The Cliffs, page 5
When Ms. Billings had first introduced the concept of exoskeletons, she’d defined them as “crude frames that could be attached to other things for added mobility.” She’d then explained how that could be expanded upon if the frames’ power sources could add enough functionality to control the wearer. That’s what had given him his great project idea. He’d intended to make something to fit over his little sister Alexa’s extremely annoying baby doll. He thought it would be cool to make the little doll scare his sister—a classic brotherly prank. But his vision, at this point, wasn’t likely to become a reality.
Shelly and Pickle had their projects over halfway done before Reed had gotten even a tenth of the way through his. And now they were both finished, a couple weeks before the project was due.
Admittedly, Pickle’s robot was puny, about the size of a small remote-controlled car—just a vaguely man-shaped small metal skeleton with not a lot of personality. Pickle’s robot wasn’t much to look at, but his robot had mad abilities. With his tricked-out custom remote, he could practically make the thing break-dance. Shelly’s robot was similar, but dog-shaped instead of man-shaped. It was about the size of her Labrador, Thales, who was named after some man Shelly said was the first scientist. Living between 624 BC and 545 BC, “Thales of Miletus” was an ancient Greek dude who did a lot of science and mathematics stuff. Reed could remember the guy’s name and when he lived, but for some reason he couldn’t remember anything Shelly had said the guy did. Not that any of it mattered. What mattered was that Shelly’s robot was supposed to mimic a well-behaved dog, and from what Reed could tell, she could probably win a dog show with the thing. She was going to get an A, like she always did.
Why did he let the twins talk him into taking this class anyway? Sure, they were his best friends, but that didn’t make him a science nerd like them. Reed was into computers, but not as they related to robotics. He wanted to combine his love for fiction with his aptitude for programming to become a game designer. He wasn’t an engineer, and he sucked at building things. Shelly and Pickle knew this. After all, Shelly was the one who couldn’t let a year go by without reminding him of his complete ineptitude going all the way back to the building blocks they’d played with when they were five years old. They were freshmen now, and yet Shelly got the giggles at every science model and historical event diorama assigned to them. Every one of Reed’s construction efforts reminded her of the “log cabin” five-year-old Reed had built, a cabin that looked less like a cabin and more like the aftermath of an explosion. But in spite of that good-natured ribbing, he knew Shelly hadn’t talked him into this class just so she could laugh at him. And as for Pickle, he was too uninterested in others’ shortcomings to orchestrate Reed’s humiliation.
“It’s fun when we take classes together,” Shelly had said to Reed when he signed up.
Pickle had grunted what could have been agreement or noncommittal disinterest.
The truth was that Reed would do pretty much anything Shelly wanted him to do. They were friends, and they’d been friends for too long for her to think of him as anything but a friend. But he spent more time than he’d ever admit thinking about what it would be like if he and Shelly were more than friends. But after almost ten years, the idea was still what his dad would call a “castle in the sky.”
But maybe it wasn’t. Sometimes, when he talked to Shelly, she’d look at him with something like admiration, as if she was considering him in a different light.
Take the cliché castle in the sky, for instance. One day, when Reed, Pickle, and Shelly were getting off the bus, Shelly was talking about wanting something that was “impossible.” Reed had spotted clouds that looked exactly like a castle. He’d pointed at the castle-shaped clouds and said to Shelly, “Look, a castle in the sky. That means impossible dreams can happen, even if it’s in another dimension.” He was just messing around. But Shelly said, “Actually, you’re right.” And she’d squinted at him like he’d suddenly gotten interesting.
Reed looked over at Shelly now. Her attention on Ms. Billings, Shelly was chewing on the ends of her thick black hair. She wore it in a meticulous chin-length style, which put the ends right at mouth level. She always chewed on her hair when she was concentrating. It was one of the few little imperfections he noticed about her, and just like all her other imperfections, it was hopelessly charming.
Nah, he didn’t think Shelly and Pickle wanted him to humiliate himself for their amusement. That was mean, and they weren’t mean. Maybe they were a little thoughtless sometimes, because they’d get wrapped up in their books and their projects and forget to act like normal kids, but they weren’t mean.
