Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs (7 page)

As we wandered in he said, “Find a workbench and sit down, please, please sit down.”

Our workbenches were long desks of pale wood that sat three people each. A long, low cubby that held a collection of electronic equipment studded with fancy dials and meters rose up on one side. The classroom filled up slowly.

There were thirteen boys and two girls. The other girl besides me was one of those girls who boys paid attention to, even though if you looked at each of her features they were nothing special. In the Chelsea de Guzman mode, she was skinny and had long dark blond hair, round blue eyes, and a snub nose. She wore extra low-rise jeans and an oversized newsboy hat that engulfed her head. Like most of us, she might as well have been wearing a sign that said: I AM HERE AGAINST MY WILL. She sat down at the workbench in front of me and started text-messaging someone.

The teacher, Mr. Lawndale, wore a red and blue plaid shirt that already had dark sweat rings in the armpits. He was talking to some mom at the front of the room. He had his hand on one hip and kept shoving his glasses up on his nose with the other. The mom was explaining something, and Mr. Lawndale frowned. Then he said, a little too loud: “Look, if your kid
doesn't want to be here, I don't want him here either. I don't need it, I simply don't need it!”

Aren't teachers supposed to be happy and full of love for their profession on the first day of class?

I traded glances with the boy sitting next to me. He must have been having the same sort of thought. He was a little taller than me, with long dark bangs that hung in his eyes and freckles all over his nose. When Mr. Lawndale took roll call, shouting out our first and last names, I learned his name was Bryce Duncan. If I didn't already think Kevin was the cutest boy I knew, I might think that way about Bryce Duncan.

Mr. Lawndale stood behind the exploded toaster table at the front of the room and began with a speech on the importance of learning the fundamentals, but then he went off on resistors and transistors and the ubiquitous NE555 timer integrated circuit and the PIC microcontrollers. He talked about commonplace components, LEDs and switches and batteries. I don't know what he was talking about, but I don't think they were fundamentals, I think they were topics meant to make him look smart and us look dirt-dumb. He had an impatient tone, as if we were all asking one stupid question after the next, even though no one had said a word. The air-conditioning whirred on. I was relieved, because Mr. Lawndale was perspiring like a man about to be found guilty.

“The only way you can possibly
possibly
have a chance at understanding electricity is to think of it as water in a pipe,” he said. “Voltage is the water and the amplitude is the water pressure.”

My glance wandered over to Bryce Duncan. I noticed he had small moles dotting his arms. He was wearing a black AC/DC T-shirt that had been washed so often it had turned dark gray. I wondered why he was here, whether basic electronics was something he had an interest in, or whether his parents were worried that he would become a juvenile delinquent over the summer unless he had Something To Do.

He reached into his front jeans pocket and fished out a pack of Big Red gum. He looked over just at that moment and saw me watching. “Now longer lasting fresh breath.”

“I don't have bad breath!” I said. Mark Clark was an Altoid freak. He ate—and offered—so many Altoids the dentist told him if he didn't lay off he would have fresh breath but no teeth.

Bryce Duncan blushed beneath his freckles. “Naw, I just … that's what the stupid ads say.”

“Oh, right.” I laughed.

The pretty girl, who sat kitty-corner from us, turned around and looked at Bryce Duncan.

Suddenly, I noticed that Mr. Lawndale had fallen silent. He stood at the front of the room with his hands on his hips, glaring around the classroom. At first I
thought Bryce Duncan and I were going to get busted for talking, but I looked around the classroom and saw that my classmates were all either stealth text-messaging beneath the desk, or dozing, or fiddling with the electronic equipment. We were one large fifteen-headed organism of Not Paying Attention.

“All right,” said Mr. Lawndale. “Fine. I am here to meet your needs, am I not? You need to see what electricity can do, am I right? This is all just boring twaddle, am I right?”

We glanced around. He was being phony nice, that was for sure.

“Take out your breadboards.”

Breadboards?

