On Thin Ice

by Michael Northrop

  “Sure, sure,” I say, getting up and heading toward the cabinet.

  The biggest piece of his model is a glass tank, like a fish tank. The other parts seem to be stashed inside. We each get on one side, reach into the cabinet, and try to slide it out. It moves like an inch and that’s it. “Yeah, it’s stuck,” I say.

  We both lean in to try to see what, but it’s dark back there. Suddenly—bump—we’re both pushed out of the way by someone coming up right between us. “Get your stubby seventh-grade arms out of the way,” she says. It’s Esme. She reaches into the cabinet, fishes around a little, and then slides the tank out smoothly.

  “Thanks, S,” says Nephi as she puts the tank on the table. S? I think. I guess they know each other from maker space. It shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.

  “I’m sorry those guys were giving you a hard time,” he says, keeping his voice low.

  “Typical dude-bros,” she says with a casual shrug that I don’t believe. Right away I think of Landrover’s friends who invaded maker space. I remember what Mr. Feig said about them: Sure they’re makers. Troublemakers. Time on their hands and a purple-haired girl to pester—I guess that’s why she’s not in there during the day anymore either. Mr. Feig invited both of us to this space. He found a way to make room for everyone. But he also handed regular maker space over to the barbarian hordes.

  “What am I looking at, Neff?” I say, because, I’ll be honest, I’m feeling a little left out.

  Nephi looks over at me. I’m on the opposite side of him from Esme. I feel like she did that on purpose, but the three of us are still standing around, and she’s not glaring at me. It feels like progress.

  Nephi picks up a sign, hand-painted but precise: “Renewable River Power for the Twenty-First Century.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “This is a water turbine,” he says, holding up a plastic case. There’s a metal rod coming out of one end with a little plastic propeller on it.

  “So you fill this tank with water, the water spins that propeller, and … it generates electricity?” I say.

  “Exactly,” he says.

  “But how do you get the water to move?”

  He points to the small electric engine I saw him working on the other day.

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “That’s pretty awesome.” I mean it too. The design is impressive, and the river is what makes Norton special. It’s why the town is here, why the factory is. “I hope you win,” I say.

  “Fehh,” says Esme. So much for progress.

  We all get down to business after that. I start with the can of carb cleaner. I go over every inch of the carburetor, turning the greasy block with my fingers like a rotisserie chicken. PSST! PSST! PSST!

  I dry off the metal and pick up the screwdriver. For such small bikes, Road Rokkits have pretty complex carburetors. I take off the bottom cover first, and the first thing I see is the metering diaphragm. It’s made of thin synthetic rubber, and I am terrified it is going to come apart in my hands when I try to remove it. I pinch the edge softly and begin peeling it away slowly—so so so slowly. I feel little pinpricks on my forehead as the nervous sweat begins to push its way to the surface.

  Finally, it comes free. Somehow, miraculously, it is still in one piece. I set it aside. It feels like that one piece alone took as long as the whole YouTube video. I lean in and keep going, arranging the parts in the same order I remove them in so I’ll know how to put them back.

  The metal parts aren’t so bad, even the little springs and pins. I go as slowly and gently as I can, cleaning as I go, sometimes blasting away with the spray can and sometimes dabbing away delicately with a balled-up tissue.

  Now that I’m inside the carburetor, it’s pretty obvious that the engine wouldn’t have run the way it was. It was a lot more gunked up than the one in the video. I’m pretty sure this was the problem with the engine, and it’s a relief to find it. But I’m not done yet, and trying to peel an intake gasket free, my miracles run out. The thing comes apart in my hands.

  I groan softly and sit back. Disaster. I open and close my fingers to let them uncramp. I pick up the little five-dollar repair kit I got at the shop. Wrong model, wrong cc, but it’s my only chance. I reread the part on the label that says “may fit” 49cc engines. I feel a little better, and I find a piece that more or less matches the one I just shredded.

