by Brian Tacang
“Um, okay,” Juanita said, petting her violin case. “As you all know, Masonville’s annual Young Talent Extravaganza is less than a week away. I’m proud to say that I’ve perfected the Prokofiev piece I’ve been practicing in time for the competition. I’m giving a preview of it at the student assembly at school.” She stood and curtsied.
“Very good,” Roderick approved. “Tonisha, you should have notes on Juanita’s rehearsal in your minutes from the last meeting. Could you read those? Provided you’re ready.”
“I am, I am,” Tonisha said, fumbling with her notebook. She flipped some pages, stood, and smacked her lips in preparation.
Whenever Tonisha read, she’d sway from side to side, which made whoever was listening sway from side to side, too. As she leaned, it looked as if the headwrap she was wearing that day would come toppling down. The Wunderkinder couldn’t help but hope it would stay intact.
Tonisha read from her notepad, swaying, candlelight and shadows writing sonnets across her face:
“Juanita Romero Alonso,
Having gone completely gonzo,
Fiddled her little socks off
In a tribute to Rachmaninoff—”
“Fiddle,” interrupted Juanita, “is such a rustic term.” She caressed her violin case. “This is a VI-O-LIN.”
“Too many syllables,” Tonisha said.
“And it wasn’t Rachmaninoff. That was the meeting before,” Juanita said.
“Right,” Tonisha said. “And ‘fiddled her little socks off in a tribute to Prokofiev’ sounds so much better.”
Juanita grimaced.
Millicent squirmed in her seat. Tonisha’s minutes never sounded like real minutes. Millicent preferred it when Leon was secretary. At least his minutes were shorter since he slept most of the time.
Tonisha went on:
“Juanita Romero Alonso
Fiddled her song on and on so
Roderick begged her to stop it,
Then he took the floor just to top it.”
She finished the poem dramatically with a sigh loud enough to wake Leon and a bow so low everyone shouted, “Whoa,” as her headwrap came dangerously close to falling off and into the candelabrum. She snapped her body upright, and the headwrap boinged back into place.
“In other words,” said Roderick, blinking, “last month Juanita worked on a new violin piece.”
“Plainly put,” said Tonisha as she sat.
“Mmm,” mumbled Leon, reclining in his chair and closing his eyes.
“Who would like to go next?” Roderick asked. Millicent raised her hand. “Everett, you have the floor,” Roderick said.
“It’s not Everett anymore. I’ve told you that. I go by Pollock now,” Pollock huffed. “I’ve renamed myself after Jackson Pollock the—”
“Abstract expressionist painter, I know,” Roderick said.
Pollock folded his arms over his paint-splattered shirt. “I’m also entered in Masonville’s Young Talent Extravaganza. I’ll be exhibiting a few paintings at the opening day student assembly, too.”
“Well done, Ever—Pollock,” Roderick said. Millicent raised her hand, but Roderick leaned forward to address Leon, the math-whiz Wunderkind. “Leon? We haven’t heard from you yet.”
Leon snored louder.
“Leon?” Roderick asked. “LEON!”
“Four thousand three hundred and ninety-six!” Leon blurted, suddenly awake.
“Dreaming about numbers again,” Pollock mumbled. “Go back to sleep, Leon.”
“All righty,” Leon said, then put his head down on the table.
“Tonisha, weren’t you working on a little poem for the extravaganza?” Roderick asked.
Tonisha arched an eyebrow in his direction. “I’m still working on my epic poem.”
“Is that it for old business?” Roderick asked Tonisha, his eyes rolling.
“Verily,” she replied.
“Good,” Roderick said, “now, who wants to be first to share their most recent accomplishments?” Millicent raised her hand, but Roderick’s own arm shot up as if he had no control over it. “Looks like I’m first.”
The Wunderkinder groaned and everyone leaned back in their chairs, readying themselves to listen to Roderick.
“You all know,” he began, “but it bears repeating that my parents are both highly successful in their chosen fields. My father as senior partner in Biggleton, Wigglebum, and Higglebee, attorneys-at-law and my mother as—”
“President and CEO of Beauty Goo Cosmetics,” the Wunderkinder said in unison, as if they were singing a hymn.
