Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo

by Greg Leitich Smith

  I left Vice Principal Harrell’s office feeling numb. I walked this time without an escort. I guess they weren’t afraid I was such a delinquent that I would act out my rage against the Peshtigo School family with further acts of vandalism and malicious hooliganism.

  They were, they said, going to call Dad, and they did not need me there.

  The question was, would Dad be more upset that I would, possibly, be expelled, or that my “Puff, The Magic Dragon” demonstration had been conducted without a control?

  The expelled part, probably. But only by a hair.

  What would happen then? Dad would, maybe, disown me, never speak to me again, unless I became his only hope for grandchildren. Not likely, since I had a sister and four older brothers. Mom, though, would make sure I stayed in school. Not public school, even though both of them had gone to public schools and I hear they’re really improving.

  Catholic school? We weren’t Catholic. We weren’t even particularly Protestant, except in a go-to-church-on-Christmas-and-Easter sort of way.

  That left the Lab School at the University of Chicago. I began to panic. I’d heard about what goes on there. They’re not all touchy-feely like Mr. Eden. They make you work.

  All the time.

  And, it’s just down the street from my dad’s office. I’d have to commute with him. He could take advantage of that tuition break he was always talking about.

  I was doomed.

  24

  The Justic System

  Honoria

  At the Peshtigo School, the wheels of justice turn very swiftly. By the time I got to the ninth period student court meeting, Eli’s case, Students of the Peshtigo School v. Brandenburg, had already been docketed, and a trial date had been set for next week.

  “This one’s mine,” Goliath Reed told me, as he handed me a copy of the charges. He held up four fingers and then left for football practice.

  Andrea Shaw brushed past me to sit at the opposite end of the conference table, as far away from me as possible. We hadn’t spoken a word since her warning me about her man. That reminded me, I hadn’t heard anything about Eli’s e-mail “from” Shohei in a while. I briefly wondered if he’d send another now that they were mad at each other. Or at least, Eli was mad at Shohei. Shohei just felt wretched and pathetic. Which he was.

  Maybe, I thought, I should just talk to Shohei myself.

  Josh Patel cleared his throat, and I looked up. Everyone was staring at me, waiting to begin.

  “Then it’s mine, too,” I said, full of false confidence. Even though I’d lost four cases in a row to Goliath, I still had the best record. Certainly Andrea Shaw wasn’t equipped to take on her boyfriend, Josh still had to deal with the root beer incident, and Wendy McCormick and Angela Palsgraf needed a lot more practice.

  Besides, Eli was my friend.

  Elias

  When I got home from soccer practice that day, Dad was playing his cello and Beastmaster VII was hiding in the living room underneath the Flemish double harpsichord. I considered barricading myself in my room, but figured it was time to face the music. I climbed the stairs to my funeral and knocked on the doorframe. I stood in the doorway while Dad finished up the bourrée from the C Major Suite No.3, BWV 1009.

  He pointed at me. “Sit.”

  I sat. Deep armchair with wings that kept me trapped.

  He said, “I understand you have a date in court.”

  “It’s not my fault,” I said, gripping tight to the armrests.

  “Did you break into the music room?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you switch the music in the Garden?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have permission to do either?”

  “No.”

  “Then it was your fault,” he said. He leaned back into his chair. “It may interest you to know that I spoke with your mother.” I sat upright, my mouth dry, and wondered inanely what time it was in Australia.

  “She sends her love,” Dad continued, “and told me to give you these.” He gestured at a pair of volumes sitting on his desk blotter in front of him.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “The libretto from Rigoletto and an Italian-English dictionary,” Dad replied. “Your mother wants it translated into English by the time she gets back.” Then he handed me a fountain pen and a pad of stationery. “Longhand. And be prepared to discuss it.”

  I took the pen and pad. “Is that all?” I asked quietly.

  “Not quite,” Dad answered. “You are hereby grounded. For ten thousand years. Go to your room and do not come out.”

  Shohei

  By the middle of the week, I was starting to get worried. My parents still hadn’t had The Talk about my ethno-pride display for the Eichbaums, though they’d done a great job during the dinner and ever since of pretending everything was normal. As for Elias, he still wasn’t speaking to me. I’d tried to call him, but he’d just hung up.

  So maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to copy Christoph’s old data. But how was I supposed to know that Elias would get it wrong — sorry, “fail to confirm” — too? The whole reason Elias did the project was because it was supposed to be easy. And following his lead should’ve been even more of a no-brainer.

  When the phone rang just after dinner that night, I grabbed it, thinking it might be Elias. Honoria’s voice said “hi,” and I handed Tim the phone. Ignoring his chants of “Shohei’s got a girlfriend,” I ran to my room, where I picked up the line and yelled at Tim to get off it.

  “What’s up?” I asked Honoria.

  “I’m defending Eli in Student Court on charges of vandalism and malicious hooliganism, and I need you to testify about your project,” she said.

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  Honoria filled me in on Elias’s ninja act in the Garden. Wow. It was pretty extreme, for Elias. Kind of neat, though. Sort of wish I’d thought of it. I would have loved to have seen Mr. Eden’s face when he came in on “Puff.”

