face.”

“Your miniatures are really cool, though,” Doug said. “Mrs. Petroski likes them.”

“They are good, Mike,” Junia said. “The problem is just how to make a substantial art project out of them.”

“In the meantime, I’ve drawn about three dozen cartoons about Timmy the Squirrel,” I said. “But they’re definitely more kitsch than art. And the main message in them seems to be, ‘Look both ways before you cross the street.’”

They laughed. Then Doug said, “I wonder who Mabel is going to team up with?”

“Looks like she wants it to be Bob,” Nora said, a bit bitterly, glancing over to where Bob was sitting.

“Or Bob wants it to be Bob,” Doug said. “Have you guys talked about the project, Mike?”

“Yeah,” I said, chasing my Jello around my plate. “As far as I know, we’re still working together, but we can’t seem to come up with anything to work on. He’s all caught up in physics the last few days. He wants to build a sculpture of a supercollider out of junk. Or make a drawing of it.” I finally trapped the Jello against my peas and scooped it up. A couple of peas came up with it.

Nora watched me put the spoonful in my mouth, and gave a slight shudder as I chewed. “From what I’ve seen of Bob’s inventions, they aren’t undiscovered wonders of the art world.”

“No,” I said, scraping up the remaining Jello. “He hasn’t won any esthetic design awards.”

“His bike and trailer are picturesque, though,” Junia interposed. “In a rustic kind of way.”

“They were even more rustic before we painted them,” I grinned. “And now that the paint is flaking off, they’re getting rustic again.” I trapped a forkful of peas with some mashed potatoes and consumed them. “We’re pretty good at rustic. Have you decided what you’re doing, Doug?”

Doug sighed. “No. I’ve worked with Eddie and with Tony on school projects, but I don’t think that would work for art class. Besides, I think they’ve teamed up. I’m at loose ends.”

Nora was watching Bob and Mabel, who were looking at something Bob was sketching on a napkin. “Seems like we’re out of our element all of a sudden. It’s like jet lag or something.”

ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ

Bob was just plain weird on Monday afternoon in science class. He was full of good cheer, and kept contributing irrelevant comments to the class discussion. Nora was grumpy and sniped at him for being an idiot. Mr. Conner finally had to shut them both up.

Afterwards, as I sorted out books at my locker, I said, “So what’s up this afternoon, Bob? Shall we work on the art project or what?”

Bob said, “I dunno. Whatever. Hi, Mabel!” He turned to smile at her as she approached.

She smiled back. “Hey, I wanted to see your famous bike. I’ve heard a lot about it. And you’re Mike. I’ve seen you in class, and heard a lot about you from Bob, but hadn’t actually talked to you yet. Hi.” She put out her hand, and I shook it, a little awkwardly.

“Hi,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.” I felt like an idiot as soon as I said it.

She said, “Likewise. Bob was telling me about some of the adventures you guys have had. Sounds like a lot of fun.”

I shot Bob a dark look. “We’ve had some good times,” I said.

I finished up my pack, and we headed out to the parking lot.

“This is the same bike I’ve had since about sixth grade,” Bob said as we approached the bike rack.

“Pieces of it are,” I said.

“Well, there’s no question which one it is,” said Mabel, surveying the black and red monster.

I looked at it critically. It stood balanced on its stand, bristling with truck batteries, brackets, motor, cables, and other miscellaneous hardware. The baskets on each side of the rear wheel were bent and misshapen. The front wheel was narrower than the rear one, and had a chrome rim instead of a red one, and the front fender was gone. The red and black paint job was beginning to flake off of the frame and the rear fender.

Bob said, “Well, it’s not much to look at, but the motor has gotten me around since, what, seventh grade?”

“Late seventh grade,” I assented.

“I’ve used it for a paper route, school, camping, running around town, a prom date....” Bob listed, counting on his fingers. “Several thousand miles by now.”

“I heard about the prom. That sounded like a lot of fun,” Mabel said. “So this bike was able to pull the weight of a trailer and four people? That’s amazing.”

“It’s all in the gearing,” Bob said. “We had to change it from a one-speed to a ten-speed for it to work.” He showed her the gears.

“Very cool,” she said. “Do you still have the trailer?”

“Yeah,” Bob said. “At my shop. You want a ride sometime?”

“Sure,” she said. “Where is your shop? Your garage?”

“No,” Bob said. “At my dad’s junkyard. I have a 20 by 40-foot shed there for my equipment and my inventions. Want to see it sometime?”

“Definitely,” Mabel said. “Is that where your submersible and winch and stuff is?”

I glared at Bob over her shoulder and began unlocking my bike.

“Right,” Bob said. “Come by one of these evenings and I’ll show you around.”

“Can I come tomorrow?” Mabel asked.

“Sure,” Bob said. “In fact, I’ll bring the trailer to school and give you a ride over there afterwards.”

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” I said, throwing my leg over my bike.

Mabel turned and smiled. She had a dusting of freckles on her nose and cheeks. “It was nice meeting you, Mike. I’m looking forward to seeing the things you and Bob have built.”

“Are you coming by the shop to talk about the art project, Mike?” Bob asked.

“Nah. I got stuff to do at home,” I said. “See ya.”

I stood on my pedals and dropped over the curb into the street. When I glanced back, Bob and Mabel were still conversing. I pedaled fast until I turned the corner onto the road out to my house. Then I settled into a slow, trudging rhythm for the rest of the ride.

ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ

I did my math and science homework and skimmed the English reading before supper, feeling very grumpy. At the table, Nancy asked, “So how’s the green-eyed physicist today?”

“Bob’s going to pick her up in the chariot tomorrow after school and take her to his shop,” I said, dumping a second mound of mashed potatoes onto my plate. “She said she wanted to see his inventions.”

Mom glanced at me. “How do you feel about that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It kind of bugs me. I’m trying to figure out why.”

“Are you jealous?” Nancy asked.

I thought a minute. “Not really. I mean, she’s really nice and all that, but it’s not like I want to date her. It’s more like she’s butting in. Everything’s confusing. Bob’s off in Lalaland, and I can’t even talk to him without arguing or getting mad. Now he’s going to show her all our secret stuff, and after all our years of rivalry with Nora and Junia and Tony, that feels like treason.” I ladled gravy onto my potatoes. “At school, things are weird. I feel stupid not even knowing where to sit at lunch. I don’t have any idea what to do about an art project, which is due in a couple of weeks, because I can’t get Bob to talk seriously about it, and besides, he’s so caught up in Mabel and physics that when we do talk, we can’t come to any kind of agreement.” I stabbed my mound of potatoes with my fork.

“Hmm,” Mom said. “Sounds like culture shock. Are you spending time with any of your other friends?”

“I sat with Doug and Nora and Junia at lunch on Friday. That was pretty nice. Today they were at a crowded table when I got there, and Bob was with Mabel, so I sat with some kids I don’t know,” I said.

“What’s this art project that you’re having trouble with?” asked Nancy.

“Well, we’re supposed to team up, which is weird for art, and we’re supposed to come up with a substantial project using skills we learned this semester.”

Mom shook her head. “When I was in school, it was very rare to have a graded assignment that you didn’t work on by yourself. Times have changed.”

“Teamwork is real big in the honors program,” I said. “They say the working world is all about teamwork.”

Nancy chuckled. “When was the last time you did a project with someone other than Bob?”

I thought back. “Uh... probably fourth or fifth grade. Fifth grade. Eddie and I did a report on internal combustion. That year was when Bob and I started hanging out.”

Dad spoke up. “Would it disrupt the fabric of the universe if you did one of your school projects with someone else?” he asked.

I pretended to gasp. “Good heavens! Inconceivable! I’ve thought a little about it. Doug is the main person I know of who doesn’t have a partner yet, and he does oil painting, so that would be kind of awkward.”

Nancy said, “What about Junia? Doesn’t she do ink drawing?”

“Yeah, that and watercolors, but she and Nora always do everything together,” I said. “Although they were having a hard time working this one out, too, since Nora does oil painting.”

Mom smiled. “Maybe it’s time to reshuffle the deck.”

‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚

In English class, we were paired up randomly and assigned a poem to read and discuss, with some questions to answer. I got stuck with a guy named Willy that I didn’t really know, although he was in most of my classes. I glanced around and saw that Bob was talking with Eddie, and Junia was paired with Mabel. Nora was over in a corner somewhere with someone else.

Willy and I plowed our way through the assignment without inspiration for several minutes.

“Poetry just isn’t my thing,” Willy said, pushing up his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

“Mine either,” I said. “And some of these questions are kind of odd. Look at this one: ‘What line would you change in this poem, if any?’”

“Well,” Willy said. “I think line four should have something in it about a duck.”

“A duck?” I said. “Why a duck?”

“Ducks are cool. I’ve been reading about them,” he said. “My dad has a chicken farm and wants to add ducks, since we have a big pond and plenty of land. Ducks have oily feathers that lock together to keep the water out so they can float. They produce a lot of meat, and it’s a lot more expensive than chicken. So look at line four. I think instead of talking about a fountain, he should say his love is like a duck in flight.” He grinned.

I read the line as he said. “Hmm. But then what happens with the references to the fountain later on?”

“Ducks got to have water. They can be about that.”

“Well, the last line would be a little awkward,” I said.

Willy squinted at the poem. “You’re right,” he finally said. “Looks like we’re going to need to change two lines. This last line can be about the poor duck getting blown out of the sky by a hunter.”

“How about this: ‘Until shotgun’s blast brings it, bleeding and broken, back to my bosom’?” I said.

Willy stared at me. “Whoa, nice alliteration,” he said admiringly. “Write it down before you forget it.”

I obligingly scribbled our lines on my notepad. “Okay. That’s done. What else do we need to say?”

We goofed off a few more minutes, then sat in silence, looking around at the other kids. Bob and Eddie were arguing, of course. I could hear Nora voicing her opinions clear across the room. Junia and Mabel were deep in conversation, bent over a notebook. The curly red hair and the straight blond hair made quite a contrast. Both girls were smiling.

‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚

I sat with Junia and Nora at lunch. Nora was talking across the table to Doug, so I asked Junia, “What did you think of Mabel?”

“She’s nice,” Junia said. “Really friendly. Smart, too. We had a nice talk.”

“Your comments about the poem were pretty good,” I said.

“Thanks,” Junia said. “What on earth was that duck business about?”

I laughed. “We were bored. Willy’s dad has a poultry farm.”

“Well, it was pretty funny,” Junia said.

“Willy’s drawing chickens and ducks for his art project,” I said. “He likes to use colored pencils, and Eric does landscapes in pastels, so they’re doing a barnyard scene together.”

“Eric’s landscapes are nice,” Junia said. “Mabel likes pastels, also.”

“So I heard,” I said. “And she has green eyes. She knows a lot about physics, too.”

Junia looked at me strangely. “Any progress on your art project?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Nope. I was kind of ticked at Bob last night, and didn’t feel like talking with him about it. My family was saying maybe I ought to work with someone else, if I can’t work it out with him.”

“That would be revolutionary,” Junia chuckled. “You’ve been doing projects with him since the beginning of junior high, at least.”

“Longer than that,” I said. “How long have you and Nora been doing stuff together?”

“Let’s see...” Junia pondered. “The first one was in fifth grade. In sixth grade our teacher made us pair up with someone else once or twice, but other than that....”

“We were on a team of four in seventh grade. Remember?” Nora piped up. “And you and Bob were with Tony and Hiroshi that time.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “That was a fiasco. Tony and Bob wouldn’t stop bickering. We were all glad when it was over.”

“I think I’ve done projects with at least six or seven different people,” Doug volunteered. “Tony, Eddie, Hiroshi, Martina, Irene....”

“Joe? And Mickey. Remember Mickey?” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” Doug said. “Old Mickey. That was a fun project. The Origins and Evolution of Buttons. I wonder where Mickey is now?”

“I don’t know. Anchorage or somewhere like that. Did you do a project with Joe or not?”

“Yeah. We did a history report once. Not very good.” Doug chugged down the rest of his drink.

“Maybe that’s why he’s not in honors anymore,” I said.

“What’s it like working with so many different people?” Nora asked, wrinkling her nose. “Seems like it would be tough. People think so differently.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Doug said. “It’s kind of like sports. If I’m playing tennis or basketball, I want Neil as my teammate. If it’s football or soccer, Hiroshi, of course. I always try to find the best partner I can from the people available. Then once that’s decided, we work out the best way to get the job done. Sometimes I have to do most of the work myself. Other times I don’t have to work so hard.” He grinned.

“Yeah, I remember how Tony complained after the science fair that you guys did together,” I said. “That was a great display, though.”

The bell rang then, and we went to our next classes.

''''''''''''

After school, there was a small crowd at the bike rack, admiring the chariot, which was chained to the rack beside Bob’s bike. Bob ostentatiously pushed it and the bike into the street and hooked them up, explaining how it all worked to Mabel. I didn’t offer to help.

Mabel sank into the grimy vinyl cushions. “Oh, it’s comfortable!” she said.

“Yeah, we calculated the best angle when we were building it,” Bob said. “The seat came from a porch glider. Are you ready?”

Mabel settled her pack beside her. “I guess so,” she said. “No seatbelts, I see.”

“Nah,” Bob said. “No roll bars, helmets, or airbags, either. Ride at your own risk. Operator is not insured or bonded.” He rifled through the little bin of cassettes. “What music would you like? Vivaldi? Chopin? Arlo Guthrie? B.B. King?”

Mabel turned to look at the selection. “No Blues Nerds?”

Bob shook his head. “The cat peed on our demo, so I threw it out.”

“B.B. King, then,” Mabel said.

Bob put that cassette in and adjusted the volume. He glanced at the bike gears and threw his leg over his seat as the music started. “All right, let’s go.”

He flipped the switch, and the bike lurched and settled into a plodding gait. Mabel waved to me and smiled. I nodded back.

''''''''''''

I went to the city library and checked out a book about quantum physics. I tried to read it as I did my homework. It seemed boring and dry, and the diagrams were totally uninteresting.

Bob called me late in the evening.

“I’ve got a sketch drawn of the supercollider,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll show it to you at school tomorrow.”

“Okay. I’ve been reading about physics this evening,” I said.

“Cool stuff, isn’t it?” Bob said.

“Blah,” I said, noncommitally  “It’s not my thing. Puts me to sleep.”

“Well, what I’ve drawn is pretty neat. I used different pieces of scrap to lay it out, then drew it as if it were made of those pieces. It’s a good drawing, if I do say so myself.” He went on for several minutes about the junk he had used, then said, “Mabel helped me design it. She’s got a good eye.”

“Green, too,” I said.

“Yeah. Two of them, actually,” Bob said. “She was pretty impressed with my inventions, especially the submersible. She thought it looked really cool. I told her I’d let her try it next summer, if she’s still around.”

“That’s treason!” I said.

“No it isn’t,” Bob said. “She’s never been a Girl Scout. She liked the winch, too. She was suggesting that I could make a curved cover for the spool, with a sliding panel so that the cable is always hidden.”

“Good idea, I guess,” I said. “Keep the branches out. And your beard, if you grow one.”

“It should be easy,” Bob said. “She was also saying I should streamline my bike and the chariot to make them more graceful and aerodynamic.”

“I suppose she wants you to put a fairing on the bike,” I said. “Make it look like a café racer or something.” I chuckled drily.

“Something like that. It would be nice to keep the bugs out of my face in the spring.”

“Tree branches, too,” I said. “Not to mention the odd low-flying duck.”

He went on at length about Mabel’s reactions to the various devices he had built. My irritation was growing, but I bit my tongue to keep from lashing out. I couldn’t think of anything to say that made any sense.

“Anyway, I’ll show you the drawing tomorrow,” Bob finally said. “See ya.”

“Good night,” I said unenthusiastically.

7777777777

At lunchtime the next day, Bob and Mabel waited for me at the classroom door. We walked to the cafeteria together. After we had gotten our trays and sat down, Bob pulled a large rolled-up paper out of his pocket. “This is my sketch,” he said. “Just to start with.”

It was a fascinating drawing. There was a collection of pipes that formed a circle, supported on a frame made of miscellaneous junk: a jack stand, a blender, a meat grinder. On opposite sides of the circle, the pipes went through two machines, which I recognized as an ancient truck magneto and a rusty old soft-serve ice cream machine that used to sit behind Recycle Sally’s. Bob had woven a fanciful and intricate collection of cables and smaller tubes through the machines and around the pipes.

“Whoa. This is awesome,” I said. “Not at all what I was expecting.”