  The new material is a little thinner, more like heavy paper than rubber, but the shape is … close. Maybe I can make this work? I look across the table. “Uh, Esme?” I say. “Can I borrow that X-Acto knife for a sec?”

  I must look pretty pathetic, my hands greasy and my eyes needy, because the look she gives me is more sad than annoyed. She puts down the knife she’s holding and picks up a different one. “You can borrow this old one,” she says. “The blade’s kind of dull anyways.”

  She pulls back her hand like she’s going to toss it. “That’s okay!” I blurt, raising my hands in front of me. “I’ll come get it.”

  I push the torn, old gasket back together and lay it on top of the new one. Then I just kind of trace the shape. The so-called dull razor on the end of the knife cuts through the thin material easily. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s not bad. I’m still worried, though. The videos didn’t mention anything about this.

  Esme clears her throat in that attention-getting way. I look up to see what she wants. “Uh, my knife?” she says in a tone generally reserved for infants and small mammals.

  Is she serious? She wasn’t even using this one?

  “You can’t just have all my stuff,” she says.

  She’s serious. I feel like rolling it across the table at her, but Mr. Feig is watching now—and it does have a pointy razor blade on the end. I get up again and walk it back around the table. I ignore how annoyed I am and say, “Thanks.”

  Sure she spoke to me like a gerbil, but she helped me out too.

  She considers it for a second, then gives the tiniest of nods. “It’s okay.” When I’m halfway back to my seat she adds: “Let me know if you need the sharp one.”

  That is literally the nicest thing she’s ever said to me, and when I sit back down, I manage to take apart the rest of the carb without tearing anything else with my fat fingers.

  More progress. I’ll take it.

  MR. FEIG CLEARS HIS THROAT. I think he’s ready to go.

  “Mr. Feig,” I say, “can I have a little more time?”

  “You’re killin’ me, Eakins!” he says, but you can tell he’s joking.

  I don’t want to leave the carburetor in pieces like this, so I start putting it back together. I’m not saying it’s ten minutes, but it’s a lot faster than before. All I have to do is the reverse of what I just did, putting the screws I took out back in and stuff like that. There’s a little pinching and pushing to make the new gasket fit, but not too much.

  Mr. Feig is watching, and as I put the cover back on and tighten the last screw he starts putting his papers away. Nephi pretends he doesn’t notice and keeps working, but Esme starts gathering up her stuff. After all that tense, silent work, I feel like talking to someone.

  “Why’s your whole town painted black anyway?” I say.

  I’m afraid she’s not going to answer, but she answers right away. In fact, she answers so fast that I almost wonder if she was waiting for someone to ask her that.

  “It’s photovoltaic paint,” she says. “I mean, it’s not really. That technology doesn’t exist yet. But that’s what it’s supposed to be.”

  Nephi finally stops what he’s doing and looks over. He has needle-nose pliers in one hand and a wire in the other. “Photovoltaic,” he says. “That’s good. Every inch of surface area would become a solar cell. Hypothetically.”

  “That’s really cool,” I say.

  Esme is so happy she nearly smiles. “Plus,” she adds, “the enemy will have a harder time seeing it at night.”

  Nephi nods very seriously.

  “Of course,” I say.


  We’ve been silent this whole time but suddenly the dam has burst. Nephi points to a wire trailing down the side of one of the buildings in Esme’s model. “What’s that?” he asks.

  “That connects to this,” she says, pointing to the little roof. “See? A real solar cell. It’s like an example of what the paint would do.”

  “Nice,” he says. “What does it power?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” she says. “I was thinking, like, a streetlight. But then I was thinking it might be weird to have just one.”

  I’ve been kind of hovering on the outside of the conversation, but I’ve also been scanning her model. I know downtown really well from my walks. I take a step closer and point at a square building right in the center of Main Street. “This is the bank, right?”

  She hesitates for just a second before answering: “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, if you … I mean …” She gives me a look like, Spit it out already, and I finally do. “You know how there’s that big display out front with the time and temperature?”

