The Perpetual Motion Club

by Sue Lange

  “I’ve got some angles that no one else is thinking about.” (As if she knew what angles people were thinking about.)

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I just need to . . . talk with my mom and maybe talk a little with you and a couple of other people. I’ll figure it out. I always do. I read mysteries all the time and usually can figure it out way ahead of time. Same with the movies.”

  That was actually true. She could usually figure it out ahead of time but that was because they were fiction and the reader was manipulated by the author and Elsa had learned that early on. She no longer read mysteries because of that as a matter of fact, but no matter. She was on a roll.

  “That’d be great,” Jason said, confused and still a little annoyed, but optimistic because he really thought Elsa was one of those mysterious brainy types that really did know what a gerund was. He thought she was much higher than him in the world of animals. Maybe even a different species. Something untouchable.

  “The problem is this project is taking up so much of my time, I don’t have time to think about anything else, like your predicament. I need time to think. If I had more people doing assembly then I could—”

  “My friends will help. We’ll finish it in no time. Just tell me what to do and I’ll get them here.” The unspoken despair he’d been feeling since the day he’d learned of his brother’s death was lightening ever so slightly.

  “Really?” Elsa said. She so wanted to jump up and kiss Jason, but he was still Jason Bridges and she was still Elsa Webb, a nobody. But soon, soon. One day soon, he’d be jumping up and kissing her.”

  “Is this for that science thing you told me about?”

  “You remember me telling you about that?”

  “I’m not an idiot you know. Look, what you’re trying to do is pretty simple. You just need a winning plan. You don’t know jack about competition. You’ll win with my, our, help and then maybe you can help me with my—”

  “Definitely. There are holes in this thing. The police . . . Listen, yes, you help me, I’ll help you.”

  Jason didn’t skip a beat. He was used to fast decision making. When presented with an opening, a chance to break through, he didn’t ask questions. He went right for the open basket. “First off, who’s the competition?” he said.

  And so they sat down and discussed Elsa’s strategy. They viewed last year’s winning entry exhibited on the Internet to get an idea of what they were up against. Elsa introduced an asset/debit concept, listing problems (not enough time to finish) as well as advantages (unique, big, style), and gave him the ultimate goal: seven working perpetual motion displays built to scale with movable parts and text included to describe how each machine was supposed to work and why it didn’t.

  “This is going to be easy,” Jason said. His excitement transported her to the same plane an upcoming game would send him to. He was born for competition and his enthusiasm was contagious. This was going to be easy.

  After several hours that passed like minutes, Lainie called from the top of the stairs, “Stop boring Jason with that crap. He needs to get his rest.”

  They laughed. “I’m boring him to sleep, Mom.” Elsa called.

  They said goodnight and shook on the partnership. Just before Jason retreated upstairs, he turned to her and said, “We’ll get started tomorrow night. Practice is scheduled for seven.”

  “Practice?”

  “Or whatever you call it. Seven. We’ll bring more players to help.”

  Elsa smiled and sat on her cot. She stared at her “crap” for a while as conflicting emotions wrestled in her gut. It was nice to have Jason Bridges, the new, tall boy, here. It felt surrealistic in a way. But now he would see for sure what a loser she was. Somehow she didn’t care. She’d have a few weeks of friendship with him, maybe less once he lost interest in the project, or some new girlfriend called him on the phone, or the graduation parties began kicking in. Jason, no doubt, had lots and lots of things to turn his head. Still, she’d have a few days or a few moments with him to lighten the load. And he needed her, too. That was worth something wasn’t it?

  All thoughts of the real club members drifted out of her head, replaced by Jason and the unreality of him sitting in her house, under her roof, in her bed! She was no longer angry with May and jWad and Christine. She wasn’t even aware of their existence.

  But then her eye caught the tygon tubes that Jimmy had cut two evenings ago. They lay where he left them, perfectly lined up, waiting for instructions. Jimmy might have been slow, but he had a great eye. Without that artistic eye, this project was going to suffer.

  Damn him! How could he abandon her?

  He really was a twerp, but she didn’t know whether she should be angry that he was leaving her high and dry or hurt that maybe he didn’t care quite as much as she thought he had.

  She shook off the thoughts of Jimmy’s abandonment and returned to the mess on the floor before her. In the center was a transformer that needed tacking to a plywood back. A few stray magnets and heater coils were in a pile over at the far end of the room. She stood up to place them in their proper group. Over by the far wall she spied a main spring she’d thought she lost a few weeks ago. Then behind a stray piece of steel sheeting she saw the missing . . .

  By two a.m., after four hours of grouping debris and usable parts into piles of like-minded objects, she fell exhausted onto the cot. Seven work stations complete with components and a drawing of the finished model looked like mounds of sorted laundry. Regardless of who showed up tomorrow night—Jimmy, Jason and his friends, or even May and jWad—she’d be ready with work for them.

  ***

  Six-fifteen on Friday evening, the Dr. Zhivago theme rang out.

  “Who on Earth,” Lainie asked as she sat at dinner with Jason and her daughter.

