Like every other day at Eastville Central High
School, Tuesdays are
usually boring. Space Week Tuesday was a rare exception.
That was
because the annual science fair was held that day and anyone with an
exhibit that need demonstrating got to miss all of their classes.
I
was one such lucky person. My exhibit was on makeup effects used
in
the movies, so I spent the whole day sculpting a creature known as the
Skuzmoid. A Skuzmoid is a hideous green alien that has half its
face
torn off, and beneath its skin is a metal skull—a robot.
To me, aliens and robots are scary enough alone, but
combining them
is three times as bad. I thought most of the people who looked at
it
would agree, but all I ever heard them say was “What’s this elementary
school kid doing in here?”
Despite that, I won first prize in the freshman
category. It was
the first time I ever won anything in my entire life and I couldn’t
wait to tell my parents. I tried calling them from a phone booth
in
the hallway outside the gym, but there was no answer at the number they
left me. Oh well.
The secret of my success was none other than Casey
Winslow. I
listened to the tape I made of his dedication on my Walkman about forty
times while I made the Skuzmoid. It gave me all the confidence I
needed to make a winner. I decided to thank him the next time I
saw
him.
Some of the other exhibits were interesting,
too. There were such
bizarre offerings as a hologram of a human skull, an experimental
hovercraft that runs on vinegar, a shortwave radio that picks up
communications between a rescue party and a group of lost missionaries
on some deserted island in the Pacific, and a lunar power cell so
powerful that the light of the moon is enough to light the entire city
of Las Vegas for two hundred thousand years. Of course, since the
science fair took place during the day, nobody ever found it if really
worked, but that’s what the guy who made it claimed.
Another exhibit I liked was a video camera that was
aimed at a TV
screen to create weird feedback. I spent about a half an hour
playing
with it. I made me wonder if I was somebody who overdosed on
drugs
back in the Sixties in a past life, because the designs I made looked
like something out of a Jimi Hendrix video.
The sophomore entries were largely unimaginative and
stupid, but
that is to be expected from people who are also unimaginative and
stupid. It’s a well-known fact in our school that the sophomore
class
is made up of at least thirty percent more people than any other
grade. Most of the extra people have been in the tenth grade for
at
least three years, and all of them built clay dinosaurs that looked
more like starving chickens.
The juniors were slightly more interesting with
their entries.
Louie Chin, Eastville’s only Japanese kid, won first prize for a
hilarious animated movie depicting his theory on the extinction of the
dinosaurs: extermination by UFO’s. According to his theory,
aliens
wiped out the dinosaur population to provide mankind with a safer
environment to develop in. Of course, everybody who watched it
made
sure to tell him that man didn’t exist until millions of years after
the dinosaurs went the way of the...well, dinosaurs.
Jessica Cartwright and Lisa Ryker set off the smoke
detectors with
their demonstration of Human Spontaneous Combustion and brought the
volunteer fire department to our school to a standing ovation.
Other
than those two exceptions, the junior class entries were good cures for
insomnia. The seniors, on the other hand, were going all out this
year.
Many students had multiple entries and strived for
diversity and
originality. Some of them bordered on disgusting, like the
mummified
mouse and the fetus aerobicise record. Simon Chadwick,
Eastville’s
resident mad scientist, was disqualified from the competition because
his almost-atomic bomb went against the “science for peace” theme of
the science fair, but his bomb could have worked if he could get his
hands on some plutonium. At least, that’s what he claimed.
My brother Curt and the stuffed shirts got together
to perform a
skit about the space shuttle and NASA’s planned orbital space
station.
Everyone had to go to the auditorium to see this. It was pretty
interesting in spite of its dork origins. Curt was dressed in a
snappy, blue astronauts uniform, reading a poetic, awe-inspiring
narration, while Wesley and Harris were dressed from head to toe in
black. They held up models of the space shuttle and the parts of
the
space station. Since they were standing in front of a black
curtain,
all you could see were the models. They constructed the station
piece
by piece and would have won first prize hands down if it weren’t for
another sneak attack by Casey Winslow and his gang.