“The drawing is exquisite,” Mabel said.

“Well, there are a few things I still want to move around,” Bob said, “and I wanted to maybe draw in some background. But I’m really happy with the way the machine came out.”

“It’s cool,” I said. “Very cool. Any ideas on how to make it a joint project?”

“Well, I was thinking, since you’re pretty good at drawing people, maybe you could draw us looking at it. We could be holding a set of plans, which would be a tiny drawing of it.”

I looked over the drawing again. “There’s no room on this paper for them,” I said.

Mabel said, “You could do a separate drawing that you lay partway over it, maybe. Like right here.” She pointed to the lower right corner of the page.

I scratched my head. “Yeah. That might work. I have trouble drawing people, though, if I try to fill a sheet of paper. I can draw one, but if I draw more than one, seems like one is always bigger or smaller than he should be. And even just one is likely to have his eyes or ears out of line.”

Mabel smiled. “If you use measurements to set parameters for your drawing, you can probably get past that. Draw the rough shapes, say, nine inches tall with a light pencil, then darken them after you have them sketched out.”

“Yeah. Mrs. Petroski said the same thing. I just can’t seem to get the hang of it, though.”

“I have another idea,” Bob said. “A real supercollider or particle accelerator is the size of a big building. You could draw us in one of your little tiny drawings, looking at this machine as if it were the size of the school.” He pointed to the bottom middle of the drawing. “Like, we could be standing here, about three inches tall, looking at a blueprint. I think that would be really cool.”

I mused. “That might work. I could try, see how it comes out. Somehow, though, it seems like the scale might be a problem. Part of the coolness of your design is that it’s made of things people will recognize, like the blender and the meat grinder. If I add little people, it turns it into a cartoon.”

“Well, try it,” Bob insisted. “Let’s make some copies and see what you can do.”

Mabel said, “You draw really well, Bob. Have you ever drawn your inventions, or any of the junked cars around your shop?”

“No, just diagrams for building stuff,” Bob said. “I usually do it in chalk on the floor, then erase it after we get it built. I have a notebook where I keep rough sketches of future projects.”

“I’d love to have a drawing of your bike and trailer,” Mabel said. “If you drew it in this kind of detail, I think it would be fascinating.”

Bob scrutinized his drawing. “Like the illustrations in Alvin Fernald or the Mad Scientist’s Club, huh?”

“You draw more precisely than that,” I said. “And you’ve done shading and stuff.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to think about it,” Bob said. He rolled the drawing back up, put it in his pocket, and picked up his fork to attack the meatloaf lunch.

77777777777

There was no time to talk in art class the next day, so we got together at lunch again. I unrolled my copy of the drawing and showed them a little drawing I had made on a separate sheet of paper.

“Oh, that’s cute!” Mabel said, smiling. “It looks just like you guys.”

Bob squinted. “Do I need glasses, or did you draw me with a bald spot?” he asked.

“Shut up,” I said. “I drew you with a beanie cap with a propellor on it. The propellor broke off.”

“It’s a cool drawing,” Bob said. He tried it in several positions at the bottom middle of the page.

“The blueprint is really neat,” Mabel said. “It’s so exquisitely tiny, and you got the perspective just right, so it looks like the corner of the plan is flopping down.”

“Yeah, after wearing through the paper with my eraser a few times,” I said. “The blueprint is my favorite part of the drawing.”

Bob pulled out the original drawing. “I made a few tiny modifications,” he said. “Nothing that would show up in your blueprint.” He pointed out some details he had changed here and there on the machine.

I laid my drawing on the bottom of the original and stared at it for a while. “My drawing isn’t an improvement to yours,” I finally said. “Gives it sort of a cartoonish feel. We look like Smurfs.”

“Oh, come on,” Mabel protested. “You don’t look anything like Smurfs. It’s a great drawing.”

“Yeah, but the styles are so different. It doesn’t look like serious artwork,” I said. “I keep thinking there should be a caption at the bottom.”

“Like, ‘You idiot! You were supposed to use a juicer, not a blender!’” Bob quipped.

I grinned. “‘I’m sorry, sir. We’re going to need a new engineer. Jenkins had a spot of trouble in the Osterizer.’”

We set the drawings aside and focused on our meal. Nora and Junia were at the other end of our long table. Mabel waved to Junia, then turned to Bob. “Your rivalry with Nora goes back a long way, doesn’t it?”

“Fifth grade,” Bob said promptly. “We faced off in a spelling bee the first week of class, and became sworn enemies at that moment.”

“Sworn enemies, huh? Who won the spelling bee?” Mabel asked.

Bob cleared his throat. “Well, actually....”

“I did,” I chuckled. “It was down to the three of us, and they were staring daggers at each other, and then neither of them could spell ‘occurrence’. It was one of the few times I ever won against Nora.”

“Actually, I don’t know how I got that far in the first place,” Bob admitted. “Spelling isn’t my thing. I worked my tail off memorizing the spelling book after that, though, just to give Nora a run for her money. And Mike, too, though it didn’t bug me as much if he won. Math is more my kind of deal.”

“Yeah. Doing math with Bob was annoying. We’d be working on homework, and Bob would say, ‘What do you have for number ten?’ And I’d go, ‘I’m still on number three!’” I laughed. “Nora slaved over her math homework. Believe it or not, Junia’s actually better than Nora at math, but Nora could never stand to have anyone be better than her at anything, so she’d work and work to get everything just right and be the best in class.”

“Nora’s pretty remarkable,” Mabel commented. “She seems good at everything. Her artwork is excellent, and she plays a really mean bassoon, and she’s one of the top people in every class. She writes great stuff for the paper. And she’s really pretty, too.”

“She is now,” I conceded. “You should have seen the glasses she used to wear!”

“The whole honors program got together to bury them when she got contacts,” Bob said. “Not really, but getting rid of them was a vast improvement.”

“I wish I had wavy hair like that,” Mabel said wistfully, glancing down the table.

“You’re kidding!” Bob said incredulously.

“No, really,” Mabel said. “My hair is so straight and thin, I can’t do anything with it. She’s got beautiful hair.”

Bob and I stared at each other. He raised an eyebrow quizzically, and I grinned.

MMMMMMMMMMMMM

In science class, there was a three-way discussion about physics between Bob, Mabel, and Nora. Nora and Bob were bickering with each other, even though neither of them really knew all that much about the topic, and Mabel was only able to speak intermittently about what she knew, which was a lot. I pulled out the little drawing of me and Bob, and stared at it.

“Hey, that’s cool!” Junia whispered, leaning back and across the aisle. “Can I see it?”

I handed it to her. She looked at it a long time, then handed it back. “The tiny drawing is great!” she said. “It’s a neat concept, to have a picture of a picture.”

I grinned and handed her the Adventures of Timmy the Squirrel, which I had stapled together into a booklet. “If you’re bored, you can read this.”

She took it and began perusing it. I saw her wrinkle her nose, and then giggle as she flipped the pages.

Mabel had the floor again. Mr. Conner shushed Bob when he butted in, and Mabel finally got to finish what she was saying.

Junia handed me back the Timmy book. “That’s disgusting!” she said with a wry frown. “You’re a sick man.”

“You inspired it,” I said. “You were the one who brought up Beatrix Potter.”

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ

After class, Bob said, “Hey, why don’t you come over to the shop and let’s talk about the art project? I have some ideas that might work better than what we were talking about before.”

“About time,” I said. “Sure.”

I pedaled along beside him, working hard to keep up with his pace. Bob kept rambling about physics and Mabel and his argument with Nora. I didn’t say much.

When we got to his shop, he parked his bike and put his pack on the workbench. “What I was thinking,” he said, “is that your drawing is pretty cool in itself, and mine is pretty good in itself. Maybe we could each draw the same thing in our own way, and come up with a collection of drawings, where each of us has his own take.”

“I had this discussion just the other day,” I said. “Doug suggested it as a way for Nora and Junia to deal with their watercolor-oil issue.”

“I started thinking about it when Mabel asked me to draw my bike,” Bob said. “Maybe we could draw different ones of our inventions, like the bike, the sub, the winch, and then display them together. What do you think?”

“Sure,” I said. “I feel a lot better about that than about the Smurfs.”

Without much more ado, we settled down with our drawing pads, staring at Bob’s bike. Bob immediately began a straight realistic sketch of a side view, using a ruler to make sure he had the proportions just right. I drew a quick sketch like his, then started thinking about the bike loaded for a camping trip. I drew it with Bob sitting on it, and luggage strapped all over it and overflowing the baskets. Bob’s feet were protruding and his head was thrown back like he had just flipped the switch. I drew a sketch of the trailer, too, to use later on at home for an idea I had.

Bob was still working on his drawing, so I made sketches of the winch, the submersible, Bob’s welder, and several other things around the shop.

“Time for dinner. I got to get,” I said when I was done.

Bob grunted. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

I glanced at his drawing. “Whoa, that’s really detailed!” I said. “Down to the paint flakes.”

“I’m trying to get everything in,” Bob said. “After I saw that tiny blueprint you drew, I decided to try putting more detail in my pictures and see how it worked.”

“That’s cool how you have the needle on the speedometer, and the brands on the batteries,” I said. “But it’s going to take you a long time to get through, at this rate.”

“Yep,” Bob said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’d best be getting home, too.”

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉ

In art class the next day, Mrs. Petroski gave us a chance to show what we had done so far on our projects. Willy showed a couple of drawings of his favorite chickens, much to the class’s amusement. He had drawn them very expressively. One was looking at the viewer like it was about to say something, and the other was furiously pulling a forlorn worm out of the ground.

Bob showed the picture he had done of the supercollider, so I showed the tiny drawing that went with it. Then Bob displayed his bicycle drawing, which was about two-thirds done. I riffled through my sketchbook and decided to show the picture of the bike loaded up for a camping trip. Bob’s posture in the picture drew some chuckles.

“Very interesting,” Mrs. Petroski said. “You both draw very well, but very differently. There’s a nice contrast between your different takes on the same subject. I take it you’re going to do a collection of drawings?”

“That’s right,” Bob said. “We’ll each draw the same things, using our own styles, and display them together.”

Nora and Junia each showed a painting of a large rock that stood in a corner of the Schmidts’ yard. “This is my favorite rock,” Junia said, holding up her painting. “My brother and sister and I have played on it since we first moved to this house.” Her picture showed a sunny spring day, with children climbing on the rock and jumping off. It was drawn with sparing ink lines, and painted in cheerful flowing watercolors.

Nora’s was a meticulously detailed realistic oil painting including a lot of nature: yellow grass stubble, a chipmunk with his cheeks full of seeds, a couple of ants, lines and shadows in the rock, a grasshopper.

“Lovely,” said Mrs. P. “Two very different paintings, both wonderfully done. It will be a great display. How is your project coming, Doug?”

Doug cleared his throat and grinned. “Well, I don’t have a partner yet. I did actually do a painting of this rock, too, the day Nora and Junia were working on it. You want to see it?”

“Sure,” said Mrs. P.

Doug pulled a canvas out of a carrier that leaned against his desk. “It’s a little more abstract than their paintings.”

He set his painting on his desk. Someone said, “Oh, wow!” Mrs. Petroski’s eyebrows went up.

The angle was exactly like Nora’s, but he had minimized the background, and focused on the shape and texture of the rock itself. He had painted it in very dark colors, grays and blues and blacks and reds, carefully blended to show contours and shading. It looked very heavy and rough.

“Like a meteorite,” Willy commented.

“Well. That’s amazing,” Mrs. P. said. “Three very different takes on the same rock, and all from approximately the same angle.”

A couple of people made remarks, and then Mrs. P. turned to Mabel. “How are you doing, Mabel? Have you found a partner yet?”

She shook her head. “No. I’ve made some friends, though.” She smiled around at us, and said, “I feel a little out of my league, looking at all this great artwork. My art teacher in Kansas City was a designer, so my drawings are more like commercial art. I don’t know what to do for a project, but maybe if I show you part of my portfolio, you can see what kind of drawings I’ve done.”

She opened a big portfolio and showed us pastel drawings of a girl dancing, a cat basking in the sun, a building exterior, a sports car. “They aren’t very personal,” she said apologetically. “My teacher was more into technique and design more than self-expression.”

“Is that your cat?” asked Mrs. P.

Mabel pulled the cat picture out of the stack and looked at it. “No,” she said. “One of my friends had it. Its name is Thomas.”

“Well, it’s beautifully done, and it looks like a real cat. I would guess from the way you’ve drawn it that you liked it a lot,” Mrs. P. said.

Mabel smiled sheepishly. “Actually, I hated him.”

The class laughed, and she went on, “He was spoiled rotten, loud and snooty and demanding, and he tore up all the furniture in my friend’s house. But he looked really sweet that one time, so I drew him.”

Mrs. P. said, “Did you ever think of drawing him in a way that showed what you really thought of him?”

Mabel frowned. “No. I guess my pastels are usually things that I think are attractive or appealing.”

“Think about it,” urged Mrs. P. “Stretch your boundaries a little. Not all art is sentimental or cheerful. A lot of artists use their art to work through their thoughts and feelings, whatever they are.”

“Well, I did a little cartooning for fun,” Mabel said. “Just silly stuff.” She pulled a thin sketchbook out of the portfolio and leafed through it. Then she grinned. “This was my art teacher. Mr. Sloane.” She held up the book, and we saw an ink cartoon of a tall, thin, cadaverous man with a shock of black hair and an exaggerated overbite.

“Goodness! What did he think of that drawing?” asked Mrs. P., while the class giggled.

“I never showed it to him,” Mabel said. “Didn’t want to hurt his feelings. This is my little sister Eunice.” She showed a drawing of a skinny little girl in a sundress, weighted down with costume jewelry and standing in adult high heels. Two of her front teeth were missing.

“Well, you certainly have no problem making your drawings personal,” Mrs. P. said. “Do you have any ideas on how to do the same with your pastels?”

“I guess I need to think about it,” Mabel said.

*ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ

Mabel was very pleased with Bob’s bike drawing, and insisted on getting a photocopy right away, even though it wasn’t done. Bob said, “Well, I’m still going to draw the trailer, but that’s a separate drawing that will be in the same scale.”

“Yeah! I want a copy of that, too, when you finish,” she said. She whisked off into the library with Bob’s drawing.

“I guess I’ll go on home, Bob, since you’ll probably be working on art and stuff,” I said, shouldering my pack.

“Okay. How are your drawings coming?” he asked.

I flipped through my sketch book. “I’ve got a bunch roughed out, and I’m going to polish them up,” I said.

“These are very, very cool, Mike,” he said, looking them over. “I wish I could draw people like you do. Mine always look like mannequins.”

“We need to get together in a couple of days and compare our work and see what we need to do and what we have to work with,” I said. “It’ll take you that long to get several drawings done.”

“Particularly with the history test this week,” Bob said ruefully. “I haven’t even read the chapter yet.”

Mabel returned with her copies, so I said goodbye and left.

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ

I worked very hard on my drawings the next two nights. I barely skimmed the history chapter, and whipped my other homework out in record time. What Mrs. Petroski had said about using art to deal with feelings kept coming back to me.

I drew a sketch of Bob in the river, clutching the submersible. He had his eyes squinted because of the spray, and his face was in a grimace. The spray effect was a lot of fun. I used tracing paper to practice the technique, so I wouldn’t have to keep erasing on my drawing, and eventually I figured out how to draw a V-shaped pattern of water arching up from the sub and back on each side of Bob. I also used the tracing paper to figure out the churned-up water around Bob’s feet.

The winch was more challenging. The first picture I produced, of Bob going up into a tree, was boring. I stared at it a long time, and then set it aside.

I drew Bob crouched down with his welder mask on, working on an undefined machine, while I held the parts together. The spray of sparks and the brightness of the torch were fun to produce, but took a lot of tries.

My most ambitious drawing was another of the bike, this time with the trailer attached. I drew Bob riding the bike, wearing a long-tailed suit with a ruffled shirt. The pants were rolled up around his ankles, and the sleeves were pushed up and wrinkled. In the trailer, I drew Nora, me, and Junia. Nora figured most prominently because of the viewpoint, but I was sitting taller, and Junia was leaning forward, so we were all visible. It looked like Nora was calling over her shoulder to Bob, and the others of us were smiling. This was my biggest drawing, and I sweated over it to get the proportions right. I shaded the edges of the drawing to give the illusion of night, except for a V-shaped headlight beam from the bike and a small circle around the taillights.

*ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ

I showed my drawings to Junia the next day at lunch. She chuckled at the drawing of Bob in the river, complimented me on the sparks in the welding picture, and then when she flipped to the picture of the bike and trailer, her eyes widened, and she stared at it in silence for a long time.

“This drawing is wonderful, Mike,” she finally said. “Could I get a photocopy of it?”

“Sure,” I said. “How’s your project coming?”

“Not too good,” she said frankly. “I did a couple more paintings to go along with Nora’s, but they aren’t very inspired. Doug’s paintings look a lot more interesting with hers than mine do, because he’s using oils and painting from the same perspective. It looks to me like they’d be better off teaming up.”

“What would you do, then?” I asked.

She stared at my drawing. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Mabel needs a partner yet, but we don’t have a lot of time left. I guess I’ll talk to her about it.”

I looked around the lunchroom. “Where is Mabel, anyway? And I don’t see Nora, either. Bob’s skipping lunch to study for history.”

Junia glanced across the cafeteria. “There’s a special rehearsal for the youth symphony concert tonight, in the auditorium.”

“Aren’t you in that?” I asked.

Junia took a sip of her drink. “Yes, but this rehearsal is just some of the woodwinds. There’s a quartet, and since Mabel hasn’t been here long, they’re having an extra practice.”

“Does she play oboe or flute?” I asked.

“Oboe,” Junia said. “She’s really good, too.”

“As good as Nora is on the bassoon?”

Junia laughed. “Pretty much. Nora’s been practicing her lungs out since she came.”

“Doesn’t want to be shown up, huh?”

“Nope. I’ve hardly been able to talk to her for the past week. She’s totally focused on her practicing and her oil painting.” Junia sighed.

“Who else is in the quartet?” I asked, to change the subject.

Junia said, “Well, Mitch, he’s the other oboe player, from Clark. He’s playing English horn for the quartet. Kim is playing flute, and actually the guest conductor will play piccolo for one part, so it’s really a quintet.” She looked at me. “Are you going to come?”

“Sure,” I said. “I hadn’t realized it was tonight. At seven?”

“Right. We’re performing in the school auditorium tonight, and tomorrow night over in Clark at the high school.”

+*+*+*+*+*

I got Nancy to take me to the concert that night in the station wagon. The auditorium was nearly full. I looked around to see who was there. Hiroshi was on the front row, wearing a sports coat and tie. He had a bouquet of roses. The Schmidts and Slattens were sitting together a few rows back. Mrs. Schmidt was wearing an elegant black dress, and Mr. Schmidt actually looked pretty classy in his dark gray suit. Mr. Slatten had a camera with a huge telephoto lens.

Nancy nudged me and pointed. “Looky there.”

I looked. “Oh, wow!” I said.

It was Bob, sitting with his folks. Bob had a tie on, and his hair was combed carefully back. His dad wore a blue pinstripe suit, and his mom had on a white evening gown.

“Shall we sit with him?” Nancy asked.

“Of course,” I said.

We edged our way along the row, and sank into the seats beside Bob’s, after greeting his parents.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Bob.

He grinned. “Art is my life. Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast. If music be the food of love, play on. Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. And my folks wanted to come.”

“And Mabel is in a woodwind quartet?” I said.

“That too,” Bob said. “Hi, Nancy.”

“Hi, Bob. You look nice. Why aren’t you wearing your blue tux?” she asked.

“I outgrew it,” Bob said.

“Did you bring your folks in the chariot?” she teased.

“I offered,” Bob said.

The concert was very good. The guest conductor was a woman named Bertha Spadowski. She was round and red-cheeked, and extremely energetic. Her arms flew through the air as she waved her baton. Sometimes they were contorted like a dying spider’s legs, as she nursed the orchestra through a soft, delicate part of the music. Other times it looked like she was pounding stakes or cutting down a tree, as she emphasized the beat. It was as much fun to watch her as it was to listen to the music.

The quartet was very good. They played an intricate baroque piece, and each instrument had occasion to be the dominant as it played the melody. Mitch looked calm and cool. Nora’s face was very intense and focused. Mabel looked relaxed, but when she had the melody, she leaned forward and stared very carefully at the sheet music, with occasional glances up at Mrs. Spadowski, who had stepped off the director’s platform to a music stand in front of the quartet’s chairs. Kim sat on the front edge of her seat as she played, poised and elegant as usual. I glanced down at Hiroshi on the front row, and laughed. He was mirroring her posture, barely perched on the front edge of his chair, swaying as Kim did in time to the music. The roses were hanging off of his lap.

Near the end of the piece, the music became more intense, and the pitch went higher and higher. Mrs. Spadowski picked up a tiny piccolo from her music stand and began to play a high, shrill counterpoint to Kim’s flute part. She swayed and twisted as she played, almost as if she were directing with her elbows and head. It was quite a show.

The quartet got a standing ovation. Mabel looked relieved, and Nora was beaming. They bowed a few times, and I saw Nora and Mabel exchange words and smiles as they returned to their orchestra places.

A set of timpani were rolled out to the front of the stage while the orchestra tuned up again. Mrs. Spadowski tapped the timpani a few times with the drumsticks, then nodded. She lifted her arms, holding a drumstick in each hand, and the orchestra was silent. Then she began to wave out the tempo, and Kim started a haunting melody on the flute. It was picked up by Junia on the piano, then by a clarinet, then by a French horn, and gradually the whole orchestra joined in.

It was a dark, complex piece by some Russian composer. All the musicians looked very focused, staring at their music or at Mrs. Spadowski. When the music got really intense, Mrs. Spadowski played a thunderous drumroll on the timpani that grew louder and louder, ending it with a series of blows: “Bam! Bam bam bam bam!” Then a light melody began again, from the piano this time, and was passed around all over the orchestra in a series of solos.

The piece grew to a loud crescendo in the final moments, with the whole orchestra playing. Mrs. Spadowski was rumbling away on the timpani, bobbing her head and swaying to direct the other musicians. Finally, a series of drumbeats on the timpani and other drums, along with crashing piano chords, brought it to a close: “Bam! Bam bam bam bam!”

The crowd was immediately on its feet. Mrs. Spadowski looked flushed and exhilarated. She bowed, and signaled to the orchestra to stand. They stood and bowed, and the applause went on and on. The regular symphony director brought Mrs. Spadowski an armful of flowers, and there was more clapping, and finally people began to file out.

The Nelsons waited until the crowd had thinned, then made their way towards the stage. Nancy and I tagged along behind Bob. We went up the side steps to the stage, dodging the guys who were clearing the orchestra chairs away, and then stepped through the side curtain to the long room where the performers were putting their instruments away.

We went straight to Mrs. Spadowski. She was stretching a cover over her timpani, which sat on a little cart. Mrs. Nelson hugged her, and they laughed and joked. “I hadn’t seen you perform in about eight years, Bertha,” Mrs. Nelson said.

Mrs. Spadowski said, “That’s right! We did a tour of the Midwest, and you all came to the performance in the state capital.” She looked over at Bob. “Well, you clean up pretty well, Bobby. Thanks for coming, although I suspect I’m not the only performer you came to hear.” She winked.

I nudged Bob. “So this is your aunt Bertha?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s been staying with us this week and having rehearsals with the youth symphony every evening.”

“I expected a plaid skirt and cat’s-eye glasses,” I said.

Nancy snickered.

A few yards away, I saw Kim holding the bouquet of roses and talking with Hiroshi.  Beyond them, Mabel and Nora were conversing animatedly as they cleaned their instruments and stashed them in their cases. Mitch was crouched behind them, working on the English horn. Bob and I ambled over.

“That was a great concert,” Bob said. “I especially enjoyed the quartet.”

“Well, I survived,” Mabel laughed. “I was barely ready. During practice, I kept missing my spot to come in, so during the performance, Nora signaled to me right in the middle of her own part, and I got it just right. What a relief!”

Nora was disassembling her large instrument. Bob stared at the buttons and levers in fascination. “That’s really cool! I’ve never seen a bassoon up close,” he said. “Can I see it?”

Nora handed him a section, and he pushed several of the buttons and levers to see how they opened and closed. “Awesome! I want to make one sometime. It’s actually just a big hollow pipe with all these valves, right?”

“And a reed on the stem at the top,” Nora said, handing him a double reed. “That’s the most important part.”

“I’ve got to build one of these,” Bob said. He examined the reed. Then he wanted to see the oboe, so Mabel unpacked hers and let him look at the pieces. She assembled it for him so he could see the whole thing.

Nancy was quite amused by Bob’s fascination. She caught Mabel’s eye while Bob was peering through the inside of the oboe.

“You must be Mabel. Hi, I’m Mike’s sister Nancy,” she said.

Mabel smiled. “Hi,” she said.

“It’s nice to get to see you in person. I’ve been hearing all about this green-eyed physicist who is causing quite a stir among the male population in the honors classes,” Nancy said.

Mabel blushed, and said, “Well, I don’t know what to say to that.”

I poked my sister with my elbow, hard. “Don’t be rude, Nancy,” I said.

“Oh, everything I’ve heard has been positive,” Nancy said. “And I hadn’t even heard about your skills as a musician. Your quartet was excellent.”

“Thanks,” said Mabel, beginning to recover her composure. “It went better than I expected.”

“See you girls tomorrow,” Mitch said, snapping his case shut and standing up.

“Hold on a minute,” Bob said. “Could I look at your instrument? I’m trying to figure out how these things work.”

Mitch stared at Bob a minute, then said, “Sure.” He opened his case and showed the English horn to Bob.

“It looks pretty much like an oboe,” I observed.

“Not much difference except in the size and the pitch,” Mitch agreed. “This one belongs to the youth symphony. I couldn’t afford to own both it and an oboe.”

Bob looked it over and thanked Mitch. “Great performance, by the way,” he said.

I agreed. “The English horn has a really mellow tone,” I said.

Junia came up and hugged Nora and Mabel. “Great quartet, guys!” she said. “You did really well!”

They talked about the concert a while. Then the Slattens came, and Nora left with them. Junia turned to Mabel. “I was wondering if I could talk with you about something tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Mabel said. “In the morning, or in the afternoon?”

“Morning, I think,” Junia said. “Can I come over around ten?”

Mabel smiled. “I should be up by then. Oh, here’s my folks.” She introduced us to a pleasant-looking couple, about the age of our parents.

Mr. Mortensen looked at Bob and me and said, “It’s good to meet you. I wanted to thank you for helping my daughter fit in so quickly. She was a little nervous about changing schools in the middle of a semester, but so far she’s having a really good time.” He turned to Bob and said, “Did you come on your bike tonight?”

“No,” Bob said. “Those are my parents over there. I rode with them.” He gestured to where they were still talking with Mrs. Spadowski. “The conductor is my aunt Bertha.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” said Mr. Mortensen, with a twinkle in his eye. “I hope I get to see the electric bike sometime. At your age, though, I suspect you’ll be driving a car soon, and the bike will get parked.”

“Not likely,” snorted Bob. “Dad says I can have a car when I can afford one.”

Mabel and her dad laughed. “Where have I heard those words before?” said Mabel, looking up at him.

+*+*+*+*+*+*

As we drove home, Nancy said, “I hadn’t ever seen Junia up close before. She’s really cute, and seems very nice.”

I didn’t say much, just nodded.

“How is she adjusting to Mabel being around?” Nancy asked.

“She likes her,” I said. “Nora’s the one who’s been grumpy. She hasn’t said anything mean, but she’s even more argumentative than usual in class, especially with Bob.”

“Is it rivalry or jealousy?” Nancy asked.

I thought a minute. “Probably both,” I said. “Mabel’s good at everything, and Bob is obsessed with her. The funny thing is that Mabel thinks Nora has it all together: looks, brains, music, art.”

“They seemed to be getting along pretty well tonight,” observed Nancy.

“Yeah, they did,” I said.

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ*

I mowed a couple of lawns in the early morning, and raked leaves. It was around 11:00 by the time I got home. I poured myself a glass of lemonade, and Nancy poked her head into the kitchen. “Oh, Mike, Mabel was calling for you. She said to call her back.”

I took the number she gave me, and went to the phone. Mrs. Mortensen answered, and put Mabel on. Mabel said, “Oh, thanks for calling back, Mike. Actually, Junia’s here and she wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay,” I said.

Junia came on then. “Hi, Mike. I was wondering if there was any possibility of you coming over here to Mabel’s to talk with us. If you aren’t really busy with your lawns and all.”

“I just finished,” I said. “Can you wait long enough for me to shower? Like half an hour?”

“Sure,” she said. She held a quick conversation in the background, and then Mabel came back on.

“Mike, how about if you come for lunch? We’re just going to make sandwiches and eat on the porch.”

“Cool,” I said.

Then Junia was back on. “Oh, bring your sketchbook! That’s the most important part,” she said, and laughed.

“All right,” I said. “Oh, where does she live?”

Junia gave me the address, which was on the edge of town, not too far from the Schmidt’s farm. I rang off and called out, “Mom?”

“What?” she answered from her sewing room.

I stuck my head in the door. “I’m going to be gone for lunch. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” she said, looking up from the jeans she was patching. “By the way, you should have told me about Bertha directing the orchestra last night. We would have gone with you. She was a good friend of mine in college.”

“Is she the same... you knew her? Oh, no wonder! Kettle drums and piccolo. But I didn’t really know what was going on last night until I got there,” I said. “I think they’re playing over in Clark tonight, though. At the high school.”

“That’s what Nancy said,” Mom said. “Dad and I are going to go. Do you want to go with us?”

“I’ll let you know,” I said.

I showered quickly. As I was leaving, I said to Nancy, “If anyone needs me, I left the number by the phone.”

“A lunch date with a hot chick, huh? Our little nerd is moving up in the world,” said Nancy.

I snorted, picked up my sketchbook and pencil case, and went out to my bike.

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ*

When I got to the Mortensens’, I found the two girls setting up lunch on the big porch that wrapped around two sides of the big stone house. I sat with Junia on the white glider, and Mabel sat in a lawn chair. The food and lemonade was on a card table in front of us.

We chatted casually while we ate. I wondered what I was there for, but decided just to enjoy the moment. My sandwich had an unusual but vaguely familiar flavor. I couldn’t remember where I’d had it before.

“What’s this meat in the sandwich?” I asked. “Tastes a little... like liver or something.”

“Do you like it?” Mabel asked. “You don’t have to finish it if you don’t. It’s Braunschweiger. It’s a paté made from pork liver.”

I took another bite. “I like it. I had some paté de foie gras once a long time ago. That’s why it was familiar.”

Junia laughed. “My dad has Braunschweiger in the house all the time. That and sauerkraut. They’re two things Mom has never quite gotten used to. Well, three, actually. Dad also likes to play polkas on his accordion, and Mom can’t stand polkas.”

“My mom has never been able to handle ludafisk,” Mabel said. “She’s okay with sauerkraut and sausage, but the weird Scandinavian fish things give her an upset stomach.”

“Well, we’re more of a hot dogs and American cheese family,” I said. “Lasagna is about as exotic as we get.”

We finished off the sandwiches and some chips and brownies, and then Mabel took the tray of plates back inside. I looked at Junia and said, “I think I’ve been in this house before. Who used to live here?”

Junia thought a while. “I know what you mean. Seems like something long, long ago....”

I snapped my fingers. “First grade,” I said. “It was Diane’s seventh birthday. Remember Diane? I came to a party here. There was a huge cake, and I got to play with an electric train in the garage. Were you here? I think you were.”

Junia’s nose wrinkled. “Maybe. I remember Diane, but I’m not sure about the party. But I do remember this house from something.”

Mabel came out. “Okay, that’s taken care of. Do you guys need more to drink?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” I said, looking at my glass.

Junia said, “No, I’m okay.”

Mabel sat down and looked expectantly at Junia. Junia sat up, and said, “Well, Mike, we wanted to talk with you about the art project. I came over here to see about teaming up with Mabel, but I think we’ve come up with a more interesting idea. Can I see your drawing, Mabel?”

Mabel handed her a Masonite drawing board with a picture taped to it. It was Bob’s bicycle picture, with the trailer taped to look as if it were being towed. Junia propped it on her lap, facing me, and said, “Look at this.”

There was a piece of tracing paper hanging off the back of the drawing board. She flipped it so it hung over Bob’s picture. On it was drawn a stylized racing motorcycle, in blue and silver pastels. The trailer looked like a streamlined chariot, in the same colors and style. The original pencil drawing could still be glimpsed through the strokes of pastel chalk.

“Whoa! Cool!” I said. “That’s awesome! Has Bob seen it yet?”

