Paula DeBoard - The Fragile World

“Hey!” someone called, pointing up to the roof of the cafeteria, at me.

A few students stopped to look.

“It’s Mr. K!”

“What are you doing up there, Mr. K?”

“Is this for Egg Drop Day? Throw me an egg, Mr. K!”

I gave them a polite wave but didn’t answer. Most of the students glanced at me and kept walking, but a small crowd had begun to gather below. I recognized Alex among them, my key ring in his right hand. He was such a conscientious kid; he’d probably fended off my incoming class at the door and locked up before returning to find me.

“Mr. Kaufman!” someone called, and I focused in on Candace Silva, the principal’s secretary, waving her hands over her head in such an exaggerated way that she might have been signaling to an incoming aircraft. Everything about Candace Silva was exaggerated, from her very pink cardigans to her candy-themed office cubicle, which had always made me slightly dizzy, in an overindulged way.

“You have class!” she called to me now. “Mr. Kaufman! Curtis! You need to come down now!”

I will, I thought. I’ll come down in a minute.

“Are you sick? Do you need me to call you a substitute?”

“No,” I whispered, which of course she couldn’t hear. Everything seemed to be moving farther and farther away—the buildings on campus, the horizon, the distant hum of the freeway. On the ground below, one of the kids called my name, but all noise had dissolved into a drone. I saw Alex step forward uncertainly, handing my key ring to Candace.

“Curtis? Do you hear me? You just stay right there! You don’t need to move a muscle! I’m going to take care of this!” I watched as she began walking back to the office rapidly, and then broke into a near-run after a few steps, her heels clattering. In all the years we’d known each other, I had never seen Candace Silva run.

I was dimly aware that more time had passed and that what was happening was not normal, but I didn’t seem to be able to prevent it. Standing up was out of the question, an act of superhuman strength and resolve. I shielded my eyes and looked out farther, at the horizon, a distant place where sky met land. The whole world was so tiny, so fragile, just waiting to be crushed by a giant footstep.

Over the intercom I heard Olivia’s name paged, and I thought distractedly, How nice. Everyone else must love Olivia, too.

The campus security squad—two burly guys in their twenties who intimidated even the staff members—arrived and hustled the students below back to class. The only students who remained, I realized, were mine, the students who should have been sitting in my third-period class. I recognized a group of boys who perennially sat in the rear of the room, and smiled to see that they were kicking a hacky-sack in a circle, and not looking up at me at all. Then Candace was back, pointing and gesturing frantically to Bill Meyers, Rio’s principal for the last decade. Bill waved an arm at me, and I raised mine in a weak salute.

I heard Olivia’s name being paged again, and I thought: Liv. I should get up now, just for Liv. I could feel the sun beating down on my head, where every day I combed fewer and fewer hairs. Olivia thought I had rickets, but maybe this was simply a case of sunstroke. Kathleen would take care of me. She would press a cold washcloth to my face and keep refilling a glass of ice water. I would be feeling better by the time Daniel and Olivia got home from school.

“Curtis,” a voice behind me said, and I turned around to see Bill Meyers, holding out a hand to help me to my feet. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”

So I stood, light-headed and unsteady. Bill took firm hold of me until we were well away from the edge of the roof. Then he held out his hand in a wide, strangely formal gesture and said, “After you.” I led the way across the roof, to the open door and down the stairs, past the serving ladies, the skin of their foreheads pinched tight by gray hairnets. They stared at me, bewildered.

A few of my students were still gathered on the sidewalk below, although it must have been well into third period by now. Why weren’t they in class? The hacky-sack guys stopped when they saw me, the sack hitting the ground with a soft, beanbag ploop. Candace Silva was still there, too, chewing on a lacquered fingernail. On the outskirts of the group, which was just about where I could always find her, stood Olivia, weighted down by her massive backpack. I waved at her as Bill Meyers and I passed, his hand on my elbow.

“Everything’s okay!” he boomed heartily. “Back to class now.”

“Dad?” Olivia’s eyes were huge, her face even paler than normal.

I took a step in her direction, but Bill clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Curtis, maybe we should have a little talk first.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll see you in a bit, Olivia.”

She nodded slowly.

I felt a sudden longing for the cot in the nurse’s office, but Bill steered me out to the parking lot, straight to my dusty green Explorer. From his pocket he produced the ring of keys I’d tossed from the roof.

“Get in,” he said. There had been some warmth in his voice when we were on the roof, as if we were two friends who had bumped into each other at a coffee shop. Now he was coolly efficient. “Passenger side, Curtis. I’m driving.”

olivia

By fourth period, everyone knew. I took my seat in Spanish, feeling sick and anxious, and listened to the gossip of my classmates.

“Did you see Mr. K just totally lose it?”

“I was sure he was gonna jump or something.”

“If he jumped, I bet we’d get a sub until the end of the year.”

I gritted my teeth. They were just stupid things said by stupid kids who had never experienced a tragedy beyond what they’d seen on television. I checked my cell phone for the dozenth time since Dad had left campus with Mr. Meyers. Wasn’t he going to call me? Didn’t someone want to tell me what was going on?

A guy in the back of the room said, “Seriously, the guy must be a total wacko. The school cafeteria? Couldn’t he find like, a bridge or something?” and I almost screamed at him. Shut up! Don’t you know that’s my dad? To be fair, maybe he didn’t. It was a school of sixteen-hundred students, and I had perfected the art of being off the radar.

But I didn’t have to listen to this. I shoved my Spanish notebook in my backpack and left class just as the bell was ringing, before my teacher had logged off whatever important email she was sending from her computer.

On my way to the office, I passed the science wing. A cute blonde girl who must have been just out of college was Dad’s substitute. The lights had been dimmed in his room, and I recognized a Nova episode on the white projector screen.

Mrs. Silva didn’t seem too surprised when I entered the office, although she clearly had no idea what she was supposed to do with me.

“I just want my dad,” I said, fighting very hard not to cry. “He’s not answering his phone.”

“I’m sure he’s fine, dear. Mr. Meyers is with him.”

“But how am I supposed to get home?” We lived several miles away from campus—a trip I’d never made on foot.

Mrs. Silva smiled at me patiently, like I was an idiot. “You know it’s still several hours before the end of the school day. Shouldn’t you be in fourth period now?”

“Would you go back to class if everyone in the whole school was talking about how your father almost jumped from the roof of the cafeteria?”

We stared at each other for a long moment over a jar of hard candy on the lip of Mrs. Silva’s cubicle.

“I could call your mom,” she offered finally, her voice rising at the end in a subtle question mark. But of course, she knew my mom was in Omaha, and that wasn’t going to solve my immediate problem.