  Elsa shrugged.

  Jason spoke. “It’s probably some friends of mine.”

  Elsa’s heart thudded. The moment of truth. Did Jason intend to help? Or was last evening all she would get from him? Was he going out with his friends or staying in tonight?

  Lainie stated the worst. “You’ll be going out, I suppose.” She smiled at Jason. “The prelim went well today and you deserve it. Elsa, go get the door. I’ll clean up here. You go have fun, Jason.”

  Jason went to the door with Elsa and together they found two of Jason’s followers, Jake the Shorter and his girlfriend, the statuesque Em Twill who was the girls’ basketball team captain.

  “Well, see ya, Jason,” Elsa said at the door, hoping and dreading at the same time.

  “Uh, yeah go ahead and get started. We’ll wait up here for the rest.”

  “The rest?”

  “Yeah, everybody else. I told you we’d get a team together.”

  Elsa looked from Jake and Em to Jason and then suddenly turned and ran to the kitchen.

  “What’s going on?” Lainie asked as she loaded up the dishwasher.

  “Mom, I want to apologize.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I’m serious. This whole perpetual motion thing. You were right. It’s kind of a waste, but not really. I apologize for not explaining it right. I didn’t, I don’t know, think you cared, so I didn’t bother taking the time. I’ve had such a hard time convincing people about what I’m doing that—”

  “Why do you need to convince people? Me for instance.”

  “I didn’t think I needed to, but I need help. The project is huge. I want to illustrate why perpetual motion is not real so I’m making all kinds of perpetual motion machines. It’s kind of, I guess, gotten kind of too big, so . . . Well, Jason and I have been friends for a long time.”

  “When were you going to tell me about that? That you were hooked up with him? This—”

  “He didn’t do it, Mom. And I’m not hooked up with him. We’re just . . . friends. He has a lot of friends and, well, I’ve asked them to help me finish my project. If I can finish, it will be so awesome. It’ll win FutureWorld for sure and then t
he club will be sanctioned and May can put it on her resume and . . . ” Fortunately she ran out of steam before saying something stupid like: “and then Jason Bridges will fall in love with me.”

  “You are making very little sense,” Lainie said. “And Jason needs to keep his mind on his . . . thing.”

  “I know. He’s told me all about the . . . thing. But he needs to keep his spirits up. He’s easily depressed. I’m trying to get his mind on other things. He said he wanted to help and—”

  “I don’t like this at all, young lady. This boy’s life is in my hands. It’s not a joke.”

  “I know that, Mom. I’m being very serious. There’s a lot you don’t know about Jason.”

  “Is there something I should know?”

  Just then voices from the hallway indicated the gang was all here and they were headed downstairs. Elsa nodded knowingly.

  “We’re not through talking about this, Elsa,” Lainie said. She smiled tentatively at the teens as they passed through the kitchen on the way to the basement. Elsa followed behind. She turned before going down the stairs and whispered, “Later.”

  She had no faith in the abilities of Jake the Shorter and the statuesque Em Twill, but hands were hands and certainly they could glue, or cut, or nail, couldn’t they? And just by the luck of having Jason’s chutzpah here under her roof, the hands were here to work.

  Elsa was too stunned and giddy and not just a little nervous about her promise to Jason, so he did most of the talking at first. He gave a quick overview of the project, its goals, why it was important, how it could not possibly lose.

  “This here game is the science competition,” he started. “And we’re going to win.”

  Everyone cheered.

  “Eth . . . Elsa, here, is the coach. She’ll be running plays by you and keeping track of the score. If you have any questions, go to her. I’m the team captain, so if any of yous are out of line, you’ll have to deal with me. Look here: go in and come out fighting!”

  The group cheered again. Elsa was unsure if the locker room speech was fitting, but she cheered along with everyone else anyway.

  Finally at the end, Jason said, “So that’s what we’re doing. I don’t know how the stuff works so Elsa’s got the floor. Right?” He pointed to her and she came from off the wall into the center of the circle.

  “Well, yes, actually, um, I thought we’d split into groups of two. I’ll be my own group. We’ll work on seven separate mechanisms and they each have their own workstation, which as you can see, is basically just a pile of junk right now. I’ve got preliminary sketches for each one. You can dig through the piles to find them. My laptop is available over on the ping pong table for details. Just select the project at the bottom of the window, or you can go to the appropriate bookmark in MyBrowser . . . or . . .

  “What she means,” Jason interrupted, knowing his friends better than she did, “is if you get stuck, she’ll look it up for you.”

  Everyone nodded in unison.

  “Right,” Elsa looked to him. “Um, do any of you have any experience with a screw gun?”

  Once she mentioned power tools, everyone got serious. Goggles and gloves were donned and particulate masks handed around. They spoke in quiet voices, using “please” and “thank you” when requesting items such as glue dispensers and automatic staplers. Somehow the project had gained the respect of a final exam.

