Tesla's Attic

A sudden rainstorm soaks all the for-sale items on Nick’s driveway. While the rain pours down, they sit in the dark garage. One attic item that didn’t get outside is an old lamp on a tall post. They switch it on; it’s very bright.

High School cheerleader Caitlin Westfield decides to attend the sale. She’s a strange combination of “wildly popular and wildly original” (14). She likes to acquire old things, smash them to pieces, and glue the resulting garbage onto a canvas, a process she calls “garbart.”

The thunderstorm nearly deters Caitlin, who was struck by lightning during cheerleading—the pom-poms, designed by her, contained bits of shimmering metal—but something about the Victorian house draws her to it. She arrives to find dozens of people, pulled there like her, pawing through the soaked items. Something about the bright light in the garage seems to energize everyone. They thrust cash into Nick’s hands faster than he can collect it, overpaying wildly for the odd contraptions they find.

Nick feels guilty, so he talks some of them down. Caitlin says, “I don’t think that’s the way it’s supposed to work” (20), and Nick wonders if the whole thing’s some sort of conspiracy. Caitlin notices that Nick doesn’t lavish attention on her like most guys; a boy from school who is larger than others, Mitch, chats with her briefly and then continues searching. Something’s definitely wrong here.

Mitch buys a metal disk that looks like a See ‘n Say, with an arrow in the center and symbols around the edge. He offers $10, way more than he should. Nick demands to know what he and Caitlin are up to. Mitch is taken aback; Nick sighs and accepts the money.

Caitlin sees the reel-to-reel tape recorder; she imagines disassembling it and then wrapping it in its own recording tape. She’ll call it “Media Frenzy.” Almost frantically, she offers Nick $20; he says that’s way too much. Tears well up in her eyes.

A car—driven by an overly eager attendee—jumps the curb. Nick tackles Caitlin, and they land on the wet grass, barely escaping. The driver gets out and promptly walks toward the items for sale. Caitlin says, “These people are nuts!” (25). She returns to the tape recorder and puts her hand on it possessively.

Nick looks at the bright light bulb in the garage: It feels soothing; it tugs at him. He switches it off; immediately, the visitors set down the items and leave, complaining and calling the sale a waste of time. Caitlin admits she still wants the tape machine, but not as much. Nick gives her back the $20, saying it’s a gift. It’s heavy; she’ll pick it up later. Nick suggests that, when she does, she stay for dinner; she turns him down.

Nick takes the lamp post inside. A gleaming-white SUV stops, and four pastel-clad men get out. Chuckling, the leader tells Nick it’s too bad the storm kept people away, but Nick surprises them by announcing that nearly everything has been bought. Disappointed, one of them asks if Nick got the buyers’ names and addresses; Nick scoffs.

The other men quickly sweep up the remains of the items and bag them. The leader places a $50 bill and a calling card on the table; he asks Nick to reach out if any of the buyers bring back their items. Nick frowns; the man puts another $50 bill on top and says Nick’s cooperation will be handsomely rewarded. The men take their new possessions, pile into the SUV, and drive away. The leader looks angry as he pulls out a cell phone.

Nick crushes the calling card and throws it away.

Now empty of junk, the attic seems big and dark: The glass panes at the top of the roof pyramid are painted black. Nick’s dad gets him a small desk and bed; Nick wishes he could put in more, perhaps a wide-screen TV or a pinball machine, but those won’t fit through the narrow door hatch.

Breakfast is interrupted by the elderly next-door neighbor who bought the strange toaster. She’s cranky and wants her money back. Nick gives her the money; she dares him to use the toaster.

Nick places the appliance on the kitchen counter. It contains strange parts unrelated to toasting. Engraved on the bottom is “Property of NT” (32). There’s no electric plug. He puts bread in the slots and pushes down the lever. It works; the inner coils heat up with a hum. The hum increases to a roar, and an arc of blue light bursts forth, knocking Nick against the wall.

His dad runs in. Nick is ok. The toaster dings, and the toast pops up. It’s burnt to charcoal.