Now, Julius, he was mean.
Reed shot a dirty look at the artful blond waves cascading down the back of Julius’s head. Shelly once told Reed that Julius’s hair was “dreamy” even though she admitted his personality was somewhere between detestable and execrable. The latter word, among others, taught Reed to never again buy her a word-of-the-day calendar for her birthday.
“Why does he have to use an RF remote?” Julius whined to Ms. Billings. “I don’t want his stupid remote to be telling my exoskeleton what to do.”
My ears, Reed thought. When Julius whined, his voice climbed an octave, and he sounded like a frightened weasel with a head cold. Who cared about the dreamy hair? Makes me gag, Reed thought. And who cared that Julius was tall and muscular, and shallow girls who rated boys on looks and/or money instead of character thought he was a stud? Julius’s voice told listeners everything they needed to know about him—he was a sniveling weasel who acted like an ass so people wouldn’t notice all that sniveling weasel-ness.
All the expensive clothes Julius wore didn’t cover his essential weasel identity, either. No amount of skinny black jeans, gazillion-dollar basketball shoes, designer shirts, or cashmere scarves could disguise a true weasel.
Reed looked at the dangling metal foot of Julius’s gangly exoskeleton, which hung off the right side of Julius’s desk. Julius’s project was a skeletal “suit” he intended to wear. A collection of metal frameworks attached to mechanical “joints” at the shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees, Julius’s exosuit had leather straps and metal clamps that would hold the contraption in place on Julius’s body. He’d been bragging that it would make him even faster and stronger than he already was. Whatever.
Reed thought exosuits looked a little like scaffolding—what a race of tiny people might create and attach to a human body so they could climb up and repair it. Reed wished Julius’s suit was scaffolding and there was a race of tiny people who could fix Julius, who was certainly in need of repair.
“Dilbert?” Ms. Billings said. Pickle looked up—his real name was Dilbert, but his family and close friends called him Pickle, a play on Dill.
“Can you explain to the class your reasoning for using an RF remote?”
“Sure. But I’m not just using an RF remote. I’m using the RF as an IR extender. I want my remote to be effective through walls.” Pickle sniffed. “I don’t think the problem is my remote anyway. I’ve achieved my goal with my remote. If he hasn’t achieved his goal, isn’t it up to him to make adjustments? Why doesn’t he”—Pickle pointed at Julius—“install an RFI filter in his signal path? Or he could change his frequency. Or he could check his macros. He may have them programmed too close to mine.”
Pickle sniffed again. He didn’t have a cold; he was just a perpetual sniffer. Short and dark like his twin sister, Pickle unfortunately didn’t get his sister’s looks. Shelly was really pretty. It was just that no one, other than Reed, seemed to notice it because she was so intense. Or maybe it had to do with the baggy button-down shirts she always wore with her jeans.
Pickle, on the other hand, would never be called pretty. With unusually deep-set eyes and a nearly black unibrow, a long nose, and a strangely small mouth filled with crooked teeth, Pickle’s looks weren’t going to open doors for him. He was going to have to rely on his smarts to get him through life. Thankfully, he had plenty of those.
Pickle narrowed his eyes at Julius to deliver the killing blow. “He might have even stolen my macros.”
“I did not!” Julius erupted. The sound came out as a cross between a honk and a screech.
Ms. Billings pushed a button on her own remote, a remote that controlled at least a dozen robotic creations in the room. Robotic arms attached to a monkey holding cymbals flung the cymbals out and smashed them back together. The metallic clang created a hush in the classroom.
Julius crossed his arms and sulked, but he didn’t whine anymore.
Everyone else was still.
After five seconds, Ms. Billings said calmly in her flat, even tone, “Dilbert makes excellent points, Julius. I suggest you attempt to implement some modification strategies of your own. Successful robotics aren’t about getting others to make changes so your creation functions properly. We live in a world filled with RF signals. You’re going to have to problem-solve the issue using the techniques and knowledge you’ve learned in this class.”
Reed grinned at Julius’s red ears. Smackdown! Ha!
