Things Not Seen (13 page)

Alicia makes a face. “What's that?”

Dad's looking over Leo's shoulder, and he says, “The schematic diagram shows the electrical details—it's like a map of how the electricity flows, and it shows impedance and resistance, the voltage at different points, any motors or capacitors, transformers or resistors, things like that.” One of Dad's degrees is in electrical engineering.

Alicia nods, and I can tell from her face that she's into the spirit of the hunt, tilting her head to listen as Dad starts rooting through the kitchen junk drawer.

With a little “Aha!” he grabs a small screwdriver set and says, “I think we have everything now.”

Then Mom and Mrs. Van Dorn come down the back stairs with the blanket, and we all follow Dad back to the front parlor, me still lugging the oscilloscope.

Alicia's father studies the diagram while Dad unscrews the metal bottom of the blanket controller. He looks up and says, “Em, would you plug in the scope?” So I help Mom get the cover off the oscilloscope and find the power cord.

Mrs. Van Dorn says, “What are you looking for, Leo?”

Her husband glances up from the diagram. “Flaws. We want to see if this controller unit is working right. Because if it's not, it could be generating an unusual field.”

“A field?”

He looks back at the diagram, nodding. “Electric blankets always create an electron field of some sort, because you can't run power through ten or twelve yards of wire without causing an electromagnetic disturbance. The question is, what kind of disturbance, and what magnitude?”

Mrs. Van Dorn nods, and I can't tell from her face if she followed all that or not.

Dad's got the screws out and lifts the metal bottom off the blanket controller. Then he picks up two probes hooked onto wires coming from the front of the oscilloscope, a red one and a black one. He fiddles with a dial and flips some switches, pokes the pointers down into the guts of the controller, looks at the scope, looks at the diagram, frowns, and then touches something else. Except for the hum of the green cathode tube, it's quiet.

Alicia says, “What's going on?”

I whisper, “My dad's poking around with these wires that are hooked to the machine I found in the basement. He's testing the electrical parts of my electric blanket control.” I see Alicia's fingers tremble, sensing the tension in the room. Dad yelps and we both jump.

“Ha!” Dad is pointing at the screen. “See that?”

Leo squints. “What?”

“This resistor is way outside its parameters. It's letting about six times too much power through!”

Mom says, “What's it mean?”

“Not sure yet. Bobby, have you noticed this blanket being hotter than normal?”

“Nope. Works same as always.”

“Hmm.” Dad makes a note on the sheet, then starts poking around again.

“Dad?” I'm speaking softly.

“Umm…yes?” Dad's looking at the diagram every few seconds.

“So…you're checking every part? Like, to see what's not working?”

Dad doesn't answer until he makes another note. “…Yes, looking for anything unusual.”

I turn to Dr. Van Dorn. “And when you saw the blanket on my list, was it, like, the idea of force fields just jumped out at you?”

Alicia's dad nods, his lips pressed tightly together. His eyes don't leave the diagram, and he taps the sheet and says, “Get a reading on this rheostat, David. If the dial's out of alignment, that could double or triple the current getting past.”

Dad shakes his head. “I want to check the throughput reactance first.”

I say, “Reactance? Is that like resistance?”

Dad shakes his head. “Different principle.”

Then I get an idea. “Hey, Dr. Van Dorn—should we check out the other stuff on my nightstand? There's an old phone, and a digital alarm clock too. I mean, they sit right there on the table, right next to the blanket controller. Do you think maybe they're throwing off electrical fields too? Like maybe they're affecting the blanket controller? I could run upstairs and get them—Dad, do you think we should test them too?”

Neither of them answer me.

I look at Dad. He squints and touches the probes to a different pair of contacts inside the controller. He glances at the diagram and says, “Leo? Take a look at the value for that third resistor—is that a two or a five?”

Alicia's dad bends closer to the schematic. “Five. Definitely.” So Dad nods and moves the probes again.

He's forgotten I'm in the room. Dad's off in science land with his pal the professor.

I feel my face getting hot, feel my jaw muscles tighten. I clench my teeth, biting back the anger. Because inside my head, I'm yelling at them, at both of them.
Hey! Excuse me…WHO had the idea that the answer wasn't off in theoryville, that the place to begin was at the scene of the crime? What's that? That was MY idea? Well, what do you know! And guess what? If you'd talk and LISTEN, maybe I have other ideas too. Or does that sound like science fiction to such big geniuses?

A minute goes by, and I've got myself back under control. I'm not shouting in my head now, but I'm thinking,
Who needs this? I'm supposed to just stand around and be part of their audience? I don't think so
.

I glance at Alicia. She's not having such a great time either.

So I say, “Hey, Alicia, wanna get some more ice cream? They'll let us know if anything exciting happens, right, Dad?” I see Alicia's smile flicker when I say that. Alicia understands sarcasm, even the subtle kind.

Dad doesn't know I've made a little joke. He nods distractedly and says, “Sure…you bet.”

So we leave the science guys in the parlor with no one but their adoring wives to cheer them on.

I yank open the freezer. “Mint chocolate chip or black raspberry?”

Alicia wrinkles her nose. “How about you count to ten and then ask me again—without snarling.”

I laugh, but only a little. “Okay. How's this: Miss, would you prefer mint chocolate chip or black raspberry?”

Alicia pretends to flirt with me. She bats her eyelashes, tilts her head, and says, “Which do
you
prefer?”

“Definitely the raspberry.”

She smiles and says, “Then I'll have mint chocolate chip so you can have an extra-big dish of your favorite.”

