Nicholas Day - At the End of the Day I Burst into Flames

“You can stop showing off, please.”

Stephen stood up and continued, louder than before.

“Six hundred fifty-six. Seven hundred thirty-eight.”

“Sit down immediately.”

But Stephen wasn’t having any of that, and he kept talking and started walking to the front of the class.

“Eight hundred twenty. Nine hundred two. Nine hundred eighty-four. Want me to go back to one or start at twelve and do it backwards? One hundred forty-four. One hundred thirty-two. One hundred twenty—”

“Stop it this instant and return to your seat.”

“I know my multiplication tables. I could do them forever.”

“Do you want a detention? Is that what you want?”

“How much do you know about numbers, Mrs. Clark?”

“We are all learning our multiplication tables this week.”

“No.” He pointed to us. “They’re learning how to memorize. That’s not math. I didn’t learn how to read by memorizing a book.”

“I think you need to go to the office. Go to the principal’s office immediately.”

“You’re no smarter than any of us.”

“How dare you?” Mrs. Clark stood up. “ You … you just wait right here young man, you wait here and I’ll get the principal myself.” And she shuffled out of the room and into the hallway, her heels clacking the tile and echoing down the cavernous maw of Wood River High School.

“You’re in trouble.” I said.

“No I’m not.”

“She’s going to get Mr. Matthews and he’s going to give you a detention.”

“Fuck him.”

All the kids sucked in and froze, a collective gasp for the reigning king of dirty words.

“Holy cow,” somebody whispered. “He said the f-word.”

“I want to show you guys something.” Stephen grabbed a piece of chalk and drew a circle, a perfect one, on the board. “Do any of you know anything about infinity?”

I raised my hand. “Infinity means forever and ever.”

Stephen smiled.

“That’s right,” he said. “Did you know that the roundness of a circle gets smaller when the circle gets bigger? And I mean lots bigger.”

“Like a house?”

“Like a planet. Like the earth. It’s round. You look outside across that field as far as you can.” Twenty kids craned their necks. I was the only one that got up and went to the window.

“See? It looks flat. We’re so tiny and it’s so big it looks flat. But it’s just a great big circle.”

“The bigger the circle gets the flatter it looks?” I asked.

“Because we’re so small,” he said. “Now, imagine the universe.”

“Is the universe round?”

“I think it is. But it’s also infinite. So the circle would be so big, so enormous, that all it would look like is a straight line. That’s an infinite circle.”

“An infinite circle is a straight line.”

Stephen laughed, and then I smiled and I laughed because right then and there I knew that Stephen didn’t think I was stupid. Maybe he thought that way about the other kids, but not me. I surprised him, and it made me feel good.

One of the kids in the class mumbled, “You guys are crazy.” Stephen looked over them and I could see his lips pulling back. He zeroed in, he knew who insulted us. His teeth clenched. He walked over to a chubby kid named Mark, a kid whose baby fat would turn into the muscles of a high school quarterback, a kid that would date cheerleaders and get A’s, a kid that bullied me in junior high but thought so little of me that by the time we got to high school he just pretended like I wasn’t there. I always hated Mark, even before I really knew him.

Stephen slapped him across the face.

Principal Matthews and Mrs. Clark came rushing in and Mr. Matthews grabbed Stephen and pulled him out of the room. For most of the kids, that was the last time they would see Stephen, but that was the day he and I became best friends, and, now that I think about it, I guess we were always best friends.

The school board decided to give Stephen a test to see how smart he was and after that year they moved him up to the senior level. He told me that he’d begun taking math classes at the local college, but he didn’t call them classes, he called them courses. High school kids were dicks, he said, but the college kids were alright because they mostly ignored him. After that year, the high school arranged for Stephen to receive his diploma early. He was a college freshman at fifteen.

“Man, I wish I was in college,” I said.

“It’s all the same shit, dude. Crappy teachers that barely know more than the students and students that hardly even try to learn. It’s like they’re robots. Like they’re going through life with their switch turned off. They may as well be asleep.”

“It’s got to be better than high school. I bet there are some hot girls.”

“Old ladies you mean? Yuck. You can have them.”

“You mean you don’t even think about it?”

“I think of everything.”

“I’m talking about girls, stupid. Not math. Not the universe.”

“I miss being able to hang out at school.”

“You never really hung out at school, Stephen.”

“I hung out with you.”

“Well, yeah, but we still hang out.”

“I’ve been accepted to another university. They want to give me a full scholarship.”

“What school?”

“ Schools . Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.”

“Fuck, dude, those are, like, on the other side of the country.”

“I’ll be back for the summers.”

“Yeah, no, that’s cool. I’m sorry. I guess I keep forgetting that you’re so far ahead of us. I’m stuck here for another three years. Three years. God I wish I was smart like you.”

“You’re plenty smart, Firecracker.”

“Not like you, dude. You’re going to be king of the world.”

“I’ll just give power over to you. You’re better with people than I am.”

“If you make me king, then first thing we’re going to do is burn this town to the ground. It fucking sucks, dude.”

Stephen hugged me. I thought it went on a little too long but then I realized he was crying and I let him hang on until he was done.

“Everything happens for a reason,” he said.

And then he went home.

That week, Stephen decided to go to Massachusetts, and he was there by the weekend. We wouldn’t speak again until the next year. By that point, I’d danced in the snow and said goodbye to love for the first time, and the addiction had its claws in me.

Sophomore year of high school wasn’t so bad. Not like the fantasy junk that you see in movies and television. It was a small community. Most of us went to the same schools since we were little kids. Hell, most of our parents went to the very same high school when they were kids. It was like that. Everybody knew everybody by the time we got there. The social order was decided long ago. No need for hazing. No use trying to fit in where you didn’t already belong. There was no need for pissing contests. In retrospect, it was like a microcosm of our future.

I could sit back and see future teachers, stay-at-home moms, truck drivers, the local politicians and the criminals. It’s like the town knew what you needed to be. I began to think that’s why it pushed out Stephen. The town knew he didn’t belong. He was the square peg to this town’s round hole. It was so perfectly laid out that these kids might as well have gone out to the cemetery and buried themselves. Their fates were written. They were already dead.

Infinite circle, and all that, I guess.

I got a letter from Stephen during Christmas break:

Firecracker,

MIT is amazing. I’ve found some actual living and breathing humans out here. My age is a novelty, I think. Some of the teachers are put off by how young I am, but at least I can talk to them and they understand me. Math is a real language here.