“No,” Mabel said. “I was going to show it to him next time I see him.”

“Let me show you another drawing,” Junia said. She reached into Mabel’s portfolio and pulled out a piece of cardboard with Bob’s supercollider drawing on it. She flipped over a piece of tracing paper, and the drawing was now overlaid with a pastel drawing of a very sleek, futuristic machine.

I took the drawing from Junia and examined it. It looked like Mabel had used a pencil or charcoal to sharpen up the edges of the huge machine. She had drawn a control panel in one corner, and there were two scientists dressed in lab coats working on it. As in the other drawing, the original could faintly be seen through the chalk work.

“Man! That’s impressive!” I said. “It’s going to blow Bob away.”

“What do you think Mrs. Petroski would think?” asked Mabel.

I looked at her, then at Junia. “I don’t know. It looks to me like your artwork is really good, and I think the concept is very cool. There’s something... I don’t know. I’m not much of an artist, but it seems like she might think it needs to be a little more personal. Does that make sense?”

“What I was saying in class, about being too commercial?” she said. “It is pretty stylized. How could I make it more human?”

Junia said, “What’s the drawing about?”

Mabel looked at the two pastels. “Well, they’re about imagination and creativity. And ingenuity. Contrast. I don’t know. Stuff like that.” She looked discouraged.

“Yeah, all those things are pretty clear,” I said. “Maybe it’s fine as it is. You might ask Mrs. P. on Monday and see what she says.”

“Anyway, Mike, like I said the other day, it really seems like Nora’s work looks a lot more interesting with Doug’s than with mine,” Junia said. “So I came over to talk with Mabel about teaming up with her, but then when I saw these drawings, I thought it made more sense for her to work with Bob.”

“It’s a great idea, but where does that leave me?” I asked. “There’s just a week left. And what will you do?”

“Well, we were talking about your miniature drawings, and then I tripped over this in the hallway, and I had another idea,” Junia said. She held up a tiny easel, about eight inches high.

“That’s from my little sister’s Barbie,” Mabel said.

“Anyway, I had this brainstorm,” Junia said....

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ*

“So who’s going to talk with Bob?” I asked as I prepared to leave a couple of hours later.

“Probably you should,” Junia said. “He’s still expecting to do the project with you.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s right,” I said. “I’ll swing by there on my way home. Thanks for lunch, Mabel. And for showing me your artwork. It’s really cool.”

“Thank you, Mike,” she said. “I’m starting to get some more ideas, from looking at your drawings. Tell Bob we can get together and talk tomorrow afternoon. I have to get ready for the concert tonight.”

“Me too,” Junia said, looking at her watch. “I need to talk to Nora first, though.”

I grinned at Junia. “I’m pretty excited about our project. It’s going to be a blast!”

She laughed. “You’re lucky. Your part is pretty much done. I’ve got a lot to do in the next week.”

“I’ll get you the copies as soon as I can,” I promised. “And there’s a lot I have to do yet, too. I’ll get right on it.”

I rode over to Bob’s shop. He was working on a chainsaw engine. Briefly, I told him about the girls’ suggestion for new partnerships. “You should see Mabel’s drawings, Bob. You’re going to love them!”

Bob looked sort of cautiously happy. “Are you really okay with it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What you and I were working on is fine, but this brings Mabel in, and her drawings go really great with yours. And the idea Junia had for my stuff is really cool. It seems a lot more natural all around.”

“Well, okay, if you’re all right with it. It would be fun to work with Mabel.”

“Indeed it would. Mabel of the green eyes. Mabel Curie, the renowned scientist. Mabel the musician of note. She said you could get together tomorrow afternoon,” I said.

“I’ll probably see her tonight,” Bob said. “My folks are going to the concert again, and I was thinking of tagging along. You want to ride along?”

I considered. “No. My folks are going, too. I think I’m going to stay home and do homework and work on my drawings and stuff.”

“What’s your project going to look like, then?” Bob asked.

“I’m not going to tell you,” I said. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

Bob looked a little taken aback, but all he said was, “I probably won’t see you till Monday, then.”

“Enjoy the concert,” I said.

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ*

I went home, then rode to the library and the grocery store. After that, I started on my homework.

At supper, I handed my mom a manila envelope. “This is for Junia,” I said. “Could you make sure to give it to the Schmidts for me? She needs it for some homework.”

“Sure,” Mom said. “I might even give it to Junia herself, because we’ll be going backstage after the conference to talk with Bertha.”

“That would be even better,” I said. “Don’t forget.”

Sunday afternoon, I got out the package of popsicle sticks from the grocery store and some glue, tape, cardboard, and string, and began fiddling with them on the grubby workbench/desk in my room. It took a while to get my first design right, but I finally was satisfied with my product. I quickly made two more identical ones, then started on my next project.

I didn’t see much of Bob or Mabel that week. I ate lunches with Junia, talking about our project. Occasionally we sat with Doug and Nora. Nora was still irritable, but she seemed satisfied with the art arrangement, at least.

After school, in addition to cutting and glueing popsicle sticks and cardboard, I had to write a paper and an essay, study for tests, and work on other end-of-semester assignments. I rarely had time to relax.

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ*

Thursday afternoon, I put my bike in the trunk of Mrs. Schmidt’s car and rode out to their house with Junia. I felt kind of self-conscious on the way, but Mrs. Schmidt was very nice. “Have you done any more singing since music class, Mike?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Just in church.”

“Are you in the choir?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“You really ought to consider it,” she said. “You have a nice tenor voice.”

I blushed and grinned at Junia, who smiled sympathetically. “Is Bob still playing his guitar?” Junia asked.

“Off and on,” I said. “He’s not as tone-deaf as he was, either. Last summer, I gave him such a hard time about it that he took a  tape recorder and started working on it. He would blow a note on his pitchpipe and sing it into the recorder, and then listen to it and try to hear the difference. Or he’d play a note on his guitar and try to sing it at the same time. That worked a little better.”

“So it actually made a difference?” Mrs. Schmidt said.

“Yeah. He can actually sing a recognizable tune now, and he can tune his guitar without the pitch finder, sort of. At least in the ballpark. He still can’t hear it when he hits a wrong chord, though.”

Junia and I spent a couple of hours in the big family room at the back of the house, assembling what we had been slaving over. Sounds of piano lessons came down the hallway from the living room. I faintly heard Mrs. Schmidt’s voice: “All right, that’s not too bad. Now try it more slowly, and pay close attention to the rhythm.”

“Your mom’s a very patient woman,” I said to Junia.

She wrinkled her nose. “We all have to be. I try to tune it out, but it’s hard. The worst is the clarinet beginners.”

Shortly afterwards, I heard a loud, squawky scale being played. It ended with a loud squeak.

“Clarinet beginner?” I asked.

Junia nodded and got up to close the family room door. It muffled the sound a bit, but the squeaks came through loud and clear. Then the door burst open, and a little redheaded boy with freckles came in.

“Hey, Junior! Guess what? We had a pop quiz in social studies today, and I hadn’t read the chapter, so I only got a B. Do you think Mom and Dad are going to be mad at me? Hey, what are you making, a doll house?” He reached out to pick up one of the pieces I had built.

Junia grabbed his wrist. “Don’t touch anything, Mitch,” she said. “It’s an art assignment. And no, I don’t think they’ll be mad about you getting a B. Did they scold you for it before?”

“No, because I never got a B before,” Mitch said, staring at the picture I was working on. “What are you making? Is that a window?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And that’s a door. See? But it doesn’t open. It’s just a picture.”

“Cool! When you’re done, can I use it for my GI Joes?”

Junia grinned at me, and said, “Probably not. Besides, you don’t have any GI Joes that are artists, do you?”

“I don’t think so.” Mitch looked at me. “Who are you? Are you Junior’s boyfriend? You’re in her prom picture.”

I grinned at Junia, who gave me a wry smile. “I’m Mike. Junia and I went to the prom together last year, and now we’re doing this art project.”

“Mike? You’re Mike? My dad talks about you sometimes at dinner,” Mitch said.

“Shut up and get out of here, Mitch,” Junia said, blushing.

“I can’t. Mom said I have to practice piano before supper, and she’s got lessons going on, so I gotta practice in here. And Mom said not to say ‘shut up’.” He picked one of my little pictures and stared at it.

Junia took it from him and put it back down. She sighed. “If you’ve got to practice, go ahead, but keep the soft pedal on.”

She got up and went over to the baby grand piano to put the top down. When she sat back down, Mitch turned reluctantly away and went over to the piano. He spun the stool around until it was low enough for him, and then I heard a “bang!” as he  flipped up the keyboard cover.

I bent back over the cardboard I was cutting, bracing myself mentally for the kind of plinking I had heard from the hallway. Instead, Mitch launched into rapid and elaborate scales, up and down the keyboard. I sat up and stared, shocked.

Junia saw me and laughed. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.

“I just.... He’s really good!” I said, watching in fascination as his fingers raced over the keys.

Junia nodded. “Yep. He’s going to be way better than me, or even my mom, if he keeps going. Mom says that by junior high, she’ll have to get someone else to teach him.”

We plugged along, cutting and glueing and occasionally arguing amiably about where to put something, while Mitch flew speedily and accurately through several sets of exercises and a handful of classical pieces. Finally he banged down the keyboard and said, “I’m done. I’m going to go swing.” He scooped his sheet music together, slapped it onto a corner of the piano, and scooted out.

“Amazing,” I said. “Must be nice to have that kind of talent.”

Junia shook her head. “It makes me feel really dumb. He gets songs down in three days that took me weeks and weeks to master. And school is no  problem for him, either.”

“Funny to hear a kid talking about GI Joes and then sit down and play like that.”

Not long after that, Mrs. Schmidt came in. “Lessons are finally over,” she announced, breathing a sigh of relief. “Supper will be ready in fifteen minutes. Will you join us, Mike?”

I looked at the work we had done, and what remained. “Uh... well, if I could, that would be great, because we have a lot left to do,” I stammered. “But I’ll need to call my folks.”

“Certainly. There’s a phone on the cabinet over there,” she said, nodding at a corner of the room.

I called home. Nancy answered.

“Hey, Nancy. Is Mom available?” I said.

“She’s right in the middle of getting supper on. Where are you?” Nancy asked.

“I’m at Schmidts’. Could you tell Mom and Dad that I won’t be home for dinner? We’re working on an assignment,” I said.

“So, it’s lunch with Mabel and dinner with Junia, huh?” Nancy said.

“Shut up,” I said politely. “I’ll be home when we’re finished. Might be a couple of hours. Bye.” I hung up without waiting for a response.

I heard Mr. Schmidt come in just before the dinner bell. He greeted Mitch jovially. “What’s new, little man?”

“Hi, Dad. Millicent isn’t here because she’s at rehearsal. Mike from Junia’s prom picture is in the back room. He and Junia are building something that looks like a doll house, and Junia told me to shut up.”

I looked at Junia and raised an eyebrow. She grinned.

Mr. Schmidt chuckled. “Hmm. She’s not supposed to say that, is she? Should I make her take a time out? Hi, honey. You look wonderful.”

“Dinner’s on, dear,” said Mrs. Schmidt. “Mitch, why don’t you ring the bell?”

A bell clanged loudly, coming down the hallway towards us. Junia got up from the table. “There’s a bathroom in the hall,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

Mitch burst into the room, still clanging the bell. “Dinner’s ready! Dinner’s ready!” he announced loudly. “Don’t forget to wash your hands!”

He let me to the bathroom and stood in the door, occasionally ringing the bell, to watch me wash up. “I washed in the kitchen before I got the bell,” he proclaimed. “Mom keeps the bell clean, so it doesn’t have any germs.”

“Good,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

Dinner was a cheerful affair. Mr. Schmidt was in a good mood.

“I saw you at the concert on Friday,” he commented to me. “How did you like it?”

“Oh, it was great!” I said. “The last piece was really exciting, and the quartet was awesome.”

“Bertha Spadowski is quite an animated director, isn’t she?” remarked Mrs. Schmidt.

“She’s Bob’s aunt,” I said. “She and Bob’s mom and my mom were all in college together.”

“Did you know that she invited us to the city to perform?” asked Junia.

“Who, the youth symphony?” I said.

“Yes. No, just some of us. The quartet and me. She said she would send us a piece to perform, for woodwinds and piano.”

“Oh, that’s really cool! When do you go?”

“Probably next spring break. She said they couldn’t afford to fly us there, but they’d pay for bus fare or a van rental, and they’d put us up.” Junia took a pork chop and passed the platter to me.

“Junia’s a truly outstanding pianist,” Mitch informed me, as I passed the platter to him.

Mrs. Schmidt suppressed a smile, and Mr. Schmidt said, “She certainly is.”

“How is she on the accordion?” I asked innocently.

Junia chuckled, her mom stared at me, and Mr. Schmidt said, “She’d be the best accordion player in town if her mother would let me teach her.”

“She’s pretty good on the accordion, but not as good as Daddy,” said Mitch.

Mr. Schmidt leaned forward and said conspiratorially, “I gave her a lesson or two while Mrs. Schmidt was out of town last year.”

“You didn’t!” gasped Mrs. Schmidt, and then laughed.

“Well, she certainly dances the polka well,” I said. “When Ollie Gustafson and his Punk Polka and Perloo Society played at the prom, she was the only one on the dance floor who seemed to know what to do.”

“Hey, you polka pretty well yourself!” Junia protested. “It was Bob who was clueless.”

“Speaking of Bob,” said Mrs. Schmidt, “I saw him at both performances of the youth symphony. Why the newly discovered interest in classical music?”

Junia and I looked at each other. “I think he’s more interested in a particular musician than in music per se,” I said.

“Who, Nora?” said Mr. Schmidt. “He took her to the prom, didn’t he?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But no, it’s the new girl, Mabel. The one who played oboe in the quartet.”

“The oboe player. The girl with the short blond hair?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The first day she was in science class with us, she started talking about quantum physics, and he was immediately infatuated. Now they’re doing their art project together.”

“Hmm. What does Nora think about all this?” asked Mrs. Schmidt, looking at Junia.

Junia wrinkled her nose. “It’s been kind of hard on her. She and Bob bicker constantly, and they’re always trying to outdo each other, but she’s always kind of liked him underneath, and she thought he liked her.”

“How is she coping?” asked Mrs. Schmidt.

“Well, she’s been touchy, but she’s been working on her art project with Doug, and that’s been good for her. Doug has always been real nice, and he’s taught her a lot about oil painting, so she’s immersed herself into art for the time being.” Junia passed me the pitcher of milk.

“And what does Mabel think of Bob?” asked Mr. Schmidt, looking at Junia, then at me.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, since Junia didn’t answer right away. “She spends a lot of time with him, and likes a lot of the kinds of things he likes, but I don’t know how she feels about him.”

“When she was over here, she mentioned that he was really smart and really funny,” Junia said. “She admires him.”

“She’s only been here a few weeks,” I added. “She seems too sensible to get a crush on someone that quick.”

“Hmm,” said Mrs. Schmidt.

After supper, Mitch was sent to watch TV in the living room. Junia and I buckled down and ground out the rest of our art project as fast as we could.

At about 9:00, I said, “Well, I think that’s good enough. I’ve got a little math homework to do yet, so I’m going to take off.”

“Do you need a ride?” asked Junia, glancing through the window. “It’s really dark. My dad will take you.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Thanks, though. I have a good light on my bike. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She walked me through the house. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt in the living room, watching TV, so I stuck my head in and said, “Thanks a lot for dinner, Mrs. Schmidt.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Do you need a ride home? Fred has to go out now anyway to pick up Millicent,” she said. Mr. Schmidt got to his feet.

“No, no, thanks. Don’t bother. I’ve got a really good light on my bike, and I need the exercise after so much sitting today,” I said. “Thanks, though.”

Mr. Schmidt walked out onto the porch with me and Junia. He watched me turn the light on on my bike, and said, “That is a good light. All right, then. Ride carefully.”

“Thanks, Mr. Schmidt. See you tomorrow, Junia,” I said, standing up on my pedals.

“Good night,” she said.

I pedaled swiftly down the drive and into the road.

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ*

I slept well that night, and woke up refreshed. I ate a quick breakfast, then pedaled off to school a bit early.

Junia was unloading a large flat box from her mom’s car as I chained up my bike. I went over to help. She smiled, but looked tired.

“Up late?” I asked, picking up the box.

“Yeah. I just couldn’t stop adding little details.” She hefted her backpack and followed me over to the school doors.