By the time we get to the couch in the family room, I'm cured. I can get back to being mad some other time. Right now, I'm just glad to be with Alicia.

I hit the remote and start flipping through the channels. When I get to AMC, Alicia says, “Stop there! I love this movie!”

It's
The King and I
, the original one with the bald guy and all the singing and dancing.

I watch and Alicia listens, and then I ask, “What's it like, just hearing it?”

“Better than you'd think. But that's because I used to love this movie when I was little. I watched it about twenty times. I'm in replay mode.”

“So, do you see it in color?”

“Yup. And I can see the lady's dresses, and the little things the kids wear up on the top of their heads, the whole thing. I mean, I see what I can remember, and I probably add stuff of my own. And when they almost kiss, that part gets me—I always wished the king would just grab her and give her a big kiss.”

“How about other movies, ones you haven't seen?”

She shakes her head. “It's not so bad if I have an idea what the story's about. It's like a radio play with music that's too loud. When I can listen to a movie I've seen, that's the best. Like
Titanic
. I can see the whole thing. But for new stories, now I like books better. Then I get to make up the movie in my head. And it's weird, about people I saw in movies a couple of years ago? Like, I'm never going to see Brad Pitt get old. He's stuck in my mind from about three years ago. He could keep acting till he's eighty, but when I listen to a Brad Pitt movie, I'm always going to see him as the little brother from
A River Runs Through It
. Don't you think that's neat?”

She puts a last spoonful of ice cream in her mouth.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Alicia's quiet a minute, and I watch her face. It's the part of the movie where the kids are putting on the play of
Uncle Tom's Cabin
. And I'm wondering what she really sees. There's this peaceful smile on her lips, and I think that maybe it's like she's in the movie herself, now sitting at the dinner table, now running around on the stage with the kids. I don't think I could ever get tired of watching her face.

She shifts expression and tilts her face toward me. “You're staring at me, aren't you?”

I feel myself blush. “No.”

“Liar. It's okay. I don't mind having you stare.”

I gulp. I don't know what to say, but I don't want to sound flustered, so I say, “Another question: What do you see when you think of me? What do I look like in your mind?…Brad Pitt?”

Now she's blushing too, a shy smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I don't know. I know you're taller than I am. I know you have a nice smile—because I can hear a smile. It's something you can't fake. But I don't know. I mean, like, I don't know if your nose is big or not, I don't know if you've got brown hair or blond hair, stuff like that.” She pauses. “And I guess it doesn't matter. I really haven't been thinking about how you might look. It's more like…a feeling I have about you. I know you're honest, and smart. And kind, at least most of the time.”

“Don't forget loyal and trustworthy—you've got me sounding like the perfect Boy Scout.” I'm choosing words carefully. “But…don't you wonder what would've happened if you hadn't been blind, and I was my regular self, and we just met somewhere—like that day at the library, except we were both just high school kids?”

“What do you think?”

“I don't know. You said you were pretty popular before. The popular kids at my school don't even know I'm alive.”

“How come?”

“Because I'm just average, and they're all good looking or rich, or both, or super athletes or something.”

“Do you really think you're average? I'd never think that, not after getting to know you.”

“But that's what I mean. At school you'd have never gotten to know me. I'm one of those kids you wouldn't have looked at twice. I'd just be this idiot who bashes into you at the door of the library one day, and all your popular friends would point and say, ‘Hey—way to go, dorkness!'”

The movie is loud, a full orchestra playing while Anna and the king of Siam twirl around and around a wide, shiny floor. But Alicia is facing me, a foot away, and I can't tell what she's thinking. And I don't know if I should be talking to her this way.

“But you're judging them at the same time you accuse them of judging you. It's like you've got a prejudice against the popular kids, and you assume they have a bad attitude toward you.”

“I'm not assuming anything. I'm talking about experience. You can tell if someone thinks you're nothing. Like, just a few weeks ago, I'm walking toward this beautiful girl named Jessica in the hall, and I smile and look at her, and her face doesn't change, her eyes don't connect with me, nothing. It's like she looks right through me, like I'm not even there.”

Alicia's eyebrows shoot up. “Hmm…she looked right through you, eh? Like you weren't even there? Interesting way to describe your old life, don't you think?”

In the movie, the young girl who's run away from the palace has been captured, and now she's on her knees before the king, waiting for her death sentence.

I see what Alicia's saying, but I'm not going to get sucked into some stupid psychobabble session. So I just clam up, sit back, and look at the TV.

Alicia senses I've turned away, so she lets the conversation drop.

We're still sitting there twenty minutes later when her mom comes in.

“Alicia? Time to go now.”

Alicia stands up and takes her mom's elbow. “Did they get the blanket figured out?”

I tense up because that's an important question right now. Mrs. Van Dorn pauses. It's just a half second, but that pause tells me everything.

She says, “I'm not sure. You'll have to ask your dad about that. Bobby, it was nice to visit. You have a lovely home…and I'm sure everything is going to work out all right for you.”

I'm standing too, facing Mrs. Van Dorn. I say, “Thanks,” but I don't mean it. I don't mean it because I don't believe what she said—that “everything is going to work out all right.” That's just something parents say. It's something they say at bedtime so you won't lie awake worrying all night like they do. They
hope
things will work out okay, and they might even
believe
things will be all right in the end, but are they sure, really sure? And when I look at Dad's face and see the strained way he shakes hands and says good night to Alicia's dad, I know I'm right. No one knows anything. It's all guesswork.