Spontaneous

by Aaron Starmer

  “The state has abandoned you, dear,” Dodd replied. “The Lord has not.”

  Then the willow-voiced firebrand treated us to an hour-and-a-half-long reading from Ecclesiastes.

  “‘Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities. All is vanity!’” she began, which sounded like a condemnation of our selfie-happy generation. Ecclesiastes was also particularly self-serving for Mrs. Dodd, seeing that it’s told from the perspective of a wise teacher. But wouldn’t you know it? We dug it. Most of us, at least, because it ended up being about the importance of living in the moment and how we’re all powerless to our fates. In other words, ancient and yet timely. More than relatable. We all went home humming the old folk tune that was inspired by those biblical verses.

  To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn . . .

  The season was winter. It was cold, cold, cold. But good God, was it something. Not all my classmates agreed, but I thought school was more interesting than it had ever been. In the morning, we had rousing bitch sessions and discussions about life, the universe, and everything led by Mr. Spiros. Then we’d share the highlights of our collected video footage, and Ms. Felson would load it into Final Cut Pro, where we could edit and add music and narration.

  Within a week, I could do the variety of yoga poses that made sex with Dylan less taxing on the lungs. We were toning our bodies, expanding our minds, pushing our boundaries. Many of us had our first taste of offal, for instance, thanks to the killer mushroom-stuffed cow’s heart Kiki served us for lunch on Valentine’s Day. Which might’ve seemed wildly inappropriate if it didn’t taste so damn good.

  By the time daylight saving time kicked in and the first whiffs of spring were in the air, we’d heard a big chunk of the Bible and we knew more than most about begetting and bloodletting. Plenty of boring stuff in that book, but when you strip away the filler, there are some inspiring stories too. At the risk of sounding entirely full of myself, I was like Noah. I had called all the students to school and—like the ark—it was carrying us across the floodwaters to safety.

  Because you guessed it, during those wonderful first six weeks, no one—not a single person—blew up.

  evolution

  Rosetti made good on her promise. Every day, she was there, patrolling the halls and parking lot, occasionally popping into classes. Which, I’ll admit, was weird at first, but after a while it made me feel more secure. Like she was a big sister who was keeping an eye on me. And packing heat. We didn’t discuss anything about government conspiracies in the building, but we did trade knowing glances whenever we passed each other, and I always texted her the latest gossip.

  Kids were apprehensive at first, but I spread a rumor that Rosetti was once a consultant on the set of a Fast & Furious movie, and soon she was garnering tons of attention. Which she seemed to enjoy. I’d notice her smiling when she was bullshitting with students and her wardrobe gradually shifted from pantsuits to outfits that could have, in certain lights, been mistaken for youthful and fashionable.

  Dylan obviously wasn’t thrilled by Rosetti’s constant presence, and I never told him about the burner and what it meant. In simple terms, it meant I had connections to a world he wasn’t a part of. And that was okay. That was a good thing, actually.

  “I don’t understand what you see in her,” he said to me one morning as Rosetti’s Tesla glided through the late March rain and into the parking lot.

  “I see a badass chick who cares about the future,” I responded.

  “This is a job to her,” Dylan said. “That’s all. Like it was a job when she nearly ruined my family. She doesn’t care about people. She’s an opportunist.”

  “What’s wrong with doing your job?” I asked. “What’s wrong with being an opportunist? If I wasn’t an opportunist then this whole school thing wouldn’t be happening, would it?”

  Dylan conceded with a wink. “The difference is I love you.”

  I kissed him on the cheek. “I’m sorry she brings back bad memories, but she’s keeping us safe now, making sure we only get good memories.”

  “Well, these memories, this school thing, it’s great and all . . .” Dylan’s voice trailed off.

  “But?”

  “But wouldn’t it be nice to get away from her and everyone else?” Dylan said. “To have the option, at least. I heard the Shop City kids are having spring break. Jetting off to the Bahamas or whatever. That sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. But I never pictured you as a beach bum.”

