The Opposite of Hallelujah

by Anna Jarzab

“I guess.”

  “Have you ever been to Sabra’s grave?” I didn’t want to look at her face, but I could see her stiffen on the very periphery of my vision.

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” she said, straightening her bedding, creasing it again and again into meticulous lines.

  “Hannah, I really think—”

  “I mean it. I’m not ready.”

  “Okay,” I said after a long pause. “But whenever you are—”

  “I know.”

  29

  I spent all weekend working on the Rube Goldberg machine. It wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked, and I wasn’t creative enough to completely invent it end to end like Pawel did. I cheated by looking up some machines online and incorporating bits and pieces of them into my design. That was another thing—the design. I was sure, with my knack for physics—I’d turned sound into light, for heaven’s sake!—that I could build one pretty easily on the fly, but it was soon cripplingly obvious that it wasn’t going to be that simple. I stood in my room for a long time, surveying the large mass of children’s toys scattered on the floor, incapable of piecing even two of them together without second-guessing myself and ripping them apart again.

  Then I remembered Pawel’s doodles and realized that he always planned his machines out beforehand. It was probably the most meticulous side of him: the side that produced those insane works of art. Because it was art. They were beautiful. I wanted to go over to his house again just to see them whir to life. I grabbed some loose-leaf binder paper from my bag and a pencil and started sketching out the mechanism, including a list of objects—marbles, rubber bands, coins—that I wanted to incorporate.

  I was almost done with the drawing when I looked up to find Dad standing in the doorway.

  “How long have you been there?” I asked.

  “Just a while,” he told me. “It’s coming along nicely.”

  “I haven’t even started,” I pointed out.

  He nodded at my blueprint. “Sure you have.”

  I let a long stream of air through my lips. “I’ve been working on this plan for about three hours now. I was crazy to think I could build the whole thing in a few days.”

  “Not crazy,” he said. “Just optimistic.”

  “I don’t even know why I’m doing it,” I said. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “It’s going to look so out of place with the rest of our experiment. The judges are going to think we’re bonkers.”

  “So? I thought you didn’t care about winning the science fair,” Dad said, sitting down on the edge of my bed.

  “I don’t,” I told him. “Do you think Pawel will like it?”

  “Well, to be fair, I don’t know him very well,” Dad reminded me. “But I think he’ll feel flattered when he sees all the work you put into it.”

  “I hope so,” I muttered, running my fingers over the plans.

  “Do you want some help?”

  “Are you sure you have time?” He probably needed to go to the hospital. Mom had been there all day.

  “For you, Caro? Always,” Dad said with a smile. He grabbed the blueprint from me, and we got to work.

  The day of the science fair crept up on me. Between school and the machine and finishing the presentation board for our project and visiting Hannah in the hospital, I didn’t realize the fair was Thursday until it was Wednesday. Pawel called me that night to make sure everything was ready for the expo the following afternoon.

  “I’m sorry for doubting you before,” Pawel said after we finished discussing the particulars.

  “When did you doubt me?” I asked, mock-appalled.

  “When you said you wanted to do single-bubble sonoluminescence and I told you it was too difficult,” he said. “I was totally wrong. You really pulled it off.”

  “We did,” I insisted. “You helped a lot.”

  “A lot more than you thought I would, maybe,” Pawel grumbled.

  “Hey! You told me off and I reined it in,” I reminded him.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to say that. You were right, I was wrong. It was a kick-ass project. Thanks for letting me be a part of it.”

  “Can you repeat that?”

  “Thanks for—”

  “No, before that.”

  “You were right, I was wrong?”

  “Yeah. It’s my favorite phrase. To hear, of course. Not to say.”

  He laughed. “Of course.”

  “I’m really looking forward to tomorrow,” I told him, lying down on my bed and staring at the ceiling. I crossed my eyes to make the minuscule paint bubbles match up, but they wouldn’t; they were all too different.

