Chapter 4: Cooperation
"Never have so few done so much for so many."
"This is Oxygen." Ms. Frizzle said indicating the atom that was animated on her touch screen wall. "He enjoys historical fiction and mountain biking. These are hydrogen." she indicated two smaller atoms orbiting each other on the other side of the screen. "They like barn dancing and poems by Lewis Carroll. Now watch this." She flicked the Oxygen over at the Hydrogens. There was a crash, a flash of light, and there was a molecule in its place.
"This is Water." said Ms. Frizzle. "It's the substance that makes life on Earth possible. If can form entire ecosystems. If the other two elements did their best they wouldn't come close to that. When they bonded together they had properties they could never have alone."
More compounds came out onto the screen. They were many shapes and colors. As new ones appeared, Ms. Frizzle called out their names.
"Sugar, Salt Pewter, Phosphorous, Adenosine Triphosphate, Phospholipids, Calcium, and oodles of other elements and compounds. These substances make up a cell."
The atoms grew swiftly smaller like the camera was zooming out. Eventually, the picture solidified into a cross section of a cell.
"All the different parts work together to do something that none of them could do alone. Create Life." The picture zoomed out again revealing...a kitten.
"And this is an organism." said Ms. Frizzle "It is capable of looking cute. Hydrogen was never going to pull that off. And if a few of these kittens all work together they could kill a full grown bull elephant."
From the front row of the class, Moze raised one eyebrow in a condemning expression.
"They would," amended Ms. Frizzle "require a great deal of the element of surprise. The point is when different entities work in tandem they accomplish things they could never do alone. This is true at the chemical level, this is true at the cellular level, and it's true about people. Your assignment is to work with two other people to make something. Anything. Amaze me. Don't worry if all you have are bad ideas. All good ideas started off bad, they were perfected by determined people. Now go!"
At the word 'go' the class scrambled to find their friends. There was only one thing more terrifying than a group project: a group projects with people you hate. Ned made a dive for Moze while Cookie latched on to his ankle.
"Jennifer Mosely, Ned Bigby, and Simon Nelson-Cook..." said Ms. Frizzle as she jotted their names down on the touch screen wall. "...are Group I."
She continued to read off the rest of the groups as they formed. Ned, Moze, and Cookie were in conference about their project.
"We need to analyze all our unique properties," said Cookie, "and come up with a project that will rock Ms. Frizzle's world."
"Well, I can cook well." said Ned.
"I'm good at wood-crafting." said Moze.
"And I'm good with electronics." said Cookie. They all shared a knowing look.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Moze asked them.
"Oh, yes." said Ned.
"Pie Vending Machine!" They all said together.
Seven hours, eighteen splinters, four electrical burns, and eight pounds of butter later, it was done!
They all stood back and gazed lovingly at their creation. In it's own corner in the wood-shop room stood the world's first pie vending machine.
Moze had crafted a large cabinet with an array of small doors at the front, each about the size of a shoe box. She had gone all out on the molding and carvings. The cabinet looked like it would be very at home in a palace. If the Queen of England ever saw Moze's work, her royal highness would be ordering an invasion of the colonies that week.
Ned had been baking for the worth of his life. He had made up fourteen different cobblers, seven pies, and 12 crumble cakes. They were custom sized to fit the special shelves. Each one of them had a flavor that could loosely be defined as the physical form of joy.
Cookie had rigged up a control panel and a series of electrically operated hinges for every door. The panel could accept voice commands and a soothing voice, programed to sound like Oprah Winfrey, would thank you for your patronage after it took your order. The internal environment was maintained to prevent anything inside growing fur or making colonies.
It was a mastery of all three disciplines.
They put a sheet over it and moved slowly to the door. If any mischievous entities noticed things were going right, they would exact a harsh punishment.
"This story is wrapping up nicely." said Moze as they made their way to Mr. Sweeney's class. As they reached the bottom of the stairs they heard a ruckus from the next story. There were people crashing around and they heard people chanting 'fight, fight, fight'. Then they heard a collective gasp. With a few crashes and a 'thunk', Loomer tumbled down the stair and landed at Ned's feet.
"Whoa," said Moze appreciatively. "Hey, Loomer. Who kicked your butt?" Loomer didn't answer. He didn't move at all. Ned bent down to examine him more closely.
"Don't touch him!" Ned jumped back. Vice Principal Crubbs was dashing down the hall, and he wasn't even worried he'd dropped both pairs of sunglasses.