  “I’m not. It’s what it represents. The freedom to come and go.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. My first taste of freedom had been at the beach, sharing adventures with Tess.

  “We may not be able to get away from everyone,” I told him. “But we still can have a spring break. All we have to do is bring the beach here.”

  “Ha-ha. Hilarious. So I was fantasizing. No need to make fun of it.”

  “I’m serious. Opportunism, my boy. There’s sand to be had somewhere, right? I mean, people have sandboxes. And we’ve got an entire pool that isn’t being used.”

  It was another fine thought from the old Mara Carlyle think tank, and wouldn’t you know it, there was some extra-fine follow-up from the brand-new Covington High do-tank. Our always-scheming classmate Dougie O’Shea took the lead, and a few days after I proposed the idea, his father and a few marble-mouthed construction compatriots backed a convoy of sand-filled trucks up to the entrance near the pool. Spring break arrived right on schedule.

  “Where’d they get it?” Dylan asked, watching in awe as the men attached hoses that would blow the sand halfway up the bleachers and all over the deck.

  “Down the shore,” Dougie said. “Sea Girt has plenty to share.”

  Maybe, though I doubted share was the right word.

  “Exactly how much sand is that?” Dylan asked.

  “I believe that is a shit-ton,” I said.

  “A metric shit-ton,” Dougie corrected us. “We’re Irish, son. Respect!”

  Respect was given. After all, by the end of the day, the O’Shea crew had created an indoor beach that surrounded the pool and spilled into the adjacent gym. Bonus: We didn’t have to worry about permanent damage.

  “They’re gonna demo this place once we graduate,” Dougie explained. “Dad wrapped that contract up quick as shit. The town isn’t ever gonna be down with this school again. Might as well fill the bitch with dirt, amirite?”

  As dirty as the bitch was, some kids were definitely still down with it. When word got out that school was a whole lot better than sitting home and moping, more seniors began showing up. And when the final holdouts discovered that we were spending spring break lounging and swimming in addition to broadening our minds, they poured in as well.

  How did they find out about the glories of our education experiment, you wonder? The handful of reporters and documentary filmmakers who remained in town still stopped by on occasion, but we were the ones who spread the word through our videos.

  It’s amazing what a little crowdsourcing and free time can do. Every week, the seniors cobbled together a thirty-minute video of interviews and candid footage of our days, which we then posted to YouTube. And people watched. Boy, did they watch. Basically overnight, we had an audience that was hundreds of times as big as Billy Harmon’s. Millions and millions of views.

  They came for obvious reasons—gore and explanations. When they didn’t get those things, they stayed for the characters. Because, come on, we were interesting kids. Our videos premiered on Monday mornings and became water-cooler fodder, more talked about than any movie or TV show. We expressed our fears, our dreams. We detailed our little annoyances and cosmic questions. There was joy too—laughing and hanging out at the beach and whatnot. But most of all, we were honest. Sometimes honesty is enough.

  One of the viewers’ favorite pastimes w
as shipping my various classmates. That is, making up imaginary love connections, or relationships.

  I ship Malik and Greer.

  I realize Clint’s not gay but I totally ship Kylton and Clint.

  I ship Dylan and Jane so friggin much. Awww!

  Yes, “awww!” Because, yes, “Jane!” She showed up right after spring break, when there was a sudden influx of cash. The subscribers who saw the sad state of our school started donating money to help make the facilities cleaner and safer.

  Jane would have been content earning her GED, but her dad pressured her into returning to school for the sake of “establishing valuable credentials and contacts by letting people see you for the wonderful student and mother you are.”

