Special Topics in Calamity Physics

by Marisha Pessl

  Mr. Victor Moats was, for the most part, a gentle man, but at times, for no rhyme or reason (perhaps it was moon phases) he relished degrading a student in front of the class. He snatched my Strathmore drawing pad from the easel and held it high over his seal-slick head. Immediately, I saw the tiny disaster: there was nothing, nothing at all in the Pacific Ocean of the white page, except way down in the lower right-hand corner, I'd drawn Raging the size of Guam. I'd also drawn his leg over his muddled face, which would have been fine if Mr. Moats hadn't spent ten minutes at the beginning of class detailing the essentials of life drawing and proportion.

  "She is not concentrating! She must be dreaming about Will Smith or Brad Pitt or any number of brawny heartthrobs, when what she should be doing is—what? Can someone please inform us what Miss Van Meer should be doing instead of wasting our time?"

  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 Velazquez, 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 Velazquez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the luxuries ofcentral heating and twenty-four-hour pizza delivery?!"

  "No one's talking about Velazquez," 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, 1 LOVE PAIN, BLOOD TASTES GOOD and the words scrawled in black permanent marker all over his backpack, RAGE, ANARCHY, GO F*CK YOURSELF. 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 south-eastern 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. Perôn 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.

  "Wish we could light the candles."

  "Let me do it. You're going to ruin the whole design, Kara— "

  "Maybe we should light them anyway. For her sake, you know?"

  "We can’t. Didn't you listen to Ms. Brewster? It's a fire hazard."

  The taller, pale girl was taping a large card to the door, which sported a giant gold sun and read, "A star has dimmed . . ." The other girl, bowlegged, with black hair, was holding an even larger card, this one handmade with crude orange lettering: TREASURED MEMORIES. There were at least fifty more cards propped up on the floor around the flowers. I bent down so I could read a few.

  "Rest in peace. Love, the Friggs," wrote the Friggs. "C U N HEV N," wrote Anonymous. "In this world of bitter religious hatred and unmitigated violence against our fellow man, you were a shining star," wrote Rachid Foxglove. "We'll miss you," wrote Amy Hempshaw and Bill Chews. "I hope you're reincarnated as a mammal and our paths cross again, sooner rather than later because when I go to med school I doubt I'll have a life," wrote Lin Xe-Pen. Some cards were introspective ("Why did it happen?") or harmlessly irreverent ("It'd be cool if you could send me a sign that indicates there's a discernible afterlife, that it's not just eternity in a box because if that's what it is, I'd rather not go through with it."). Others were filled with remarks suitable for Post-its, for shouts out of unrolled windows of cars driving away ("You were an awesome teacher!!!").

  "Would you be interested in signing the Condolence Card?" the black-haired girl asked me.

  "Sure," I said.

  The inside of the Condolence Card was graffitied with student signatures and read: "We find peace and comfort knowing you are now in a Perfect Place." I hesitated signing, but the girl was watching me so I squeezed my name between Charlie Lin and Millicent Newman.

  "Thank you very much," said the girl, as if I'd just given her enough change to buy a soft drink. She taped the card to the door.

  I walked outside again and stood in the shade of a pine tree in front of the building until I saw them leave, and then returned inside. Someone (the black-haired girl, self-appointed Executor of the H. Schneider Memorial) had placed a plastic green tarp beneath the flowers (all stems pointing in the same direction), as well as a clipboard next to the door that read, "Sign here and pledge a special amount to raise money for the Hannah Schneider Hummingbird Garden. (Minimum donation $5.)"

  To be honest, I wasn't especially thrilled with all the grief. It felt artificial, as if they'd taken her away somehow, stolen her, replaced her with this frightening smiling stranger whose giant color faculty photo was laminated and propped up on the floor by a squat unlit candle. It didn't look like her; school photographers, armed with watery lighting and smeary neutral backgrounds, cheerfully leveled everyone's uniqueness, made them look the same. No, the real Hannah, the cinematic one who sometimes got a little too drunk with her bra straps showing, she was being held against her will by all these limp carnations, wobbly signatures, humid sentiments of "Missing U."

  I heard a door slam, the stark punctuation of a woman's shoes. Someone pulled open the door at the end of the hall, letting it slam. For one mad moment, I thought it was Hannah; the slim person walking toward me was wearing all black—a black skirt and short-sleeved shirt, black heels —exactly what she wore the first time I saw her, all those months ago in Fat Kat Foods.

  But it was Jade.

  She looked pale, gutter-thin, her blond hair slicked back in a ponytail. As she passed under the fluorescent lights the top of her head flashed a whitish green. Shadows swam through her face as she walked, staring at the floor. When she finally noticed me, I knew she wanted to turn back, but didn't let herself. Jade hated all retreats, U-turns, backpedaling, and second thoughts.

  "I don't have to see you if I don't want to," she said as she stopped in front of the flowers and cards. She leaned down and inspected them, a pleasant, relaxed smile on her face as if she were peering in at cases of expensive watches. After a minute, she turned around and stared at me.

  "You planning to stand there all day like a moron?"

  "Well, I— " I began.