Everyone backed away from Loomer while Crubbs made sure he was breathing normally. Down the hall, Ms. Frizzle running towards the stairs with Nurse Hunsucker being pulled along behind her. Nurse Hunsucker immediately knelt down next to Loomer and stared checking vital signs.
"Alright, everyone!" shouted Ms. Frizzle. "You all have studying to do! Move along!" She waved her arms and the students moved along to their next class.
Moze was leaning against the wall opposite Ms. Frizzle's classroom door. After Loomer had been taken away in the ambulance, the rumor mill was going at full speed. Some people were saying his neck was broken and he had died. Some people were saying he was in a full body cast. Some people said this was a cover to have his brain replaced by a computer matrix and he'd come back a model student.
The only things Moze had managed to piece together were the events leading up to him falling down the stairs. Loomer had been trying to pull Coconut Head's underwear up over the top of his head. What Loomer didn't know, indeed no one saw this coming, was that Coconut Head had hit puberty and had been growing muscles. Coconut Head had given him one good shove. Loomer had been caught completely off guard by the strength behind the move and had lost his balance. Unfortunately, all this happened at the top of the stairs, and Loomer had come tumbling down.
What Moze didn't know was if Loomer was going to be alright. He may be a bully, but he didn't deserve to be maimed. She was hoping Ms. Frizzle would be abreast of the situation and let her in on what was going on. However, right now she couldn't work up the courage to knock on the door.
"Come in, Jennifer." called Ms. Frizzle from inside the classroom. Jennifer looked around the hall, wondering how Ms. Frizzle could possibly have seen her. She slowly opened the door and peaked inside. Ms. Frizzle was sitting at her desk, reading a copy of Newsweek.
"How'd you know..." Moze started.
"I heard you fretting loudly." answered Ms. Frizzle. "What can I do for you?"
"Is Loomer alive?" asked Moze after some hesitation.
Ms. Frizzle set down her magazine and folded her hands on her desk.
"Alive, yes." she answered. "The fall caused muscle swelling. However, there were no breaks or serious injuries."
"So, he's just a little swollen?" Moze asked, relieved.
"It's actually worse than it sounds." said Ms. Frizzle. "The swelling is pinching off nerves in his body making it difficult for the brain to send instructions to the muscles. Until the swelling goes down he's going to find it very hard to...well, do anything."
Meanwhile, in the wood shop room, the faint glow of sparks went off under the sheet covering the Pie Vending Machine. Oprah Winfrey's crazed cackle was heard. The faint sparks became a flickering, orange fire.
"This is Loomer's house?" asked Ned as he, Moze, and Cookie stood outside a three story house on a hill overlooking a lake.
"Yep." said Moze.
"This is Loomer's house?" asked Ned as he surveyed the fountain and coy pond in the front yard.
"Yes." said Moze, getting impatient. "Ms. Frizzle said the hospital sent him home since he wasn't in critical condition." She approached the huge double doors and rang the door bell. From inside they heard bells chiming the tune of Il Travatore.
"This is Loomer's house?" asked Ned looking at the four car garage. "If he has all this stuff, then why is he so mean all the time?"
"Makes sense to me." said Cookie. "It's a family trait. You don't get disgustingly wealthy by being nice to people."
Moze was about to lecture them on the rewards of honesty and compassion when they heard a crash inside and muted swearing. Moze tried the doorknob, which was mercifully unlocked. They all ran in to see what had happened. The idea that Loomer could have fallen down the stairs twice in one day meant the universe was meaner than they could bear thinking about. Moze led them down a the West Hallway. In a house this big you couldn't use words like 'right', 'left', or 'forward'. You had to use cardinal directions to navigate.
After passing a few empty rooms they found themselves in the kitchen. As Ned looked around he wondered if this was actually Heaven. There was a huge glass topped stove dominating an entire wall. There was every sort of cooking implement and utensil hanging from hooks in the ceiling. There was a pot resting on a shelf in a corner that could have poached a hippopotamus.
"Loomer!" Moze cried out. She saw a foot poking out from the pantry. When they ran over they saw a pile of foodstuffs and broken shelving on the pantry floor. Some one was desperately trying to free themselves from under the pile with flailing movements. It was Loomer.
"What are you doing here?" Loomer asked when he saw them.
"We came to see if you were alright." said Moze, as she grabbed one of his arms.
"Peachy Keene." Loomer grumbled as Moze and Ned hauled him to his feet. macaroni noodles and a cloud of paprika fell off of him as he stood up. He stayed standing for a second, then started to fall forward.
"Whoa!" Ned and Moze said together as they caught him.
"Where can we set him down at?" Moze asked.
"I think I saw a sofa in a chamber a few clicks to the east." Ned offered. They grabbed Loomer under each arm and carried him down the hall.
"It's this one." said Loomer as they came up to a door. The chamber had no windows and several plush, black velvet sofas facing a TV screen that could give Ms. Frizzle's wall an inferiority complex. Ned and Moze backed up to the nearest Sofa and they all three sat down.
"Why are you here alone?" Moze asked as she caught her breath.
"My Parents have been in Europe for the past two weeks." said Loomer. "He's in Berlin. She's in Monte Carlo."
"When are they getting back?" asked Cookie. An expression they couldn't quite catch ran across Loomer's face before he went back to looking vacant.
"They get back in another month." Loomer answered. "I called them while I was in the hospital. They aren't going to cut their trip short, but they're going to pay a nurse to come check up on me." They were all silent for a little while. Ned was starting to feel a sort of tenderness he didn't think he'd ever connect with someone so hard-headed.
"What happened in the kitchen?" Cookie asked finally.
"Well," said Loomer, "I was feeling hungry so I went to look for the peanut butter, but I lost my balance and grabbed a shelf on my way down. That's when you guys...Hey, where'd Ned go?"
Moze looked up to where Ned was sitting a minute ago. He had softly and suddenly vanished away. Down the hall, they heard pots moving around and cabinets opening. To Moze, who knew Ned's cooking well, it was like listening to an orchestra warm up before the opera started.
"I think he's about to get cooking." Moze told them. Loomer raised his eyebrows. Random people showing up and cooking something was extremely unusual, then again: food! "I'll go see if I can help." Moze said as she left for the kitchen. After she was gone, Loomer noticed there was something drizzling down his arm. When he looked he thought he had cut an artery, but it turned out it was marinara sauce that had spilled on him. He looked over the rest of his body to find he was covered in everything from curry powder to corn oil.
"Um...Cookie?" Loomer asked nervously.
"Yeah?" asked Cookie.
"Can you...help me get cleaned up?"
Moze watched Ned race around the kitchen. He was flitting between different pots like a humming bird with a very serious nectar addiction.
"What's for dinner?" asked Moze.
"Spaghetti Bolognese. Garlic Bread. Canapés." Ned rattled off.
"Need any help?" she asked.
"Can you boil water?" he asked.
"Not really." she admitted.
"Toast bread?" he asked.
"Nope." she said.
"Fix shelving?" he asked.
"That I can do." she said and she went to see what could be done about the pantry.
Cookie guided Loomer back into the room with the huge TV. Loomer was more or less steady on his feet and only needed to be stabilized now and again. His hair was still damp from his shower and he'd changed into a short sleeve and athletic shorts. Cookie was slightly damp on one side from catching him before he brained himself on the bathroom floor. The both collapsed on the couch. The trip between the den and the bathroom was a long one at the best of times.
Cookie reached for the remote and clicked it at the TV. The screen turned blue. He pushed a few more buttons that looked promising. A few of the machines under the TV whirred to life and one of them ejected a disc tray.
"It doesn't work." said Loomer. "Any of it. My dad decided to build an entertainment system and he let the guy at the store talk him into buying the most expensive crap they had. He didn't know how to set any of it up, so now he just doesn't come in here."
Cookie picked up all the remotes on the coffee table and walked up to the entertainment system. He stared it down for a few minutes.
"So, we meet again Mr. Bose." Cookie said. "Prepare to die!"
Moze walked back to the TV room. After some trekking, she had found the garage. It was fully stocked with enough tools to keep a NASCAR pit crew happy, but they didn't look like they'd ever been used. She took what she needed and secured the shelves in the pantry back into place. Charging rhinos couldn't bring those things down now. Putting the groceries back up had been a bit more of a challenge. Some of the food was no longer edible, and the ones that were needed to be ordered by food group cross referenced with expiration date. Top it all, Ned seemed to instinctively know when she was holding a spice he needed and would run into grab it from her.
She was done now and going to check on Cookie and Loomer. She half suspected that Loomer's hunger had compelled him to eat Cookie by now. She came through the door to find Cookie in front of the TV knee deep in wires.
