I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class (11 page)

 

 

(
Setting: a suburban kitchen. Time: late afternoon
)

 

(
Sound of someone licking the crème filling from Oreos, a window opening
)

 

LIZ TWOMBLEY
: Wow! Did you just come through the window?

THE MOTIVATOR
:
⁶²
No room is closed to me.

LIZ
: You’re funny looking.

MOTIVATOR
: Erm . . .

LIZ
: I’m sorry, that was rude. You’re not funny looking at all. I hardly noticed.

MOTIVATOR
: I suggest you drop out of the election for class president.

LIZ
: That’s so weird! I already almost
did
drop out, because there’s this boy who has this disease of fatness that’s killing him, but it turns out it wasn’t true.

MOTIVATOR
: I suggest you drop out—

LIZ
: But I don’t see how it’s not true, because he’s still totally fat.

MOTIVATOR
: (
coughs
) Erm . . . Really? I don’t think he’s fat.

LIZ
: Are you crazy? He’s huge!

MOTIVATOR
: Erm . . . no . . . I hear he looks powerful. Handsome.

LIZ
: Huh. I guess he’s kind of cute. Like one of those poison fish that blow up, if you could pet them. Do you want the cookie part of my Oreos? I only eat the stuf.

MOTIVATOR
: I suggest you drop out of the election for class president.

 

(
Sound of papers being taken out of an envelope
)

 

LIZ
: Oh my God! That’s me!

MOTIVATOR
: I suggest—

LIZ
: (
delighted laughter
) Dancing around in my jammies, singing into my hairbrush. I remember doing that! That is so embarrassing!

MOTIVATOR
: Yes, exactly. So, I sug—

LIZ
: You know what? If my friends saw these? How embarrassing would that be! Where did you get them? Can I get more?

MOTIVATOR
: We can make an unlimited supply of—

LIZ
: Oh my God! What if we blew them up, like, poster-size, and put them up all over school. That would be so embarrassing! (
Ten-second-long giggle fit
).

MOTIVATOR
: (
long pause
) Do you know what the word embarrassing means?

LIZ
: It means hilarious! Can I have these pictures?

MOTIVATOR
: Knock yourself out.

LIZ
: I’m going to be totally humiliated!

MOTIVATOR
: What if I was to offer you anything in the world if you agreed to drop out of the election?
⁶³

LIZ
: Anything?

MOTIVATOR
: Anything.

LIZ
: World Peace.

MOTIVATOR
: You can’t have that.

LIZ
: You said anything!

MOTIVATOR
: Besides that.

LIZ
: Mmm . . . a pet unicorn.

MOTIVATOR
(
urgently
): Permission to go to Phase Four! Please, give me permission to go to Phase Four!

LIZ
: Who are you talking to?

 

(
A beat of silence
)
⁶⁴

 

MOTIVATOR
: Damn it.

 

(
A beat of silence
)

 

LIZ
: This is getting boring.

MOTIVATOR
: Yeah, fine. I guess that’ll work. (
then, friendly
) Sorry, I should have told you before. I’m the doctor for the little boy who’s dying.

LIZ
: He is dying!

MOTIVATOR
: Yes. And the only thing that will cure him is if he wins the student-council election.

LIZ
: That makes sense.

MOTIVATOR
: The thing is, it won’t work if you tell anyone, even his parents. Do you understand?

 

(
Sirens in the distance
)

 

LIZ
: Sure. Don’t tell anybody.

MOTIVATOR
: Even his parents. Or you’ll kill—

 

(
Sirens get much louder
)

 

MOTIVATOR
: Are those coming here?

LIZ
: You set off the alarm when you opened the window.

 

(
Beat of silence
)

 

MOTIVATOR
: I hate you.

 

(
Sound of steel-toed boots scrambling out a window
)

 

LIZ
: Bye! Thanks for the pictures!

 

(
Fin
)

I am not purely a force for destruction. I don’t only produce electro-rays, untraceable poisons, and blackmail files. One time, for instance, I invented this
amazing
gold-plated back scratcher—I think I already mentioned it. I also sometimes publish counterfeit Archie comics, in which Betty and Veronica dump that idiot Archie and devote their lives to worshipping the great Reggie. Because I think there’s an audience for that.

 

But if I don’t make more
constructive
contributions to society, it’s really not my fault. I’ve never gotten any encouragement for such ventures.

 

When I was five, my family drove to Florida for a week’s vacation. My father’s friend Don owned a house down there.

 

I spent most of my first day at the beach building a sand castle with Mom, while Daddy sat in a folding chair reading (
see plate 11
). For the most part, it was like he wasn’t even on the same vacation with us. He just sat there, reading, wearing black sunglasses and a blue Chicago Cubs baseball cap, getting bright red streaks on his shoulders.
⁶⁵
But at one point, he looked up from his book and gave our castle a surprised look.

 

“Wow, Marlene,” he said. “That’s some castle.”

