Georgie was still sprawled out on his bed, barely awake, while I claimed the only somewhat clean chair near his bedroom door. I generally avoided stepping foot into his room because it was always incredibly filthy, but today I had important business to discuss that could not wait.
"We are going to buy a used car, fix it up, and then resell it for a nice profit," I told Georgie, keeping my explanation as simple as possible so his tired brain could follow along.
Georgie blinked at me, wiping the sleep from his eyes. "But we do not know the first thing about how to fix a car," he said, his face twisting in genuine confusion.
"Speak for yourself," I replied, leaning back in the chair with complete confidence.
He sat up a little straighter on the mattress, squinting at me through the dim light of the morning. "How do you suddenly know how to fix a car?" he asked, still looking entirely lost.
"I read a book," I stated calmly, maintaining steady eye contact.
"You read a book," he repeated slowly, giving me an absolute dead stare that questioned my sanity.
"Yes, a book," I confirmed, deciding right then that I was going to stick with this story no matter what he said.
"Let me get this straight. You want me to put all our hard-earned money into this crazy scheme just because you read a book?" Georgie was clearly not convinced by my reasoning, but watching his posture change, I knew I had sparked his interest.
"I am going to have you put in five hundred and fifty dollars, exactly the same amount as me. So you had better go earn that extra hundred and fifty," I told him flatly. He was going to need to complete a few side jobs by himself over the coming days to make up the difference.
He just sighed heavily and ran both hands through his messy hair, gripping the roots in frustration.
"Man, I am going to go bald early just keeping up with your ambitions," he muttered under his breath.
Despite his loud complaining, I knew I already had him hooked on the idea. He was going to stand by me on this project, just like he always did. I simply smiled from my chair, quietly enjoying his minor misery for a brief moment.
_____
Later that morning, I rode to school with Kevin. During the drive, I took the opportunity to silently analyze the mechanics and exterior of his vehicle. It was actually in very good condition. When I mentally matched the current market price from my appraisal against the deal he had told me about, I realized he had gotten a rather fair price. Lucky son of a bitch.
The moment I arrived at the school parking lot and stepped out of Kevin's car, my girlfriend was right there waiting for me. She immediately wrapped her arms around my neck for a warm hug.
"Good morning, Helen," I greeted her softly, leaning in to kiss her since I was in such a great mood. Honestly, even if I had been in a terrible mood, I would still have kissed her exactly the same way.
She immediately blushed and looked away, since she always got easily embarrassed by any display of public affection. It was incredibly fun to tease her about it.
"Did you hear the news? There's an actual rocket scientist from NASA coming to the school today," she said, her eyes bright with curiosity, clearly assuming I would be thrilled by a special guest like that.
"Yeah, I heard about it. I was honestly thinking about skipping classes today, but let's see if this guy is actually worth my time," I told her, trying to hide the fact that I was actually quite excited to hear him speak.
After walking down the noisy hallway, we took our seats in the classroom. Luckily for me, my very first class of the day was with Mr. Givens, our science teacher, which meant I wouldn't have to completely bore myself to death first thing in the morning.
I chose to sit near the back of the room, right by the window. It was the classic protagonist seat, the kind you'd see in every anime I had ever watched.
As the bell rang to signal the start of class, Mr. Givens stood at the front of the room with a wide smile.
"There is a very special guest among us today. He was actually a former classmate of mine, and he's now a scientist working for NASA. Please give a warm welcome to Dr. Ronald Hodges."
Before the applause had even fully died down, Mr. Givens spoke up again, his voice carrying a heavy note of self-pity. "You must all be wondering how one of us goes on to become a high school teacher while the other becomes a prominent scientist."
Sheldon shot his hand straight up into the air. "I was actually wondering that," he stated plainly.
The room fell into an awkward silence for a brief second before Dr. Ronald chimed in with a slight smirk. "I'll tell you exactly how it happened. One of us spent all his time chasing girls, and the other one spent his time studying in the library, reading books," the guest speaker declared.
Mr. Givens visibly deflated at that blunt statement and stepped aside to let Dr. Ronald take over the rest of the talking for the day.
Dr. Ronald began his lecture with sweeping gestures and overly simplified concepts. The material was so incredibly basic that I instantly felt like I was wasting my entire morning just by sitting there. I was nearly zoning out when Sheldon raised his hand again, cutting the presentation short.
Sheldon looked directly at the guest speaker with intense curiosity. He politely asked the scientist why NASA didn't simply land the rocket boosters so they could be reused in future missions, rather than letting them burn up in the atmosphere or fall into the ocean and be destroyed for good.
Dr. Ronald chuckled in a deeply patronizing manner and quickly explained to the class that what Sheldon was suggesting was practically impossible.
He stated firmly that the rockets were far too heavy and moving far too fast to ever successfully attempt a controlled descent back down to the surface.
Sheldon didn't back down in the slightest. He immediately countered the expert by suggesting they could easily calculate the necessary thrust to decelerate the rocket, and further proposed they could land the falling boosters safely on a large barge positioned out in the ocean.