Right above the stage, on the video monitor my
father’s company donated
to our school, a strange message flashed on the screen when Curt and
his friends took their bows. The entire auditorium got completely
dark
and that strange, electronic voice filled the air: “DO NOT ADJUST YOUR
SET. WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL!”
“Not again...” I heard Curt mutter as a
star-filled sky appeared
on the video screen. The narration continued: “STARDATE:
85844.98.
THE STARSHIP KATZENJAMMER IS ON A MISSION TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN
WITH A CREW OF FIVE. SCANNERS DETECT AN UNCHARTED PLANET IN AN
ORBIT
SIMILAR TO EARTH’S. CAPTAIN CASEY WINSLOW ORDERS THE KATZENJAMMER
IN
TO INVESTIGATE.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. All of the guys in
Casey’s band were
dressed as futuristic warriors. Their song, “Gods of Metal” was
the
soundtrack. There were special effects and action scenes that
would
have made Steven Spielberg envious. The plot was your basic
science
fiction story about astronauts who arrive on an alien planet to save
the population from mutant warlords. Casey and his friends defeat
a
ten-foot, multiple-limbed robot with razor sharp weapons, and are
worshipped as gods from then on. Needless to say, it won first
prize
and made Curt’s space shuttle skit look like a kindergarten Christmas
play in comparison.
Casey accepted the ribbon for first prize and
thanked someone named
“the Squeege” for helping them make the video. Curt and his
friends
were standing on the side looking like somebody who had just watched
their families drive over a cliff in a bus.
I thought about all of the science fiction stories
in my creative
writing notebook and wondered if Casey would be interested in using one
of them for a script. When he and his friends left the stage and
walked out of the auditorium, I thought it would be a good idea to
follow them outside.
“Did you see that look on Curt’s face?” Casey
was asking A. J. “You’d think he’d be used to a little humiliation by
now!”
“Yeah, he looked like he was going to the gas
chamber or
something,” A. J. replied, giving Casey high-fives. “It was
pitiful!”
I stood behind the gym teacher’s pickup truck so
that they couldn’t
see while I gathered up my courage to approach them. The other
guys in
the band were congratulating each other.
Now’s your
chance, Crystal! Go for it!
I took a deep breath and stepped out in the
open. Just then,
Sylvia Norris snuck up from the other side of the parking lot and
goosed Casey. He spun around, took her in his arms, pulled her
close,
and—
He kissed
her! On the lips!
In front of everybody!
But that...that...that can’t be!
I stepped back behind the gym teacher’s truck,
completely blown
away by this shocking revelation. How can this be possible?
Casey
Winslow is Sylvia’s boyfriend? I felt a strange knot
forming in
my
guts while the two of them tongue-wrestled in front of me. My
entire
nervous system seemed to be short-circuiting inside me.
“Poor Curt,” Sylvia said, breaking the kiss.
“He’s over by the
locker room eating his gym clothes. I guess getting shown up
three
times in one lifetime is too much for him.”
“Sorry to hear he’s taking it so bad,” Casey
admitted. He grinned
at his friends. “Light that victory joint, dudes! I feel like
celebrating!”
Sylvia punched him in the arm. “Not here!
We’ll get caught! Let’s go behind the football field and smoke it
there.”
Casey laughed. “Screw that! Light it up right
here!”
“No!”
“Oh, all right then! Lead the way!”
Sylvia grabbed his hand and the whole entourage
followed them to
the other side of the parking lot. Although they were looking
back at
the school to see if anyone was watching them, they didn’t notice me
hiding behind the truck. I just stood there trying to rationalize
what
I had just seen.
Casey Winslow and Sylvia Norris. My idol and
my babysitter.
Together! As a couple! The thought was nauseating, but it did make
sense. Sylvia was good-looking but kind of spaced out, and that
described Casey to a T. They had a lot more in common than just
that:
they were both seniors, they both hated preppies, and they both had the
nerve to get high on school grounds. A match made in heaven, by
any
standards.
Somehow, my science fair victory didn’t seem so
wonderful after
that. In fact, life itself began to look pretty bleak to me,
too. I
felt as if someone had ripped my heart out of my body and smashed it
with a sledgehammer. In a matter of seconds, what had been the
best
Tuesday I’ve ever had turned into the worst one in recent memory!
