Karl hesitates, still not sure he should trust Mr. Hightower.
“That’s all right, Karl. Whatever it was, I salute you- because now I can go back to teaching biology until I retire, and I won’t have to worry that the school will fall into a maniac’s hands.”
Shyly, the principal shakes Karl’s hand. He smells very clean, in an old-fashioned way, like a bar of soap from a bygone era.
“You have my admiration, and my sincere apologies. I wish I could have helped you more.”
“So do I. But I’m okay now.”
The principal takes his leave. The brown suit passes the Fretz house, the Santangelos, the Carneys, and turns the corner. There’s something extremely unusual about this man, but Karl can’t put his finger on it.
Or-yes, he can. Mr. Hightower came here on foot.
An odd person. But probably a good biology teacher. Karl hopes so, anyway.
When he calls to invite Lizette to Swivel Brook Park, she answers, “Why?”
The tone is key here. Why? can be a straightforward question, but more often it’s a challenge: what you just said doesn’t make sense, so you’d better give me a good reason (and I don’t think you can).
Lizette’s Why has more teasing than insult in it. This is how it’s been between them since that stumble at the school’s front door. She has given up on him ever kissing her, it seems. Instead of waiting and hoping, or doing the kissing herself, she makes fun of him.
“There’s something I want to show you,” he replies.
“In the park, in the dark? Doesn’t sound like something my daddy would approve of.”
“Will you please just come with me?”
“I guess. I can’t say no to you.”
She picks him up after dinner, in her father’s station wagon. She’s wearing a Rutgers football jersey and her old Devil Rays cap, and the car has a chaotic pile of sporting goods in the back. Karl makes another of his resolutions on the way to the park: if the Turtle works, and she appreciates it-if she says something like, Karl, this is amazing-then he’ll kiss her right then and there. No more fear and hesitation. Just a kiss, period.
On the other hand, the likelihood of her praising him is about equal to the chance that green kangaroos will rain down from the sky.
He takes her through the wooden playground fortress where he once found a plastic space shuttle, his first memory. The sky is a pale, post-sunset blue; the trees are silhouettes. “You’re a mysterious person, Karl,” Lizette says.
“Mmph,” he replies.
The gravel path leads them to the stream. Karl takes a seat on a bench under a lamppost, and she joins him. Some old guys with bats and mitts laugh as they leave the dark softball field.
Karl gazes at the flowing water, trying to influence Lizette to do the same. He’s waiting for her to notice what he brought her here to see, but she’s too preoccupied. Staring at her lap, she shakes her head and snorts unhappily.
“What did you want to show me?” she asks finally.
“You have to look at the water.”
She sees nothing unusual at first, just some ducks, tall grass, cattails, a couple of boulders. Farther downstream, the little waterfall makes a peaceful rushing sound.
Hold on, though.
One of the boulders in front of them isn’t gray-black but shiny blue, a reflection of the sky. There are small holes, regularly spaced, drilled into the smooth surface. A nubby black thing pops up on top.
“Is that the thing you were building in your garage?”
“Uh-huh.”
He reaches into his jacket and takes out a universal remote, the kind that can operate a TV, DVD player, and audio system. The buttons and their labels have all been painted black, except four: the Power button and three others, marked with little white symbols that Lizette interprets as a music note, a drop of water, and a complicated fishhook, upside down. (Or maybe it’s a very sparse tree, a sapling with droopy branches.)
“Go ahead,” Karl says, holding out the remote to her. “Turn it on.”
“It’s not gonna blow up the park, is it?”
“Probably not.”
She hesitates. “You should do it yourself. Since it’s the first time.”
“I’d like you to.”
She bends her head, and the visor of her cap covers her face-or, it would if Karl were in front of her. Even in the dim light, he can see that her cheek has turned red.
Accepting the remote, she says, “Here goes I don’t know what,” and presses Power.
Nothing happens.
“How do you know when it starts working?”
“You have to push the next button.”
“Oh. I thought it was a dud.”
She presses the button with the music note above it. A queer noise joins the quiet burble of the stream: a tremulous, flutelike hum. A moment later, the pulsating note deepens to a lower pitch-and then jumps to a higher one. The notes seem to change at random, but they all sound good.
“It’s the scale Debussy used in La Mer,” Karl explains. “The notes are all a whole tone apart.”
“You’re so bizarre, Karl.”
These are not the words he was hoping to hear.
“Press the next button.”
Expecting something water related-the little symbol is a droplet, after all-Lizette literally jumps off the bench when twenty thumb-size flames shoot from the metallic dome- bursting up and then shutting off, in the same rhythm as the musical notes.
“This is supposed to be a flame? It looks like a drop of water.”
They watch the jets of fire and listen to the music. Karl worries intensely that Lizette thinks his creation is stupid.
“Should I press the last button?”
“Go ahead.”
Expecting mechanical fish to leap from the water-why else the fishhook symbol?-she’s taken by surprise when several fine streams of water spray from the dome. Each arc begins below the flames and travels away from the dome, so the falling drops won’t put out the fire.
The symbol is a fountain, Lizette sees now-not an upside-down hook.
The yellow flames lend their color to the falling drops, turning them into moving necklaces of gold.
“So, is this what’s supposed to happen?”
“Pretty much.”
She watches the Turtle perform, torturing him by saying nothing. It was a mistake to bring her here, he decides. If she mocks his work, he won’t even be able to talk to her anymore, let alone kiss her.
“Are you allowed to tell me how it does all that? Or is it like a magic trick?”
“Most of the power comes from the current of the stream. And I used the basic mechanism of a vibraphone to give it that trembly sound. It’s hard to explain the machinery in words-but I can show you my sketches later if you want.”
She nods, taking in the sound and light. He dares to hope.
“If only,” she says, “you would use your genius for good and not evil.”
It’s a joke, not an insult-but you can’t call it admiration, either. He’s confused. Does she respect him, or does she think he’s a dork?
The Turtle plays a haunting, random melody. The little flames bend in the breeze. A mallard paddles up to watch the fountain drops patter on the brook, and returns to report to his friends and family. Karl almost comments on this- That must be where they got the name “Peeking Duck”-but decides not to break the silence.
Lizette lets the air out of her lungs, an extended sigh.
How long can two teenagers writhe in their separate turmoil before one of them explodes-or lets fly a tension-breaking comment like that duck pun? Pretty long, I’d say- but we’re not going to find out tonight, because an outside force intervenes, and that force’s name is Cara.
She has cut her hair to finger-length and thinned her bangs into parallel lines with her forehead showing through. “Wow,” she says, watching the Turtle perform. “So I guess it’s not a spy submarine after all.”