Free Lake Overturn by Vestal McIntyre Page B

drop of blood collected on his knuckle and fell, but his face never changed.
    I N THE WEEK since Mr. Peterson had announced the science fair, Gene and Enrique had failed to agree on a project. Enrique had come up with dozens of ideas that had provoked little or no response from Gene. Now, as they zigzagged down the sidewalk from the bus stop, Gene taking care to keep awnings and tree branches between him and the sky, Enrique tried again: “Gene, I know you don’t want to do erosion, but it could be really neat. We could make a landscape out of dirt with little miniature trees and stuff. And we could have a fan blow it. We could show how the soil holds together when there’s roots in it. What do you think?” With this, Enrique stepped forward slightly, and bent to be in Gene’s line of vision.
    “Erosion is boring,” said Gene.
    “I know erosion is boring,” said Enrique, “but a model of erosion with a fan blowing dust around is neat.”
    “It would be boring because erosion is boring. A model of something boring is boring. A model of something neat is neat.”
    “Well, then, what is neat, Gene?” Enrique’s voice rose into a whine. “I come up with these ideas, and you shoot them down, but you don’t come up with any yourself. We only have a few days left. If we don’t come up with something we both like, I’m just going to do it on my own.”
    They circled the car-wash parking lot and stepped through the tear in the chain-link fence to enter the trailer park. On Meadowlark and Goldfinch Lanes, the deepest corner of the trailer park away from the boulevard, bushes huddled against trailers, carports extending toward the lane like hands offered in greeting, frilly curtains hung in the windows, lawn statues and pinwheels peeped from flower beds, and an American flag hung from a pole that rose at an angle from one vinyl-sided garret. This was the quiet, respectable part of the trailer park, to which the long-term residents had migrated. The front spokes of the star-shaped trailer park—the only part visible to passing cars—was the rowdier neighborhood. For the more-or-less transient residents of these lanes, Robin and Sparrow, nothing seemed to stick to its intended purpose: cookouts became brawls; refrigerators died, moved outside, and became anchors for clotheslines; a broken-down, doorless car became a pirate ship for the children, complete with a Jolly Roger hanging from the antenna. The trailers here exposed the jacks and stilts and wood blocks that held them up off the ground, while on Meadowlark and Goldfinch Lanes, vinyl skirts modestly covered these underpinnings. It was to avoid walking down Robin or Sparrow that the boys’ mothers encouraged them to enter the trailer park the back way, through the hole in the fence.
    The previous spring, Gene had become interested in the mechanics behind all of those spinning brushes in the car wash. Every day the boys had peered into the building on their way by, eventually lingering and hiding when cars entered. They got home with their shirtfronts damp and smelling of ammonia. Enrique had already got bored of watching the car wash when, one afternoon, one of the men who worked there decided to come around back of the building and run them off. “I’m going to design car washes when I grow up!” Gene had shouted in defense once they were safely through the fence. Enrique had shushed him. He could be so embarrassing.
    After this, Gene went through a period of stopping to examine the morning glories that grew on the fence. He began by opening the flowers—which, by the afternoon, had twisted themselves closed like hand-rolled cigarettes—then turning the flowers inside-out. Sometimes Gene picked them and took them home to perform experiments on them. He put them in his closet to see if he could make them open and close by shining a bright light on them.
    Once when Enrique was over watching TV with Gene, Connie had come upon a pile of withered flowers under