The Perpetual Motion Club (23 page)

The concept of working in groups of two on separate projects went out the window almost immediately. Cutting and attaching were the jobs of the day and that was all that was going to get done. Once she saw that, Elsa realized she’d have to leave connecting up the various components for more talented hands, i.e. her own.

Jason’s friends excelled with their plywood cutting. They also did well with the little bits of Formica required for the instructional plaques. She was pleased with that. It was a well-done, if small, start.

After the session was over and Jason’s friends left, after Elsa said her good nights to her mother and Jason, after everyone went off to their respective sleeping quarters, Lainie’s footstep was heard on the stair. Elsa dreaded speaking to her mother on the subject she knew was coming. But at the same time, she looked forward to it. She needed information from her mother concerning Jason. Of course she was going to have to lie through her teeth to get what she wanted. She fingered the earbud knowing iHigh was not going to help her get through this. She needed one hundred percent of her wits about her just now.

“Elsa,” her mother said from the bottom of the stairs.

Elsa looked up from a piece of plywood with the word “Boyle” on it.

“What exactly is it that Jason is not telling me?” Lainie said. Half her face was in shadow, a result of faulty lighting. The other half was molded into a show of parental power: firm, slightly-downturned lips, pinched eyebrows, colorless pallor.

“I’m not exactly sure,” Elsa said. A truth so far. “He’s not telling me a whole lot just yet, but he seems to want to tell me something. Something big.” Here was an insupportable lie. “There’s definitely something going on with him.”

“If you’re withholding evidence, Elsa, you could—”

“Be in a lot of trouble. I know that. I don’t have any evidence or information, but I know there’s something more. I know Jason, we’ve been friends all year, ever since he got to our school and he didn’t know anybody. I was nice to him as soon as he transferred and we’ve been friends since. And I can tell when there’s something he’s not telling me. But I also know he didn’t do it.”

“And you know that how?”

“Because I know Jason.”

“But you just said he’s not telling you something.”

“Mom, I know Jason. He’s protecting someone. Maybe his father or something. His mom. One of the other suspects.”

“There are no other suspects. His father’s been out of town for months. He has an airtight alibi. Same with his mother. She’s been gone for years. Chicago, I think.”

“What about relatives?”

“What are you, a detective now? If you must know, there was no sexual misconduct and the circumstances don’t match the psychology of a random killing. There was purpose to what happened. And no there are no other relatives around.”

“So it’s the anti-Rifs.”

“The who?”

“You know that group protesting around town.’

“Against the RFID chips. Yes, that’s who I suspect as well, but it’s not your concern. I don’t want you talking to him about this and if he does talk to you about it, I want you to tell me everything he says. Got that?”

She didn’t wait for an answer before turning and heading up the stairs.

Elsa’s mind cranked. Yes, now was the time for iHigh. She needed creative thinking just now. She reached for her back pack and inserted the earbud. For just a second, she considered tuning to channel44. She needed the ultimate in vision creating inducements, but she kept the dial away from that end of the spectrum. Too dangerous. Too much head scrambling and she might do something crazy. And there was plenty too much crazy about right now.

***

The next day, Elsa did something she couldn’t believe she’d do. She went and looked for Jimmy. Again. Twice in the same semester. He’d no doubt get the wrong idea, but things were desperate. She’d made that promise to Jason and now she needed to do something. She’d made that stupid statement to her mother and now needed to do something about that as well. The way she figured it, the only way out of this whole nasty web of deceit was to determine who actually committed the crime. Jimmy was her connection to the most likely suspects.

When she entered the room off the guitar lab, Jimmy was sitting under the naked light behind his drafting board staring at the stool in front of him.

Elsa entered and tossed the cracked skull that was on the stool over to the shelf. It broke into four pieces.

Jimmy looked up without expression, waiting for her to start.

“I’m thinking of joining the anti-Rifs,” she said.

He stood and bumped his head on the bulb. “What?”

“The anti-Rifs. You’re a member aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I thought you didn’t . . . you don’t believe in . . . You don’t like them.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about what you said. About this kid’s murder and everything. It seems so lame to have these chips. What good are they if they don’t help you when you need it? Especially if they get you killed.”

Jimmy walked around to the front of the drafting table and leaned against it with one leg crossed in front of the other. He considered Elsa for a moment. His hand brushed his chin, leaving a streak of charcoal gray. “For the record, the anti-Rifs didn’t do it.”

“Uh huh.”

He inhaled and opened his mouth to retort, but then changed his mind. His shoulders dropped. “If you’re serious about joining,” he said, “we have a meeting today right after school. Up in the boys lav on—”

“Third floor. I figured. You’re going to be there, right?”

“Yes. Do you want to meet me ahead of time?”

She wanted to say ‘no,’ that she didn’t need a chaperone, but she knew she wouldn’t be fine by herself. “Sure,” she said. “At the lockers.”

“Good,” he smiled broadly but remained leaning against the table. She turned and left hoping she knew what she was doing.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

After the three-thirty bell, Elsa ran out of English class down to the locker. Jimmy was late. She waited for 15 minutes and just as she was going to give up, he sauntered over, seeming to relish that she was waiting for him.

“Do I need to bring anything or what?” she asked, trying to keep her annoyance to herself.

“No, it’s not homeroom,” he said. “You don’t need a standard number two cellphone.”

“Anyway,” she answered.

They remained silent as they climbed the stairs. Elsa had more than just a queasy feeling in her stomach. She was glad they were heading for a bathroom where she could throw up.

On the third floor they heard the rumbling sound of low conversation as soon as they entered the hallway. They followed the sound into the restroom where Ralph was leading a conversation.

