Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

I gazed up at Mr. Moats. If it’d been any Friday before Hannah’s death, I’d have turned red and apologized, perhaps even sprinted to the bathroom, locked myself in the handicapped stall and wept over the toilet seat, but now, I didn’t feel anything. I was impassive as a blank sheet of Strathmore drawing paper. I stared up at him, as if he wasn’t talking about me but about some other wayward kid named Blue. I felt all the embarrassment of a desert cactus.

I did notice, however, that the entire class was nervously glancing around at each other, carrying out some impressive routine of alarm like tree-dwelling Guenon monkeys alerting each other to the presence of a Crowned Eagle. Fran “Juicy” Smithson widened her eyes at Henderson Shoal and Henderson Shoal, in response, widened his eyes in the direction of Howard “Beirut” Stevens. Amy Hempshaw bit her lip and removed her caramel hair from behind her ears and lowered her head so it swiftly covered half of her face like a trap door.

What they were signaling to each other, of course, was that Mr. Moats, notorious for preferring the works of Velázquez, Ribera, El Greco and Herrera the Elder to the company of his clam-faced Gallway coworkers (who neither dreamt about, nor were overly eager to wax poetic on, the genius of the Spanish Masters) had also apparently thrown out, unopened, all recent interoffice mail delivered daily to his Mailbox in the Faculty Lounge.

Hence he had not familiarized himself with Havermeyer’s “Emergency Memorandum,” nor the article written by the National Teaching League, “Preparing a Student Body for Grief,” or, most critically, that confidential list prepared by Butters entitled “Ones to Watch,” which included my name, as well as the Bluebloods’: “These students in particular will be affected by the recent loss. Pay close attention to their behavior and academic performance and alert myself or our newly appointed counselor, Deb Cromwell, of any abnormalities. This is a very delicate situation.” (These confidential faculty documents had been stolen, Xeroxed and illicitly trafficked among the student body. By whom, no one knew. Some said it was Maxwell Stuart, others said Dee and Dum.)

“Actually,” said Jessica Rothstein across the room, crossing her arms, “I think it’s okay to excuse Blue today.” Her kinky brown curls, which at distances greater than fifteen feet resembled one thousand wet wine corks, trembled in perfect unison.

“Is that so?” Mr. Moats spun around to face her. “And why is that?”

“She’s been through an ordeal, ” said Jessica loudly, displaying the thrilling conviction of a young person who knows she’s Right, the old guy in front of her (who should, in theory, have Maturity and Experience working for him) Flat-Out Wrong.

“An ordeal,” repeated Moats.

“Yes. An ordeal.”

“What sort of ordeal are we talking about? I’m intrigued.”

Jessica made a face of exasperation. “She’s had a rough week. ” She was desperately glancing around the room now wishing someone else would take over. Jessica preferred to be Captain of this rescue, making the phone call, giving the order. Jessica had no desire to be the Private who flew the HH-43F helicopter from Bin Ty Ho Airbase, emergency-landed in enemy territory, crawled through rice paddies, waterholes, elephant grass and landmines with over seventy pounds of ammo and C-rations tied to her, carrying the wounded solider seven miles and spending the night on the mosquitoed bank of the Cay Ni River before boarding a rescue bird coming at 0500 hours.

“Miss Rothstein enjoys beating around the bush,” said Moats.

“I’m just saying she’s had a hard time, okay? That’s all.”

“Well, life isn’t a cakewalk, is it?!” asked Moats. “Eighty-nine percent of the world’s most valuable art was created by men living in rat-infested flats. You think Velázquez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the luxuries of central heating and twenty-four-hour pizza delivery?! ”

“No one’s talking about Velázquez,” said Tim “Raging” Waters, slumped on the stool at the center of the Life Drawing Circle. “We’re talking about Hannah Schneider and how Blue was with her when she died .”

Usually no one, including myself, paid any attention to Raging, so typical his sullen voice and the bumper stickers all over the trunk of his car, I LOVE PAIN, BLOOD TASTES GOOD, and the words scrawled in black permanent marker all over his backpack, . Whiffs of cigarette smoke followed in his wake like a Just-Married convertible trailing cans. But he said her name, and it floated out into the center of the room like an empty rowboat and — I don’t know why — in that moment, I think I would’ve run away with that pale angry kid if he’d asked me to. I loved him desperately, an agonizing, overwhelming love, for three, maybe four seconds. (That was how things were after Hannah died. You didn’t notice someone and when you did you adored him/her, wanted to have his/her offspring, until the moment passed as abruptly as it had come.)

Mr. Moats didn’t move. He raised a hand to his green plaid vest and kept it pressed there, as if he was going to be sick, or else he was trying to remember words to a song he once knew.

“I see,” he said. Gently, he returned my sad Strathmore pad to my easel. “Resume your drawings!”

He stood next to me. When I started drawing again, beginning with Raging’s leather shoe in the middle of the page (a brown shoe, on the side of which a word was scrawled, Mayhem ), Mr. Moats, oddly enough, bent down next to me so his head was inches from the white paper. I sort of glanced over at him, reluctantly, because like the sun, it was never a good idea to stare directly into a teacher’s face. Inevitably, you noticed things you wished you hadn’t — sleep, moles, hairs, wrinkles, some calloused or discolored patch of skin. You were aware there was a sour, vinegary truth to these physical details, but you didn’t want to know what it was, not yet, because it’d directly affect one’s ability to pay attention in class, to take notes on the many stages of club mosses reproduction, or the exact year and month of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1863).

Moats didn’t say anything. His eyes traveled all over my blank paper, stopping on Raging down in the corner with his leg over his face, and I watched him, spellbound by his craggy profile, a profile that bore a striking resemblance to the southeastern coast of England. And then he closed his eyes, and I could see how upset he was, and I started to wonder if perhaps he’d loved Hannah. I was aware too how strange adults were, how their lives were vaster than they wanted anyone to realize, that they actually stretched on and on like deserts, dry and desolate, with an unpredictable, shifting sea of dunes.

“Maybe I should start over on another piece of paper,” I said. I wanted him to say something. If he said something, it meant he might bear extreme heat, freezing temperatures at night, the odd sandstorm, but otherwise be all right.

He nodded and stood up again. “Continue.”

That day after school, I went to Hannah’s classroom. I’d hoped nobody would be there, but when I walked into Loomis, I saw two freshman girls taping things — it looked like Get Well Soon cards — to Hannah’s door. On the floor to their right was a giant picture of Hannah, as well as a pile of flowers — carnations for the most part, in pinks, whites and reds. Perón had mentioned them on the intercom during Afternoon Announcements: “The outpouring of flowers and cards shows us that, despite our different backgrounds we can band together and support each other, not as students, parents, teachers and administrators, but as human beings. Hannah would be overwhelmed with joy.” Immediately, I wanted to leave, but the girls had seen me so I had no choice but to continue down the hall.