“Yes,” said Roderick, sneering at them. “Despite your impolite interruption—which I take as anticipation—I will begin at the beginning and leave no stone unturned as I recount the fascinating month I had. It will undoubtedly inspire you to lift your dreary lives to a higher level of aspiration. You, too, can be like me.”
The Wunderkinder balked, whispering to each other things like “The nerve.”
A year ago, they’d asked Roderick to join the Wunderkind Club because he’d been teased at school for being smart, but also because he seemed to have a knack for running things efficiently. Little did they know then that his organizational skills relied on a heavy dose of bossiness.
Roderick went on for nearly fifteen minutes, talking about how he helped his father prepare a legal case for which he couldn’t share the details—attorney-client privilege, you know—and about how he went with his mother to a cosmetics convention in Pinnimuk City where he, personally, met the president of So Much Stuff, So Little Time department stores.
He was nearing the end of his speech. Leon was snoring. Pollock was doodling on a scrap of paper. Juanita was humming to herself, her hand inching toward her violin. Tonisha was writing and Millicent was feeling antsy. She wanted so badly to give her presentation, her sluggishness of that morning now a memory.
“And that, my fellow Wunderkinder,” said Roderick, “was what I did last month.” The Wunderkinder applauded halfheartedly. “Is there other new business?” Millicent raised her hand.
“Millicent, you have the floor,” Roderick said.
Millicent bounded to the head of the table, her presentation materials in hand. She wrestled with the three-legged easel until it was properly set up, slapped her flip chart onto it, then turned back the first sheet of paper. She whipped out a felt-tip pen from her waistband and spun around to face the group. Her foot snagged on the easel. It leaned and she frantically grappled with it, but it crashed to the floor.
“Eighty-seven thousand five hundred and six!” Leon yelled, his eyes wide open.
“Buzzing Millicent,” said Tonisha, scribbling in her tablet. “Caught in the web of her spider easel, a fly bearing products with which to…tease-l.” She scratched out the last part.
“Wow,” said Pollock Wong, putting his hands behind his head and his feet on the table. “Somebody’s anxious.”
Roderick nodded.
Millicent repositioned her easel and took a deep breath. Whatever pitch she had rehearsed escaped her. She felt daring. She felt hyped. She decided to wing it.
She wasn’t as good an artist as Pollock but she drew on the flip chart anyway. She started by sketching a pudgy figure in a striped shirt with a baseball cap on its round head; next, a tall figure as thin as a tetherball pole; and, finally, an apelike creature with long hair, wearing a halter top, whose overlarge knuckles scraped the horizon line of the picture. Her memory still fresh from her encounter with them, Millicent thought she did a decent job of capturing the bullies’ likenesses.
“Wunderkinder,” she said, stepping away from the flip chart. “Do you know who these people are?”
They leaned forward, quiet. She had their attention.
“Well, the quality of your drawing is rather primitive,” said Pollock Wong, “and the proportions are a bit questionable, but I’d say the chubby one looks like Pollywog Jones, the thin one looks like Fletch Farnsworth, and the chimp bears an uncanny r
esemblance to Nina ‘The Knuckle’ Kwaikowski.”
“Exactly, on all accounts,” said Millicent, wagging her felt-tip pen at him.
“Not bad,” Leon said to Pollock. “I thought the chimp was Mrs. Bleeker.”
“Mrs. Bleeker does kind of look like a chimp, doesn’t she?” asked Juanita.
“A chimp,” said Tonisha, her face buried in her notepad, “or a rhesus monkey.”
“Need I remind you all—especially you, Leon—that regardless of what primate she resembles, Mrs. Bleeker doesn’t wear halter tops?” Pollock asked.
“Oh. I thought it was a lobster bib,” said Leon. Everyone smirked at him. “Hey,” he whined, “I saw her at Captain Dandy’s Seafood Shanty on my birthday. She was wearing one then.”
“Go back to sleep, Leon,” said Pollock. “The caricature is clearly of Nina Kwaikowski.”
“Nina Kwaikowski,” said Tonisha, still writing in her notepad. “Now there’s a rhesus monkey if I’ve ever seen one.”
