“A thousand milligrams is one gram. Now we’ll never be able to detect a milligram, but a gram we can measure. If it’s more than a milligram per cigarette, it becomes easier.” I showed her how the filters would work. “We can take the filters apart after we weigh them and then collect the tar chemically.”
“You can do that?” she asked.
“WE can do that,” I replied. Her eyes opened at this. “If we are doing this as a team, it won’t just be me. You’ll have to help out, too. Otherwise I can do it on my own.”
She nodded slowly. “Uh, okay, but what can I do? I’m not all smart like you. I don’t even know what grams and stuff are. How am I going to help?” I figured Shelley was planning on smiling and flirting and getting that silly nerd, Carling Parker Buckman, to go along with her, for the sheer enjoyment of her company. Five minutes after the A was handed out, Shelley would be history.
I reached across the table and laid a hand on top of hers. “Don’t worry. I’ve thought of that as well. You’re going to be a lot of help.” I squeezed her hand and then pulled my arm back. No use frightening the prey away. The hunter had to leave a little more bait out first.
“Oh? How so?” she asked suspiciously.
Time to calm the prey down, show her that the trap wasn’t really there, but just part of the landscape. “Well, we need a place to set this up. We’re going to need someplace which can be secured, without a lot of people wandering through and messing it up.”
“Here, after school?”
“Take too long to smoke all those cigarettes,” I answered.
She shrugged. “Home?”
“There’s five other people at home, several of whom would take the thing apart or turn it off or something, and I don’t have a basement to lock it in.”
“Well, I do. I mean, we have a basement. We could set it up there,” she said.
I nodded. “Any kid brothers who’d wreck it?”
“I’m the baby of the family. The only person other than my parents is the cat, and we can keep her out of trouble.”
“See, you’re already helping. We set the lab up in your basement. We can smoke cigarettes down there after school. You help with that, and get your parents to buy the cigarettes. I’ll do the science. Do you know how to type?”
“Better than you, Carl. I’ve seen your typing!” She smiled at this. We shared the same typing and home economics classes.
“Then you can type up our final report. It’s a natural partnership. Even at the actual fair itself. I’ll stand there and look like a nerd, and you can dress up and look pretty. We can’t lose!”
“I can do more than just look pretty!”
I laid my hand on hers again, just for a moment, and squeezed it again. “I know that, and this will be your chance to prove it. Besides, you end up better off than I do.”
“How so?” She never removed my hand.
I pulled back and smiled. “Because you’ll always be pretty, and now you’ll show how smart you are. As for me, I’ll still be smart, but I’ll never be pretty!”
She giggled loudly at this and agreed to my terms. I turned in our project outline that afternoon, beating Randy by three days. The first few weeks would all be research anyway, and I would have to do that on my own. My compliments to Shelley notwithstanding, the brain portion of the project was all mine. She was a gorgeous airhead.
I got home late from school that night, missing the school bus, and had to walk. It was only about a mile and a half or so, and my new and improved shape wasn’t even a light workout. I came in the door to find Mom standing there. “Detention? Wait until your father hears about this!” The school must have called her.
I gave her a sheepish shrug and went downstairs, dumping my stuff off in the bedroom. I avoided Mom and any questions until later. Mom must have told Dad when he got home, but I stayed in my room studying Geometry until we all went up to dinner.
Now that we had six people in the house, Suzie had to share her side of the dining room table with Nana. She was in charge of making sure Nana didn’t put salt on her plate before we sat down. She was on a low sodium high blood pressure diet, and she salted everything, driving my mother nuts. I never narced on her, figuring the old bat would just make a ruckus if we caught her. Usually Suzie caught her about once a week and ratted her out, causing Nana to start crying. Tonight I noticed Nana got away with it. I debated winking at her, but Mom would probably catch me and figure it out.
Dad was the one who started in on me. After we said grace, he picked up the serving plate of the pot roast and speared a piece. “So, you want to explain how you got a detention in Home Economics?”
Hamilton started laughing. He began singing, “Carl got detention, Carl got detention!”
“Hey, Dad, really?” I hooked my thumb at my brother, and Dad ordered him to shut up, or else. Hamilton had never given them the no-hitting ultimatum like I had, and could still get walloped.
“So?” he pressed.
I thought about it, and I must have looked very sheepish doing so. “I couldn’t help it. I swear, I just couldn’t help it. It just sort of burst out,” I admitted.
“What just burst out?” asked Mom coldly.
“Well, Mrs. Wakerman was talking about tropical foods and fruits and nuts and stuff, and she started talking about coconut milk, and she asked if anybody knew what you could use coconut milk for. So I just said that mommy coconuts fed it to the baby coconuts, so they could grow up to be big and strong, and that’s when she gave me detention.”
Mom stared at me for a second, and then just buried her face in her hands and started laughing. Dad leaned so far back while he laughed that his chair fell backwards and dumped him on the floor. Even Nana started laughing. Only Suzie and Hamilton didn’t laugh; Suzie because she didn’t understand, and Hamilton because he could see I wasn’t getting in trouble.
He still tried to push it, though. After our parents calmed down, he started smirking and snarkily said, “You still got detention. You’re still going to get punished.”
I just shook my head at him. “Hamilton, you want to know why people like me more than you? I was named after a delicious and refreshing adult beverage, and you were named after a watch.” That set my parents to laughing all over again.
The next day at school I got the approval for the project from our Biology teacher, Mr. Hailey. I told Shelley and she squealed with delight, and kissed my cheek again. This time I gave her a hug, which surprised her, but she didn’t protest. My seduction strategy was a slow one, but would probably prove successful. A few discreet inquiries gave indications that Shelley had a much better understanding of the birds and the bees than would be expected in a ninth grader. How much was completely true, I couldn’t say — yet — but I considered this as worthy of scientific investigation as cigarette tar.
“Now, for the next week we need to do preparation. I need to get over to Towson State and use the library there and you…”
“You’re going over to Towson State College?” she asked, her eyes widening.
“Uh, sure. I need to do the preliminary research.”
“Wow!”
I don’t know why this surprised her, but I chalked it up to the fact that she figured only college students could go over there. The truth was that Towson State was only about a half mile from Towson High, and the college prep kids there routinely went over to the library for research. All you needed was your student ID card and they’d let you in. I didn’t see why there would be an issue.
Getting over there would be simple, too. It was basically just a couple of miles further south on York Road, almost in the center of Towson. I could ride my bike there easily. Further, what with my wacky schedule and a lot of independent study time, I pretty much had an unlimited hall pass. As long as I let my teachers know what I was up to, I could take a day and go over there without worrying about skipping class.