  “You are?”

  “Not the presentation part—I hate that stuff, talking in public and putting on a show. So much smiling and nodding. But I like seeing what other people have done, and having people look at what we’ve done and say how cool it is.”

  “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

  “Once or twice. Science is kind of my subject.”

  “And thank God for that.”

  I was over-the-moon happy talking to him like this—a calm, casual, friendly conversation—but it was time to hang up before it went on too long and lost its luster. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Pawel.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  “This is quite the production,” Reb said, strolling into the auditorium behind me, carrying my presentation board and chewing a piece of spearmint gum, the tang of which floated over to me and made me think of Christmas. “Who knew people got so worked up over science?”

  It was indeed a circus. There were people everywhere—students (some of whom I recognized; most of whom could have been space aliens for how unfamiliar they looked to me), teachers, parents, judges, little siblings who’d been snatched out of day care to see their older brothers or sisters in action. The craziest thing of all was that it wasn’t a county or regional or state fair—it was just our district, the high school and middle school. I pressed my fingers against my forehead, kneading and rubbing to try to relieve the tension. Crowds and loud noises always gave me a headache.

  And the nerves, oh, the nerves. I wasn’t even trying to win anything and I was a roiling, sparking mess on the inside. It was really the machine I was worried about. I’d finished it in the wee hours of the morning, but after the foggy stupor of near sleep had been replaced by the stark glare of early morning, I was beginning to think it wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, no matter what Dad had said. It was certainly incongruous with our project, and what if Pawel thought I was making fun of him? Or worse, what if he didn’t care at all? It was also possible that Mr. Tripp would think we were just goofing off and fail us right there in front of everyone. I didn’t think any of those things would happen, exactly, but the fear was there all the same, lurking around in the dusty corners of my K’nex-addled brain.

  “Hey!” Pawel said, running up to us. “I found our table, 34F. What’s that?” He pointed at the Rube Goldberg machine I was trying not to drop. I’d slid it onto a second presentation board and covered it with the lightest blanket I had, the one my grandmother had sewn for me when I was a baby.

  “A surprise,” I said. He reached over to lift the blanket, but Reb slapped his hand away.

  “No spoilers, Poland,” she scolded, shoving the presentation board into his hands. “Here, take this. I’ll help you, Caro.”

  Pawel rolled his eyes at me as he walked off.

  By the time we’d slowly lumbered our way to 34F (the machine wasn’t in the sturdiest of conditions), Pawel had everything else set up. There was the presentation board, with its write-ups and captioned photographs and formulas and diagrams all meticulously laid out in an eye-pleasing pattern. I’d thought Pawel was going to kill me when I had insisted on everything being just so, but it did end up looking great, which he then had to admit grudgingly to me.

  There was also a large computer monitor that Pawel had borrowed from his dad, which he�
��d hooked up to the DVD player I’d borrowed from Erin so we could show the video of our experiment to the judges. That was where the Rube Goldberg machine came in. Or at least, where I was hoping it would.

  “Now can I see what’s under the blanket?” Pawel asked.

  “No way,” I told him. Reb helped me slide the machine onto the table.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. I promise, you’ll be happy you waited.”

  We had a little time still, so I slipped off to the bathroom to brush my hair and apply some lip balm. I came back ready for my close-up just before the judges arrived at our table.

  Pawel began our presentation by describing the steps we took in preparation for the experiment, and I followed with a description of the experiment itself. For the finale, we were supposed to show the video that Pawel had shot in the lab. But first, my surprise for Pawel.

  I lifted the baby blanket off the Rube Goldberg machine and folded it carefully. When I looked over at Pawel, he was grinning.

  “Was this part of the experiment?” a confused-looking woman with wiry gray hair and Coke-bottle glasses asked.

  “No,” I said. I winked at Pawel. “This was just for fun.”