We made our way to the art classroom. Mrs. Petroski had borrowed several cafeteria-type tables and had lined two walls of the classroom with them. Several projects were already on display.

“Look, there’s Nora and Doug’s!” said Junia, pointing.

We claimed a spot right next to theirs, and set up our artwork. It took a little while to assemble because some parts were a little precarious. As we were finishing, Bob and Mabel trooped in, carrying her portfolio and another flat box.

“Greetings, earthlings,” said Bob. “We come in peace.”

“Take us to your leader,” said Mabel. She grinned.

“Haven’t seen her,” I said.

They approached, and Mabel set her box down. Her eyes widened as she looked at our display. “Oh, my! Oh, wow!” she said. “How incredibly cute.”

Bob came up real close to peer. “Mike, old bean, you’ve definitely outdone yourself. This is amazing.”

“Thank you, thank you, old chap” I said. “All Junia’s idea, what?”

“Not all,” said Junia.

“Mostly,” I said.

“Can we set up next to yours, there at the end?” Mabel asked, still staring at our artwork.

“Sure,” Junia said. “I think that would be good. We’ll give you a hand, if you want.”

It didn’t take long to set up their drawings, and then the room was inundated with the other art students, scrambling to set up before the bell. I weaved my way through the crowd out to my locker.

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ*

“All right,” said Mrs. Petroski. “This is the moment you have all been waiting for with dread or anticipation. I see some excellent art projects here, and I think the best thing would be to start from the end of the table by the door. You each have five minutes to present your project.”

The projects were quite varied: clay sculptures, wood carvings, paintings and drawings of all kinds, mobiles. It took most of the class period to get to our end of the displays.

Doug and Nora had a fascinating display of three large paintings each: the rock we had seen before, a vase of flowers, and a chunk of twisted, dried-out cedar wood. Nora had painted them realistically, in beautiful detail and color. In each case, Doug had painted them more abstractly, calling attention to form and shadow and weight in much darker colors. In addition, they had sketches showing how they would have approached several other subjects.

Mrs. Petroski was quite pleased. “You’ve both done remarkable work, and the contrast between your styles is fascinating. What happened to the watercolor of the rock that you showed us last time, with the children playing?”

“That was Junia’s,” Nora said. “We reorganized our teams for the project, so her painting didn’t get used.”

“I see. Well, congratulations on an excellent display. So, I take it you and Mike did your project together, Junia,” said Mrs. P. “It looks very intriguing. Would you like to explain it?”

“Well,” said Junia, “we had the challenge of combining Mike’s talent of drawing tiny pictures with my watercolors, and we came up with the idea of using his drawings as pictures within a picture. So I took three big sheets of watercolor paper and some display board, and I painted a triptych of an artist’s studio. These are the three walls,” she said, gesturing to the three-sided display.

The studio walls were beautifully drawn and painted. The right-hand panel included a wood-paneled door (watercolor), framed in popsicle-stick wood. A couple of pictures hung on it. The middle panel was a big wall covered with hanging pictures (my drawings), with others sitting on the floor leaning against it. The left-hand panel had a row of windows (framed in wood), and one or two of my drawings were leaning against it as well. There were four miniature easels (made from popsicle sticks) with drawings on them as well. Junia had painted some of the drawings with watercolors, with very charming results. She had also done a few miniatures of her own, including a copy of her painting of the rock with the children on it.

“The drawings are exquisite, Mike. Do you want to tell us what they’re about?” asked Mrs. P.

“Well, this one you’ve seen. It’s Bob on his bike. This is a picture from the prom last spring, with Bob and Nora dancing. This bike picture here, with the trailer, is also from the prom. This is Mabel and Bob talking about physics. If you look close, you can see the picture they’re looking at, of a supercollider. Here’s me and Bob singing the blues a couple of years ago. This is Bob with his submersible in the river. Junia did this copy of her rock picture, and this one of her and Nora playing their instruments. I put chickens and ducks in this one, with Willy feeding them. Sorry, Willy, I don’t know what it looks like when you feed poultry, so I have you giving them a sandwich. And this here is a comic book about Timmy the Squirrel,” I said, picking up the tiny stapled magazine.

There were chuckles. Mrs. P. said, “So what would you say is the message of your presentation?”

I thought a minute. “It’s about friendship. Good memories. The joy of creativity and skill.” Then I waxed facetious. “Life is a canvas. Use your skill and creativity to make it a wonderful picture,” I said, gesturing grandiosely. “And look both ways before you cross the street.”

“Oh, bravo. Well said, my good man. Well said,” said Bob, clapping.

“Anything you want to add, Junia?” asked Mrs. P.

Junia swallowed and blushed. “Well, I think it’s interesting that people in the same class can be just as fascinated by chickens as by quantum physics, or music or welding or painting. Those are some of the things that make it fun to get to know people.”

“Very good observation,” Mrs. Petroski said. “Your artwork is definitely a celebration. Now, the last presentation is by Bob and Mabel. Which of you is going to speak first?”

Bob stepped forward. “This is a drawing of my bike, obviously, with the trailer we built for it last spring. I drew it as realistically as I could. This one is just for fun. It’s a supercollider, made of stuff from the junkyard. You’ll recognize the pipes, blender, meat grinder, those kinds of things. And this one is the submersible Mike and I built in junior high. It’s one of my favorite inventions.” He bowed and said, “Thank you, thank you,” even though no one was clapping yet.

Mabel cleared her throat and stepped up. “Like I told you before, my art background is more design than fine arts. When I look at Bob’s bike, I see not just a beat-up kid’s bike with a motor welded onto it. I see vision and imagination, the dream of speed.”

She flipped over her pastel overlay, and there was an “Oooh!” from the class at the sight of the streamlined racing cycle with its chariot trailer. A helmeted rider in a racing outfit straddled it, and a helmeted passenger peered forward from the trailer.

“Totally awesome!” breathed Eddie.

“Likewise, this supercollider is just fun, but it’s also the dream of exploration, science, discovery, creation,” Mabel said. She flipped over another pastel overlay, and the jumble of pipes and appliances became a streamlined, futuristic research facility, with three scientists at a control panel.

After a few reactions from the class, she flipped another sheet over the submersible picture, and there was a man in a wetsuit clinging to a silver and blue submersible, with bubbles, fish, and seaweed in the background.

“Cool! Looks like Aquaman!” one of the guys said.

“The one thing missing from these pictures is the human element,” Mabel said. “I realized that my artwork has mostly been stylized, not very personal, so I thought I should stretch a little and try something new. So I made another set of overlays to do that.”

She flipped another sheet of tracing paper over the motorcycle drawing, and there was an ink drawing of Bob in flapping jeans and t-shirt, hunched over the bike/motorcycle, squinting into the wind. She had put a few sparing lines to reemphasize the bike’s original shape, but the three layers formed a single fascinating and whimsical picture. The passenger in the chariot now was a girl with wavy hair flowing behind her and an exhilarated expression on her face.

“Oh, man!” I said. “I wish I could draw like that!”

Junia nudged me. “Look who that is in the chariot!” she whispered. “See?”

After the stir died down in the class, Mabel flipped another overlay over the supercollider picture, and the three scientists became three young people who looked suspiciously like Bob, me, and Mabel.

There were chuckles and comments from the class. Then Mabel folded an overlay over the third picture, and the diver became Bob, wearing cut-off jeans, flippers, and a snorkel. A number of legs now hung suspended at the top of the picture, as if people were swimming just above him.

“Better not come up for air if they’re washing clothes, Bob,” I said.

Junia snickered, and Nora burst out laughing. She colored and covered her mouth, but continued to giggle. Most of the class looked baffled.

Mrs. Petroski made some very favorable comments. Then the class bell rang, and we filed out for lunch.

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ*

For the first time ever, Bob, Mabel, Junia, Nora, and I all sat together.

“Where’s Doug?” I asked.

“He had to finish up a report, so he’s in the library,” Nora said.

“Your oil paintings were excellent, Nora,” Mabel said. “I wish I could paint like that.”

“Thanks,” said Nora. “Your drawings were wonderful. What you said about a human element made me think a little, because I’ve been afraid to draw people. It’s hard to get everything just right when I try, and it’s really hard to capture expression.” She leaned forward and said in a lower tone, “That looked like me in the chariot. Was it supposed to be?”

Mabel grinned. “I guess so. It seemed like it should be, when I was drawing it. Did you mind?”

“No, not at all,” Nora said. “It’s a great picture. I wish I could have a copy, but I don’t know how you could ever copy something like that, except one layer at a time.”

Mabel looked at her a minute. “You can have it. I’ll give it to you. At least my part of it.” She turned to Bob. “Do you mind?”

Bob stared at her, then at Nora. “No. You can have all of it. I wouldn’t mind a copy, but the drawings can be photocopied, and I’ll take a photo of the pastel part, and of everything layered.”

“Well, thanks, guys,” Nora said. “I appreciate it.”

I sniffed and honked into my handkerchief. “All this kindness is so touching.”

Junia jabbed me with her elbow. “Shut up!” she said. “Don’t be mean.”

Bob put his hands over his mouth and made loud breathing noises. “Come over to the sensitive side, Luke,” he intoned.

“You plagiarist,” I muttered.

Mabel said, “Speaking of sensitivity, have you ever tried to draw people, Bob?”

“Yeah. I slaved over a picture of my family at the beginning of the semester, and Mrs. Petroski said they looked stuffed and mounted. My parents, my own flesh and blood. I was cut to the quick,” said Bob.

“She didn’t say that!” protested Junia, amid laughter.

“She also said I could call the drawing, ‘Still Life with Mannequins,’” Bob said.

“No way,” said Mabel. “That’s not like Mrs. Petroski.”

“No. I said that,” Nora said. “Sorry, Bob. That was rude of me.”

“And I was the one that said they looked stuffed and mounted, after Mrs. P. said they looked stiff in the drawing,” I said. “I’m a little sorry, Bob, but not very. I wasn’t talking about your parents, just the picture.”

“Well, you guys wounded my tender soul and stomped on my lifelong ambition to be a portrait artist,” Bob said. “I’ll send you the bill for the therapy. You can split it.”

Nora looked at Mabel. “I heard you actually got to go see Bob’s workshop. Is that true?”

“Yeah,” Mabel said. “I wanted to see the inventions he was telling me about, like his submarine and his tree-climbing winch.”

“Last time I saw wenches climbing trees was when we were spying on the Girl Scouts in junior high,” I said.

“What’s this workshop like?” Nora said. “It’s always been a mystery to us. Sometimes it sounds like Henry Huggins’s clubhouse, and other times it sounds like some top-secret CIA lab. I always pictured it made of packing crates and bristling with antennas and periscopes.”

Bob snorted, and Mabel grinned. “It’s a biggish metal building at the junkyard, and it’s full of tools and pieces of machines and old bicycles lying around. Pretty messy.”

“Hey, I cleaned up before you came!” Bob protested.

“Well, I’m jealous,” Nora said. “I want to see it, too. Will you give me a tour sometime? Matter of fact, I have an idea for a machine that I’d like to talk with you about.”

“Imagine. Me helping my archrival build an invention,” said Bob, shaking his head in amazement. “What is this world coming to?”

“See, I told you it was treason to take Mabel there,” I said.

“It’s not treason,” said Junia. “Times are changing. Old alliances and rivalries are in flux. We live in a new day.”

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” pontificated Bob.

“It’s your fault,” I said, pointing at Mabel. “You come sailing in with your green eyes and your quantum physics and pastels, and our world gets shaken to its very core!”

“Junia’s got green eyes, too,” Mabel said.

“Yeah, but she’s a redhead,” I said.

Bob beamed at all and sundry. “That’s my buddy Mike. Incisively cutting to the heart of the matter.”

“What’s wrong with being a redhead?” asked Junia, glaring at me.

“Nothing at all!” I said hastily. “Red hair is great. I was just commenting on the relative coincidence of it with green eyes.”

“It’s no coincidence, it’s genetics,” Bob said. “Our world shaken to its core by a recessive trait. Oh, Mabel, Mabel, wherefore art thou Mabel?”

“It was my mom’s decision,” Mabel said. “My dad wanted to name me Bertha. Can you imagine?”

ÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈÉÈ

The concept in this story is wonderful. There is a run-in or series of run-ins between Bob and the high school quarterback at the beginning that I haven't written yet. Apparently their PE teacher was teaching self-defense to the nerds in the fall of the 10th grade, and they learned some good stuff in the very first weeks of school.

As you will see, I haven't figured out how to resolve this story; in particular, why the perfume was in the attic in the first place, and what it meant to its owner. This thread is called "The Great Perfume War", and will be woven into a novel along with the drama club thread and the prom thread. I may include the honors program funding crisis as well.

“So, twerp, how’s your Nerdmobile running?” leered Jim. He crowded Bob away from his locker and began working his combination.

“It’s fine, Bozo,” said Bob. “I didn’t think a big all-star quarterback would stoop to letting air out of bike tires.”

“Who are you calling Bozo?” asked Jim, setting his pack down and turning menacingly toward Bob.

“Hey, if the shoes and the nose fit, wear them,” Bob said.

I opened my locker and casually set my backpack on the floor behind Jim. It was very full, because I had homework in most classes and a test in two of them.

Jim reached out and grabbed a handful of Bob’s shirt front. “Don’t mess with me, twerp,” he hissed.

“Unhand me, varlet,” said Bob. He brought up his arm in a sweeping motion and knocked Jim’s arm away, just like Coach had shown us. Then he put his hand on Jim’s big chin and pushed. Jim staggered back, hit my pack, and went sprawling on his back in the hall, slamming his locker shut with his shoulder as he fell.

“See you later,” said Bob. He shouldered his pack and started toward the door.

Jim scrambled to his feet, his face flushed and angry, and leaped toward Bob. Just then the office door opened, and the assistant principal stepped out.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Ablington,” Bob said cheerily. He pushed open the front door and stepped out.

“Is everything all right? I thought I heard a racket,” Mrs. Ablington said.

I swung my locker shut. Jim slowed to a walk and pushed his way out the front doors, mumbling to himself. Mrs. Ablington watched him go down the front steps.

“I think everything’s okay, Mrs. Ablington,” I said.

“What was the noise?” she asked.

“Someone slammed a locker,” I said. “Have a nice afternoon.”

There was a musty old cardboard box on Bob’s desk. I flipped open the dusty lid. “What’s this? Some junk that came in?”

Bob said, “No, I was cleaning out part of the attic because I was changing out our doorbell, and I ran into this old box. I thought it was maybe old family stuff, but my folks say they don’t know anything about it. It must have been there when we bought the house.”

He reached in and pulled out a stack of newspaper clippings. “These are from the 40s, about World War II. They’re mostly about air battles, so probably someone was a pilot or something. There’s an old checkbook for someone named Quincy, but there aren’t any Quincys in town, according to the phone book. I even called the nursing home, and my mom called the people who sold us the house.”

I saw some small round shiny objects among the odds and ends in the bottom of the box, and picked one up. “What are these bottles?”

“Perfume. Lavender,” Bob said as I opened it.

“Lady Lavender,” I read. I sniffed the open top. “Whoo! It’s stout. Smells like when we visited my great-grandma when I was little.”

Bob shrugged. “I didn’t want to throw it away, in case it meant something to someone, so I just brought the whole box of stuff over here. Probably I’ll just throw it away after a while, or give it to Goodwill.”

“Seems like Jim really has it in for you,” I said, changing the subject.

“Yeah. Ever since that first day of class. I don’t know what his problem is, but he just won’t let up,” Bob said.

“Have you talked to the principal?” I asked.

“Not yet. If he gets violent, I will. But I’d feel like an idiot complaining because a big kid is calling me names.” Bob plugged his soldering iron into the outlet and took several tiny components out of a Radio Shack bag. “Good backpack placement, by the way,” he said, grinning.

“What do you mean? I just put it down so I could sort my locker,” I said.

“Right.”

“You really ought to thank Coach,” I said. “The great equipper of nerds, twerps, girls, and the downtrodden.”

“Yeah, for once PE class is actually more than just a waste of time,” Bob said. “Maybe I ought to ask him about how to handle Jim. Coach isn’t the usual PE guy who is totally behind the jocks and totally against anyone else.”

“Maybe you ought to offer Jim a peace offering,” I suggested facetiously. “A nice present to show your goodwill.”

“Socks, tie, or cologne?” asked Bob. “Eau de Skunk. Cement overshoes. A new paint job for his truck.”

“Eau de Skunk sounds good. Or maybe Lady Lavender,” I said, picking up the little round bottle again.

