David Phalen - Chasing the Idea Rat with My Best Friend, Jaime

Illustration by Nicholas Jainschigg

Jaime hits me hard on the arm, nods toward the rusted metal grate covering a window well of the soot-blackened brick tenement we’re passing. A thick, pinkish-brown tail, maybe ten inches long, curls out from the grate, lying on the sidewalk like a taunting smile. I step forward, but the tail slides over the pocked, gray cement and through the bars.

“You get a look at it?” I ask.

“Probably just meat,” Jaime says. He pokes the grate with the toe of his sneaker. It moves half an inch, then fells back into place, not nearly as solid as it looks.

We pull together, and the grate comes off with a groan and a snap. It clangs to the sidewalk behind us when we drop it. The window well is a three-foot drop into a muddy, trash-filled puddle. A jagged hole has been gnawed through a corner of the water-stained piece of plywood covering the window. The tail and a slick, gray-furred ass are still on our side of that hole, but only for a second before a six-clawed hind foot pushes the body the rest of the way through.

Jaime beats me in the scramble to get into the well first. We’ve finally found an Idea Rat.

Idea Rats were second only to Pinch as the cause of dropouts from the Inner-Consolidated School System, where I met Jaime. Every kid talked of knowing somebody who knew somebody who once chased an Idea Rat and almost caught it. Weak as it was, that dream offered more than anyone ever got from ICSS.

Jaime showed up at my school in fifth grade planning to drop out, but I never thought I’d leave early. Every year, I was the special project: the kid who made the teachers forget their failures because they thought they were making a difference in at least one life. I’d take whatever tests they wanted to give me, do extra homework assignments. I was never particular about favorite subjects or teaching methods—I just wanted to learn.

Whether I wanted the special treatment or not didn’t matter to the other kids. To them, I was just the teachers’ pet: not trusted, not included in any of the cliques that constantly formed, broke apart, reformed. I always wondered what it would be like to eat lunch at a table with a large group around it, to be in the middle of other kids when they played stickball on the playground. To listen to what they thought of things, find out if my ideas and experiences were the same as theirs, or at least how they were different.

All I ever did was wonder. Until Jaime came to ICSS, I didn’t have any friends.

Jaime pulls the plywood away from the window and passes it up to me. A greenish-white powder of mold dusts my hands before I drop the wood to the sidewalk, next to the grate. Jaime pushes against a glassless window, swinging it up and open. He sticks his head through into the basement beyond. After a few seconds, he pulls back out.

“Hold this up for me,” he says. I drop into the well next to him and take the window. Jaime slides through into darkness.

I look in after him, my eyes taking some time to adjust from the sunlight. The room I finally focus on is large, maybe thirty-five feet square. Two boarded-over doorways are on the wall across from the window. A smaller opening, also boarded shut; is in the middle of the wall to my left. An indeterminate pile in the corner is probably some pinchhead’s bed or final resting place. A crooked circle of broken cinder blocks in the center of the room forms a makeshift fireplace that hasn’t been used in a while. The place has the damp, musty smell pretty much universal to basements.

I drop softly to the concrete floor beneath the window. I untie the durafab bag from around my waist, pull it from my belt loops. Jaime moves quietly toward a cobwebby set of wooden stairs along the right-side wall. He holds his bag ready. As I move behind him, I see the Idea Rat on a step about halfway up. Its snout is raised, testing the air. Satisfied, it grabs the next step up and pulls itself that much nearer a closed door at the top of the stairs.

Jaime takes a deep, silent breath through his mouth. For a second, he stands frozen. Then he’s a blur of motion, diving up the steps, bag open, outstretched. He lands on the Idea Rat’s step so quickly that I’m sure he must have it, but the sound of scampering claws can only mean the impossible has happened; Jaime has missed.

The Idea Rat glides up the last couple of steps and throws itself against the door with a hollow, echoing thud. The door falls slowly into the hallway beyond, hitting the floor with a “Whap!”

The Idea Rat scoots through the opening, barely breaking stride. Jaime and I lose a second staring, but then we re after it again. When I step over the door at the top of the stairs, I notice the knob and all three hinges have been removed. Scrap scavengers are always doing stuff like that.

Most of my teachers were just out of college, putting in time at ICSS because every year they taught there canceled a year of student loans. By comparison, Mr. Rodriguez, my fifth-grade teacher, seemed ancient. His dark hair was grayed almost white in two swoops at the temples, and the deep wrinkles around his eyes had started to spread to the rest of his face, blending with a jagged, C-shaped scar on his cheek. Schoolyard legend said he got that scar in a knife fight with a student. Kids said the janitor eventually carried that student out of the building in a durafab bag.

When Mr. Rodriguez kept Jaime and me after school the Monday following our annual tests, I knew pretty much what was coming. When he turned around a student desk to sit and talk with us, I gave him an encouraging smile. Jaime didn’t.

“We scored your Academic Skills Tests over the weekend,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “You did well, both of you. Your scores are the highest of anyone at ICSS for as long as I’ve been here.”

I sat up straighter in my seat. Jaime rolled his eyes.

“These would be great scores at any school,” said Mr. Rodriguez. “Only a few kids anywhere in the country did better. For someone here to score this well is remarkable. I’m going to send your scores to the AST people and see if they’ll waive the fee on a retake to be included in the national database.” When we didn’t show any response, he explained. “It may help you get to college eventually. To get out of here.”

Mr. Rodriguez fixed his eyes on a spot somewhere just above our heads. He made a gesture with his hand, encompassing the shabbiness of the place. Three-quarters of the windows were boarded up, and most of the ones remaining displayed cracks so elaborate the glass would have Men out long ago if it hadn’t been bulletproof reinforced in the mid-’90s. Ink-stained wood showed through in huge patches on the ancient bulletin boards, their cork long since flaked off. Graying blackboards held impossible-to-erase ghost lessons, long ago taught and forgotten. When Mr. Rodriguez continued, his voice was softer, sadder. “You’ve gotten nothing from this place. These scores could only have come from inside of you.”

He shook his head and stood. “I want to show you something.” We followed him to the front of the room, through a door that led to his office. He nodded at a large table next to his cluttered desk. I think I probably gasped out loud when I saw what was on it.

Covered by a plastic sheet—opaque with time and dust—was a computer. I knew such things existed, of course, were even common in many places: but not in districts like ICSS.

“We got it with the last of our federal money,” said Mr. Rodriguez. “Over ten years ago. We can’t afford repairs, so you’ll have to be careful. You can access any of the public share libraries, but nothing with a user fee.”