  “So, anyway,” Honoria said, “I need you to testify that you falsified your results. Would you be willing?”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. Elias was going way overboard being mad at me, and his break-in wasn’t real smart and that wasn’t my fault. But he was still my friend. “If it’ll help,” I said.

  “It could count against you as academic dishonesty,” Honoria warned. “You could get detention or be expelled. I’d have to look it up.”

  “Wait,” I said, thinking it through. “Are you saying that Elias and I got the right results and Christoph and Mr. Eden have it wrong?”

  “That’s what I’ll argue. That music doesn’t help plants grow. Not baroque music. Not ‘Puff.’ Nothing. It may even be the truth,” Honoria replied. “But, like I said, admitting you cheated could get you expelled. Probably should.”

  I thought a moment. If Honoria could pull this off, she could probably fix it so I wouldn’t get expelled either. Besides, I kind of liked the idea that Mr. Eden was wrong. And Elias might un-freak a little. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” Honoria said. “Oh, and would you like to go to Riverdance this weekend? My father got tickets as a thankyou from a client.”

  “The Irish dance thing?” I laughed. “I’d love to.”

  Elias

  My being grounded for ten millennia did not, apparently, include conferring with counsel. Saturday afternoon, my father delivered me to Honoria’s to go over litigation strategy.

  She was seated on the opposite side of her mother’s library table from me. She was wearing a dress that made her look sort of curvy. She had some black smeary stuff under her eyelashes, and her lips were shiny. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Why do you look like that? We’re just working on my case. It’s not like it’s school picture day or anything.” Not that Honoria had ever dolled up for a school picture.

  “Shohei and I are
going out to Riverdance later,” she explained. “It’s practically our first date. I look stupid, don’t I? I feel stupid.”

  Since when did either of them date anyone, let alone each other? Shohei wasn’t supposed to like her. I was going to have to kill him. Again. Slowly.

  “You don’t look stupid,” I said quietly, trying not to show anything. “Sort of early, though, isn’t it?”

  “I wanted to be prepared for the possibility that I wouldn’t have time to change later,” she replied. “Now, to get back to your case, I talked with my father about your vandalism and malicious hooliganism and —”

  “So what is ‘malicious hooliganism’?” I asked Honoria, opening her copy of The Peshtigo School Rules of Public Safety and pretending my life wasn’t falling apart.

  A real date.

  “Any nonspecific activity the administration doesn’t like,” she replied. “It’s very flexible.”

  “Why not breaking and entering?” I asked, leafing through the Rules. I wondered if Shohei would try to kiss her.

  “It’s unlikely that they can charge you with that,” Honoria said. “The regulation defined it as ‘entering school premises after hours without permission.’ Inasmuch as you were already on school premises when you changed the CDs, they probably can’t get you that way.”

  “You know,” I said, bringing up the jerk again despite myself, “I can’t believe what a lousy job Shohei did on his project.”

  “You know,” Honoria told me, toying with a mechanical pencil, “it’s pretty rotten of you to bad-mouth him when he’s coming over early to go over his testimony that he pretty much faked his experiment. It’s courageous, don’t you think?” She looked at me. Calmly.

  “He’s going to testify?” I exclaimed. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Now,” Honoria went on, “in order to prove that you’re guilty of vandalism, they have to show that you caused damage to school property, in this case the plants in the Garden. If there was no damage, there’s no vandalism.”

  I stood up to pace on the Oriental rug.

  “For that,” she continued, “we have your experimental results.”

  “Two things,” I said slowly, my eyes catching a jar of ladybugs on a shelf, “One: my experiment doesn’t prove that music has no effect on plant growth. And two: my experiment doesn’t prove that ‘Puff, The Magic Dragon’ has no effect on plant growth.” All I had shown was that I had not confirmed Christoph’s results. We didn’t really know anything.

  “I know that you can’t prove a negative,” Honoria said. “But we don’t have to. They have to prove that music does affect plant growth. They have to prove classical music helps the Garden grow and that ‘Puff’ stunts it. All we have to do is introduce a ‘reasonable doubt’ that the music doesn’t matter either way. Plus, for show, there’s also the fact that the Atrium Garden didn’t wither and wilt, or whatever you were going for, when you changed the CDs.”

  Her doorbell chimed, and Honoria jumped up. “That’s Shohei,” she said. “Are you going to behave?”

  “Me?” I asked. “He’s the one who —”

  “Behave,” Honoria said, pointing at me.

  I nodded, telling myself I would, for her benefit, not his.

  Shohei walked in with her a few minutes later. He was wearing a charcoal, double-breasted suit, a red paisley tie, and his hair was green. Neon green.

  For a moment we just stood there, staring at each other.

  Thanks to Shohei, my science project had been a disaster. I had to translate an entire opera about a guy who accidentally causes the death of his own daughter while trying to take someone else’s life. I was grounded for ten thousand years. I was getting a D+ in science. And Honoria still wanted to go out with him.

  Still not a word.