Nick is the new kid at the middle school. Worse, it’s April. He dresses carefully—no designer labels, no Tampa Bay Rays hat, muted colors. As he walks in, Mitch loudly points out the new student. Everyone stares at Nick. Vince, a dour kid Nick saw at the garage sale, welcomes him to “the most pathetic school on this or any other planet” (35). A tall guy has his arm around Caitlin, who smiles at Nick the same way she did when she rejected his dinner invitation.

Mitch continues introducing Nick to others, which makes the situation worse. Nick pulls Mitch aside and asks him to stop it, but Mitch can’t help talking. He tells a passing student jock that Nick roots for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; the jock pushes Nick into the lockers.

Oblivious, Mitch pulls out the object he bought at the garage sale and insists that Nick pull on its string. Nick does so and hears a tinny recording of a voice telling him to check his pocket. Impatient, Nick pushes past Mitch; he’s nearly late for his first class. He manages to ease into a back seat, but his phone rings in his pocket, and the teacher takes the phone and gives him detention.

In the lunch line, a girl with severe pigtails, whom Nick noticed at the garage sale, introduces herself as Petula, pronounced “like spatula.” She’s particular about food and throws away her dessert. The lunch lady, Ms. Planck, takes pity on Nick, points out the tables where the various social groups sit, and gives him the weird advice to dump his lunch on the big boy, Heisenberg, who earlier pushed Nick aside. Desperate to improve his situation, Nick dumps his lunch on Heisenberg’s head, and everyone cheers and applauds. Kids clap him on the back.

Nick gets called to the principal’s office. His dad is there. It turns out Nick’s Tampa school has no record of him at all. The principal thinks they’re lying about Nick’s identity.

At his locker, Heisenberg appears, lifts Nick up, and gives him a bear hug, tearfully thanking him for being the test he needed to pass for his anger-management class.

Caitlin prepares to smash the tape recorder as part of her garbart project. First, though, she tries the machine. It has no plug, but when she pushes play, the tapes roll. She hit record and said, “This is Caitlin Westfield. Testing, testing” (43). She played it back and heard, “This is Caitlin Westfield, and this is a waste of time.” She did think that. She makes a second recording: “I’m testing this stupid machine again so I can smash it and be done with it” (43). On replay, she hears, “I’m testing this stupid machine again so I don’t freak out” (44).

Starting to freak out, she hits record yet again. Her phone rings: It’s her boyfriend, Theo. She puts it on speaker and examines the tape recorder as they talk about getting together later. After they hang up, she realizes the machine is recording. She rewinds, and the playback, instead of repeating their words, intones what they were thinking: He doesn’t care about her but just wants to make out; she’s disgusted with him but might see him if she’s bored.

Caitlin throws the machine away and crawls into bed, her mind in tatters. Ninety minutes later, she gets up and retrieves the machine. She realizes that it’s Nick who really interests her; she decides to solve that problem by keeping Nick at bay.

Nick struggles with math homework, which is harder in Colorado than at his Tampa school. His father, an ex-National League pitcher, is out looking for work. Nick was the star of his Tampa Little League team; the family talent hasn’t shown up in Danny, who’s out in front, throwing a baseball up in the air and catching it only half the time. Nick takes pity on him and joins him for a game of catch. Danny is terrible at it.

The white SUV appears, driving very slowly. Nick looks at it and gets beaned on his stitches by Danny’s toss. When he looks again, the SUV is gone. On his way back inside, he finds, lying on the porch, smoothed out and flat, the business card that he’d thrown out. The name on it is “Dr. Alan Jorgenson” (49).

Mitch drops by that evening and wants to talk about the device he bought at the garage sale. He points out that when you pull its string, it gives you smart advice. Nick retrieves some apple juice from the fridge and opens it. Mitch begs Nick to pull on the device string again. Nick sighs and pulls. The device says, “—you shouldn’t drink that” (51). He sniffs the drink: it’s rancid. Nick asks Danny when Dad bought the juice; Danny says it was in the fridge when they arrived and probably was there for years.