  At least that’s what she said on the first video she appeared in, which is where I primarily saw her. I avoided Jane as much as I could. Which wasn’t too hard. We still had only four teachers, but our numbers had swelled to 160 students by the beginning of April, so we split into four groups of 40. Each teacher taught each group one of the four periods. Luckily, Tess and Dylan were still in my group, the original forty “Pioneers,” as we liked to call ourselves. We’d see the other students at lunch, or after school, when representatives from each group would get together to cull and edit video footage.

  Like everyone else, I had only a partial say in how I was depicted in the videos. The mantra was, “If it’s interesting, it goes in.” Which meant my lunchtime PDA with Dylan was left on the cutting room floor, but Jane quickly became a star.

  Hardly surprising. A mother of three, trying to make good—that’s damn compelling. Not to mention she was a fountain of weepy sound bites like, “Three smiling faces are all that matter to me” and “When it gets to the point that I am nothing but a memory to my boys, I want them to remember that I tried.”

  To make sure that Dylan wasn’t seen as some deadbeat dad, I let it slip that his brother was the father of Jane’s triplets, one of my few comments to make a video’s final cut. Nevertheless, the public preferred a Dylan-and-Jane pairing to a Dylan-and-me pairing, which was more than a little disheartening.

  I set up a Google Alert for my name, which I know is basically the corner where masochism meets narcissism, but I couldn’t help it. It should come as no surprise that it was upsetting to check my email every morning and see what the world was saying about Mara Carlyle. However, it wasn’t that people were calling me an evil harpy or anything. It was that they were hardly talking about me at all.

  Jane, on the other hand, had countless Tumblrs and Pinterest boards dedicated to her quotes and “Rolling in the Deep” became something more than just the title of an Adele song. Since Jane’s last name was Rolling and she was perceived as being “deep,” this tired pun—shortened into the hashtag #RITD—became a way to share the wisdom of the world’s favorite teen mom.

  Even Tess wasn’t immune. On Picture Day, she wore a T-shirt with a quote from Jane on it:

  GO PET A DOG ALREADY. #RITD.

  I know. I didn’t understand it either.

  picture day

  Remember those yearbooks I had hoped for? Oh, we were getting them all right. A newly formed committee was soliciting candids so that they could create something bound and printed to celebrate our resurrected senior year. Still, we all knew it wouldn’t feel like an official yearbook without formal shots against the standard blue backgrounds. So we had Picture Day, a Tuesday in early April set aside for senior portraits. It was normally something kids did on their own time and dime, but the only photographers who interacted with us were journalists who had little interest in snapping the same boring shot over and over again. So we set up a makeshift studio in an art room and everyone shuffled in to model for Kylton Connors. Rather than submitting senior quotes, members of the yearbook committee decided to wear T-shirts with witty sayings on them. There were a few WRAP IT UP, SHORT STUFFs in honor of Brian, but most of the witticisms had come out of the mouth of Jane Rolling.

  Tess’s GO PET A DOG ALREADY #RITD, for instance.

  “What does that even mean?” I asked her when she walked out of the art room after her photo shoot.

  “It means people should do something kind that makes them feel good and makes someone else feel good,” Tess said. “It means take a breath, calm down, connect with yourself and others.”

  “Jane Rolling, the Rumi of our generation.”

  “I think she’s quite witty and charming. A real inspiration.”

  “If you say so. But then again you’re not the best judge of character. You think Mr. Spiros is hot.”

  “I think he’s fascinating. It’s different.”

  “You adore that tuft of hair that peeks out from his polo.”

  “He’s a man,” Tess said, blushing. “Men have chest hair.”

  “And back hair,” I said, scrunching up my face in disgust. “Admit it, you want to have his babies. You want to be his little Jane Rolling.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You want his quadruplets. You want four of his little gyros popping out of your hoodilly. Opa! Opa! Opa! Opa!”

  “Did you just call my theoretical babies gyros?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you just call my hoodilly a hoodilly?”

  “I did.”

  “Get help, dear.”

