This continues an excerpt from Mad Science Institute, a novel of calamities, creatures, and college matriculation. The novel will be available 12/16/2011, but you can read the beginning here first!

But I did have my reasons for not wanting to go. First, who ever heard of the Mechanical Science Institute? I was still hoping to get into some really well known science program like MIT or Stanford or Georgia Tech, even though I had no idea how I could afford one of those big-name places. But the real reason I didn’t want to go came down to this: I just didn’t want to leave my Dad.

For five years now, it had been just him and me and the occasional cockroach living happily in this little apartment. Sure, I was planning on leaving after I graduated high school, but that gave me two more years to adjust to the idea. And now this woman from this crazy school wanted me to pack up and leave my entire life to travel a third of the way across the country with less than two week’s notice. It sounded seriously mental. Thinking about it made me lose concentration on what I was doing and I accidentally cranked the power a bit too high. The autogyro’s motor emitted a loud POP as it erupted into orange flames and zinged upwards in one last burst of speed. Trailing a line of black smoke, it ricocheted off the ceiling and streaked down onto the stack of bills my Dad was trying to pay. What can I say—my experiments always explode.

My Dad knocked his chair over as he jumped up in surprise. I was already on top of the mess, smothering the flames before they could spread too much. The only problem was that I pushed the papers off the table and they fluttered all over the place.

“Sorry, sorry!” I yelled, stooping to gather up the bills.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said a bit shakily. “Better shuffled then burned, I suppose.”

I started reading the papers as I handed them to him. Water bill: first notice of overdue payment. Electricity: second notice. Rent: warning of eviction.

I unfolded the last one and started reading it.

“Soap, don’t—don’t read that,” he said, but it was too late. I had seen enough.

“We’re being evicted?”

My Dad was quiet a really long time. “Not until next month,” he finally said. “Then we have 30 days to move out. Don’t worry, we’ll work out something.”

“We’re getting evicted and you tell me not to worry? What part of working out ‘something’ is supposed to make me feel better?”

He put his hands up in a gesture that told me to calm down, but we both knew the electrician job market was in the toilet right then, plus there was the matter of repairing the gym and replacing all those cell phones. All because of me.

Chapter 5: Soap

“I think you should reconsider that scholarship,” my Dad said as he sat at the kitchen table paying bills. He was resting his forehead on his left palm like he always did when he balanced his checkbook.

I was zig zagging through the apartment with a hand-held version of the EMP broadcasting device. With one hand I adjusted the power level while with the other I kept the focusing dish aimed up at a miniature autogyro helicopter I had constructed from balsa wood pieces salvaged from a model airplane and the motor from an RC car. It flew pretty well, but whenever the autogyro got too high, it would lose its energy and begin to float down where it would come closer to my broadcaster. Then it would get its motor energized by the electromagnetic field I was broadcasting and would go zipping back up to the ceiling. Up and down, up and down in our tiny apartment. The challenge was that it would veer off in all sorts of directions, so I had to move constantly in order to keep the broadcaster directly beneath it. It was kind of like that old game with the rubber ball on the string that you’re supposed to get in the cup, except here the rubber ball flies away on its own.

“I know it’s short notice,” my Dad went on. “But I think it would be a really good experience for you to go to that college.”

“Seriously?” I asked, hopping to my right to stay beneath the autogyro. “I’m only sixteen. I’d never fit in at college. Plus, it doesn’t seem fair that the only reason I got the scholarship is because my cousin was all smoochy-smoochy with the Dean of Students there.”

“That’s not why you got this scholarship,” he said. “Soap, you have a gift—”

I couldn’t hear what he said next because the autogyro veered off and I had to lunge to keep up with it, which made me knock over a floor lamp.  The lamp fell with a cymbal-crash, and it made both of my Dad’s autographed basketballs fall off their shelf and bounce to the other side of the room.

“Soap,” I think my Dad tried to yell at me, but it came out more like a sigh of defeat. “Sorry, Dad!” I said. “I just have to calibrate the amplifier and then I’ll be done.”

“I just feel like you might be happier there,” he said. “This city is just too small for you.”

“Dad,” I scolded. “New York is as big as cities can get.”

“That’s not what I mean. This place is too confining. Too… closed-in. You need open air and empty fields where you can run around and play Frisbee and launch your rockets without raining fire back down on densely populated areas.”

I smacked my shoulder into a wall trying to keep up with the autogyro. Aside from knocking the wind out of me, it took away any argument I might have made about not needing more space.