Bob looked at it and started to say something, and then his jaw went slack and his eyes glazed over. Suddenly a grin spread over his face, and he looked up at me, his eyes bright. “You, old man, have given me a most remarkable idea.”

He took the bottle from me, opened it, and sniffed it. “Hoo-wee! This stuff is potent. All you need is a drop.” He looked at the back of the bottle. “I thought perfumes usually lost their odor with time, but I bet this stuff is stronger. Do you really think Jim would like it?”

“Oh, he’s sure to,” I said.

Bob rummaged around in his stack of boxes and found what he was looking for. He set a dirty cardboard box on his desk and rifled through it. “These ought to come in handy,” he commented, laying several empty disposable insulin syringes in a row.

“What’s in these?” I asked, picking up a small drip bottle and looking at the label. “Optirest,” I read.

“Very ancient eye drops,” Bob said. “Don’t use them.”

“I was thinking about the bottle,” I said. “The tip comes off.”

“Sure,” Bob said. “Have at it.”

I took the bottle to the door and emptied it onto the gravel. Bob stuck a needle onto a syringe and siphoned a couple of ccs out of the opened bottle of Lady Lavender.

So began what came to be known as The Great Perfume War.

On Monday morning, we crowded into the school door with everyone else. Bob and I went to our lockers and organized our books for the morning. I looked around. Jim was nowhere in sight. I said, “Hey, Bob, did you get your homework done for math class?”

“Yeah, I did, but I’m glad you reminded me. I don’t think I wrote my name on it.”

Bob fished a paper out of his math book and put it up on the front of Jim’s locker over the vent and wrote his name on it in pencil. When he took it back down, there was a tiny pinhole next to his name, and a very faint odor of lavender in the vicinity.

“Just in time,” I said, as Jim came around the corner. I picked up my pack and slammed my locker shut. “See you in class.”

“Right behind you,” said Bob, closing his locker and zipping his pack. He hefted it just as Jim shouldered his way through the crowd to his locker.

“Morning, Jim,” Bob said cheerily.

Jim shot him an unfriendly glance and began working the combination to his locker. He sniffed. “Smells like one of you pansies came all perfumed up,” he commented.

“You have a great day, too, Jim,” Bob said. We joined the flow of students to math class.

We saw Jim again at study hall. He was sitting with Lisa, his cheerleader girlfriend, over by the wall.

“Wonder how his morning has gone,” Bob muttered.

“I’m sure he’s spreading joy and cheer wherever he goes,” I said.

We studied half-heartedly and took turns watching Jim. Finally Jim went over to the teacher and asked to go get a drink.

“Your turn this time,” Bob said.

I pulled my pencil out of my pack and walked across the room to the sharpener. As I passed Jim’s chair, I paused to say, “Hi, Lisa.”

She looked up and smiled, a bit quizzically. I don’t think she even knew my name. “Hi,” she said automatically. She resumed her reading.

I sharpened my pencil and returned to my seat.

“How’d it go?” Bob asked.

“Perfect. One drop on the middle of the seat, one on the back,” I said.

Bob watched Lisa out of the corner of her eye. She sat up and smiled as Jim came back to his seat. They talked quietly, and then I saw Jim sniff and look around at the people nearby.

“Don’t stare,” Bob warned. “We got him, no need to pay any more attention.”

After school, we went out to the bike rack. We chatted as we unlocked our bikes until Eddie and a couple of other guys had left, and then I asked, “What does Jim drive?”

Bob pointed. “That red pickup truck is his. Right next to the big old blue thing.”

“Right. Okay, I’ll see you down the road.”

I hopped on my bike and pedaled into the parking lot. I went down the row where the pickup truck was parked, then turned my head as if I’d seen someone in the next row I wanted to talk to. I got off my bike and pushed it between Jim’s truck and the big blue Pontiac. When I got into the next row, I got back on my bike and pedaled out into the street.

“Three drops on the door handle,” I reported. “If I’d had a syringe, I could have shot some in through the crack at the top of the window. He leaves it a quarter inch open.”

“Cool!” Bob said. “Maybe next time we can go that way.”

The next morning, as we walked into school, I grabbed the handle to Jim’s locker.

“Oh, silly me,” I said. “This one is 764. Mine is 766.”

I shifted to my right and opened my own locker. A faint odor of lavender began to emanate from the vicinity as I shouldered my pack and left Bob to deal with Jim.

“He’s in a great mood this morning,” Bob reported in math class. “He slammed me with his shoulder, and then apologized. He did it again when he left.” Bob grinned. “He’s wearing his letter jacket today.”

“Did you get it?” I asked.

“You bet I did. Right on the back of the collar.”

PE class was Tuesdays through Fridays. Jim wasn’t in PE with us, but the football team used the same locker room after school when they practiced.

“Hiroshi said Jim’s locker is 61, like his uniform,” I said. “They get them assigned during summer football practice.”

Bob changed into his gym shorts in the corner where the lockers were in the 60s. I stood in front of him as he injected a few drops of Lady Lavender into the vent of the locker.

And so it went. Over the course of two weeks, we perfumed his lockers several times, his jacket twice, his chair four times, and his truck nearly every day. Bob managed to insert a drop into Jim’s history book once, and onto a sheet of his homework on the teacher’s desk. We tried to set him up with a perfumed napkin in the cafeteria, but a friend of his cut into line and pulled silverware and the aromatic napkin as they were talking. It was just as good, though. We sat near them, and I heard Chuck say, “What’s that smell? Kind of a little old lady odor.”

“Beats me,” Jim said gloomily. “Seems to be everywhere these days. They must be using a new cleaner here.”

“First time I’ve smelled it,” Chuck said as he wiped some grease from his cheek. “Whoof! It’s getting stronger!”

Bob snorted. He choked on his sandwich, and I had to thump him on the back.

Jim began to wear a haunted look. Other students were beginning to associate the lavender smell with his presence, and he got lots of ribbing.

In afternoon study hall, I sat at the table next to where Jim sat. There were several other people at the table with him. An aura of lavender emanated from him. Ben sniffed.

“Hmmm…. Smells nice. Like my grandma. I remember sitting on her lap and having her read to me.…”

“Mine used to make me sit with her at church,” said Kevin. “She always wore a funny round hat with a veil in front, and she always smelled of that perfume. The church and the hymnbooks smelled musty, and Grandma smelled of violets, and she sang in this high, quavery voice.…” He began to sing, “When the ro-o-oll is called up yo-o-onder….”

“Kevin, pipe down,” ordered Mr. Fenwick, who supervised study hall.

Jim got up and stomped across the room to another table. He sat down and glared at the three kids sitting there, daring them to say anything. They looked at him with round eyes and were silent. I continued watching as they resumed studying. Marty was one of them. He was a mousy little guy who had been in classes with us in junior high.

Suddenly Marty’s eyes popped open, and he gasped and looked panicked. Frantically he pulled a tissue out of his pack, but before he could use it, he sniffed.

Jim whirled and glared at him. Marty blew his nose and coughed. “Head cold,” he explained. “Can’t smell a thing.” He suddenly realized he had said the wrong thing, and hastily got up and went to the teacher to ask permission to go to the bathroom.

My master stroke was to drip two drops onto Lisa’s jacket in study hall.

“Brilliant!” enthused Bob. “He’s going to go nuts for sure.”

For several weeks we targeted Lisa almost as often as we did Jim, sometimes alternating them as targets on different days.

However, one afternoon I cautioned Bob: “We need to lay off Lisa. Today after you dripped on her purse, she picked it up and sniffed around until she found the corner where the perfume was. We’re going to have to be subtle even with Jim, if she’s catching on.”

A big challenge was to keep from smelling like the perfume ourselves. One day my squeeze bottle oozed a bit onto my fingers as I was using it. I hastily went to the bathroom to wash my hands and the outside of the bottle.

As I was rinsing, the door swung open, and I heard Jim and Chuck talking as they came in. “We’re going to have our hands full with Frankfort,” Jim was saying.

“We can handle them,” Chuck said confidently. “Our defense is a lot better than last year.”

Panicked, I dropped the squeeze bottle into the trash, wadded up some paper towels, and threw them on top. I spied a bottle of air freshener under the sink, scooped it up, and immediately sent a cloud of spray into the air. I was just setting it back down when Jim and Chuck came around the corner.

“Hoo-wee!” said Chuck. “Must have been a fragrant one.” He laughed and went to a stall.

Jim glanced at me and went to a urinal. I beat a hasty retreat.

I ran into Hiroshi at the bike rack that afternoon. “No football this afternoon?” I asked.

“Game tonight. We have to come back an hour before the game,” he said.

“How’s football going?” I asked.

“Good. They moved me up to first string, so now I get to play a lot,” he said, grinning.

“How is Jim as a quarterback?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s good,” Hiroshi said. “He’s got a great arm, and he’s not afraid to run the ball himself.”

“Somebody said he’s been smelling like a little old lady or something lately,” I remarked. “I don’t know if his mom’s using some weird fabric softener or what, or if it’s something he’s picking up from Lisa.”

Hiroshi laughed. “Last week during the football game, we kept smelling that during the huddle. Gibbs made some smart remark about real men not smelling of lilacs, and Jim punched him right there on the field! Coach pulled him out for several plays to cool down. Then Coach says to him, ‘What’s that funky smell?’ Jim just about exploded.”

I chuckled. “Does his mom wash his uniform?” I asked.

“No, that’s the funny thing. The equipment manager gets the game uniforms laundered at some place in town, and then they’re handed out on Thursdays, and we put them in our lockers for Friday. Unless it’s an away game. If it’s away, we put them into our equipment bags right away, and then the equipment manager loads them into the back of the bus.”

Bob and I began to be quite busy with drama club, and as the fall months passed, we put less effort into the Great Perfume War. Jim’s lockers had a pretty permanent aroma by this time, and the people closest to him seemed to have gotten inured to the smell.

“You know, Jim hasn’t been rude to me in several weeks,” remarked Bob one day.

“Why do you suppose that is?” I asked.

“I think he got humbled by going around smelling like Lady Lavender for so long. He got the arrogance knocked out of him,” Bob said, a bit smugly.

“You don’t think it’s because you’ve been polite to him since the Great Perfume War started?” I asked.

Bob snorted. “Facetiously polite. He’s got to know I don’t mean it.”

“Well, when was the last time you called him Bozo or Tarzan or Homo Habilus?” I asked.

Bob considered. “Probably September. Maybe the day he tripped over your pack.”

“There you go,” I said.

“Pfaah! It’s the perfume, I tell you,” Bob said, not very convincingly.

My mom asked me to pick up the local paper one Friday, because she wanted to go garage saling. I got one out of the machine by the school and glanced at it as I went to my bike.

“VFW honors Pearl Harbor vets,” read one headline. I scanned the article, then looked at it more closely as one of the names registered with me. “D.L. Quincy,” I read aloud.

I got on my bike and pedaled over to Bob’s house. He had already gone to the shop, so I went on down the road to the junkyard.

“Pearl Harbor Day will be remembered with a ceremony acknowledging local WWII vets,” Bob read. “Among the honorees will be Robert ‘Bub’ Smeed, James Partridge, D.L. Quincy.…” He paused. “D.L. Quincy.  Where did I hear that name? The TV show, right? With Jack Klugman?”

“No, you idiot. Remember the clippings you found in your attic? About a pilot?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bob said, looking down at the article again. “You suppose this is our guy?”

“I don’t remember anything but Quincy. Do you still have those papers?” I asked.

Bob rummaged around in his shelves. “I put them in something smaller because the box was dusty and too big. Let’s see….” He pulled a shoe box off a high shelf and flipped the top up. “Yeah, here it is.”

Bob began leafing through the clippings. “Local boy Don Quincy gets battlefield promotion to captain,” he read.

I opened the checkbook. “Donald Lee Quincy,” I read. “Route 3, Box 114. I would imagine that’s him.”

“Hmm. Well, it would be cool to return these to him. When is the ceremony?”

“Pearl Harbor Day. That’s the 7^th. Monday,” I said. “4:00 p.m. Right after school.”

“Is it at the VFW hall?” Bob asked.

“I think so.” I scanned the article again. “Yeah, it’s in the VFW hall auditorium. Do you suppose the perfume means anything to him? We could take it along and ask.”

“Uh-oh,” Bob said. “If there’s any left.”

He looked at the shelves over his desk, reached up, and took down a bottle. “This is the last one,” he said. “It’s mostly full.”

“You’re a true optimist, Bob,” I said, looking at the half-empty bottle.

“We could water it down,” he suggested.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said. “Hold on. I just refilled the other day.” I fished in my backpack and found my squeeze bottle. I carefully put the tip over the mouth of the bottle and squeezed the contents into it.

The bottle was now close to three quarters full. Bob said, “I guess I’ll contribute my last round of ammo, too.”

He went to his bike and located a syringe in a plastic case, and sprayed its contents into the bottle.

“Now it’s mostly full,” I said. “Whether you’re an optimist or not.”

Bob tightened the cap on the bottle and put it in the shoebox, taped to one side. He taped the lid on the box with masking tape. “I’ll take this with me on Monday, and we can go over to VFW after school,” he said.

Monday morning, Bob rode up as I was chaining my bike. He had the shoebox bungeed to one of his baskets. We went in the doors together, and Bob tried to put the box into his locker. It wouldn’t go in straight because of its length, so he tipped it up and set it in at an angle. As he closed his locker, Jim came up. With him came the scent of lavender.

“Morning, Jim,” Bob said.

“Morning,” Jim said absently. He sniffed, sighed, and opened his locker.

Bob and I hurried down the hall to math class. “Do you suppose he’s putting the perfume on himself now?” I asked.

“I zapped his car pretty generously on Friday,” Bob said.

The smell was strong around our lockers when we stopped by at the end of the day.

“Uh-oh,” Bob said. “I haven’t zapped his locker today. Did you?”

“I have no ammo left,” I said.

Bob pulled open the door to his locker. A cloud of fragrance wafted forth.

“Dang,” Bob said.

The box was still sitting at the tilted angle. The bottom corner was now dark with moisture. Bob picked it up and peeled the tape loose. He lifted the lid, and the smell became overwhelming.

The bottle was still upright, taped into the damp corner. It was about two-thirds full. The newspaper clippings in that corner were soaked.

“Lid must have leaked,” Bob said disgustedly.

“Jim’s coming,” I said.

Bob slapped the box shut, slammed his locker, grabbed his pack, and ran for the front door. I sorted my books and put the ones I didn’t need into my locker.

Jim had paused to talk with another jock. They came over, and Jim began working his combination. He sniffed and shook his head. He must have noticed me staring at him, because he turned and said, “What?”

My jaw was slack. I goggled for a minute, then snapped it shut. I decided attack was the best defense. “What’s that smell?” I asked.

He glared at me. “Don’t hassle me, squirt,” he said sharply. “I’ve had all I can handle.”

He yanked some things out of his locker and slammed it shut, while the other jock grinned. They sauntered off together. I closed my locker and went outside to look for Bob.

Bob had the box standing in one of his bike baskets, and his pack was on the other side.

“Doesn’t that make your bike hard to ride, having it unevenly balanced like that?” I asked.

Bob shook his head. “I’m used to it. Besides, it’s so heavy with the batteries and motor that I hardly notice it. Are you ready?”

“Almost,” I said. I unlocked my bike and wrapped the chain around my seat. “Okay. Let’s go.”

The VFW auditorium was across town from the high school. It took us about twenty minutes to get there. There were lots of cars there, big Cadillacs and Lincolns and Buicks and Oldsmobiles, some with Purple Heart license plates, many with military decals and patriotic bumper stickers. We locked our bikes to a light post and shouldered our packs. Bob picked up the box. “All right. Let’s go see if we can find D. L. Quincy,” he said.

“What did you do with the perfume?” I asked as we walked over to the door.

“I put a piece of plastic under the lid,” he said. “It’s in my pocket.”

The box was quite fragrant. I could smell it as soon as we got indoors. There were a few people milling around. The doors to the auditorium were on one side, and a couple of old guys in uniform were handing out programs. We each took one and went inside.

Most of the seats were occupied. A Navy officer was giving a speech, and there were several older men in chairs behind him on the stage, as well as a few younger soldiers standing to one side. The Navy guy gave a brief recapitulation of the history of Pearl Harbor, and what it meant to America’s participation in the war, and then another guy, I think he was a Marine officer, got up and talked about how important World War II was, how many local guys had served, and how many had lost their lives. He had all the World War II vets present stand up. Twenty or thirty men stood up, and everyone clapped a long time.