“You’re all getting off track,” Millicent said, huffing. She was losing their attention. Uncle Phineas said losing an audience’s attention spelled trouble.
“Continue,” Roderick advised.
“School starts on Monday,” she said, collecting herself, “and these animals will be roaming the halls again.” She pointed at the flip chart with her pen. “They will be waiting for us with kick-me signs.” She began pacing, slowly, deliberately, making eye contact with each Wunderkind. They’d all been picked on by bullies, she reminded them. “They will pick their noses and, with their boogery fingers poised, flick nasal nuggets at us.”
Tonisha stopped writing and looked up from her notepad. “Vividly disgusting,” she said.
Millicent ignored her. Instead, she strolled behind Roderick, bent down, and hissed in his ear, “Why, just this morning, on my way to this very meeting—I was confronted by Fletch, Pollywog, and Nina.” She straightened up and added, “So was Tonisha.”
The Wunderkinder turned to look at Tonisha, who’d stopped writing.
Suddenly, the air was pierced with a screechy, horror-movie tune—eeek, eeek, eeek, eeek.
“Juanita—” Millicent growled. Juanita put her bow and violin down.
Millicent went into grim detail as she recounted her run-in with the bullies. Her vivid description of Nina’s foot on her car had them spellbound. Then she went into the incident with Tonisha, lingering on every aspect for dramatic effect. When she finished, the brick room was as silent as a tomb.
Juanita petted her violin. Pollywog Jones had kidnapped it once and had placed a ransom note in her locker demanding she do his homework for a whole week in exchange for it. Pollock scowled. Nina “the Knuckle” Kwaikowski had once punched a clay sculpture he’d prepared for a city-wide youth art show.
“So?” asked Roderick, his voice echoing. “What’s so new about that?” Millicent could tell by his shaky tone that Roderick was trying to appear cool and unmoved. He, of all the Wunderkinder, was most acquainted with the bullies’ ways, having once been pushed into the Winifred T. Langley Memorial Fountain by all three of them.
Millicent squinted at Roderick, inhaled deeply, then turned her attention to the other Wunderkinder. “I have invented a new product to keep bullies away: Bully-Be-Gone.”
At this point it was hard for Millicent to know who to listen to because they all began jabbering at the same time.
“Oh, no.”
“I can’t believe this—”
“Not me—”
“You try it.”
“No way.”
“Never again.”
Millicent raised her voice above the others’. “Excuse me,” she said.
They chattered on. Except Tonisha, who watched quietly.
“Excuse me,” she yelled, then lowered her voice because they were, after all, in a library. “Need I remind you that—despite the excess saliva it produced—you thrilled at my Ever-Juicy Gum Enhancer pellet? You were awestruck at the effectiveness of the I’ve-Got-Rhythm Boogie Belt—which reminds me, Leon, I still owe you a refund for that unfortunate punch table incident at the spring dance. And, though I’ve yet to work out the kinks in the flavored ink and paper, you were all duly impressed with Fax-A-Snack.” She stopped and stared them down. “This invention is my most potent of all.”
Tonisha forced a smile. The remaining Wunderkinder were quiet, their eyes ablaze with distrust—an ominous effect further enhanced by the dancing candlelight.
Five
After Millicent left for the Wunderkind meeting, Uncle Phineas tidied the kitchen, with the help of the Robotic Chef, who’d started scraping the leftovers into Madame Curie’s food dish. The Robotic Chef missed the dish completely, dumping the meager leftovers on the floor.
“Dish? Floor? Yes. Makes no difference to you, does it?” Uncle Phineas asked the cat, who’d already gobbled her meal. “You made quick work of that. And I must make quick work of repairing these trousers.”
He turned around to show the cat the deflated chair hanging off his pants. Madame Curie batted at it as if it were a toy. Uncle Phineas laughed and then went upstairs to his bedroom to change, the cat following him, dodging and attacking his chair pants.
Uncle Phineas changed, shaved, and applied his favorite cologne. He sprayed a cloud of it, walked through the mist, then spritzed some under his armpits and behind his ears. Named Strong Like Bull, the cologne claimed to make one man smell like ten men. He had bought ten cases of Strong Like Bull many years ago when he’d heard the manufacturer would be discontinuing it. His stash of the fragrance had soured over time, yet even now he wore it because it had been his wife’s favorite scent. “My big, strong inventor,” she used to say to him, so close her breath fogged his glasses.