He sighed, reached over into the cubby on the desk nearest the front and pulled out a flat white rectangle the size of a paperback book. Rows of tiny holes ran down each side, with a blank strip in between. Someone asked why they called it a breadboard.

Mr. Lawndale sighed again. “Well, what does it look like to you?”

No one said anything.

“Why, it holds the components,” said Mr. Lawndale. “You do know what components are, right? Without our handy breadboards, you'd be forced to wrap the wires around each of the capacitor's legs. How inconvenient is that?”

There was a small storage cabinet on each bench, and from that we were told to find something called a capacitor. It looked like a flattened pencil eraser with two wires sticking out from under it, like legs. Bryce Duncan made his walk around the table a little, as if it was a little alien bug.

Mr. Lawndale then instructed us to plug our capacitor into the breadboard, followed by the red wire and the black wire issuing from the power supply box on our workbench.

“Keep in mind what I said earlier about the important rules of positive and negative electricity,” brayed Mr. Lawndale.

Just as I was thinking that maybe basic electronics wasn't so bad, there was the first big snap, followed by another and another.
Crack! Crack!
It was the sound of firecrackers going off, but there were no firecrackers. The sleepiest, most distracted kids jumped, startled. The newsboy hat girl shrieked.

Each and every one of our alien bug capacitors was exploding. They weren't big explosions, but they were loud. The room filled with a strange smell: melted plastic and peanut butter–scented smoke. The moment after the last capacitor blew there was a half second of silence, during which one boy with an Afro said, “Now that rocks.”

Mr. Lawndale said, “That rocks?
That rocks?
No, my
friend, that does not rock. That is called an exploding capacitor. That is called a sure way to blow your empty heads clean off. That is called what happens when you're not listening. Did even one of you pay attention to the rules of positive and negative electricity? Was anyone at all listening when I said that you must
always
place the long leg of the capacitor into the positive side of the breadboard, which would be the side with the
red
wire?”

Even though the exploding capacitors were sort of cool, we got the point. The fifteen-headed organism figured that it would be good to pay attention after all, but then irritable Mr. Lawndale, who clearly hated us and needed to find a new career, maybe one in which he does not work with children, threw away his chance at gaining our respect.

He said, “When it comes to electricity, you need to focus or someone will lose an eye.”

Then, if Bryce Duncan didn't pipe up: “It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it's just fun!”

Even though it's an old joke, we started laughing. I felt sorry for Mr. Lawndale, even though he was sort of awful. He had no choice but to stand at the front of the room and push his glasses up on his nose over and over again until we decided to calm down.

The moment class was dismissed I popped on my Bluetooth and phoned Chelsea. Kids streamed out of the
building around me into the sunlight. The newsboy hat girl swung off down the street in the direction of Pioneer Place, a fancy downtown mall that Chelsea favors. Bryce Duncan's mom picked him up right out front, in one of those MINI Coopers, red with a black top. I stood on the sidewalk and watched them roar away, waiting for Chelsea to pick up.

“Hey, Minerva,” said Chelsea. There was so much noise I could hardly hear her.

“Listen, do you remember whether Sylvia was on the plane with you?”

In the background, I could hear a man's voice and a woman's voice, and the sound of something sliding.

“I didn't see her. But we were in first class, so you don't really see the other people on the plane. They're like all in the back.”

“During the flight did your dad mention the diamond?”

“I thought I told you, I didn't know until after we got back that he'd replaced the glass stone with the diamond. It was news to me. So like duh, Minerva.”

“No need to go all attitude on me, Chelsea. I was just trying to figure out how Sylvia knew to ask to see the ring. It wasn't just a coincidence, you know?”

“Plus, she was in line ahead of me at Coffee People. How did she know I'd get in line there?”

“Exactly,” I said. “So, did you notice her after you
got off the plane? She must have heard you tell your mom you wanted a latte.”

“We were in the bathroom when I told my mom I wanted to stop at Coffee People.”

“And you said those words? You said, ‘Can we stop at Coffee People?' Not like, ‘I'd like to get a latte'?”

