The Dinner

By Wendelin Van Draneen

By the time I got home, I knew it would be selfish of me to boycott the Loskis' dinner party. My mother had already spent a lot of time humming over pie recipes and going through her closet for "something suitable to wear." She'd even bought a new shirt for Dad and had scrutinized what the boys intended to wear. Obviously she was looking forward to the dinner —— not that I really understood that, but I didn't want to ruin everything by telling her about my newfound hatred of Bryce.

And Dad felt bad enough about David already. The last thing he needed was to hear about crackpot comments made by immature eighth graders.

So that night I went through the motions of bakind pies with my mother and convinced myself that I was doing the right thing. One dinner couldn't change andone's life. I just had to get through it.

Friday at school I avoided the blue-eyed brat the best I could, but that night as I got dressed, I found myself staring at the painting my father had given me and became furious all over again. Bryce had never been a friend to me, ever! He hadn't made a stand for the tree, he'd thrown away my eggs, and he'd made fun of me at my uncle's expense... Why was I playing along like we were jolly friends and neighbors?

When my mother called that it was time to go, I went out in the hall with every intention of telling her that I would not, could not go to the Loskis' for dinner, but she looked so lovely and happy that I could't. I just couldn't. I took a deep breath, wrapped up a pie, and shuffled across the street behind my brothers and parents.

Chet answered the door. Maybe I should've been mad at him, too, for telling the Loskis about my uncle, but I wasn't. I hadn't asked him not to tell, and he certanly wans't the one making fun of David.

Mrs. Loski came up behind Chet, whisked us in, and fluttered about. And even though she had quite a bit of makeup on, I was surprised to see the blueness of bags beneath her eyes. Then Mrs. Loski and my mother went off with the pies, my brothers vanished down the hall with Lynetta, and my father followed Chet into the living room.

And wasn't that just dandy? That left me alone in the foyer with Bryce.

He said hi to me and I lost it. I spun on him, snapping, "Don't you speak to me! I overheard you and Garrett in the library, and I don't want to talk to you now or ever!"

I started to walk into the living room, but he stopped me. "Juli! Juli, wait!" he whispered. "I'm not the bad guy here! That was Garrett. That was all Garrett!"

I glared at him. "I know what I heard."

"No! No you don't! I... I was feeling bad about, you know, the eggs and what I'd said about your yard. I didn't know anything about your uncle or what kind of situation your family was in, okay? I just wanted to talk to someone about it."

Our eyes locked for a minute, and for the first time the blueness of his didn't freeze up my brain. "I heard you laugh. He made a joke about me being a retard, and you laughed."

"Juli, you don't understand. I wanted to punch him! Really, I did! But we were in the library..."

"So instead you laughed."

He shrugged and looked miserable and sheepish. "Yeah."

I left him. Just walked into the living room and left him. If he was making it up, he was quite an actor. If he was telling the truth, then Chet was right —— he was a coward. Either way, I didn't want to be anywhere near him.

I stood beside my father and tried to follow his discussion with Chet about something they'd both read in the paper. My father was saying, "But what he's proposing would require a perpetual-motion machine, so it's not possible."

Chet replied, "Maybe in the context of what scientists know now, but do you rule it out completely?"

At that moment I was feeling absolutely no scientific curiosity. But in a desperate attempt to block Bryce Loski from my mind, I asked, "What's a perpetual-motion machine?"

My father and Chet glanced at each other, chuckled, then shrugged, giving me the sense that they'd just agreed to let me into a secret club. My father explained, "It's a machine that runs without any external power source."

"No electricity, no fuel, no water propulsion, nothing." Chet glanced over my shoulder and asked rather absently, "You think that's a doable thing?"

What had distracted him? Was Bryce still in the foyer? Why didn't he just go away?

I forced myself to focus on the conversation. "Do I think that's a doable thing? Well, I don't really know. All machines use energy, right? Even real efficient ones. And that energy has to come from somewhere..."

"What if the machine generated it itself?" Chet asked, but one eye was still on the foyer.

"How could it do that?"

Neither of them answered me. Instead, my father stuck out his hand and said, "Good evening, Rick. Nice of you to have us over."

Mr. Loski pumped my dad's hand and joined our group, making little comments about the weather. When that topic was all dried up, he said, "And wow, that yard of yours has really come along. I told Chet here that we ought to hire him out. He really knows his pickets, doesn't he?"