  “That’s a good idea,” says Nephi. “You could move the solar cell over to this roof …”

  “Oh, yeah!” says Esme, warming up to the idea. “Then bring the wire down here—you wouldn’t even see it—and all I need is like an old digital watch to take apart. Then I can put a solar-powered bank clock right on Main Street.” She pauses, thinking about it. “I mean, they’ll still have time in the future.”

  “The future is time,” says Nephi, and it basically blows all of our minds.

  “Whoooa,” I say.

  Mr. Feig brings us back to reality. “Okay, seriously, I like the enthusiasm, but I have got to go.”

  I check out Nephi’s model as he puts his stuff away. It’s a legit hydroturbine and he’s going to fill the tank with water when he’s done. It seems amazing to me. I’m rebuilding something from videos and guides and printouts. Neff and Esme are building something out of thin air. Where do they get these ideas? I think. But then I realize I just gave Esme an idea too. I get that feeling again, that feeling of being a part of something.

  With the carburetor back together and nothing to do but pick up my stuff, I can finally really think about what they’re doing, about what the contest means. Building a Better Norton … They’re picturing it in their heads—what that means, what it might look like—and then they’re making those ideas real.

  We stand up one by one and slide our stuff back into the cabinet. My engine is almost done. Hopefully tomorrow I can reattach it to the frame. Then I’ll see if it starts, maybe even take it out for a test drive. The paper comes out with my ad tomorrow too. Things are happening, moving forward.

  “This is good,” says Nephi to no one in particular as he slides his tank inside the cabinet. “You can get a lot of work done in here when it’s quiet like this.”

  “We’re like the late shift,” I say, because both our dads work half-time at the factory.

  “The late shift,” he repeats. “I like it.”

  “You two can be the late shift,” says Esme. “I’ll be the great shift.”

  Nephi waves her off, like, Oh, please, but I don’t argue.

  We split up like usual once we get outside, with Mr. Feig heading for his car and Esme’s long, eighth-grade limbs giving her an instant lead. But so much has happened today—and some of it was even good. I’m starting to think: Maybe things don’t have to be like usual.

  “Hey, Neff,” I say. “Wait up.”

  NEPHI LOOKS BACK. I hustle to catch up.

  “What’s up?” he says, all business.

  And this might sound stupid, but I don’t really have a what’s up. There’s nothing I want to talk to him about, in particular. It’s just that he was there and I was there and we were all talking, even joking. I mean, he showed me his tank! I thought we’d just hang and walk together for a while until we had to split up. It’s a cold day, but the sky is no more gray than usual and we’ve got our jackets. It’s not head-down-and-hustle-home weather.

  But those two words, and the way he said them, let me know he’s not thinking the same thing. And I guess that just makes me mad. “You’re welcome,” I say.

  “What?” he says.

  “For telling you about the extra maker space.”

  He looks at me carefully. “What’s your problem?” he says.

  “I guess you can hang out with me when no one else is there to see it, huh?” “We weren’t alone,” he says, literal again.

  “Oh yeah, Esme—excuse me, S!—your best bud!”

  “I don’t even really know her,” he says. “She’s just nice.”

  That statement is a lot less shocking to me now than it would have been yesterday, but I don’t want to get into it. “Yeah?” I say. “How about you?”

  He opens his mouth to say something but he doesn’t even get the chance. Here it comes. I can feel it all boiling up inside me. It’s like that moment when you know you’re going to throw up and all you can do is rush to get to the toilet in time. “I don’t even know why I’m surprised! Of course you’d ditch me again. Just like you ditched me before. Just like you all did!”

  And now it’s not even about him anymore, or not about just him, but he’s the only one here now. The word vomit continues: about lunch, about school. I think I mention the lake at some point. It’s honestly a bit of a blur.

  “Ked!” says Nephi. “Shut up.” I stop, out of breath anyway.

  “You’re the one who stopped coming to the lake,” he says.

