Denial
"Too much work. Aside from the fact that Electra hates a challenge. You ever see a sylph try to read a book? They have to have weights down on each corner, then they’re walking back and forth to read each line, mumbling the incomplete sentence to themselves so they don’t lose continuity by the time they get to the start of the next line.
“Then turning the page? Ten minutes of moving weights off, prying up a page, moving weights back in place, while muttering a summary of the action and dialogue so they don’t lose THAT continuity by the time they’re done.
“Four pages in, I find her curled up asleep on the book, drooling on the text.”
Chip and Chrissy were smiling, trying not to laugh at the image of Electra sleeping on a paperback. She was standing on the rim of her bowl, fists clenched at her sides.
“I’ll have you know I read Gulliver’s Travels, in book form, FOR FUN! YOU couldn’t make it through the movie without me telling you what was going on in half of the scenes!” Her angry tone frightened Chrissy. She started to say something, but Chip put a hand on hers. She looked to see that he was smiling at Electra, and held her piece. Electra was well into lecturing me and didn’t notice the byplay behind her.
“I read more books last summer than you have read in your entire LIFE, Conrad!”
“Yeah, when you had the thumb strength to hold the book open one-handed,” I said dismissively.
“I read big books! With big words! Words you can’t even pronounce. And you say _I_ don’t like a challenge?”
“It’s more than that,” I said. “It’s simple physics.”
“YOU are going to lecture ME about physics? HA! I can’t wait to hear THIS!” she scoffed.
“Remember when you wanted to look up the dates for the Punic Wars because you didn’t believe my answer? And you had to wrestle the P volume of the encyclopedia open? Remember turning the pages about ten at a time? Can you imagine doing that for a whole novel?”
“YES!” she snarled. “And I’ll STILL finish it faster than you!”
“Sez you.”
“Wanna bet?”
“So you really want to do this?” I scoffed.
“Damn straight, I do!” she angrily shouted.
“Okay,” I calmly told Chrissy. “We’re in.”
“Wait, what?” Electra asked.
“I figure, each of us,” and Chrissy gestured at the humans at the table, “reads her a book off of Mrs. Burton’s list while she takes notes, and types up the report she writes.”
“We’ll hand in her original, too,” Chip said. “So Mrs. Burton knows she wrote it, but we’ll let her grade a big copy.”
“That just leaves the science fair project," I said.
“No, really, what just happened?” Electra asked.
“That’s a bit of a time crunch,” Chrissy admitted. “You’ll have to actually get started on something during Christmas Break.”
“We’ll think of something,” I promised.
“If you do the project,” Chrissy said, “I’ll do the posterboard.”
“I’ll type up the final report,” Chip said. “I have an electric typewriter.” Of course he did. But my brief surge of jealousy died when I realized he wasn’t bragging. He was being generous.
“Aren’t you guys doing projects?” I asked. They nodded. And shrugged.
“She’d do the same for us,” Chrissy said.
I snapped my fingers. “THAT’S what she was so afraid of. That she’d never be able to pay you guys back for this.”
“Pshaw,” Chrissy said. I mean, seriously, she said 'Pshaw.' I wondered what sort of books Chrissy read for fun. She poked a finger out to touch Electra’s hip. “You’re a friend, silly. If we divvy up the work, it’s not even that much of a burden.”
“Um,” Electra said, very soft.
“Now, her full name for the diploma-“ I started to say.
Electra screamed and spun away from Chrissy to run towards me. “Don’t you DARE!”
“Jennifer Wilma Beatty,” Chip said. He sounded firm on that point.
“Exactly,” I said. I cupped my hands around a stunned little sylph and held her up to my face. “It’s the only way this’ll work.” I kissed her head and handed her over to Chrissy to say thank you.
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Index
31. Scale-Free View
33. Is It Rational?