Slob - Ellen Potter [33]
And on and on. It was pretty ridiculous. But I needed to have detailed descriptions of the old shows to figure out when they were aired and pinpoint the time that the star Nemesis was bouncing back the radio waves.
Jeremy came in, sat down on my bed, and watched me for a little bit.
“Hungry?” she asked. “Mom left us some casserole thing.”
Mom always worked late on Saturday, so for dinner we had to fend for ourselves.
“Not really,” I said with my nose tucked into the Retro TV Magazines.
“Really?” She looked at me so strangely, which made me realize it was strange that I wasn’t hungry.
“Have you figured out which channel you’re going to tune to?” she asked.
I just had. “The Freakout Channel. It’s all seventies shows, all the time.”
“Okay.” Jeremy clapped once. “Now we have the right channel. What do we do next?”
She enjoyed feeling like she was a part of Nemesis. And she was, in a way. She scavenged a lot of the materials for Nemesis, so I felt it was only fair to let her help a little.
I let her help me set up some of the equipment and explained to her that we were only testing things out at this point. That we would probably get no results whatsoever, and that was normal. There were lots of adjustments that still had to be made.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she said breezily. I really don’t think she understood.
I tuned the TV to channel 74, which is the Freakout Channel. We don’t get that channel on our regular TV, but with luck it would come through with the help of Nemesis, just like the farm channel did. Only a whole lot clearer.
Nothing happened. I adjusted the satellite dish for a few minutes, hoping, hoping . . . The sound came through first, then the picture. Yes! It was the Freakout Channel. The picture was far from perfect, but it was clear enough. We sat there on the bed, watching this show called Mork and Mindy, which funnily enough was about a guy from outer space. He lands on earth and moves into the attic of this cute girl’s place. I watched enough of it to get the gist of the episode then checked the most current Retro TV Magazine for today’s listing. There it was. The very same episode. Okay, I admit there was a part of me that was hoping we’d pick up a two-year-old signal right off the bat. But the sensible part of me knew that it probably wouldn’t happen that easily. It was lucky that we’d been able to pick up the Freakout Channel at all.
After Mork and Mindy, we watched an episode of Sanford and Son, then The Love Boat, then two back-to-back episodes of Gilligan’s Island, then I Dream of Jeannie. After a while I felt Jeremy’s eyes on me.
“What?” I said, keeping my eyes on the screen. If we caught some two-year-old signals, it might be only a second-long glimpse of the “wrong” show and I didn’t want to miss it.
“Maybe we should call it quits for the night,” Jeremy said.
My eyes left the screen. She was right. I think I had been temporarily hypnotized by hope and a blond genie in a pink harem outfit.
10
There wasn’t much time to work with Nemesis on Sunday. Sunday is Family Day. Mom always digs through the newspapers to find something “interesting” for us to do together. It’s pretty hit or miss. That Sunday it was miss.
She said she was taking us to a puppet show, which we objected to immediately.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not five years old, Zelda,” Jeremy said.
I watched Mom press her lips together and blink a little too quickly when Jeremy called her Zelda. Mom hears the most hair-raising things every day and she has to always keep her cool, but I could see how much it bugged her every time Jeremy called her Zelda. Of course, so could Jeremy, which is why she did it. Still, Mom is stubborn too, so she said, “It’s not