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 brothers’ 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 guitars 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 has 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 about how great “Candle Ice” was. She was positively gushing, which seemed very odd, coming from Lynetta.

As I looked around, it struck me that we were having dinner with a group of strangers. We’d lived across the street for years, but I didn’t know these people at all. Lynetta did know how to smile. Mr. Loski was clean and smooth on the outside, but there was a distinct whiff of something rotten buried just beneath the surface. And the ever-efficient Mrs. Loski seemed flustered, almost hyper. Was it having us over that was making her nervous?

Then there was Bryce—the most disturbing of all because I had to admit that I didn’t really know him, either. And based on what I’d discovered lately, I didn’t care to know any more. Looking across the table at him, all I got was a strange, detached, neutral feeling. No fireworks, no leftover anger or resurging flutters.

Nothing.

After we’d had dessert and it was time to go, I went up to Bryce and told him I was sorry for having been so fierce when we’d first come in. “I should’ve let you apologize, and really, it was very nice of your family to have us over. I know it was a lot of work and, well, I think my mom had a really good time and that’s what matters to me.” We were looking right at each other, but it was almost as though he didn’t hear me. “Bryce? I said I’m sorry.”

He nodded, and then our families were waving good-bye and saying good night.

I walked behind my mother, who was holding hands with my father, and beside my brothers, who were carrying home what was left of our pies. We all wound up in the kitchen, and Matt poured himself a glass of milk and said to Mike, “That Mr. Loski was sniffing us out pretty good tonight, wasn’t he?”

“No kidding. Maybe he thinks we’re hot for his daughter.”

“Not me, dude! You?”

Mike got himself a glass of milk, too. “That’s Skyler’s gig. No way I’d go there.” He grinned. “But she was really cool tonight. Did she come down on papa bear or what?”

My dad took a paper plate out of the cupboard and cut a slice of pie. “You boys showed a lot of restraint tonight. I don’t know if I could’ve kept my cool that way.”

“Aw, he’s just, you know… entrenched,” Matt said. “Gotta adjust to the perspective and deal from there.” Then he added, “Not that I’d want him as my dad….”

Mike practically sprayed his milk. “Dude! Can you imagine?” Then Matt gave my dad a slap on the back and said, “No way. I’m sticking with my main man here.” My mom grinned from across the kitchen and said, “Me too.”

I’d never seen my father cry. And he didn’t exactly sit there bawling, but there were definitely tears welling up in his eyes. He blinked them back the best he could and said, “Don’t you boys want some pie to go with that milk?”

“Dude,” said Matt as he straddled a chair. “I was just thinking that.”