  I tipped the little platform that held a marble and the machine spooled into motion. The marble swirled around a plastic funnel before dropping into a metal measuring cup Dad and I had borrowed from the kitchen, which disturbed the delicate balance of a seesaw made out of a plastic ruler, which knocked another marble out of its container and sent it soaring down a long track of hamster tubes left over from my brief pet-owning experience. (I don’t want to talk about it.) The speed of the marble going down the tubes gave it just enough force to snap against another ruler, vertical this time, causing it to hit another marble sitting on top of what looked like a roller coaster track built entirely of K’nex, and at the end of the track was the pièce de résistance—a small lever, which, when tripped, released one of those goofy birds with the weights in their beaks. It tipped downward, and because I had positioned it in just the right way, it struck the play button of the DVD player and our video started up. I’d layered about thirty seconds of Handel’s famous “Hallelujah” chorus over the video, because when all is said and done, I’m a bit of a smart-ass.

  The judges were impressed with our experiment and congratulated us for conducting it successfully, but they still seemed confused by the Rube Goldberg machine and chose to ignore its existence.

  “Sonoluminescence,” a tall, professory-looking type said. “It’s not an easy project.”

  “It was all right,” Pawel said. They nodded and shook our hands; we thanked them, and they left. As they walked away, I could hear one of the other judges grumble, “Not sure what that was supposed to be, though.” Pawel and I laughed. Mr. Tripp, who’d watched us give our presentation from a few feet away, gave us a thumbs-up.

  “Caro,” Pawel said. He couldn’t stop smiling, and I felt overcome by the headiness of pleasing him so unexpectedly. “That was amazing. Did you build this by yourself?”

  “Yeah,” I told him. “I mean, I stole the idea for parts of it off the Internet, but basically I made it. Do you like it?”

  “Like it? I think it’s awesome,” he said, running his fingers back and forth through his hair. “When did you have time? These things can take forever.”

  “I made time,” I told him.

  “Clearly. I’m really impressed. Can I keep it?” he asked shyly.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yeah, sort of. I don’t even know where I’d find room for it, but I definitely want it,” Pawel said. He looked at me. “Nobody’s made me a Rube Goldberg machine before.”

  He ran his fingers gingerly over the machine’s delicate moving parts, admiring the design and craftsmanship. It wasn’t as sophisticated or creative as his—actually, it looked more like a Frankenstein machine than a Rube Goldberg machine, all cobbled together and awkward—but he didn’t seem to notice. “So cool.”

  I noticed Father Bob a few tables down, completely absorbed in some middle schooler’s terrarium project. “Pawel, I’ll be right back.”

  “You came,” I said, standing next to Father Bob and leaning over to examine the contents of the terrarium. It actually was sort of elaborate, with many different species of plant life all coexisting robustly in the same environment, and it had obviously been well taken care of. I wondered if this kid would win some sort of prize.

  “I did,” Father Bob said. “I wanted to see your experiment. Thank you for inviting me.” I’d left a message for him at St. Robert’s that morning. For some reason, it felt wrong presenting the project without my friend, the scientist priest.

  “What did you think?”

  “I think it went very well,” he said. “Pawel looks happy.”

  “He’s obsessed with those things,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to make out with it later behind the bleachers.”

  Father Bob finally turned to look at me. “How’s Hannah?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder. “People take time to heal. Be patient with Hannah. She needs your strength, you can’t rush her.” He gestured at the terrarium. “These plants took months of careful nurturing to grow, and look at them now. There’s a lesson in that, I think.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re probably right.”

  “I am right. You’ll see,” he told me. “Congratulations. You did very well today.”

  “Hey, Father Bob?” I don’t know why I thought he would give me a straight answer to this, but I couldn’t not ask.

  “Yes?”

  “Is it possible that God could be both loving and silent?”

  He didn’t even hesitate. “No,” he told me, and with a smile he turned around and walked away.