Then a third officer, another Navy guy, got up and talked about the four old guys who had been at Pearl Harbor. He introduced each one, and they stood up, and another officer gave them each a plaque or something, and everyone stood and clapped a long time.

Then they pulled the row of chairs further forward on the stage, and someone handed a mike to one of the old vets, and the Navy guy asked them to talk about their own Pearl Harbor experience.

Their stories were pretty cool. Bub Smeed had been a young sailor and was actually on KP because of being in trouble when the bombing happened. He ran out of the galley with his apron still on, and started hauling wounded guys away from the burning part of the ship. He ended up saving the lives of a couple dozen guys, and got a medal for it. James Partridge was a gunner, but his cannon got damaged by a Japanese bomb, so he worked on putting fires out. His ship barely managed to stay afloat. Our guy, D.L. Quincy, was a Navy pilot, and had gone running to the airfield, but most the planes were burning, and when he tried to move a plane away from the fires and stuff, another Japanese plane came and shot up the plane he was pushing, and he got knocked unconscious and woke up in the hospital the next day. The last guy, Mickey Norwood, was in the engine room of a ship that sank, and he barely made it up to the deck through all the tunnels and stuff.

It took a long time to get through all of this. Finally the program ended, and people got up and some left, and others went forward to talk to the old guys and to the speakers.

Bob and I pushed our way through the crowd to the front. Mr. Quincy was listening to some other guy ramble about which ship had what happen to it, and it sounded like the guy was a little mixed up, because Mr. Q would occasionally correct him. Finally the guy saw someone else he wanted to talk to and left.

I nudged Bob. Bob cleared his throat. “Uh, Mr. Quincy,” he said.

Mr. Quincy turned to look at us. I saw that he wasn’t really that old. He was older than my dad, but not as old as my granddad.

“Hello, boys,” he said. He sniffed and looked around with a funny expression on his face.

“Uh, I was poking around in my attic, and I found a box of stuff that we think was yours,” Bob said. He pulled the shoebox out from under his arm.

“My stuff? In your attic?” said Mr. Quincy.

“Uh, yeah. It’s clippings, an old letter or two, a checkbook….” Bob’s voice trailed off, and he held out the box.

Mr. Quincy opened it up, and saw the tattered old clippings. “Well, for heaven’s sake!” he said. He picked up one from the top of the stack and scanned it, then another. “I can’t believe it! Wherever did you find these?”

“In my attic,” Bob said. He gave the address.

Mr. Quincy shook his head. “That address doesn’t sound familiar. Where is it?”

“It’s over just outside of town, on the way to the junkyard,” Bob said.

Mr. Quincy thought a moment, frowning, then smiled. “Oh, yeah! That used to be a rural route. We just had a box number, and the road didn’t have a name to speak of. Route 3. A white house, with dormer windows and a small barn,” he said.

“Well, the barn got torn down a long time ago, but yeah, the house has dormer windows,” Bob said.

Mr. Quincy leafed through the clippings. “I just can’t believe it. I haven’t seen these clippings in twenty-five years or so. Maybe longer.” He sighed, then sniffed again. “They have a funny smell to them. Sort of familiar, but I can’t quite remember what it is.”

I nudged Bob again. Bob fished around in his shirt pocket, then handed Mr. Quincy the little round bottle. “This was with it,” he said. “It spilled a little.”

Mr. Quincy’s eyes widened, and then he laughed. “Lady Lavender!” he chortled. “Oh, man. Boy, that takes me back.” He sniffed the bottle, closed his eyes, and shook his head.

There's a lot of potential in this story, as you will see in my notes at the end, but Bob is acting altogether too mature and too competent as a leader. I need to figure out how to have the school mascot issue play a much bigger part in the story, but it seems unlikely that it would be of much importance in an real school funding situation. Seems like the nerds and their parents need to be more pronounced underdogs, too. I made Eddie a launderer's son in another story, so that has to be resolved. There's no friction among the nerds in this story; seems like the old rivalry between the girls and Mike and Bob should be there, as well as conflict with Tony. He did show up in the story, and it looks like he might make a positive contribution.

Many people have wondered why the Rogersville high school sports mascot is what it is. Bob and I had a hand in that, as you will see.  It all started when Nora came into honors algebra II and breathlessly announced that the school board was planning to do away with the honors program in favor of an expanded sports program. “We go from 1A to 2A as far as sports go,” she said, “but they would cut the honors program and shift that money to hire more coaches and buy equipment.”

The class erupted into angry discussion. Mrs. Ronson tried vainly to hush us, and finally climbed on her chair and yelled. When we realized what she was doing, we all turned to stare at her.

She looked down at us, and a blush rose up her cheeks. “You kids are out of control!” she said. “You need to discuss this calmly.”

Junia raised her hand. “Do you know about this?” she asked. “Is it true?”

Mrs. Ronson tried to look dignified as she precariously stepped down from her chair. “We’ve been hearing rumors for a couple of months,” she said. “There is a strong movement in favor of the changes, and at last night’s school board meeting, they came another step closer. So we don’t know what will happen. I do know that Mr. Bosnick is not in favor of it, nor are most of the teachers, but ultimately it’s the school board that controls our budget and our structure.”

Eddie raised his hand. “Why would they want to do something like that?” he asked. “Is it money?”

Mrs. Ronson sighed. “Yes, unfortunately. The idea is that expanding and upgrading the sports program will add sports income and donations to the school budget. The school district has been in a money crunch for some time because our town has been growing a lot, but the tax base hasn’t grown as quickly as the number of kids needing school.”

Discussion broke out again, and Mrs. Ronson shouted again. “Excuse me! This is not the place to discuss this. Please wait until class break or lunch to continue your conversation. In any event, the plan is under consideration, and not something that’s going to happen tomorrow.”

Between classes, Bob said, “We need to get all the honors kids together so we can work out a strategy to deal with this issue.”

“When do you think would work?” I asked. “Some of the kids have jobs after school.”

“We’ll have to get together as many as we can. Maybe at lunchtime. Let’s see if we can commandeer the quiet corner of the cafeteria.”

When class was ending, Bob raised his hand and stood up. “We need to meet and talk about what’s going on. Let’s all go to the quiet corner of the cafeteria at lunchtime and hash out a strategy. Try to get through the lunch line quickly, or just skip it, so we can have plenty of time.”

We went to our next class, but had trouble paying attention. At the lunch bell, we rushed down the hall past the other kids.

“Hey, dude, what’s the big rush?” Mac called as I brushed past him.

“Gotta get to a lunch meeting,” I said.

When we got into the lunch line, I looked around. Most of the first couple dozen people in line were our classmates. We got trays and took over a couple of tables in the corner furthest from the door.

“Okay. Here’s some things we can do,” Bob said. “Nora. Can you guys do some stories in the school paper about this? What is planned, interviews with teachers and students and parents, editorials.”

“I was thinking about doing some research with graduates of the honors program. Where are they now, how did honors benefit them, what do they think about it being cancelled, that sort of thing,” Nora said. “I’ll assign several of the reporters to get the alumni list and get on the phone.”

“Perfect! You might interview guys who went through the football team, too. Sort of to compare,” Bob said. “Eddie. Your dad works at the newspaper, right?”

Eddie nodded. “He’s the city editor.”

“See what they can do to help us. I’m sure there’s someone on the staff there that would be sympathetic. It would be great if they ran a series of articles and editorials about this issue. They’ll have to report both sides, but people need to have all the facts. Mike and I are going to do some research into the financial side: how much money actually gets generated by school sports programs, where does it go, and so on.”

“We are? Oh, yeah, that’s right,” I said.

Bob ignored me. “Hiroshi, see what you can find out from the sports end. There’s got to be someone in particular behind this. It doesn’t just spring from the ground. Find out who he is, what his goals and plans are, what his connection is to the school.”

Hiroshi nodded. “His name is Jimmy White,” he said. “I think he runs that big truck dealership over in the county seat. He comes to talk to Coach all the time. I’ll see what else I can find out.”

“Great. Junia, see if you can get the student council involved in this, and get ready to mobilize the whole school so that when the time comes for action, we’ll be ready. I don’t know what it will look like, but we need to keep our eyes and ears open and be organized. That way, when an opportunity arises, we can jump on it.”

Junia looked a little pale, but she nodded. Student council was a big stretch for her, being a pretty shy person, and she worked hard at it.

Bob continued, “You other guys, talk to your parents, ask around, go to school board and city council meetings, and find out whatever you can. We need people around to be ready to talk to reporters whenever anything happens. Maybe we can get Eddie’s dad to give us some pointers so we can have the most impact. Check on that, Eddie.”

“I will,” Eddie said. “My dad was telling me something last night about the school board, but I was on my way out, and didn’t pay much attention. But it sounded like he was concerned about it. I guess I should have listened.”

Doug said, “I’ll look into what influence the city council has on this sort of thing. My mom will know how that works.”

“Go for it, Doug,” Bob said. “Your mom should be a great ally.”

Doug’s mom was the town’s most vocal councilperson, and could be counted on to speak her mind at every city meeting. She was frequently interviewed by the papers and the radio station, because she had a sharp tongue and was very straightforward.

That week’s school paper had a headline about the school board’s proposal, and featured interviews with students, teachers, school board members, and Jimmy White himself. There was an article about the potential implications of the changes for the academic program, sports, the school grounds, and the budget. An editorial by Nora very strongly opposed undermining the school’s academic program in favor of expanded sports, and suggested that any sports expansion should be accompanied by improvements in the district’s academic program. “After all, education is why schools are here,” the article ended.

There was a lot of discussion in the hallways. Most students seem to oppose closing down the honors program, but there was some excitement about expanded sports. “Don’t know why we can’t have both,” said Mac, echoing the sentiments of a lot of kids.

The city paper ran several articles about the issue, with editorials supporting both sides. Doug’s mom was quoted extensively, saying she would oppose the proposal tooth and nail.

The next time we got together, Hiroshi said, “Jimmy White has a son in 8th grade football. He really wants him to go places, like a big football college and maybe the pros, so he’s all hepped up about raising the level of football in our town. He’s good friends with a couple of the school board members. They’re all in Optimists together. He thinks that you have to be at least in a 2A school to get a football scholarship, so he’s got plans for a new football staff, new bleachers, new uniforms, new mascot....”

“What’s wrong with the Eagles?” asked Eddie. “They’re a cool mascot.”

“There’s already Eagles in 2A,” Hiroshi said. “You can’t have two of the same.”

“Okay. What did you find out, Nora?” Bob asked. “By the way, the articles were great.”

Nora pushed her brown hair back over her ear and said, “I’ve got my staff calling everybody who ever went through an honors course here, and everybody who ever played football. So far we have everything from a circuit judge to a jailbird. I hope we can get it done by next week, but it’s slow going, because people move around, numbers are no good, people aren’t home, all that stuff.”

She pulled out a folder and opened it. “A guy from the city paper called me after Eddie went over there. Blake Foster. He’s real interested in what’s going on, and is covering the board meetings and doing a lot of investigation of his own. He said he’d publish something on what we find out about graduates, and any sort of rabble-rousing we do. That was his term,” she said, looking at Junia.

“Very cool,” said Bob.

“We’re ready,” Junia said, smiling. “We’ve contacted all the clubs and school organizations, and most of them have said they’d go along with anything reasonable and legal. And they’re definitely against doing away with honors classes, since a lot of the clubs are run by honors students.”

“What did you find out from your mom, Doug?” Bob asked.

Doug grinned. “The city council doesn’t control the school board, but she’s stirring up all the fire she can. She’s threatening to go after the school’s tax base, because it’s worked out by the city, the county, and the school board, and she’s on the finance committee. I don’t know what power she has, but she’s doing what she can make it hot for the school board. She says she’ll see to it that not one of them gets re-elected next time around.”

“I can see where you got your acerbic tongue and loud voice, Doug,” I said.

Doug smiled beatifically and said nothing more.

“Well, good work, guys. I think we’re on track,” Bob said. “Mike and I have just begun trying to figure out the money side of things. We need another stretch in the library to start putting it together.”

Our financial research was tough at first, but eventually we started finding what we needed. Mr. Bosnick showed us our school district’s budget and annual report, and we went to the library and found budgets  and reports for other districts that had bigger football, basketball, and baseball programs, both 1A and 2A.

“It looks like football and the other big sports just about pay for themselves,” Bob said, after several hours of wading through numbers and charts. “The booster donations and ticket sales fund bigger fields and better bleachers and more equipment, and some staff for the program, but I haven’t found any that put money back into the academic budget. And I can’t tell if all the sports staff are paid out of sports revenue, or if some of them come out of tax money.”

“This district here had $120,000 go to a school building from the sports program,” I said. “It looks like it was a gym expansion, though.”

Bob scanned the report I was wading through. “Hinck County. Hmm. We have to look at the whole package,” he said. “See if you can summarize their whole sports-related budget, and separate it from their PE budget.”

“PE is lumped under the academic budget,” I said. “The gym expansion is the only thing that crosses over from sports to academic facilities. I can’t figure out, though, if the sports program is paying for itself or if it’s subsidized by the district budget.”

“Copy the whole thing,” Bob said. “Maybe Blake or Mr. Bosnick can help us understand it.”

He looked again at the proposal that our school board had printed. “This says that Jimmy’s plan will eventually pump $60,000 a year into the school staff budget, above what it will take to hire new coaches and staff and all that stuff. That would barely fund two teachers. But first they want to cut six positions to come up with the money to get it started. So the school would be losing four positions permanently, and from what all these other budgets indicate,  the other two positions aren’t ever really likely to get funded because sports don’t generate that much revenue. So the school loses the honors program to pay for a bigger and better football field and a sports program that won’t ever fund itself. We need to get these numbers to Nora and Blake.”

We copied our findings onto clean paper and photocopied several of the reports.

That evening, we met at Blake’s office with Nora. Junia was there, tagging along with Nora.

“So what you’re saying is that you haven’t found a program anywhere that is actually making money for the school district? All these programs are self-funding at best?” Blake said, looking over our charts.

“Exactly. The best we found was a district that expanded the gym with sports income, most of it special donations from the boosters,” Bob said. “We didn’t find any other districts where the sports program benefitted the school’s academic program. From what I can see, most schools were actually using tax dollars to subsidize the sports program. This is what Jimmy’s plan does, taking $200,000 from the honors program to pay for coaching staff to begin with, and then cutting that down to $140,000 after a few years, assuming sports income and donations are where they project them to be. Only a couple of the other districts’ sports programs were self-sufficient, between booster donations, ticket sales, and concessions, and even those were iffy.”

We spread our worksheets out and showed Blake what the numbers meant. Blake whistled. “So football usually ends up costing tax dollars, and at best doesn’t do more than pay for itself. Look here. This school with the gym expansion is actually paying coaches and stadium upkeep out of their tax-based budget, and then shifting some of the money raised through donations back to the school’s gym project.”

“Nora, what kinds of things did you find out from your comparison of honors grads and football grads?” Bob asked.

Nora pulled out a fat folder. “I finally got the numbers crunched. We were able to talk to or find out about a hundred former football players, and a hundred and fifty honors grads. The football players had about 45 percent college attendance, compared to about 85 percent of the honors grads. The overall for the school is about 63%. So that shows that football players are less likely than the rest of the school to go to college. Most of the football guys who did college at all went to community college, whereas about three-quarters of the honors students went straight to a university somewhere if they went to college at all.”

Bob frowned. “Yeah. I thought it would be something like that. There’s something about that that’s bugging me, though. It’s probably not as simple as it looks.”

I butted in. “We have to be careful about talking about what causes what, because we don’t know that it was football that kept those guys from college, or that it was honors that made them go.”

“Exactly,” said Blake. “It would be easy to write a story making it look that way, but in fact, if those guys hadn’t played football, we don’t know what they would have done. They might not have finished high school at all. And the kinds of kids that get into honors programs might well go to college even if there weren’t honors courses in their high school.”

“Okay. So what kinds of things would show that the programs make a difference one way or another?” Bob asked.

Junia cleared her throat. “I found out, from talking to the school counselors, that Rogersville has only ever had sixteen kids go to college on full sports scholarships, and maybe ten who had partial scholarships. That’s in twenty years of keeping records. I was wondering how that compared to other schools, so I called around, and Montrose was about the same. Jasper Springs, where their football and basketball programs are such a big deal, has numbers about three times that high, but their school is about four times as big as ours. They’re 2A. I’m working on getting numbers from several more districts. But the interesting thing is that during the same time period, Rogersville has had about a hundred kids out of the honors program go to college on full scholarships, plus several hundred more with partial scholarships. Montrose was lower, but their honors program is newer than ours. In both schools, honors students are about three times as likely as other students to get a scholarship.”