  The concept of working in groups of two on separate projects went out the window almost immediately. Cutting and attaching were the jobs of the day and that was all that was going to get done. Once she saw that, Elsa realized she’d have to leave connecting up the various components for more talented hands, i.e. her own.

  Jason’s friends excelled with their plywood cutting. They also did well with the little bits of Formica required for the instructional plaques. She was pleased with that. It was a well-done, if small, start.

  After the session was over and Jason’s friends left, after Elsa said her good nights to her mother and Jason, after everyone went off to their respective sleeping quarters, Lainie’s footstep was heard on the stair. Elsa dreaded speaking to her mother on the subject she knew was coming. But at the same time, she looked forward to it. She needed information from her mother concerning Jason. Of course she was going to have to lie through her teeth to get what she wanted. She fingered the earbud knowing iHigh was not going to help her get through this. She needed one hundred percent of her wits about her just now.

  “Elsa,” her mother said from the bottom of the stairs.

  Elsa looked up from a piece of plywood with the word “Boyle” on it.

  “What exactly is it that Jason is not telling me?” Lainie said. Half her face was in shadow, a result of faulty lighting. The other half was molded into a show of parental power: firm, slightly-downturned lips, pinched eyebrows, colorless pallor.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Elsa said. A truth so far. “He’s not telling me a whole lot just yet, but he seems to want to tell me something. Something big.” Here was an insupportable lie. “There’s definitely something going on with him.”

  “If you’re withholding evidence, Elsa, you could—”

  “Be in a lot of trouble. I know that. I don’t have any evidence or information, but I know there’s something more. I know Jason, we’ve been friends all year, ever since he got to our school and he didn’t know anybody. I was nice to him as soon as he transferred and we’ve been friends since. And I can tell when there’s something he’s not telling me. But I also know he didn’t do it.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “Because I know Jason.”

  “But you just said he’s not telling you something.”

  “Mom, I know Jason. He’s protecting someone. Maybe his father or something. His mom. One of the other suspects.”

  “There are no other suspects. His father’s been out of town for months. He has an airtight alibi. Same with his mother. She’s been gone for years. Chicago, I think.”

  “What about relatives?”

  “What are you, a detective now? If you must know, there was no sexual misconduct and the circumstances don’t match the psychology of a random killing. There was purpose to what happened. And no there are no other relatives around.”

  “So it’s the anti-Rifs.”

  “The who?”

  “You know that group protesting around town.’

  “Against the RFID chips. Yes, that’s who I suspect as well, but it’s not your concern. I don’t want you talking to him about this and if he does talk to you about it, I want you to tell me everything he says. Got that?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer before turning and heading up the stairs.

  Elsa’s mind cranked. Yes, now was the time for iHigh. She needed creative thinking just now. She reached for her back pack and inserted the earbud. For just a second, she considered tuning to channel44. She needed the ultimate in vision creating inducements, but she kept the dial away from that end of the spectrum. Too dangerous. Too much head scrambling and she might do something crazy. And there was plenty too much crazy about right now.

  ***

  The next day, Elsa did something she couldn’t believe she’d do. She went and looked for Jimmy. Again. Twice in the same semester. He’d no doubt get the wrong idea, but things were desperate. She’d made that promise to Jason and now she needed to do something. She’d made that stupid statement to her mother and now needed to do something about that as well. The way she figured it, the only way out of this whole nasty web of deceit was to determine who actually committed the crime. Jimmy was her connection to the most likely suspects.

  When she entered the room off the guitar lab, Jimmy was sitting under the naked light behind his drafting board staring at the stool in front of him.

  Elsa entered and tossed the cracked skull that was on the stool over to the shelf. It broke into four pieces.

  Jimmy looked up without expression, waiting for her to start.

 
“I’m thinking of joining the anti-Rifs,” she said.

  He stood and bumped his head on the bulb. “What?”

  “The anti-Rifs. You’re a member aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but I thought you didn’t . . . you don’t believe in . . . You don’t like them.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about what you said. About this kid’s murder and everything. It seems so lame to have these chips. What good are they if they don’t help you when you need it? Especially if they get you killed.”

  Jimmy walked around to the front of the drafting table and leaned against it with one leg crossed in front of the other. He considered Elsa for a moment. His hand brushed his chin, leaving a streak of charcoal gray. “For the record, the anti-Rifs didn’t do it.”

  “Uh huh.”

  He inhaled and opened his mouth to retort, but then changed his mind. His shoulders dropped. “If you’re serious about joining,” he said, “we have a meeting today right after school. Up in the boys lav on—”

  “Third floor. I figured. You’re going to be there, right?”

  “Yes. Do you want to meet me ahead of time?”

  She wanted to say ‘no,’ that she didn’t need a chaperone, but she knew she wouldn’t be fine by herself. “Sure,” she said. “At the lockers.”

  “Good,” he smiled broadly but remained leaning against the table. She turned and left hoping she knew what she was doing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After the three-thirty bell, Elsa ran out of English class down to the locker. Jimmy was late. She waited for 15 minutes and just as she was going to give up, he sauntered over, seeming to relish that she was waiting for him.