 

“Ollie did most of it,” she said proudly.

 

“Well, what do you know” he said. “Huh.” He sounded genuinely, almost kind of impressed. He got up and walked around the castle slowly, getting down on his knees to examine a particularly cunning parapet. “Good work, Ollie.” He turned to “Mom.” “Maybe he’ll grow up to be an architect. Sometimes the ones who have the worst verbal skills have the best spatial abilities.”

 

“He has wonderful verbal skills,” said “Mom.” “He just doesn’t talk very much.”

 

It is hard for me to describe the delighted tingle that was running through my body all through this conversation. Probably because it’s the only time in my life I’ve
felt
that tingle. God help me, it’s probably what Lollipop feels when I tell her, “Good dog.”

 

How sick is that? I was five—way old enough to know better, and yet some small part of me still wanted to please this sunburned buffoon. I guess boys are hardwired to admire their fathers. But when I look back at this weakness in my five-year-old self, I get almost physically ill. Thank God, I’m over
that
.

 

After making his proud noises, Daddy went back to his book. Then the tide started to come in, inching ever closer to my castle walls. So I got busy with my plastic shovel. I am not the first child who ever started digging a moat around his castle to try to save it from the oncoming waves.

 

“Time to go, son,” said Daddy.

 

“I’m not finished.”

“You’re just digging holes.”

 

I smiled up at him. “I’m keeping the water from wrecking my castle.”

 

“Oh, Ollie,” said Mom. She looked heartbroken. “The ocean washes away
everyone’s
sand castles. I’m so
sorry
, honey.”

 

But I kept digging. My father smiled at her and whispered, “Let him finish. It’s a good lesson for him to learn. There are some things he can’t control.”

 

My mother rummaged in her bag to find me a cookie.

 

It took me about ten more minutes to finish digging my network of trenches, pits, and grooves in the sand.

 

Then we went back to Don’s house and ate corned-beef sandwiches for dinner.

 

 

I woke up early the next day. I couldn’t wait to go back to the water. I wanted to feel that tingle again.
⁶⁶

 

When we got to the beach, Daddy spent a few minutes setting his chair up, laying his towel down, rubbing aloe vera on his shoulders. Then he finally looked around, surveying the shoreline like some all-powerful fairy-tale king. That’s when he noticed my castle, twenty yards away.

It was pristine. Perfect. It had not been touched by a single wave.

 

Mom was very happy for me and immediately suggested we add a giant tower to the center. But my eyes were on Daddy. He didn’t say anything for a while. He walked around the castle again, like he’d done the day before, examining it even more closely. Like he wanted to see if it was really the same castle.

 

I suppose I was expecting him to say, “Wow, Ollie.” Or, “Good work, son.” I would have settled for “Good dog.”

 

What he said was, “What the hell? . . . ” And when he finally looked at me, what I saw wasn’t justifiable paternal pride. His skinny little lips had gone transparent from the blood fleeing his face. His nostrils were wide as half-dollars, like a gorilla smelling gunpowder. His beady eyes were narrowed into greedy, suspicious slits.

 

What I saw was fear. Horror. He was
threatened
by me.

 

Here I had devised an entirely new system of hydraulic engineering—out of sand—a system that could easily keep the world’s coastlines safe from hurricanes, typhoons, and whatever other nonsense nature throws at us—and my father’s reaction was not only
disbelief
, it was
disgust
.
Terror
.

 

He was scared I would somehow
surpass
him. As much as he might moan about what a disappointment his dumb son was, his ego couldn’t tolerate a son who might be
better
than him.

 

That’s when I realized I was destined to either disappoint my father or terrify him. There would be no middle ground, no soft and squishy place called “pride.”

 

But that’s also when I realized I didn’t care.
⁶⁷
I still don’t. I don’t need his approval. I don’t need his love. I don’t need anything. I’ve got my genius to keep me warm. And I certainly don’t need to
build
anything to prove myself to him.

 

Daddy settled back into his chair and started reading again, after saying something about “a fluke” and “a-one-in-a-billion chance.”

 

I kicked the castle down and spent the rest of the day breaking seashells.

 

And that’s pretty much what I’ve done every day since.

In 1936, a German company completed construction of the LZ 129
Hindenburg
. The
Hindenburg
was a zeppelin—basically, a blimp with an ego. It was as big as the
Titanic
, but it flew.

 

Unfortunately, not for long. In 1937, as it was coming in for a landing, the
Hindenburg
burst into flames, killing thirty-six people and two dogs (
see plate 12
). A radio reporter on the scene was so moved by the carnage, he started spouting some of the best poetry ever spoken over American airwaves: “It’s smoke and it’s flames now . . . and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast . . . Oh, the humanity!”
⁶⁸

 

Although nothing was ever proved, there has always been speculation that what happened to the
Hindenburg
wasn’t an accident. It was the biggest, most famous thing that has ever flown—and when you are that big, that famous, you are bound to make enemies.
⁶⁹