“No, I said I wanted to stop at Coffee People. We were at the sinks washing our hands. I remember. And there were lots of people around us, people coming in and out. She could have been in there, easily. She could have heard me tell my mom I wanted to go to Coffee People, then gotten a head start and slipped in line before me.”

Now we were getting somewhere. I was walking faster and faster, not sure where I was going. I could feel the day warming up, the sun beating down on my head. I passed a store that specialized in clothes from Ireland, then a jewelry store. I stopped and looked into the window at a diamond ring on display. It was just a plain old white diamond, not a rare red one like ours. I felt a twirl of excitement, wondering what would happen next.

I realized Chelsea hadn't said anything for a few seconds, as if she were preoccupied. Through the phone, I could still hear background sounds. I put my finger in my ear so I could hear better. Footsteps on a hard floor. A man with an accent saying, “May I help you, miss?” Then Chelsea said, “I'm looking for a diamond? A red one? Maybe someone brought it in like yesterday?”

The man laughed like Santa. “Ho ho ho! I've never seen a red diamond in all my days, and don't expect to. Did you lose one, miss? Ho ho ho.”

“Chelsea!”
I shrieked into the phone.

“What?” she asked, a trace of annoyance in her voice.

“What are you doing? Where are you?”

“At a pawn shop.”

“What are you doing at a pawn shop?”

“I was next door at the nail place getting a pedicure and I thought how a lot of times in movies people pawn stuff, and I thought maybe that Sylvia chick pawned it. I thought I would check it out.”

“Sylvia did not pawn it, Chelsea.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it's worth a ton of money. Because it wasn't a coincidence that Sylvia just happened to admire your Claire's ring. Somehow, she knew that center stone was valuable.”

Then Chelsea must have turned back to the man with the accent, because I heard her say, “If I leave you my number? And anyone comes in with a red diamond could you like call me?”

“A red diamond?” said the man. “You are missing a red diamond?” Even through the phone I could hear new interest in his voice.

“
Chelsea!”

“
What?!”

“What are you doing? Don't you know that if Sylvia or someone connected to Sylvia shows up with a red diamond he's just going to keep it?”

“I thought you said she would never pawn it.”

“Chelsea, the point is, don't go around blabbing about this. The more people you talk to about this, the more people will be interested in finding it.”

I heard a little bell, then the whoosh of a door opening. “You're being a paranoid freak, Minerva.”

“This is how you solve a mystery, Chelsea.”

“That's right. I forgot. You caught the girl who murdered that bookstore clerk and now you're all Nancy Drew Jr.”

“I also cracked that identity theft ring,” I said.

“Oh, excuse me. Next you'll have your own TV show.”

“Look, do you want me to help you or not?”

“I want you to stop treating me like I'm some kind of an airhead idiot. Jeez.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. I didn't dare point out that airhead idiot was what they call redundant. It was like saying tuna fish; tuna already
is
a fish.

“I'm just in so much trouble, Minerva! My dad didn't ground me off the computer or anything. He just doesn't look at me or talk to me. And this morning he said the worst thing ever—he said he was
disappointed
in me. It's so much better when they're just mad and being unfair.”

“Yeah, I know.” There really was nothing worse than when the parents played the I'm-just-so-disappointed-in-you card. “Have you told him we're trying to find it?”

She snorted. “
Right.
He'd think we were so totally lame. He had just about everyone on the planet looking for it at the airport and of course they couldn't find it. This morning he called his insurance guy to see if he could file a claim or something. I feel so terrible.”

“Well, I'm going over to Sylvia's again, if you want to meet me,” I said.

“What are you going to do there?” asked Chelsea. Her voice sounded flat and depressed.

“I don't know. I'll figure it out when I get there.”

The thing was, I felt terrible, too. The ten minutes' worth of fun I'd had sitting next to a cute guy in basic electronics and blowing up the capacitor was over, and now I was facing a mystery I couldn't solve, a friend whose dad was “disappointed” in her, an almost-boyfriend who hadn't called me from Montana like he'd promised, and a visit from my mom that was sure to be totally weird.