  "Because I'm not going to sit here and lug it out of you." She put a hand on her hip. "I assumed because you've called me like some lunatic stalker for the past week you had something decent to say."

  "I do."

  "What?"

  "I don't understand why everyone's angry at me. I didn't do anything."

  Her eyes widened in shock. "How can you not understand what you did?" "What did I do?" She crossed her arms. "If you don't know, Retch, I'm not going to tell

  you." She turned and leaned down to inspect the cards again. A minute later, she said: "I mean, you disappeared on purpose and made her go look for you.

  Like some weird game or something. No, don't even try to say you went to the bathroom because we found that roll of toilet paper still in Hannah's backpack, okay? And then you—well, we don't know what you did. But Hannah went from laughing with us without a care in the world to hanging from a tree. Dead. You did something."

  "She signaled for me to get up and disappear into the woods. It was her idea."

  Jade made a face. "When was this?"

  "Around the campfire."

  "Not true. I was there. I don't remember her—"

  "No one saw her but me."

  "That's convenient."

  "I left. She came and found me. We walked into the woods for ten minutes, then she stopped and said she had to tell me something. A secret." "Ooo, what was the secret? That she sees dead people?" "She never told me." "Oh, God." "Someone followed us. I didn't see him clearly but I think he was wearing glasses, and then—this is the part I can't figure out—she went after him. She told me to stay where I was. And that's the last time I saw her." (It was a white lie, of course, but I'd decided to remove the fact I'd seen Hannah dead from my history. It was an appendix, a functionless organ that could become infected and thus it could be surgically removed without upsetting any other part of the past.)

  Jade stared at me, skeptical. "I don't believe you." "It's the truth. Remember the cigarette butt Lu found? Someone had been there."

  She looked at me, eyes wide, and then shook her head. "I think you have a serious problem." She allowed her bag to fall to the floor, on its side. It belched up two books, The Norton Anthology of Poetry (Ferguson, Salter, Stallworthy, 1996 ed.) and How to Write a Poem (Fifer, 2001). "You're desperate. And completely sad and embarrassing. Whatever your lame excuses are, no one gives a shit. It's over."

  She was waiting for me to protest, fall to my knees, moan, but I couldn't. I sensed the impossibility of it. I remembered what Dad said once, that some people have all of life's answers worked out the day they're born and there's no use trying to teach them anything new. "They're closed for business even though, somewhat confusingly, their doors open at eleven, Monday through Friday," Dad said. And the trying to change what they think, the attempt to explain, the hope they'll come to see your side of things, it was exhausting, because it never made a dent and afterward you only ached unbearably. It was like being a Prisoner in a Maximum-Security Prison, wanting to know what a Visitor's hand felt like (see Living in Darkness, Cowell, 1967). No matter how desperately you wanted to know, pressing your dumb palm against the glass right where the visitor's hand was pressed on the opposite side, you never would know that feeling, not until they set you free.

  "We don't think you're like, psychotic, or a Menendez brother," Jade said. "You probably didn't do it on purpose. But still. We talked it over and decided if we're honest with ourselves we can't forgive you. I mean, she's gone. Maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, but it means the world to us. Milton, Charles loved her. Leulah and I adored her. She was our sister—"

  "That's breaking news," I interrupted. (I couldn't help myself; I was Dad's daughter an
d thus prone to blowing the whistle on Hypocrisy and Double-Talk. ) "Last I heard, you thought she was responsible for estranging you from mint chocolate chip ice cream. You were also worried she was a member of the Manson Family."

  Jade looked so enraged, I wondered if she was going to fling me to the linoleum and rip out my eyes. Instead, her lips shrunk and she turned the color of gazpacho. She spoke in pointy little words: "If you're so dumb that you can't understand why we're upset beyond all possible belief, I'm not having this conversation. You don't even know what we went through. Charles went out of his mind and fell off a cliff. Lu and Nigel were hysterical. Even Milton broke down. I was the one who hauled everyone to safety, but I'm still traumatized by the experience. We thought we were going to die, like those people in the movie when they're stuck in the Alps and forced to eat each other."

  "Alive. Before it was a movie, it was a book."

  Her eyes widened. "You think this is a joke? Don't you get it?"

  She waited, but I didn't get it—I really didn't.

  "Whatever," she said. "Stop calling my house. It's annoying for my mother to have to talk to you and give you excuses."

  She leaned down and picked up her bag, heaving it up onto her shoulder. Primly she smoothed back her hair, displaying the self-consciousness of the Ones Making an Exit; she was well aware that a great deal of Exiting had been done before her, for millions of years and millions of different reasons, and now it was her turn and she wanted to do a decent job. With a prim smile on her face, she picked up The Norton Anthology of Poetry and How to Write a Poem, took great pains to tuck them neatly into her bag. She sniffed, pressed her black sweater over her waist (as if she'd just completed a first round of interviews at Whatever Corp.) and began to make her way down the hall. As she walked away, I could tell she was considering joining the elite subgroup within the Ones Making an Exit, a sect reserved for the wholly unsentimental and the completely hard-boiled: The Ones Who Never Looked Back. She decided against it, however.