“So anyway, Senator Jackson is willing to put forth the legislation if we can get enough signatures.”

“How many do we need,” a thin girl, junior probably, with waxed hair asked.

“From our district we need 10,000.”

“We’ll never make it,” a voice in the back said.

“Not with that attitude, no,” Ralph said. “The point is at least she’s considering it.

Jimmy cleared his throat. Ralph turned with an annoyed look in his eye but softened when he saw Elsa standing behind Jimmy.

“This is Elsa Webb. She’d like to—”

“We’ve met,” both Elsa and Ralph said.

“—join.” Jimmy finished.

“The more the merrier,” Ralph said before turning back to the rest.

“What do I need to do?” Elsa said.

Ralph turned back around. “Can you carry a sign? Speak in rhythm? Get people to sign a petition?”

“Um,” Elsa answered.

“You’re in,” Ralph said and then turned back around.

“But don’t I have to . . . ”

“What?” Ralph said, swiveling his head only, the rest of his body remained forward, as if the answer would be quick and he didn’t want to lose the current momentum with the crowd.

“I don’t have to . . . do the initiation thing?” Elsa asked.

“What initiation thing?”

“I don’t know it’s not my club.”

He turned fully to her then. “We know.
You
have the perpetual motion club.
You
might have initiation or hazing or whatever you want to call it but
we
don’t.
We
need warm bodies to sign petitions, that’s all. Yes, we get together and stare at people, but we don’t have initiations. If you want to stare at people, or scream at them if we go back to doing that, you’re in. We’re trying to get a law passed, that’s it. We don’t ride motorcycles, we don’t scare little kids, we don’t buck the establishment. We just try to get laws passed. If you’re not into that, then don’t stay. May I continue now?”

“Sure,” Elsa said, shrinking into a corner by the waste can. She felt hot all over and wished Jimmy would stand in front of her so nobody could see her.

Ralph finished the meeting which was nothing more than a planning session and pep rally for rousing the troops.

When it was over Jimmy walked her home.

“How come they don’t have initiations?” Elsa asked.

“Why should they?”

“I don’t know, I just thought they did.”

“They don’t. Never did. You need to stop believing what you read on the Internet.”

“I guess. Well, thanks for taking me. She leaned over and kissed Jimmy quickly on the cheek before running up to her house where Lainie was just serving dinner.

***

For several days, Elsa racked her brain for an angle in Jason’s plight. She avoided Jimmy and the anti-Rifs as much as possible. Not that she was against them so much, but she didn’t have time to solve their problems. And solve Jason’s problems. And solve the perpetual motion club’s. The last thing she needed right now was to follow up on her commitments to the anti-Rifs. Right now she was panicking and didn’t have time for doing social good.

Over the weekend, she got a chance to speak to Jason alone. His friends had not yet come over. Lainie and James were at a meeting of the LWTT. Actually it was a putt-putt golf tournament the LWTT was putting on. Whatever. Her parents and Jason’s friends were out of the way for a few hours.

Elsa had suggested they take a break from the perpetual motion displays. The two sat in front of the movie screen trying to decide between Hoosiers and Pi. Jason had no interest in numbers theory and the last thing Elsa wanted to watch was that old, feel-good basketball movie. They were just now compromising and settling for the latest Austin Powers movie, Quantum Shagging, a movie neither one wanted to watch.

“Jason,” Elsa said, tuning down the volume just before the flatulence scene started. “Here’s the thing. You’re the only suspect because of all the circumstantial evidence. The bloody knife had your finger prints. Why was it at the scene of the crime, if it was yours? You’d just been fighting and you’d said you were going to kill him.”

“He stole my knife.”

“Yes, correct. Nevertheless he was murdered with your knife. So it looks like you did it. But if you did it, wouldn’t you take it with you? Why would you leave it behind to incriminate yourself? No one seems to be asking that. I guess everyone thinks you’re a criminal mastermind. That there’s method to your madness.

“But you didn’t do it, so there has to be someone else who did it. Is there someone else that goes to that shack? Use it for something? Supposedly it’s abandoned and so far off the beaten track that it isn’t even vandalized. No graffiti from what little I’ve heard about it. They only found it because somebody had ordered a land survey. So whoever killed him must have known about that shack”

“Well, there you go.
I
know about the shack. It was Jer’s and my hideaway. As far as I know we were the only two that knew about it. It was all overgrown. We discovered it when we were kids following the river. We used it when we ran away from home to hide from Dad. He never knew about it. It’s the only place we felt safe.”

“Did you tell my mom?”

“Of course not.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“It wouldn’t be a secret anymore. I just said I didn’t want my dad to find out.”

“Jason, you’re going to lose your life but you’re afraid of your dad?”

“You don’t know my dad.”

“Doesn’t everybody know where it is by now?”

“No, they’re keeping it a secret until the case is over.”

“You need to tell my mom this. What were you fighting about?”

“He was using iHigh and I didn’t want him to.”

Elsa pondered that for a moment. Why would Jason care about his brother using iHigh? What was wrong with it?

“iHigh? Did you tell my mom this?”

“No, I told the police.”

“You told the police that he was using iHigh or that that was what you’d fought about?”

“Yes.”

“Which?”

“Yes.”

“Nevermind. Let’s try something e . . . ” She stopped in mid-sentence. Something about iHigh struck her.

“What?” Jason said. “We fought about the iHigh and I told the police.”

Why do you care if he uses iHigh?”

“It’s no good for you. Everyone knows that. Some people blow their minds on it.”

“Not on iHigh. There’s a million things to blow your mind on, but not iHigh.”

“That’s what they say, but I don’t care. He didn’t even want to use iHigh, it was just because he wanted to impress those anti-Rifs.”