The visiting NASA scientist looked genuinely taken aback, though he quickly masked his surprise behind a thin veneer of annoyance.
"The math is pretty complicated," he said, clearly trying to belittle Sheldon with the comment.
"Perhaps I could help you with that," Sheldon said, without a trace of hesitation.
"Sure you can," Dr. Ronald replied, in that tone adults reserve specifically for children they aren't taking seriously.
Rather than engaging with the actual mathematics or the theory behind the idea, Dr. Ronald simply reached into his pocket, pulled out a colorful mission patch, and handed it over to Sheldon as if that settled the matter.
Listening to the exchange, I realized it was genuinely an interesting proposition. They will manage to do it in future but for Sheldon to actually think about this was brilliant in itself.
Sheldon's concept had actually gotten my own mind working through the complicated physics involved, turning it over from a few different angles.
Still, watching a supposed scientist try to silence a curious kid with a cheap fabric patch instead of an actual answer was infuriating. The confused, faintly offended look on Sheldon's face would have been hilarious under any other circumstances.
I couldn't just sit back and watch it happen. I stood up from my seat in the back row and asked, loud enough for the whole room to hear, why he refused to properly answer the legitimate question Sheldon had just asked him.
I added that a real doctor of science should be able to point out the mathematical flaws in a theory, rather than simply dismissing it outright without offering a shred of evidence.
He ignored me completely and went right back to entertaining the rest of the class with pointless trivia, the kind of thing meant to keep restless kids engaged rather than actually teach anyone anything.
At one point he even asked the room, "Does anyone know how astronauts go to the bathroom in space?" clearly preferring to charm the crowd rather than engage with the only two people in the room who could actually go to nasa someday.
The moment class ended, Sheldon came straight over to vent about the scientist, and I simply stood there and listened as he laid out his plan for shutting Dr. Ronald up for good. His idea was to write out a full, rigorous proof of everything he'd said in class using actual physics and mathematics, the kind of work that could realistically serve as a doctoral thesis for a graduate student.
Here he was, casually talking about completing something like that entirely on his own, purely out of spite and the need for a little revenge. I had to admit, I was more than a little surprised, and honestly a bit proud of him for it.
I had been holding myself back for a while now, deliberately not reading too far ahead and actively slowing myself down just so I wouldn't get restless and bored sitting through ordinary classes. It seemed, though, that I would have to put in at least a little real effort this time, if only for my little brother's sake. I told him I would help.
"I don't want any help," Sheldon said immediately, crossing his arms.
"Okay," I replied simply, letting it go for the moment. I knew his character was like that from bbt. He was hard to work together with. But i would change him a little by little for his own goodm
"Let's see who finishes this research faster," I said instead, tossing the challenge out just to get him fired up.
"I already know I'll win. But fine," Sheldon said, unable to hide the small spark of competitiveness in his voice.
Once that class ended, I didn't waste any more time sitting around in school. I headed straight for the library to dig up everything useful I could find on rocket propulsion and reentry physics. I already had a rough outline in my head of what needed to be done, but I still wanted to be thorough about the whole thing.
As soon as lunch break ended, I convinced Georgie to skip the last few classes of the day with me. I wanted to take him somewhere more useful, a place where we could actually start learning the ins and outs of buying, fixing, and flipping cars.
So the two of us headed over to Herschel's garage, since he was our neighbor and, most of the time, a pretty easygoing guy. He was billy’s dad and Brenda husband.
The garage door was already halfway open when we pulled up, and the smell of motor oil and old rubber hit us before we'd even stepped inside. Herschel was underneath a beat-up sedan on a creeper, only his legs visible, a wrench clanking somewhere against metal.
"Herschel, you got a minute?" I called out, stepping carefully around a puddle of something I didn't want to identify.
He rolled himself out from under the car, squinting up at us with grease smudged across one cheek. "Depends. You boys skipping school to bother me, or you actually got a reason?"
"Bit of both," Georgie admitted, earning a short laugh from Herschel as he pushed himself up to his feet.
"We want to learn the car business," I said, getting straight to the point. "Buying beaters cheap, fixing them up, selling them for more. I figure you'd know better than anybody around here what that actually takes."
Herschel wiped his hands on a rag hanging from his belt loop and gave me a long look, like he was trying to figure out if I was serious.
"That's not exactly a weekend hobby, Charlie. Takes money up front, a decent eye for what's actually worth saving, and enough know-how not to buy yourself a headache on wheels."
"We've got the money part covered," I said. "Little over a thousand between the two of us."
Herschel raised an eyebrow at that. "A thousand'll get you something, alright. Question is whether you can tell a good bones from a lost cause before you hand over the cash."
"That's why we're here," Georgie chimed in, surprising me a little with how much enthusiasm had crept into his voice already.
Herschel studied us both for another second, then shrugged and waved a hand toward the sedan he'd just crawled out from under. "Alright. Grab a rag each. If you're gonna waste my afternoon, you might as well make yourselves useful while you do it."
I caught Georgie's eye and grinned. Whatever came out of the next few hours, it felt like exactly the kind of start we needed.