“That’s huge,” Blake said. “That’s the kind of thing the school board needs to hear, because Jimmy has been waving the Jasper Springs scholarship numbers around as a big success story. But it looks like graduating from the honors program is pretty much a guarantee of a scholarship, if your numbers match up with Nora’s.” He turned to Nora. “Did you ask your people whether they had scholarships to go to college?”

Nora looked at her notes. “Actually, we did get that information from a lot of them, but I forgot to tabulate it. Sorry. I’ll get on it right away.”

“Great,” Bob said. “All right, Hiroshi, what else have you found out?”

“Jimmy’s son is a pretty good athlete,” Hiroshi said. “Jimmy shows up for all the games, and is pumping money into the junior high football program. They have new goalposts and an electronic scoreboard, and the locker rooms are being remodeled.”

“I wish someone would remodel the biology lab,” Bob snorted. “The microscopes are at least thirty years old, and we can’t even get enough frogs to go around.”

“The chem lab is even worse,” Nora said. “Most of the bottles are so old, you can’t even read the labels, and the glassware is all scarred up and chipped.”

“How do the football players feel about all this?” Bob asked.

Hiroshi grinned. “They’re excited about getting better equipment and moving into a higher division, but at least some of them think it’s stupid to cancel the honors program to do that. Even Jerry, who’s as dumb as a stump, said, ‘Sheesh, if Jimmy wants a new stadium that bad, why doesn’t he just pay for it himself? No point in leaving the poor nerds high and dry.’”

Hiroshi’s imitation of Jerry’s drawl made Junia snort. She reddened and covered her mouth.

Blake said, “I need to interview Jerry sometime for the paper. He’s that outstanding tackle, isn’t he? All-district and that sort of thing?”

“He’s really good,” Hiroshi said. “Partly because he’s two years behind in school, so he’s way bigger and more coordinated than most of the guys. But I think he would have dropped out long ago if he wasn’t playing. You could call him a football success story.”

“Okay, so let’s see what we’ve got so far,” Bob said. “We aren’t going to get anywhere by bashing football, and it might actually do some good for some guys. But Jimmy’s idea that it will benefit the school district financially is obviously hogwash, because it will actually take more tax dollars to support it, and that means cutting elsewhere. We have the budgets to clarify that. We can see that honors kids are way more likely to go to college, but they might anyway. It looks like honors programs make it more likely that they’ll get scholarships, but we need verification. Blake and Nora, could you talk to some colleges and find out what kinds of things make a difference to getting scholarships? The school counselors will also know about that.”

Junia said, “Several of the scholarships that my brother applied for specifically asked about honors courses and advanced placement.”

“Good,” Bob said, turning to her. “Can you bring us the information in writing? Like the application forms, any brochures, that sort of thing.” He looked at Blake. “Any dirt on the school board that would be useful?”

Blake grinned. “Tomorrow there will be an article about the buddy system in the school board. Jimmy is in the Optimists Club with two of the members, and he’s taken them and a couple of others on hunting trips several times. Only a couple of the school board members have had kids in the school system; the others either moved here or didn’t have kids. I want to raise the question of how much they’re actually in tune with the needs of the district’s children, and whether Jimmy has undue influence on their decisions. Just raising the question, you know.”

“Great!” Bob said. “That should help. We really need to get the financial facts out there. I’ll leave you these budgets for you to wade through, unless you want to go to the library yourself.”

“Leave them with me,” Blake said. “I’ll make some calls, too, to see what the district budget people in other places have to say.”

At our lunch meeting a couple of days later, Nora said, “They had a closed-door school board meeting last night, and from what we heard, they’re railroading the football program through.”

“Is that legal?” Bob asked.

“My dad says they’re allowed to have closed meetings, but the budget still has to be open to the public,” Nora said. “But they voted last night to go ahead with the move to 2A, without revising the budget yet. If they have additional designated money coming in, they can use it for its designated purpose without any other approval, and Jimmy’s ready to give them the money they need to begin the process.”

“That makes it sound like it’s inevitable that the sports program will be expanded,” I said. “Isn’t there any way we can stop it?”

Nora shook her head. “I asked Blake and Mr. Bosnick, and they both said that they can go ahead with new stuff as long as the funding doesn’t come out of the existing budget. But if for next year they want to get rid of an existing program, they have to answer to the public. I think they’re trying to set things up so that the district will feel obliged to go ahead with their plan, whatever it takes.”

“So what happens now? What practical decisions can they make without public response?” Bob asked. “Obviously they can’t fire staff or end programs just like that.”

“No,” Nora said. “But they have a plan in hand for shifting the sports program into 2A.”

“Doug’s mom went through the roof,” Eddie said. “I saw her on the front page of this morning’s paper. She went down to the board meeting and demanded to be let in, and they wouldn’t let her, and she sounded off to all the reporters that were there.”

Bob looked at Doug, who grinned. “She says she’ll get them all recalled, and if that doesn’t work, she’ll make sure they don’t get re-elected,” Doug said. “She’s pushing my dad to throw his hat in the ring for the school board. There are two slots up for election this year. Dad’s not excited about it.”

“Is there any way we can make it hard for them?” I asked. “Sort of to show them we don’t like them bulling in and throwing their weight around. Like a slowdown strike or passive resistance, or maybe a picket line.”

Nora said, “They’re filing paperwork with the state already. That’s about all they can do at this point. The other thing they’ve done is decided to choose a new mascot.”

“The Bulldogs. That’s what Jimmy wants,” Hiroshi said. “That was the mascot at his college, I guess.”

“He can’t just bully his way in and make those kinds of decisions,” Junia said. “We can’t let him do that.”

“No. Anything like that has to be an open process,” Bob said.

Nora brushed her hair back over her right ear. “It sounded like they actually told Jimmy that the school itself would have to choose its mascot, and not the biggest donor to the program, or the public would eat their lunch. I gathered that he was disappointed at that.”

Bob’s eyes lit up. “We get to choose? Whoa!” He thought a few minutes, then said, “Junia, if we actually get to select a new school mascot, do you think the student council could find a way to make it really interesting? Get all kinds of kids involved and make it a really huge deal?”

“What do you have in mind?” Junia asked.

“I’m thinking, lots of proposals. Tons of them, really interesting ones. Like the Mad Scientists. Rogersville Mad Scientists, bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.” Bob grinned wickedly. “Mike, we need a fight song for the Rogersville Mad Scientists football team. See what you can come up with.”

“I’ll get right on it,” I said.

“So, like, lots of really weird mascots?” Junia said. Her eyes sparkled. “That would be a blast. I bet Kelly could get the cheerleaders to come up with a bunch of new cheers. She’s really mad, because her sister went through the whole honors program and on to Princeton.”

“How about the Beagles?” suggested Eddie. “That way they can use the old uniforms, and just add the B to the front. They can draw Snoopy on the helmets with a Sharpie.”

“That’s the kind of thing I’m thinking of,” Bob said. “If Bulldogs gets nominated, it has to be buried in a ton of other really great ideas. Jimmy needs to know that we aren’t going to get pushed around.”

Junia said, “Is there actually a formal order to the school yet to choose a new mascot?”

Nora said, “It’s supposed to be forthcoming.”

“I’ll get with Mr. Bosnick and the council right away,” Junia said. “We don’t want it to slip past us. The school board might try to railroad the process, and we have to cut them off at the pass so we can control how it happens.” She grinned. “I think Mr. Bosnick would favor The Cavemen. ‘Ooga ooga! Grog!’”

We laughed.

“I can see it now, the cheerleaders dressed in skins and twirling bones and clubs,” Eddie chortled. “I’m going to write some cheers. Ooga ooga grog! Hit them with a log!”

“Clubs are good, rocks are better. In ten thousand years, I can send you a letter,” I chanted.

“No wheel, no steel, no rule of law. We don’t have fire, so we’ll eat you raw!” boomed Hiroshi.

The three of us high-fived each other. Bob said, “Perfect. We need tons of that kind of stuff, all developed with uniforms and cheers and chants and fight songs, and we’ll need to present it all very professionally. I think every kid in honors ought to be involved, and I’ll bet a lot of other kids will want to, also.”

“Just think of what Mac could come up with,” Eddie snickered. “The Rogersville Fighting Plumbers.”

“Write it all down. Talk to everyone,” Bob said. “We have to be ready to jump as soon as they open the process.”

Nora, Junia, and I were delegated to visit Mr. Bosnick. He invited us into his office, then sat back and said, “I suppose you want to talk about the school board meeting last night.”

“Yes sir,” Nora said. “In particular, we were wondering about the process for choosing a new mascot. I understand the school board did state that Mr. White couldn’t choose the mascot, but that it would be done by the school. Is that correct?”

Mr. Bosnick nodded. “We got word today that we would need to select a new mascot so that our sports programs could be moved to the 2A level.”

“Were there instructions on how to do that?” I asked.

Mr. Bosnick shook his head. “It just says that the school will make the choice,” he said.

Junia cleared her throat. “The student council has a proposal for handling the process,” she said, looking at a paper on her lap. “All students would have the right to propose mascots, and the decision would be made by an open vote of the student body.”

“May I see your proposal?” Mr. Bosnick asked.

Junia handed him the paper. He scanned it. “Announce contest in assembly and in school paper. All nominations to include mascot sketch, uniform ideas, cheers, fight song. Special assembly to be held to present nominations to the student body. Selection will be narrowed to six favorites through voice vote at assembly. Final selection will be made among six favorites by written ballot, following presentations of the favorites in second assembly,” he read. “Entry form attached. Sketches should measure... font size, etc. etc., please use colored pencils or markers or transfer lettering. Be prepared to exhibit or model sample uniforms, cheerleader outfits, brightly-colored poster, any other props at first assembly, as well as to lead sample cheers and to sing fight song. Have words to cheers and song on transparencies for projection, font size 36. Six favorites to be presented in polished and professional manner in second assembly with the help of the cheerleading squad and members of the sports teams and youth orchestra.”

Mr. Bosnick looked up. “This is very good,” he said. “Did you get it from another school somewhere?”

Junia blushed. “I wrote it during history class and typed it in study hall,” she said. “Nora and some of the student council members helped me with it. I ran it by the whole council during our meeting this afternoon.”

“I see the signatures,” Mr. Bosnick said. “Well, let me discuss this with the faculty, and I’ll get back to you in a day or two. I need to find out how this sort of thing is typically handled. But your proposal looks very professional and quite satisfactory, at first glance.”

Junia beamed, and Nora high-fived her.

“Mr. Bosnick, is there anything else from the school board meeting that you can tell us about?” I asked. “I mean, besides what was in the papers.”

Mr. Bosnick shook his head. “They filed the paperwork with the state today, and have to hear back on that before they can do anything else,” he said. “They can’t alter the existing budget without public input unless there’s an emergency, so normal operations continue. But your voice is being heard.” He grinned. “And that of some of your parents. I’ll keep you posted on anything that comes my way.”

The uproar continued in the school and city papers, and in the city council chambers. The school board members kept a low profile and avoided interviews.

“Blake and I spent three hours last night waiting for Mr. Boyd,” complained Nora. “It turned out he called a taxi and left out the back door.”

“Mr. Bosnick told the student council that he would talk with us about the mascot proposal this afternoon,” Junia said. “We’ll meet with him right after school.”

“Great. I suggest those of us who can, hang around until you guys are done, so we can find out right away what’s going on,” Bob said.

“I can’t stay. I’ve got to go help at the paper this afternoon,” Eddie said. “Can you call me when you know something?”

“I’ll call you,” I promised.

Doug said, “My mom wants me to go with her to a council meeting and talk about the proposal from a student’s perspective.”

“Yay, Mrs. Wiggins! Go! I’ll call you too,” I said.

Nora said, “I have to stay to work on the paper anyway.”

“Football,” Hiroshi said. “I’ll check in with you afterwards.”

I got inspired during study hall, and began writing a proposal for the Mad Scientists school mascot. I had a stupid tune from Sesame Street running through my head, along with Bob’s “Bwa-ha-ha!” laugh, so I put them together. I wrote up a silly little fight song with two verses, and passed it to Eddie. “To the tune of, ‘You got to put down the ducky,’” I whispered.

Eddie read it and snickered. He licked his pencil tip, then quickly scrawled out another verse and handed it back. I read it and snorted.

Mrs. Grimes looked over at me. “Yes, Mike?” she asked.

“Sorry, ma’am,” I said, wiping the smile off my face.

For the rest of study hall, Eddie was muttering to himself, punctuated every now and then by a whispered “Boom!” I had to move to another table so I wouldn’t crack up.

Bob and I got together in an empty classroom to talk strategy after school got out. I showed my fight song to Bob.

“Whoa baby! This is outstanding!” Bob said. “I’ve got to get one of those things that they always have in old science fiction movies, the rabbit ears with the electronic arc and the buzzing noise.”

He hummed the tune of the Ducky song, cackled a few times, shouted, “Fools! I’ll kill them all!” and then ended with “Boom!” He laughed again. “We’ll get the cheerleaders to wear lab coats. Maybe we could even have some sort of Frankenstein monster who lurches around. This is totally cool.”

“I’ve got a bunch of other ideas, too,” I said. “I’ll have to farm them out to other kids, though, because it probably wouldn’t look right for a lot of ideas to come from me.” I showed him my list.

“The Investors. Now that has potential. The Rabid Chipmunks. Hmm. The Lumps. The Gumps. What’s a Gump? The Mumps. I don’t know about those. The Erasers. The Beagles. Yeah, that was Eddie’s thing. The Smurfs. The Cavemen, most definitely. The Neanderthals. Probably about like the Cavemen, except it’s gender-neutral. We’re going to have a whole lot of fun.”

Bob handed me back the list. “I came up with the Snarling Possums and the Avenging Angels. I don’t think that last one will fly, though.”

“Snarling Possums.” I whipped out a crude sketch of a possum’s face with fangs bared. “I got to get Tony to draw this.”

“Tony? Pfaah! Why would he want to help us?” Bob snorted.

“He’s still in the honors program,” I said. “He just keeps a low profile. I talk with him sometimes.”

“I don’t,” Bob said definitely. “I never even see him, and when I do, I ignore him.”

“I feel kind of sorry for him,” I said. “He chose all his classes based on avoiding the ones that we were going to be in, but he still gets teased all the time about his stupid robot. Anyway, he’s a great artist, and I think he’d be willing to draw some of the mascots.”

“Huh!” Bob said. “Well, anyway, it looks like this mascot thing is on track, depending on what Mr. Bosnick says. We’re getting good press coverage, and we have some city leaders behind us. A lot of the graduates that Nora called are writing letters or calling the school, the paper, and the school board. Most of the school is against closing the honors program. Seems like there’s something missing, though. I can’t put my finger on it.”

I counted on my fingers. “Press. Students. Alumni. School administration. City council. Parents. Budget.”

Bob snapped his fingers. “Budget! That’s the key. We need to see how outside money can be raised for the honors program, just like the sports teams have their booster clubs and special donations.”

I scratched my head. “I’ve never seen parents getting in line to buy new textbooks or classroom equipment. It would be cool if local businesses would support our special events, like they do the basketball tournaments and football team trips. ‘Joe’s Bakery is proud to back the Rogersville Nerds on their twelfth visit to the regional Science Bowl.’ ‘The Rogersville High School Science Fair is supported by a gift from Harris Hardware. Harris Hardware, helping the handy homeowner for forty years.’ It just doesn’t happen.”

“But why shouldn’t it? They could have sponsored our trip to the state Science Fair. Paid the motel, put a congratulatory ad in the paper, given us t-shirts to wear with their logo, that sort of thing. They do it for the sports teams, don’t they?” Bob got up and paced back and forth.

I frowned. “I don’t know about the logo thing. There are restrictions. I’m not sure exactly how they do support the teams, but I know they do.”

“We need to find out about it,” Bob said. “Seems like it would be good publicity for businesses to support the school’s academics programs as well as our sports.”

We kicked the idea around for about half an hour. “I think the person we need to talk to is Eddie’s dad,” I said. “The newspaper is always publishing the ads and articles about how businesses back the sports team and all that. I’ll go talk to him after we’re done here, or else call him tonight.”

“Good,” Bob said. “I’ll ask Mr. Bosnick about the legal side of it, what can and can’t be done.”

Notes: