After Oma apologized and promised Asad she wouldn’t yell anymore, he went off to camp with Dad, and Eli and I decided to take the goats to Uncle Gregor’s to make our video of the GOAT Obstacle Course. Rodgers still didn’t see why he couldn’t focus on knocking Hammerstein off the balance beam instead of walking across it, and Hammerstein chewed on the Hula Hoop, so we had to duct-tape it back together. But overall, it went pretty well.
Since we were there, I decided to fill up Uncle Gregor’s recycling with old magazines and papers and wheel it out to the curb while Eli practiced his latest solo.
When I came back inside, I showed him what I’d found. It was an old certificate with fancy type. “Know what this reminds me of?”
Eli grinned. “The World’s Best Hay-Loader certificate I made you!”
I nodded. When Eli won a prize at last year’s science fair, and I didn’t, he decided it wasn’t fair that I couldn’t show my hay-loader off properly in the gym, but the science judges didn’t really want to discuss that any further. So he made me his own prize. It wasn’t as good as the real thing, and I’m still going to beat him next year. But I felt better knowing that someone knew what I could do, and respected it.
“I still have it,” I told him. “It gave me an idea too….Want to head over to the library? I need to ask Harry about something.”
That night, after dinner, we had a special viewing of the GOAT Obstacle Course video. My parents laughed so hard I thought they might hurt themselves, and even Oma cheered. Asad said it would have been way better if he was in it too, so we should do another one.
Then Oma told us she’d made something special for dessert.
Eli and I shut our eyes and tried to guess what it could be.
“Those almond moon cookies?” I guessed, sniffing hard.
“No, wait, what was that other thing?” Eli said, sniffing too. “The one with the swirls?”
“Wrong!” Oma said, and we opened our eyes. A huge pan of brownies was floating right in front of Asad.
“My favorite!” Asad yelled, and gave Oma a huge hug.
I grinned at her. “Where’d you get the recipe?”
“Mr. Ziedrich’s friend Mrs. Alvarez emailed it to me,” she said, smiling proudly. “It won a blue ribbon at the fair.”
“Mrs. Alvarez gave you her brownie recipe?” I said, surprised. “I thought it was a secret.”
“Well, I told her it was a special request from my grandsons—and then I had to send her my Kirschenkuchen recipe in exchange,” Oma said. She looked down at Asad, and smiled. “It was a good trade.”
Then it was Asad’s turn to tell us about the photo he’d picked for our wall.
“This was me on my birthday,” he said. “Right after my brother FINALLY let me use his Mentos tube for the first time, and Diet Coke went STRAIGHT UP EVERYWHERE! Then it went ALL OVER ME!”
We all clapped for him, and he grinned almost as wide as he did in the photo.
I couldn’t help but grin too. “Yeah, that was pretty cool. We should probably do it again this summer. Only, this time you should at least try to get out of the way.”
“NEVER!” Asad yelled, and did a happy stomping dance, with a lot of punching.
He’d be pretty cute sometimes, if he wasn’t my annoying little brother.
“We can have a PARTY for ME and the Mentos and SCIENCE!” Asad went on.
“A science party?” Mom asked as she and Dad started gathering plates.
“Sure!” Eli told her, following them into the kitchen. “Science is awesome! It could be kind of like a science fair, or maybe like the county fair, only the food and the recital and everything would all be science-related….”
“And Mom and Dad and Oma and Eli and Rodgers and Hammerstein and Uncle Gregor and Andre and I guess my brother, HD, could all come…,” Asad went on.
“Who is Andre?” Oma asked him.
“Andre is Uncle Gregor’s BOYFRIEND!” Asad told her. “He loves science so much they’re off doing science RIGHT NOW!”
Oma looked at me, confused.
I hesitated. I was pretty sure this was one of those things that had been different when Oma was alive, and I didn’t know if Mom and Dad had talked with her about it or not, or if they’d covered it on the History Channel. But Uncle Gregor was her family too. “Oma, do you know about how some guys fall in love with guys, not girls? Uncle Gregor fell in love with a guy he met when he went back to college. His name is Andre.” I went over to the mantel and found the photo from when Uncle Gregor and Andre took us for a special backstage tour of the penguin exhibit at the zoo. Uncle Gregor has his arm around Andre’s shoulders, and they’re both squinting at the sun and smiling. “This is Uncle Gregor, and that’s Andre,” I told Oma. “They’re off doing research on penguins. They’ll be back in September, though.”
She took the photo from my hand and studied it for a long time. “I cannot wait to meet them,” she said at last. “Does Andre make sauerkraut?”
After that, we were all pretty busy getting everything ready for the fair.
Dad dropped our entry forms off and paid the entry fees for me and Oma, since we’d been working so hard on our projects.
Mr. Z. walked me through putting a free open-source operating system and some basic software on my computer, like a word processor and a game I bought, so I could show the judges that it did something. (It’s going to be a while before I save up enough money for all the software I want. But like Mr. Z. said, this is a start.)
Eli practiced two solos until they were both nearly perfect, even when the goats came over to see what he was doing. He’ll pick which one he wants to do once he’s up on stage doing his thing. Eli likes some spontaneity in his performances.
Mr. Z. signed Rodgers and Hammerstein up for the fair, but he decided not to enter the goat-and-owner look-alike contest this year, so we didn’t have to help him make costumes. We had to make a few repairs to Eli’s costume after an incident with Asad and a football and the goats, though.
Eli and I helped Oma make a really nice poster, and she seemed okay with it now. We helped her write out what she wanted to say on index cards too, to hold up if the judges had questions about her sauerkraut.
I made some cards about my computer build too, and practiced a few times during our kaffeeklatsches. Mr. Z. said I covered everything perfectly.
And Mom let me use her email account to let everyone know when my presentation was scheduled, in case they wanted to come by. Every single one of them said they’d be there.
It was all coming together, just like I wanted it to.