Reed looked around the room to see if anyone else was enjoying Julius’s embarrassment as much as he was. His gaze landed on Leah, a curvy girl with round glasses whom Reed had admired for much of the year. No one ever wanted to talk to her, but her happy demeanor and self-confidence were unshakable. Leah noticed Reed’s gaze, and she winked at him. Whether or not the wink was shared enjoyment of Julius’s discomfort was unclear. But Reed smiled at her anyway.
The rest of the fifteen kids in the class didn’t look toward either Julius or Reed. They were all either fiddling with their projects or looking at Ms. Billings. Figures. This class wasn’t exactly a cross-section of the normal freshman. Except for Julius, who was an odd combination of jock, brain, and bully, everyone else in the room could have been in the running for Geek of the Year, if there was such a contest. There were more glasses, bad haircuts, and mismatched clothes in this room than in the rest of the school combined. Robotics class might as well be called “Misfits class.”
“Now,” Ms. Billings said, “if there are no other questions or complaints?”
No one said a word. No one moved.
“Good.” Ms. Billings stood and stepped over to the blackboard. “Let’s move on to a deeper discussion of actuators. I understand some of you are having problems there. So what are the four common types we talked about last week?”
Shelly’s hand shot up. Reed suppressed a grin. Shelly had never met a question she didn’t want to answer, and for some reason, he always enjoyed seeing her small square hand with its bitten-to-the-nub fingernails stuck up in the air, vibrating with eagerness. Her excitement was audible through the beaded bracelets she liked to wear; they clacked together while she waited for Ms. Billings to call on her.
“Yes, Shelly?”
“Electric motors, solenoids, hydraulic systems, and pneumatic systems.”
“Excellent.” While she wrote Shelly’s answer on the blackboard with her right hand, Ms. Billings pressed another button on the remote in her left hand. A small spider-shaped skeleton crawled up the inside wall of the classroom and stuck a light-bulb-shaped sticker on the row next to Shelly’s name, which was on a huge chart that included all the class’s names. Shelly had more stickers than anyone else. Reed had none.
Reed turned away from the stupid chart and looked out the window at the tiny pale green buds on the oak trees outside the school. He wondered if he could see the buds get bigger if he stared at them long enough. Watching trees grow had to be more interesting than this stuff.
One of Ms. Billing’s robotic characters started marching up and down each row between the desks. The exoskeleton was vaguely shaped like a horse. Its hoof-like feet clapped against the gray linoleum floor as it pranced past Reed’s dirty athletic shoes. Reed was pretty sure the robot was modeling an example of a hydraulic actuator. But maybe it was pneumatic. He probably should’ve been paying more attention.
How did Ms. Billing expect anyone to pay attention in this room full of animated characters, exoskeletons, and robotic parts? It was sensory overload, like having class in a circus. On top of that, even though Ms. Billings wore conservative pantsuits, she obviously loved the color red, which was splashed all over the school’s institutional pale yellow walls in the form of huge posters and a myriad of charts. It was distracting.
A wadded-up piece of paper landed on Reed’s desk, next to his pathetic exoskeleton. He blinked and glanced at Ms. Billings. She had her back to the class, so he spread out the paper. It was a note from Shelly: Coming home with us? Long homework session! followed by a smiley face. Shelly thought long homework sessions were fun.
He looked at Shelly. She was watching Ms. Billings, but she nodded when Reed gave her a thumbs-up. Not that he wanted to do homework. But he did want to go home with his friends. And besides, he had to do homework. At least when he studied with Shelly and Pickle, he got better grades.
* * *
As soon as Ms. Billings dismissed the class, Pickle grabbed his robot and jumped up. He did this every day because this was the last class before lunch. Pickle loved to eat. That was the only other thing he had going for him: Pickle ate more than Shelly and Reed combined, and he didn’t have much more meat on him than his metal skeletal robot did. The boy had the metabolism of a hummingbird.
Today, Pickle was in an even bigger hurry. Today was a half day because all the teachers had some conference to go to. After-school activities had been canceled. There would be no late buses. The principal had announced that morning that the school would be closed up and locked at noon. This meant Pickle and of course Shelly and Reed were in for an afternoon of the great snacks Mrs. Girard put out for the twins and their little brother, Ory, on special days like this. Even on normal days, stuff like homemade pizzas, veggie egg rolls, and grilled sandwiches were typical after-school eats at the Girard house. But on “special days,” Mrs. Girard went over the top.