He was joking. I think. But my father didn't take it that way, and neither did Chet. I was afraid of what might happen next, but then Mrs. Loski tinkled a little dinner bell and called, "Hors d'oeuvres, everybody!"

"The hors d'oeuvres were delicious. But when my father whispered that the teeny-tiny black berries on top of the crackers weren't berries at all, but caviar, I stopped midbite. Fish eggs? Repulsive?

Then my father pointed out that I ate chicken eggs all the time, so why get squeamish over fish eggs? He had a point. I hesitantly finished the cracker, and before long I was having another.

Bryce was standing all by himself across the room, and every time I happened to look his way, he was staring at me.

Finally I completely turned my back on him and said to my father, "So who's trying to invent a perpetual-motion machine, anyway?"

My father laughed. "Mad scientists all over the world."

"Really?"

"Yes. For hundreds of years."

"Well, what do they do? What's one look like?"

It wasn't long before Chet was in on the discussion. And just as I was finally starting to catch on to magnetism, gyroscopic particles, and zero-point energy, I felt someone standing behind me.

It was Bryce.

I could feel my cheeks flush with anger. Couldn't he see I wanted to be left alone? I took a step away from him, but what that did was open up the group and allow him to move forward. Now he was standing in our circle listening to our discussion!

Well! Surely he was not interested in perpetual motion. I barely was myself! So, I reasoned, continuing our discussion would drive him away. I dove back in, and when the conversation started to peter out, I came up with my own ideas on perpetual-motion machines. I was like a perpetual-idea machine, spinning ridiculous suggestions right out of the air.

And still he wouldn't leave. He didn't say anything, he just stood there, listening. Then when Mrs. Loski announced that dinner was ready, Bryce held my arm and whispered, "Juli, I'm sorry. I've never been so sorry about anything in my whole life. You're right, I was a jerk, and I'm sorry."

I yanked my arm free from his grasp and said, "It seems to me you've been sorry about a whole lot of things lately!" and left him there with his apology hanging wounded in the air.

It didn't take me long to realize that I'd made a mistake. I should have let him say he was sorry and then simply continued to ignore him. But I'd snapped at him in the middle of an apology, which somehow made me the rude one.

I sneaked a peek at him across the table, but he was watching his dad, who was asking my brothers about graduating and their plans for college.

I had, of course, seen Mr. Loski many times, but usually from a distance. Still, it seemed impossible that I'd never noticed his eyes before. They were blue. Brilliant blue. And although Mr. Loski's were set farther back and were hidden somewhat by his eyebrows and cheekbones, there was no mistaking where Bryce had gotten his eyes. His hair was black, too, like Bryce's, and his teeth were white and straight.

Even though Chet had called Bryce the spitting image of his father, I'd never really thought of them as looking alike. But now I saw that they did look alike, though where his dad seemed kind of smug, Bryce seemed... well, right now he seemed angry.

Then from the other side of the table, I heard, "Your sarcasm is not appreciated, Dad."

Mrs. Loski gave a small gasp, and everyone looked at Lynetta. "Well, it's not," she said.

In all the years we've lived across the street from the Loskis, I've said about ten words to Lynetta, and she's said fewer back. To me she's scary. So it wasn't a surprise to see her glaring at her father, but it was uncomfortable. Mrs. Loski was keeping a smile perched on her face, but she was blinking a lot, glancing nervously around the table. I looked from one person to the next, too, wondering if dinner at the Loskis' was always this tense.

Suddenly Lynetta got up and dashed down the hall, but she was back in a flash with a CD in her hand. And when she put it in the player, I recognized one of my brothers' songs blaring through the speakers.

We'd heard this song, "Candle Ice," pouring out of my brother' bedroom at least a million times, so we were used to it. But I looked over at my mom, worried that she might be embarrassed by the distorting guitar and the gritty lyrics. This was definitely not caviar music.

She seemed a little uncertain, but in a happy way. She was sharing secret smiles with my father, and honestly, I think she even giggled. My dad was looking amused, although he was very reserved about it, and it took me until the end of the song to realize that he was proud. Proud that this noise came from his boys.

That surprised me. Dad had never been real big on any rendition of my brothers' band, although he's never really criticized it either. But then Mr. Loski started grilling Matt and Mike about how they'd afforded to record their own music, and they explained about working and saving and shopping for good deals on equipment, and that's when I realized why my father was proud.

My brothers were feeling pretty good, too, you could tell. And it was no wonder, with the way Lynetta was carrying on table how great "Candle Ice" was. she was positively gushing, which seemed very odd, coming from Lynetta.