  It was conversations like this that I missed the most. They used to be all day, every day with Tess. But by this point, I was lucky to have them once a week. Tess was consumed. “By school,” I told Dylan and Rosetti, but the truth was, she wasn’t there too much. She showed up for yearbook committee meetings, but it seemed the only reasons she ever attended classes were to occasionally gawk at Mr. Spiros and to humor me. She didn’t even visit the beach, which seemed like sacrilege for a girl who understood the spiritual value of sand between the toes.

  “I think she’s almost got the case cracked,” I said to Tess as we rounded the corner and headed toward the cafeteria.

  “Excuse me?” she replied.

  “Lady Nightshade,” I whispered, and I checked my flanks for witnesses. “She’s here all the time now and I’ve been providing her with tons of intel.”

  Tess stopped, grabbed my shoulders, and did her own check for spies. “She’s here all the time because she likes it. You vouch for her, so people think she’s cool. Then she gobbles up the gossip you send. If her phone is on vibrate, then she’s probably in a constant state of orgasm because of all your texts.”

  “I provide her with intel,” I said, pulling away and starting to walk.

  “For instance?”

  “Um, this morning I told her that Ijichi Benjiro thinks American iodine deficiencies are to blame for everything. Also that Cole Hooper is building a suit of armor out of duct tape. You know, to make sure his body stays together?”

  “Really? Really?”

  “Okay, it’s not primo stuff, but she’s a pro. Things that seem inconsequential to us might be a big deal to her. Besides, you told me to keep the burner, so you must believe it’s useful.”

  Tess tapped my noggin with a finger. “Remember, I told you it’s useful because at some point we might have to use it to contact each other. Not Rosetti. That woman has nothing to do with it. You’re the only person I trust, Mara, and if my theories—”

  “Your theories?” I barked at her. “You shit on everyone else’s ideas but you aren’t exactly sharing yours.”

  Tess took a breath and said, “I’m not sharing because I don’t have it entirely figured out. And what I have figured out is . . . difficult.”

  “Difficult like I won’t get it?” I said with a huff.

  “Of course not,” she said with genuine concern in her voice. “You’re brilliant, honey. I mean difficult in that it will be hard to accept.”

  “As if anything these days has been easy to accept. Try me.”

  We’d r
eached the cafeteria, where Kiki had promised a “farm-to-table luncheon in celebration of the spring harvest.” From a distance, it didn’t look like much more than a big old pile of kale but, nevertheless, the line to get a plateful was wrapped around the room.

  “Have you heard of the infinite monkey theorem?” Tess asked me as we took our place behind Jared Jarowski, who was as oblivious to us as he was to personal hygiene.

  “Is that the one about how a monkey in a tuxedo will always be funny?” I asked.

  “Don’t be dumb,” Tess replied. “You know what I mean. Put infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters and one will eventually come up with Shakespeare.”

  “Oh, you need infinite monkeys and typewriters,” I said, slapping my forehead. “That’s why my novel never came together! Back to the laboratory.”

  “Hilarious,” Tess said with a groan. “I’m being serious. Think about the whole infinite monkey theorem and the whole Murphy’s Law concept of anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and you might start to believe that we live in the one particular universe among infinite universes where the monkeys and Murphy’s Law have conspired to make a bunch of us blow up.”

  “Okay. I get about nine percent of what you’re saying.”

  “What I’m saying is that it’s a load of crap. Randomness is a lazy explanation. Universes aren’t random. They have laws. Carla is right to think there’s something inside of us, but how it got there is not important, because maybe it’s always been in there. Maybe our problem is that a genetic switch has been flipped. It’s more complicated than an on/off button, obviously, but the important thing to focus on is how to switch it off. Before we go off. Because, seriously, I doubt some general in a war room is determining our fate.”

  “So what’s happening to us then?”

  “The Dalton twins blew up within minutes of each other. Well, they were born within minutes of each other, right?”

  “So it’s associated with our birthdays? Because Dylan turns eighteen in like fifteen days and—”