"What's he doing?" she asked, sitting down next to Loomer.
"Showing the Bose who's boss." said Loomer.
Cookie started shoving wires back into the shelving unit, put all the panels back in place, gave the audio switch a good kick, seriously considered sacrificing a goat, decided against it (where would you find a goat this hour? (You could find six down the South Hall, third door on the left.)), and plugged in the master power supply.
He went back to the couch and clicked the remote. The machines all roared to life. 40 square feet of TV screen glowed in bright colors. Cookie looked on with the pride of someone who'd just assembled their own Large Hadron Collider. A few more clicks of the remote and they were watching Avatar.
Moze was so entranced by a life-sized alien running through a life-sized forest she didn't notice the food in front of her until the smell started making her drool. Ned was sitting next to her, absently eating pasta. The rest of the food had been laid out on the coffee table. Loomer was tucking in like the food was about to disappear.
They spent the rest of the movie debating what the creatures on Pandora should be called. Cookie would give them a Latin name 'characidae panthera rodentia' that, more or less, meant 'Piranha-Tiger-Squirel'. When Loomer had his turn he would combine all the species it looked like and get 'Cowocerark'. Ned and Moze went with: "I will call him 'Jamie'. And he will be 'Fred'. I'll call her 'Patricia'."
By the second half of the movie, the large meal they had eaten was making them all drowsy. Moze still had enough energy to shout advice at the characters, though. Cookie wondered out loud how the mountains stayed floating. They all agreed it was 'because they could'.
Cookie and Loomer were passed out dead away by the second half of the movie. Moze and Ned were watching the two leads prance wildly in the psychedelic forest. She was equal parts fascinated and nauseated by the bonding between them.
"Imagine," she breathed, "being connected to someone else's mind."
"I know what you're thinking most of the time anyway." said Ned.
"And you don't think at all." Moze teased. Ned flicked a canapé at her and they both broke down into giggles.
Ned, Moze, and Cookie got to school bright and early the next morning. This was the day they presented their project to Ms. Frizzle, and they knew it was going to knock her multi-colored socks off.
They arrived in the wood shop room to find Ms. Frizzle already there looking critically at a large pile of ash in the corner.
"Hey," said Moze walking up to her. "Where's our project?" Ms. Frizzle reached down into the pile and pulled out a metal disc. Shaking the ash off, it was revealed to be a pie pan. Moze reached out and clutched it.
"It...it's all..." she gasped.
"Yep," said Ms. Frizzle sympathetically. "Never attach electrical components to a freshly varnished cabinet. It's Rule #46 of wood working. Rule #47 is never program it to sound like Oprah." She made her way into the hall and went to her room with the three of them in tow. "The saving grace is that the fire didn't spread to the rest of the school."
"How are we going to be graded?" Cookie asked. Moze was still clutching the pie pan, mute with shock.
"First of all," said Ms. Frizzle as she walked into her class room, "you're going to have to clean up the damage in the wood shop room." She punched in a combination on her touch screen wall and a series of icons appeared. "Second, your grade will be calculated based on your real-world project."
"Huh?" Ned asked. Ms. Frizzle tapped a few icons and a video of Ned, Moze, Cookie, and Loomer watching Avatar came up.
"How did you get that?" Cookie asked.
"Loomer sent it to me after I informed him of your plight." she answered. "He pulled it off his house's security camera network. He submitted it as evidence that you three can work as a team to make something great."
"We didn't make anything." said Moze, confused.
"You were there for him," Ms. Frizzle pointed to Loomer on the screen, "when he had no one else. Asking nothing in return. Just because he needed you. You gave exactly what you had to give. You repaired a shelf." she touched Moze's shoulder. "Made him dinner." she touseled Ned's hair. "And set up the biggest home theater for miles." she pinched Cookies cheek. "And all together: you made him happy in his darkest time."
That evening, Ned and Moze were in Ned's kitchen. Between them was a plate of fried ravioli.
"Loomer called." said Moze. "He said he's getting better at staying standing and he should be back soon."
"That's good." said Ned. "Hopefully, he won't exact vengeance on Coconut Head."
"I impressed upon him very strongly that Coconut Head was to be forgiven." said Moze, her brow furrowed in conviction.
"We really did make a great team." said Ned, smiling contentedly.
"Can't wait to work with you in the future. Cheers." said Moze, and they clinked their ravioli together.