  “I was embarrassed!” I shout. It surprises both of us. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, but of course it’s true. They didn’t ask me to stop coming, weren’t mean to me, didn’t freeze me out … I stopped showing up. Was that it, the beginning of the end for us?

  I probably look like a maniac, red-faced and shouting and waving my arms, but Nephi is calm. Even though I was shouting in his face. What he says next, he says softly.

  “And you lied to us.”

  “What do you …” I begin, but something stops me.

  “Taking up running?” he says. “How’s that going?”

  Oh, I think. That. But that was …

  Nephi starts walking again, but I stay planted. The cold wind cools my overheated face. I always thought that Maps left the group first. At least, that’s what I always told myself. But it’s not true. I guess I did. I’m seeing it through their eyes now. After all the hours I’ve spent thinking about this, this is the first time I’ve looked at it from the other side.

  I watch Nephi walk away, the wind whipping his khaki pants. It was me. I broke the trust. I left the group. It just took a little longer for it to fall apart. And I didn’t even try to hold on when it did. I watched them go, one by one. I didn’t argue. I assumed it was inevitable. That it was because of what was happening to me, because of my back. But was it? Was it ever?

  “Neff,” I say. “Hold on.”

  I didn’t ask them to stay back then—but I’m asking now. Maybe it’s pathetic. Maybe I should be embarrassed, but I’m not. Look what that got me last time.

  If he keeps walking now, I’m pretty sure that’s it. We’re done for good. But at least it won’t be because I didn’t try.

  He doesn’t stop, but he slows down. He turns halfway around.

  “Your hydroturbine looks really good,” I say.

  He gives me a look like: Seriously? This is what you want to talk about?

  Then I hit him with the punch line: “I think it’s going to make some waves.”

  He laughs, just a little. Then he shakes his head and says, “You are such a dork.”

  I hustle to catch up to him, but I don’t really need to. He’s waiting for me now.

  We talk about the contest and school and just regular stuff until he has to turn off to head home. It’s cold out, but I’m smiling the whole way. It just feels good to talk to Neff again.

  IT’S A LITTLE TRICKY wheeling the bike frame into school on Wednes
day morning, and it looks small and kind of junky in the sunlight. I can’t wait any longer, though. The ad comes out today, and I still have to fix up the frame, reattach the engine, take it for a test drive … I’m already worried I haven’t left myself enough time.

  “Just get back from the dump, Freak?” someone says as I push the bike through the crosswalk.

  I’m bent down low, pushing it by its seat and one handlebar. Haley and Becca see me coming and set up on either side. I push faster but can’t get away.

  “Is that a toy?” says Haley from one side.

  “It’s so junky,” says Becca from the other. I’m caught in the crossfire. “Where are the pedals?”

  “And the training wheels!” whoops Haley.

  I ignore them, but they keep going.

  “Is that what Santa brought you?” says Haley. “Must have been the best Christmas ever at your house.”

  “Shut up,” I say. Christmas is a sensitive subject.

  “What did you say to me?” she says.

  “Better back off, Hay,” says Becca. “He’s got some great comebacks.”

  “Stop that,” I say.

  “Stop what?” she says.

  When we reach the sidewalk they cut in front and hog the little ramp so I have to bump the bike up onto the curb. The little jolt runs through me and I feel a familiar burst of pain in my back. It’s already hurting from bending over so long.

  “Later, loser,” says Haley, and at least it feels good when they leave.

  I wheel the bike up the wheelchair ramp, and Mrs. Gallego is waiting at the top. “You can’t bring that into the school,” she says, her face peering down at the bike from inside the hood of her big white coat.

  “It’s for Mr. Feig,” I say. Which would be news to him. “It’s a science project.”

  “Oh!” says Mrs. Gallego. “Is it for the contest?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  She considers it. “All right,” she says, stepping back to keep her long, spotless coat away from the disreputable bike. “But don’t drip oil on the tiles.”