Revenge of the Star Survivors

by Michael Merschel

  And then there’s Les.

  When he wired that intercom, I think he electrified himself. Because he has become a magnet. A powerful, human-shaped geek magnet.

  They keep coming up to him, showing him tricks on their graphing calculators or printouts from the computer lab and asking his advice.

  I found out that I’ll have several of these people in my classes next year in high school. Counselor Blethins said she’d put notes in my file to make sure I got the right schedule, even if I would forever be known as an eighth-grade zero.

  None of this, of course, prepared me for the greatest cosmic oddity I have ever witnessed.

  Les and I had met at my locker after school. We had the remote hallway to ourselves, and he was explaining the bizarre rules of some game that one of his new friends had been describing to him. He kept referring to it as “Dee ’n’ Dee.” And talking about dragons.

  “It’s not a video game?” I asked.

  “No,” he was telling me. “It’s all done with dice. And graph paper.”

  “Sooooo . . .,” I said, “it’s like gambling?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Just come on over to Brad’s house on Saturday. It’ll all make sense.”

  “I doubt that,” I said. And as I closed my locker door, there was Stephanie Spring.

  I doubted that too, so I said nothing.

  She was smiling. And wearing a loose-fitting sweatshirt that said Stanford. And not looking lost.

  “Hi, Clark,” she said.

  I tried to say, “Stephanie! What a pleasant surprise!” But what came out was, “Shouldn’t you be cheering somewhere?”

  She pointed to her right foot, which was in a bulky plastic boot that would have looked right at home on a space station.

  “Fractured ankle,” she said in response to my obvious confusion.

  “How?” I asked.

  “I slipped. On a Herkie, of all things.”

  My face scrunched as I tried to remember whether I had met anyone by that name. Or maybe it was some kind of banana-like fruit? Careless of them to leave the peel on the gym—

  “It’s a kind of jump,” she explained.

  “Ah.” I nodded.

  “It’ll heal, but no more cheering for me this year.”

  “Really?”

  “Or next. I missed tryouts for the ninth-grade squad and everything. My mom was pretty upset.”

  Stephanie did not actually sound all that devastated.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess, well, you know . . .” It was very, very hard for me to come up with small talk about cheerleading. Maybe I should suggest that she and Ty could compare X rays?

  “I’ll be OK,” she said. “Anyway, Clark, I’m here because I wanted to say . . . I’m sorry. That I wasn’t nicer to you when you got here. That must have been tough.”

  I shrugged. I realized that her powers over me had diminished. I mean, her type and mine would always be from different planets. And I didn’t really need her to help me fit in on mine.

  Although . . . was she reaching out to me? Well, maybe I could find time in my schedule for her to—

  “And I was wondering,” she continued. “I’ve been hearing about this guy named Les—do you know him by any chance?”

  Les, who had been standing in silent shock at Stephanie’s presence all this time, coughed.

  “You’re Les?” she asked, suddenly lighting up in a way that made me realize I was about to become the invisible one. “I totally didn’t see you there!”

  “I get that a lot,” he said.

  She leaned in and in a hushed voice asked, “Is it true you’re the one who hacked the intercom?”

  Les drew himself up—he came just barely to her shoulder—put his hand on his chest, and made a slight bow. “I can neither confirm nor deny that. I can merely tell you how it’s done.”

  She was glowing. At Les! “Awesome! Audio—well, it’s sort of a hobby of mine. You probably know all about soundboards and amps and speakers, and stuff like that?”

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “A little,” he said.

  She pulled up closer to him. “So I’m in charge of music for the end-of-the-year all-school dance, and I have this idea that would totally rock. Do you think you could help me?”

  “H-help you?” he said. His voice cracked so harshly that I was afraid he was going to spit shards of glass.

  He finally cleared his throat. “Well, what kind of help are we talking about?”

  She reached into the gym bag on her shoulder. Several books fell to the floor—I bent to pick them up and saw that they were some of the same electronics books that Les usually liked to check out from the library. Also, a copy of Starship Troopers.

  She didn’t see me gather the books because she had just thrust a wiring schematic at Les. “This is from my attic. It’s pretty old,” she said. “But maybe you’ll understand it?”

  I thought Les might fall to pieces under this kind of attention, but as he smoothed out the paper and saw a series of lines that indicated circuits and wattages, he settled down. Briefly. Then his eyes opened wide, and his lips parted in astonishment. He looked so excited I thought he might actually ignite and shoot into orbit.

  “This . . . this is a plan for a tube amp,” he spluttered.

  “A Dynaco Mark III,” she said.

  “You’re not saying you have one of these, are you?”

  “I have two!”

  “Two? Two tube amps?” Les’s voice was so high this time I think it cracked some nearby windows. “This could be—sonic heaven!”

  “Right?” Stephanie looked almost as happy. She clapped her hands and started to do a little bounce that reminded me she was still a cheerleader. The boot made that rather awkward, but she quickly regained her composure. “There’s a catch,” she said, solemnly.

  Les looked up.

  “They’re in pieces. I have all the parts, and I have an old magazine article explaining how to piggy-back them for maximum output. But I don’t have time to finish the job myself. Much less find the proper speakers.”

  “Not a problem,” Les said. “Some of my dad’s old gear would be perfect with this setup. The sound would be . . .”

