Wendelin Van Draanen - Flipped

Perpetual motion.

My friend, I didn’t even know what perpetual motion was. They were talking closed systems, open systems, resistance, energy source, magnetism… it was like joining a discussion in a different language. And Juli, Juli was saying stuff like, “Well, what if you put the magnets back to back — reversed the polarity?” like she really understood what they were talking about. Then my granddad and her dad would explain why her idea wouldn’t work, but all that did was make Juli ask another question.

I was completely lost. And even though I was pretending to follow along with what they were saying, what I was really doing was trying not to stare at Juli.

When my mom called us for dinner, I did my best to pull Juli aside and apologize to her, but she gave me the cold shoulder, and who could blame her, really?

I sat down across from her, feeling pretty low. Why hadn’t I said something to Garrett in the library? I didn’t have to punch him. Why hadn’t I just told him he was out of line?

After Mom served everyone their food, Dad seemed to decide that he ought to be the one directing the conversation. “So, Mike and Matt,” he says, “you’re seniors this year.”

“Amen!” they say together.

“Amen? As in you’re glad high school’s over?”

“Absolutely.”

My father starts twirling his fork. “Why’s that?”

Matt and Mike look at each other, then back at my dad. “The regurgitation gets to you after a while.”

“Isn’t that funny,” he says, looking around the table. “High school was probably the best time of my life.”

Matt-or-Mike says, “Seriously? Dude, it’s totally lame!” Mrs. Baker shoots him a look, but that doesn’t stop him. “Well, it is, Mom. It’s that whole robotron attitude of education. Confine, confute, conform—I’ve had totally enough of that scene.”

My dad eyes my mom with a little I-told-you-so grin, then says to Matt and Mike, “So I take it college is out of the question?”

God, what was with him? In a flash I was clutching my fork and knife, ready to duke it out for a couple of guys who pinched my cheeks and called me baby brother.

I took a deep breath and tried to relax. Tried to dive down to calmer water. This wasn’t my fight.

Besides, Matt and Mike seemed cool with it. “Oh, no,” they said. “College is a total possibility.” “Yeah, we got accepted a couple of places, but we’re going to give the music thing a shot first.”

“Oh, the music thing,” my father says.

Matt and Mike look at each other, then shrug and get back to eating. But Lynetta glares at him and says, “Your sarcasm is not appreciated, Dad.”

“Lyn, Lyn,” says Matt-or-Mike. “It’s cool. Everyone’s like that about it. It’s a show-me-don’t-tell-me thing.”

“That’s a great idea,” Lynetta says, jumping out of her seat and dashing down the hall.

Mom freezes, not sure what to do about Lynetta, but then Mrs. Baker says, “Dinner is absolutely delicious, Patsy.”

“Thanks, Trina. It’s… it’s nice to have all of you over.”

There’s about three seconds of quiet and then Lynetta comes in and jabs at the CD player buttons until the drawer slides back in.

“Lyn, no! Not a good idea,” says Matt-or-Mike. “Yeah, Lyn. It’s not exactly dinner music.”

“Tough,” says Lynetta, and cranks the volume.

Boom, whack! Boom-boom, whack! The candles practically shake in their holders; then guitars rip through the air and about blow them out. Matt and Mike look up at the speakers, then grin at each other and call over to my dad, “Surround sound — awesome setup, Mr. Loski!”

All the adults were dying to jump up and turn the thing down, but Lynetta stood guard and just glowered at them. And when the song’s over, Lynetta pulls out the CD, punches off the player, and then smiles — actually smiles — at Matt and Mike and says, “That is the raddest song. I want to hear it again and again and again.”

Matt-or-Mike says to my dad, “You probably don’t like it, but it’s what we do.”

“You boys wrote that song?”

“Uh-huh.”

He motions Lynetta to pass the CD over, saying, “Just the one song?”

Matt-or-Mike laughs and says, “Dude, we’ve got a thousand songs, but there’s only three on the demo.”

Dad holds up the CD. “This is the demo?”

“Yeah.”

He looks at it a minute and says, “So if you’re Piss Poor, how do you afford to press CDs?”

“Dad!” Lynetta snaps at him.

“It’s okay, Lyn. Just a joke, right, Mr. Loski?”

My dad laughs a little and says, “Right,” but then adds, “Although I am a little curious. This is obviously not a home-done demo, and I happen to know studio time’s cost-prohibitive for most bands….”

Matt and Mike interrupt him with a slamming hard high five. And while I’m getting uptight about my dad asking them questions about money, of all things, my mom’s fumbling all over herself, trying to sweep away my dad’s big pawprints. “When Rick and I met, he was playing in a band….”

Poached salmon was suddenly swimming down the wrong hatch. And while I’m choking, Lynetta’s bugging out her raccoon eyes, gasping, “ You? Played in a band ? What did you play, clarinet?”

“No, honey,” my mom says, trying to hold it all together. “Your father played guitar.”

“Guitar?”

“Cool!” Matt-or-Mike says. “Rock? Country? Jazz?”

“Country,” my dad says. “Which is nothing to scoff at, boys.”

“Dude! We know. Total respect, man.”

“And when our band looked into getting a demo made, it was astronomically expensive. That was in a big city, where there was a little competition. Getting a demo made around here? I didn’t even know there was a facility.”

Matt and Mike are still grinning. “There’s not.”

“So where’d you go? And how’d you afford it?” My mother whacks him under the table again, so he says, “I’m just curious, Patsy!”

Matt and Mike lean in. “We did it ourselves.”

“This right here? You did this yourselves? That’s impossible.” He’s looking almost mad about it. “How’d you get the gear?”

My mom kicks him again, but Dad turns on her and says, “Stop it, would you? I’m just curious!”

Matt-or-Mike says, “It’s cool, Mrs. Loski.” He smiles at my dad and says, “We kept cruising the Internet and the trades looking for a deal. Everyone’s blowing out their old analog gear for digital because that’s the move everyone else has made. Digital, if you want to know our opinion, is weak . You lose too much of the waveform. There’s not enough fat to it, and obviously we like it beefy.”

My granddad puts up a finger and says, “But a CD’s digital, so… ”

“Exactly, but that is the last and only step we’ll compromise on. It’s just a necessity of being part of the industry. Everyone wants CDs. But the multitrack and the mixdown to two-track is analog. And we could afford it, Mr. Loski, because we got used gear and we’ve been saving up our pennies since we were twelve years old.” He grins and says, “You still play? We could, you know, lay down some of your tunes if you want.”

My dad looks down, and for a second I couldn’t tell if he was going to get mad or cry. Then he sort of snorts and says, “Thanks, but that’s not me anymore.”

Which was probably the only honest thing my dad said all night. After that he was quiet. He’d try to plaster up a smile now and then, but man, underneath it he was broody. And I was feeling kind of bad for him. Was he thinking about the good old days playing in a band? I tried picturing him in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, with a guitar strapped across his shoulder, playing some old Willie Nelson song.