“Just for you, my dear,” he said to a photo of Aunt Felicity he kept in the bathroom. “Wherever you are.” He kissed his fingertip and pressed it against her picture on her helmet.
Millicent’s aunt Felicity had been a human cannonball for the Sprightly Sisters All-Woman Circus. She called herself an airborne artillery artist. All the photos of her showed her standing next to a cannon, in a polka-dotted leotard and satin cape and coordinating striped helmet.
One ill-fated day, during a matinee performance, she was catapulted through the top of the circus tent. Uncle Phineas was there. Long after the audience had gone, he sat stunned, looking at the hole through which she’d exited. He wished he had the power to rewind the matinee. If he had the power, he’d once told Millicent, he would make the elephants go backward, make the lady clowns stuff themselves back into their wonky-wheeled car. In his fantasy scenario, Aunt Felicity would return through the tent roof, closing the hole behind her as if it were zippered.
However, Aunt Felicity was never seen again.
“Wherever you are, my dear.” Uncle Phineas sighed. He turned and headed downstairs, the cat trailing him, still fascinated by the deflated chair pants he had tucked under his arm. He entered the lab and laid the pants on a table. The cat leaped onto the table and pawed at the pants. Something beneath them caught her attention. She began toying with that instead.
“Madame Curie,” Uncle Phineas said, “you are being a pest today. I cannot work with you here. Perhaps you’d enjoy a romp outside.” As he picked her up, she took one last swipe at her new plaything. “What is this?” Uncle Phineas asked, examining the aluminum packet with which the cat had been so taken. He set the cat down on the floor. “‘Bully-Be-Gone. Free sample. Repels bullies, thugs, and other unsavory characters. Body heat activated,’” he read from the label. He smiled. “Now, isn’t that noble? Yes? Well, one never knows when one might have a run-in with a bully.” He tore the packet open, brought it to his nose, sniffed the contents. “Odd. No smell.” He smeared the packet behind his ears and under his arms.
He lifted the cat off the floor, brought her outside through the lab door, and set her down on the lawn. He stretched out his arms as if embracing the entire neighborhood.
“What a grand day, Madame Curie,” he said. “The air is filled with magic.”
The air was indeed filled with something he couldn’t see.
Unbeknownst to Uncle Phineas, the Bully-Be-Gone intermingled with the Strong Like Bull cologne. The chemicals in each were both attracted to, yet also repelled by, one another. He’d become a sort of living firecracker. The combination of his fermented cologne and Millicent’s invention, set off by his body temperature, was phenomenal. Like a Roman fountain, he was literally shooting tiny sparks of Strong Like Bull and Bully-Be-Gone.
Ping! Ping! Ping! The molecules shot hundreds of feet into the air where they were lifted by the breeze.
Over the next few days, they were carried past great stretches of farmland, over forests, and beyond hills to Pinnimuk City. There they were swirled in circular currents by passing cars, propelled by steam rising from vents in the sidewalks, jetted through the air again by the breeze.
They wafted through Pinnimuk City Central Park, between the trees, past the playground, over the lake.
When the invisible droplets finally landed, they came to rest on a homeless lady lying on a grassy knoll, a rock as her pillow, under layers and layers of newspapers. She opened one eye, then the other. She inhaled the wonderful scent that rained on her cheeks and forehead and nose. What was it? It smelled, to her, like a good many things at once. With her head tilted back, she mentally listed the smells: popcorn, elephants, and gunpowder.
There was a fourth smell she couldn’t place. She squinted, trying to recall what it was. She thought if love had an aroma, it might smell like this; tender and courageous. She thought harder. It wasn’t one but two distinct bouquets: a dashing young inventor and a cologne called Strong Like Bull. Five smells in all—the sum of her former life, fragrant as a posy.
She looked at the sky and sat up, gathering the sheets of newspaper around her as if they were the children she’d never had. A single tear rolled down her cheek, paving a streak of fresh skin through the soil on her face. Then she clutched both hands over her heart. She remembered who she was.