  “. . . awesome?” Stephanie asked, her voice full of hope.

  I thought I should say something. “Uh, if you need sound for a dance, couldn’t you just do your thing with the intercom again? Wouldn’t that be loud enough?”

  They both looked up at me with disdain, if not disgust.

  “You’ll have to forgive Clark,” Les said. “He’s kind of new.”

  “Oh, Clark and I go way back.” She smiled, the old, polite smile, and thanked me as I handed her books to her. But then she was back in Les’s tube-amped world.

  “The dance is in two weeks. Do you have time to work with me?”

  “I have time, but, ah . . .” He looked off in the direction of the park. “My workshop isn’t available right now.”

  “Well,” she said, looking up and down the hall, again, as if she were about to do something she wanted to keep private. “If you wanted to, you could, maybe, come over to my house? My dad has a workbench and stuff. He’s an audio engineer, and he’d be totally into this.”

  I got ready to catch Les. I was afraid he would die of bliss on the spot.

  “I’ll be there,” he said faintly.

  “Oh cool,” Stephanie said, doing her little lopsided bounce again. She looked around, then leaned in. “I never thought I’d find anyone at Festus who was into this stuff. It’s like I was the only one of my kind on the whole planet. It gets kind of lonely, you know?”

  Les and I looked at each other.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

  14.05.01

  My time on Planet Festus is drawing to a close. It would be an understatement to say I am going to be thrilled to fly out of here. Picture Chuck Yeager blasting through Mach 1, with a “Yeeeeee-haaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  I will not leave with
many happy memories, but I did think of Ricki as I walked past the office this morning. Out of habit, I looked in to see whether she was around.

  She, of course, was not. But sitting in the waiting area was someone I had never seen before. She had a backpack with a plaid design. She was clearly a newcomer. A pin on her backpack suggested that at her previous school, she had lived in Gryffindor House.

  Her hair was mousy, limp and stringy, and her eyes were wide as she glanced around the room. She reminded me of a rabbit in a new cage—twitching, nervous, desperately looking for a place to hide.

  I took a breath and walked up to the receptionist.

  “Is Counselor Blethins here?” I asked, knowing she would not have time for me.

  “Hi, Clark,” the receptionist said. “Yes, but she’s busy preparing a schedule for our new student. Is it urgent?”

  I shook my head. “No, I can come back.”

  I turned toward the girl in the waiting area. She held my gaze for just a moment, then looked away.

  I walked over to her.

  “First day?” I asked.

  She looked up at me, probably trying to decide whether I was an imminent threat or just a looming danger.

  “Yes,” she finally said.

  “Kind of late in the year to be starting at a new school,” I said.

  “We just moved. My parents thought I should enroll for the final weeks, to have a chance to meet people. It’s so crazy.”

  “Everything about this place is crazy,” I said. “But you can find ways to cope.”

  “Really?” she asked, with just a little bit of relief coloring her voice.

  “Yeah, although it would probably help to have a guide.” I added, “If you need one, I’m Clark.”

  “That’s an interesting name,” she said. Then added, “Are you, like, the welcome committee or something?”

  I thought for a moment and said, “Nah. I just know a little about this school. And a few things about how to be a survivor.”

  I didn’t tell her what kind of survivor.

  I could deal with that, and whatever else came up, in the future.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to thank . . . more people than will fit here. Because it takes a starship-sized crew to turn a pile of jumbled words into a book. But I will limit myself to thanking:

  Daphne Howland, first reader of my first draft, and May-lee Chai, who provided keen insight on a late one. Also, Dallas Morning News subscribers and editors, who kept me employed, and the smart, tolerant colleagues I’ve learned from, particularly Bryan Woolley, whose encouragement and wisdom I miss.

  John Freeman; Logan Garrison Savits; and nerd magnet Sarah Burnes, the rock-star avenging angel agent/editor every writer dreams of.

  The Richardson Public Library, for quiet spaces, and Carolyn Bess and the Dallas Museum of Art, who brought Norton Juster to town, making a childhood dream come true while also providing me with an epigraph.

  Chris Morris, John Hanan, Ken Walters, Scott Dirk Anderson, Mark Bradford and anyone else who answered oddball questions about Marines or electronics or helped me survive junior high. David Innes and Melissa Parsons, for reading my work and providing decades of moral and immoral support.

  Kelly Loughman, who edited this book with intelligence, grace and deep concern for characters and readers alike. When I tell people about her, they say, “Wow, I didn’t know editors like that still existed.” I am grateful she is not a hologram.

  Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas, perhaps obviously. Mom and Dad, also obviously.

  When I was Clark’s age, I vowed to honor all my good teachers—I had many—whenever I wrote a book. The two who shaped me most as a writer were Katherine Starkey, who read hundreds of pages of terrible freewriting journals and listened to my arguments that Star Trek II was the greatest movie of all time, and Cheryl Cartin, who pushed me to get real. Also, thank you, Pat Nelson, wherever you are.

  Krista, Gabriella and Jacob provided inspiration, put up with Grumpy Dad when the writing was not going well and sometimes watched Star Trek with me. Melinda, in general, holds my life together. She does not like Star Wars but says she loves me anyway, and my universe is full of wonder and laughter because of them.