Pickle, Shelly, and their little brother, Ory, were beyond lucky. Their mom was home to make them hot food in the afternoon and then another great meal later on in the evening. Reed was lucky if he could scrounge up a few pretzels when he had to go home to his empty house. Luckily, he usually got to go home with the twins. If he didn’t, he’d have been even skinnier than he was.
Pickle started trotting up the aisle toward the door as Reed picked up his project and tried to figure out how to shove it into his backpack. He didn’t take his eyes off of Pickle as he folded and refolded the project’s robotic arms, so he saw when Julius stuck out his foot and tripped Pickle.
Pickle, who wasn’t the most coordinated kid anyway, lost his balance and flew forward into the desk in front of Julius. Pickle’s big nose led the way wherever his face went, so his nose took the brunt of the impact when it hit the corner of the desk. Blood spurted from Pickle’s nostrils as Julius snorted out a high-pitched laugh.
Ms. Billings, who had been gathering a stack of books and preparing to leave the room, didn’t see a thing. Neither did anyone else. Everyone was too focused on where they were going. Even Shelly had her head down as she collapsed her dog-size exoskeleton into a puppy-size one. This was a particularly clever part of her project, Reed thought. She’d told him if she could figure out how to downsize Thales, too, without hurting him of course, she’d patent “collapsible dogs” and become a billionaire.
Reed’s muscles bunched as he watched his friend try to stop the spurting blood with one hand. Reed wanted to help Pickle, and he wanted to confront Julius, but he knew where it would lead if he put himself in the middle. As if reading Reed’s mind, Julius turned and smiled.
Julius’s unusually pointed canine teeth seemed to gleam under the classroom’s fluorescent lighting. Not for the first time, Reed fantasized that Julius was a vampire who could be vaporized by a stake through the heart.
If Julius had a heart.
Reed clenched his fists as Pickle ran from the room, clutching his robot with one hand and his bloody nose with the other. Before Reed could tell Shelly what had just happened, she got her act together and hurried after Pickle, calling, “Pickle, wait up.”
Julius gave Reed the evil eye for another few seconds. Then he turned to gather up his floppy exoskeleton. All the other kids filed out of the room. Reed lingered. He wanted to say something to Julius. What was it Shelly had called Julius the other day, when they were talking about him? Oh yeah. She’d said he was an ignominious, odious reprobate. Reed mentally repeated the words. They sounded ridiculous. Only Shelly could get away with saying something like that.
“What’re you staring at?” Julius asked Reed.
Reed looked around. He realized he and Julius were alone in the room. He hated that his palms had started sweating and his breathing was coming faster. Why did he let Julius get to him?
Julius stopped trying to gather up his suit. Instead, he carefully laid it out. He grinned at Reed. “Bet you wish you could build something like this, huh, moron?”
Reed didn’t answer. He wanted to pick up his backpack and leave, but something kept him in the room. What? He didn’t know. It sure wasn’t the company, which sucked. It wasn’t the decor, which he found intimidating. And it wasn’t the smell, which was a cross between chalk and soldering.
“I don’t even know what you’re doing in this class,” Julius sneered. “I mean, your runty little friend may be a mini-freak, but at least he has a few brain cells. And your other friend, that weird hair-chewing chick, is an uppity cow, but with a little makeup, she wouldn’t be bad to look at. And she has brain cells, too. You’ve got nothing going for you. You’re a freak and nothing can make you worth looking at. And on top of that, you’re all air up there, aren’t you?” Julius leaned forward and flicked a finger between Reed’s eyes.
Reed tightened his fists, and Julius noticed.
“What’re you going to do? Hit me? Didn’t you see what I did to your pickled friend?” Julius laughed his beyond-annoying laugh. “I didn’t even have to lift a finger. I just moved my foot, and now he has a bloody nose. Just think of what I could do to you without giving it much effort.”