Nick takes the device and pulls it again, saying, “My father…” and the device says his father should return to playing baseball. Mitch decides his little See ‘n Say thingy should be called “a Shut Up ‘n Listen” (52). Nick wonders if the other items he sold have weird properties.

They decide to visit Vince, who bought an old wet-cell battery at the sale. His house, a pink-and-blue splash of color festooned with flowers and overly lit, is a strange contrast to Vince, who’s pessimistic and dresses in black. His mother, a sweetly energetic lady, answers the door and ushers them in.

Vince’s lair is in the basement; it’s painted black with the windows covered and the furniture gathered into the center of the room. They ask him if anything weird happened with the wet-cell battery. He shows them a dead goldfish in a bowl—the fish died two days earlier—and he touches the battery lead to the bowl’s water, and the fish starts swimming again. Nick retracts the wires; the fish rolls over, dead again.

Vince admits that he was drawn to the battery the same way he was drawn to the garage sale itself. Nick remembers how other visitors seemed drawn to specific items. Mitch tries the battery on a dead tarantula that Vince keeps in a box: The tarantula comes to life and spits at him. Vince brings a raw chicken from the kitchen that’s in a lemon-soy marinade. They touch it with the electrodes; the wings and drumsticks begin moving frantically, splashing marinade on them.

Nick decides that these things are dangerous and they shouldn’t keep them. The boys refuse to give them up. Nick realizes that many of these things are spread all over the neighborhood, and people won’t want to return them. The men in the SUV must know about the devices. Nick needs to find them before they do.

Nick tells the boys to keep the devices but tell no one. Vince is fine with that, but blabbermouth Mitch says he won’t be able to shut his mouth unless they make him swear on a Bible. They go upstairs and retrieve one of Vince’s mother’s many Bibles, the one that looks the most intimidating. Mitch puts his hand on it and swears not to tell anyone about the Shut Up ‘n Listen. Nick also gets them to agree to help him locate the other items.

Nick and Mitch next visit Caitlin. Nick convinces Mitch to wait outside so they don’t put too much pressure on her—he really wants just to talk to her alone—and he knocks on her door. She answers, and Nick says that the item she bought might be toxic. She says she’s happy with it. Nick asks if it “works,” and she says no, and that she’s already smashed it up for one of her art projects. Disappointed, Nick leaves.

Inside, tears in her eyes, Caitlin goes to her bedroom, crawls into her closet with the tape recorder, opens her diary, and reads a passage. It’s a brief account of her win on the debate team, how people love her smashed-objects art projects, how cool and Zen her mom is, how hard-working her dad is, how shy Theo can be, and how he and she could be a long-term item. The recorder plays back instead that she felt insecure during debate, that she smashes things because she’s angry, that her mom’s depressed and her dad’s a workaholic, that Theo’s not long-term at all, and that she might end up stuck in a marriage to someone like him.

Hearing the truth hurts, but somehow, it makes her feel less trapped and more free.

With the box camera she bought at the garage sale, Petula takes a candid indoor photo of her father. She develops the film in her cramped closet darkroom, and it shows a picture of the wall behind her father but without him.

Petula has a crush on Nick. At school, she conducts an “observational study” of him—she stalks him—and notices that he’s busy observing Caitlin. Petula catches him at his locker, reminds him that Caitlin has a boyfriend, and suggests she be a replacement. Nick says he’s outgrown pigtails and heads for class. Despite this insult, Petula decides he’s treating her better than most guys do.

With Theo hefting the tape recorder, Caitlin conducts a series of short interviews with students and teachers, asking them what they think of others at school. Nick walks up and demands to know if anything unusual is happening with the recorder; Caitlin denies it. He insists that if anything weird does happen, she tell him. He tells her that “it’s important.”

Petula notes all of this. Caitlin stores the machine in the art room, and Petula sneaks in to see what’s been recorded. The interviews seem surprisingly candid. Mrs Applebaum has a crush on the principal; the star running back is in love with the quarterback, and so on. One interview gives Petula an idea; she records it on her phone.

Nick’s seventh-period history class, also attended by Caitlin, is interrupted by the school loudspeakers: They broadcast Caitlin’s interview with Nick. The recording plays what they’re thinking: Both Nick and Caitlin clearly have feelings for each other but don’t know what to do about it. Theo fears Nick’s interest in Caitlin and tries to threaten him, deliberately using words he thinks will impress Nick, like “harassment” and “intolerance,” and promising to sic the principal on Nick. Nick says the principal is a moron. Caitlin’s recorder voice says, “I’m uncovering people’s secrets to feel better about myself” (71); Nick’s voice warns her about the tape recorder. Theo wonders what’s for lunch.

Humiliated, Caitlin rushes out of class. Nick, though embarrassed, finds himself both congratulated and sympathized with by the other students. After school, the kids buzz about Caitlin’s selfishness. They also tease Theo about big words.

Nick visits Caitlin at her house. She’s in her room, crying. She wishes Nick had warned her about the tape recorder; Nick says he didn’t know about it either. She says he can’t imagine what it feels like having your whole life ruined. He answers quietly that he can and tells her about the fire that destroyed his home and killed his mom. He believes the fire was his fault, and he bursts into tears. She sympathizes.

She asks Nick for advice on how she can show her face in school. He says it’s like brushfires: They burn out the undergrowth, but the healthy trees survive. Her real friends are like those trees. She smiles and says he’s a healthy tree. He says he’s more like a weeping willow; she retorts that “at least you’re still poplar” (75), and they groan and laugh.

Nick wants to retrieve the tape machine. She agrees, but first, she rewinds, hits Record, and erases what she taped at school. Nick totes the machine back to the attic, where it joins the tall light and the toaster. He retrieves a ladder from downstairs, brings it to the attic, and removes all the black paint from the windows at the top of the ceiling pyramid with a scraper. This lets in more light.

Looking through the glass, Nick sees Danny and his dad out on the lawn playing catch. Danny’s doing much better. He also notices, wedged into the window frame, the calling card from Dr Jorgenson.

Nick’s school records finally arrive, but from an academy in Denmark. Now the school thinks Nick is an international student, which makes them happy. Mitch pesters Nick with new theories about the attic objects: They’re from aliens; they’re from Atlantis; it’s all a dream, and the devices are meant to wake them up.

At lunch, Nick thanks Ms. Planck for her advice about Heisenberg. She says she’s always happy to help. He admits he regrets selling some stuff at his garage sale; she says, “One way or another, you’ll fill the empty spaces left behind” (80).

Petula watches then walks up to Ms. Planck and asks what they talked about. Ms. Planck chides her for being nosey, then says he was simply thanking her for advising him on school and his garage sale. Petula asks if he mentioned her. Ms. Planck realizes Petula must be the one who played the embarrassing tape recording on the school loudspeakers and that it failed to drive a wedge between Nick and Caitlin. She says as much, then advises Petula that if she wants Nick’s interest, it’s best to have something he needs.

Later, Nick and Mitch go to Beef-O-Rama for burgers. They ask the Shut Up ‘n Listen how to locate the other garage sale items; the device says the problem “will sort itself out” (82). Nick notices a “Property of NT” inscription on the bottom and wonders who NT is. Petula interrupts, pushes Mitch aside, and sits with them. She says the initials stand for Nikola Tesla, the world’s greatest scientist, who once had a lab nearby. “He invented fluorescent lights—AC power—the wireless transmission of energy—and radio!” (83). Nick says Marconi invented the radio; Petula insists that Marconi stole the invention from Tesla.

Nick remembers Petula from the garage sale. She says she bought the box camera. She hands him a slip of paper with an address on it: If Nick wants to know more, he’s to meet her there Friday night. She leaves abruptly.

The Little Leagues season is already underway, but Nick’s dad uses his clout as an ex-pro and gets Nick a late tryout. Nick’s distracted by the Tesla problem, and Mitch, in the stands, distracts him further by constantly yelling, “Hey, batter.” Nick throws three wild pitches. The coach tells him maybe next year.

Back home, Danny announces proudly that he won a tryout for the nine-and-under baseball team. Nick congratulates him, then goes to his room, pulls up the ladder, and stays there till morning.