  Then Honoria said, “Right then. It’s a start. I’m going to get some Cokes.” She left, leaving Shohei and me alone.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m sor —”

  “Can we just get to work?” I asked.

  “Look,” Shohei said, again, sitting down, “I don’t have to do this-”

  “You didn’t have to blow off my project, either!” I said. “I was doing you a favor. You begged. ‘Ple-e-ease, help me, help me, help me.’ Remember?”

  That shut him up a minute. But just a minute. “Just because you’re Mr. Eden, Junior,” he replied, “doesn’t give you the right to tell me —”

  “I am not,” I said, “Mr. Eden, Junior.”

  “Oh, please,” Shohei leaned forward on the table in front of me. “You even sound like him. ‘You must do the experiment with proper scientific blah, blah, blah, blah.’”

  “Listen, you overdressed leprechaun,” I said, standing to face him, “I’m not the one who burned his eyebrows off. I’m not the one who cheated on his science project. And I’m not the one who can’t see that Honoria’s madly in love with them. Him. You.”

  And then I heard what I’d just said. It couldn’t have been me that said that, though. It must have been someone else. I was watching.

  “What?” Shohei exclaimed.

  “Eli!” Honoria said at nearly the same time. She was standing in the doorway holding three cans of Coke. “You promised!”

  She stared at me, then glanced at Shohei, turned around, and fled.

  Shohei watched her leave for a moment, then glared at me and followed her.

  So much for the case.

  My life.

  And our all being at least friends.

  25

  She Likes Me

  Shohei

  Honoria liked me? I had no idea. I mean, she was a great friend and everything, but liked me? She’s cute and all, but — at the risk of being fed to the piranhas — she’s not really my type.

  I followed Honoria upstairs, then stood in the doorway to her room a moment, not sure what to say.

  “Out!” she yelled, pointing. She was sitting on her bed in the middle of a pile of books, clutching what I found out later was a stuffed porcupine.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, turning to leave. “I wouldn’t have written the e-mails for Elias if I’d known —”

  “Wait,” she interrupted. “You wrote them for Eli?”

  “Um,” I said. “Yeah?”

  “Your invitation to Riverdance is hereby revoked,” she declared. Then she threw an atlas at me.

  I ran.

  26

  Emergency E-mail

  Elias

  E-mail to Number One Son, Johann Christoph:

  Christoph —

  I’m getting a D from Eden because I didn’t get your results.

  Help!

  Call.

  Write.

  E-mail.

  Send a telegram.

  Or a carrier pigeon.

  SOMETHING.

  — Elias

  27

  Pretrial Procedure

  Honoria

  I spent the rest of the night in my attic bedroom thinking about baking Shohei and Eli into blood pies, like in Titus Andronicus, and feeding the results to Spot and Fluffy. Then I thought of not bothering with the pies at all and just sticking them into the microwave, and pricking one with a fork to see which one, if either, would explode. Then I just thought.

  Eli liked me. It was as if somebody had just told me that the earth was flat, and all of a sudden I realized that I believed it. But I still couldn’t believe he’d ratted out my feelings to Shohei. Of course, if he liked me himself, it probably wasn’t a big thrill listening to me babble on about Shohei all the time. I let out a long breath.

  Eli liked me.

  When I woke up the next morning, I decided that disemboweling my two so-called best friends probably wouldn’t be productive over the long term. It would do nothing to alter the fact that I felt like a complete idiot. How could I have not known Eli liked me and Shohei didn’t care? Or at least, that Shohei didn’t care the way I wanted him to care.

  The fact that I still had to work on Eli’s case just se
emed cruel. But there was no way Mrs. Talmadge would let me withdraw at such a late date. So I was stuck with it.

  Elias

  Monday morning. Eight-thirty. My trial was scheduled for that day after school. I hadn’t talked to Honoria since Saturday. She’d temporarily disconnected the telephones. At least, that’s what the voice mail greeting said.

  I hadn’t tried to call Shohei.

  I didn’t know if Shohei and Honoria had still gone to see Riverdance after I’d left. I didn’t know if they were going out, period. What if I’d brought them together?

  That morning, I went to the library to see the Student Court sponsor, judge, and extremely reasonable person. “I’d like another lawyer,” I said.

  “Why?” Mrs. Talmadge asked.

  I hesitated. “Personal differences.”

  “Tough,” Mrs. Talmadge replied.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  We were in her office, the room where they used to keep the mainframe. It was the only part of the library that didn’t smell like books. I was sitting in one of the two leather Chicago White Sox chairs in front of Mrs. Talmadge’s gray metal desk, which matched her hair. Resting on the desk in front of her was a statue of St. Ivo, patron saint of lawyers. The caption read A LAWYER, BUT NOT A THIEF.

  “It is too late in the process to change lawyers,” Mrs. Talmadge said.

  “But-”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she cut in. “I strongly recommend that you speak with Ms. Grob today before your trial starts. However, if you don’t, here is all the administrative information you will need.” She handed me a thick manila folder. “You’re scheduled to meet with Ms. Grob during ninth-period study hall.”