Chapter 21: The Laminator Runs Hot

The laminator at Brannigan Hardware is a forty-nine dollar floor model, and by Tuesday night it was running hot.

Dot had unboxed it herself. She said it was for inventory.

I stood at the paint counter with forty printouts of Selena's practice pages and did not like how well I knew what to do.

"This is her weapon," I said.

"It's a laminator," said Dot. "It has no opinions."

"It has a lot of opinions. It's been her whole personality."

"Then take it back."

I fed in the first sheet. It came out the other end warm and shiny and a little curved, like a very serious potato chip.

Gus read it over my shoulder. It was a photo of the gold star.

"That's the evidence," he said.

"That's the exhibit."

"Is there a difference?"

"Exhibits have a laminated spine."

Milo laminated his Coke tally, a napkin and half a donut before anyone saw him.

By eleven we had a white three-ring binder with a clear cover, and I had put a title on the spine in blue marker.

SELENA ALDOUS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.

Three tabs. SIGNATURES. TEXT. And one empty tab, which I left blank.

"What's the third one for?" Gus asked.

"I don't know yet," I said. "I don't know what she did before."

On Wednesday Dot drove me to the lake.

The man we wanted lived in a cabin at the end of a gravel road.

He was sitting in a rowboat tied to his own dock, fishing, with a radio going.

He had been the science teacher at Marlow Falls High for thirty-one years. He had also been one of the three judges at the state fair.

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