  30

  I helped Pawel pack the Rube Goldberg machine (which he’d named Bubba), the monitor, and the presentation board into the backseat of his car and sent him off with a cheerful wave. For the first time since Hannah had ended up in the hospital, I felt like the weight that had settled in my chest had been lifted. I could breathe easily again. The science fair probably had nothing to do with it, other than the fact that it had gone so well that I felt capable of something for the first time in a long time. I dreaded going back to the hospital. I felt useless there, and sad. I wanted Hannah to recover not only so that she would feel better, but so that we would never have to set foot in that dreary place ever again.

  My mother picked me up at school and took me home. We were going to get some freshly laundered clothes for Hannah, who was sick of wearing hospital gowns and complained constantly of being cold.

  “Can you go get the mail, honey?” Mom asked as I got out of the car.

  “Sure,” I said. We’d done a pretty crappy job of keeping up the house lately; piled on the porch were newspapers, which Mom gathered up in her arms as she entered the house, and the mailbox was almost too full for the door to close properly. I had to give everything a good strong tug to get it out.

  I flipped through it as I slowly made my way to the door. There were tons and tons of catalogs, offering everything from cashmere sweaters to lawn gnomes, but that wasn’t unusual. Then there were bills and credit card offers, a postcard from my aunt and her family, who were vacationing in Hawaii, and, finally, one letter for me. To say I was surprised would be an understatement; I never, ever got mail, unless you counted the biannual reminders from the dentist that it was time for my cleaning.

  The letter was sort of bulky, too, which was weird, and wrapped in a cream-colored envelope with the Loyola University logo and return address in the upper left-hand corner, which was weirder. Byrne was the only person I knew even remotely associated with the school; it had to be from him.

  “Did you get something?” Mom asked from the kitchen. I nodded. “From whom?”

  “Nobody,” I said. “Just an old friend. How long do I have
before we leave for the hospital?”

  Mom glanced at her watch. “I’d say thirty minutes. You don’t have to come if you don’t want. I know it was a long day for you.”

  “No, I’m coming,” I said. “I just have to take care of a few things first.”

  “Okay,” she said, smiling. “You know, your father and I really appreciate all the support you’re giving Hannah. I’m sure she does, too.”

  I smiled back at her. “No problem, Mom. I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner.”

  Mom turned her head away and swallowed hard; I could see she was on the verge of tears. “Don’t leave your bag in the hallway.”

  I went into my room and shut the door, ripping open the letter. I sat down on my bed and unfolded it carefully, my eyes jumping straight to the bottom of the page to get a look at the signature. As I’d expected, it was from Byrne, and the reason it was so fat was that there was a second letter inside—longer, it seemed, from the heft of it—which read Hannah in his jerky, boyish script on the otherwise unmarked envelope.

  Dear Caro,

  I hope it’s all right that I’m writing to you. I feel terrible about our conversation, and I wanted to make sure you understand that I do care a lot about Hannah and what she’s going through. I’ve thought about Hannah so many times over the last fifteen years, because she was Sabra’s best friend, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about my sister. Which is why it’s so hard for me to see Hannah. I know it’s the right thing to do—after all, it’s been so long, and she’s in so much pain—but I can’t. I still haven’t really gotten over Sabra’s death myself, and maybe I never will; I’m pretty certain my parents won’t. I’ve written Hannah this letter, though, and I trust you and your parents to decide whether giving it to her is a good idea. For a while I wasn’t sure I could actually bring myself to write it, but my dad said something that helped me figure out what I wanted to say to her. He told me that part of his anger is that Sabra missed out on growing up, missed out on so many things that she would’ve loved—high school, boyfriends, dances, college. And when he said that, I realized that Hannah probably missed out on a lot of that, too, which is the exact opposite of what Sabra would’ve wanted, for either of them. And that’s something I wanted to tell Hannah: not to let her anger, or sadness, or guilt over what happened to my sister prevent her from living the life that she deserves to have. I really hope it helps.