There was a very loud noise, but Myron Hettinger only heard the beginnings of it.
The Boy Who Disappeared Clouds
Jeremy’s desk was at the left end of the fifth row. Alphabetical order had put him in precisely the desk he would have selected for himself, as far back as you could get without being in the last row. The last row was no good, because there were things you were called upon to do when you were in the last row. Sometimes papers were passed to the back of the room, for example, and the kids in the last row brought them forward to the teacher. In the fifth row you were spared all that.
And, because he was on the end, and the left end at that, he had the window to look out of. He looked out of it now, watching a car brake almost to a stop, then accelerate across the intersection. You were supposed to come to a full stop but hardly anybody ever did, not unless there were other cars or a crossing guard around. They probably figured nobody was looking, he thought, and he liked the idea that they were unaware that he was watching them.
He sensed that Ms. Winspear had left her desk and turned to see her standing a third of the way up the aisle. He faced forward, paying attention, and when her eyes reached his he looked a little off to the left.
When she returned to the front of the room and wrote on the blackboard, he shifted in his seat and looked out the window again. A woman was being pulled down the street by a large black and white dog. Jeremy watched until they turned a corner and moved out of sight, watched another car not quite stop for the stop sign, then raised his eyes to watch a cloud floating free and untouched in the open blue sky.
“Lots of kids look out the window,” Cory Buckman said. “Sometimes I’ll hear myself, standing in front of them and droning on and on, and I’ll wonder why they’re not all lined up at the windows with their noses pressed against the glass. Wouldn’t you rather watch paint dry than hear me explain quadratic equations?”
“I used to know how to solve quadratic equations,” Janice Winspear said, “and now I’m not even sure what they are. I know lots of kids look out the window. Jeremy’s different.”
“How?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She took a sip of coffee, put her cup down. “You know what he is? He’s a nice quiet boy.”
“That has a ring to it. Page five of the Daily News: ‘ “He was always a nice quiet boy,” the neighbors said. “Nobody ever dreamed he would do something like this.” ’ Is that the sort of thing you mean?”
“I don’t think he’s about to murder his parents in their beds, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “Jeremy’s the youngest of four children. The father drinks and beats his wife and the abuse gets passed on down the line, some of it verbal and some of it physical. Jeremy’s at the end of the line.”
“And he gets beaten?”
“He came to school in the fall with his wrist in a cast. He said he fell and it’s possible he did. But he fits the pattern of an abused child. And he doesn’t have anything to balance the lack of affection in the home.”
“How are his grades?”
“All right. He’s bright enough to get C’s and B’s without paying attention. He never raises his hand. When I call on him he knows the answer — if he knows the question.”
“How does he get along with the other kids?”
“They barely know he exists.” She looked across the small table at Cory. “And that’s in the sixth grade. Next year he’ll be in junior high with classes twice the size of mine and a different teacher for every subject.”
“And three years after that he’ll be in senior high, where I can try teaching him quadratic equations. Unless he does something first to get himself locked up.”
“I’m not afraid he’ll get locked up, not really. I’m just afraid he’ll get lost.”
“How is he at sports?”
“Hopeless. The last one chosen for teams in gym class, and he doesn’t stay around for after-school games.”
“I don’t blame him. Any other interests? A stamp collection? A chemistry set?”
“I don’t think he could get to have anything in that house,” she said. “I had his older brothers in my class over the years and they were monsters.”
“Unlike our nice quiet boy.”
“That’s right. If he had anything they’d take it away from him. Or smash it.”
“In that case,” Cory said, “what you’ve got to give him is something nobody can take away. Why don’t you teach him how to disappear clouds?”
“How to—?”
“Disappear clouds. Stare at them and make them disappear.”
“Oh?” She arched an eyebrow. “You can do that?”
“Uh-huh. So can you, once you know how.”
“Cory—”
He glanced at the check, counted out money to cover it. “Really,” he said. “There’s nothing to it. Anybody can do it.”
“For a minute there,” she said, “I thought you were serious.”
“About the clouds? Of course I was serious.”
“You can make clouds disappear.”
“And so can you.”
“By staring at them.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well,” she said, “let’s see you do it.”
He looked up. “Wrong kind of clouds,” he announced.
“Oh, right. It figures.”
“Have I ever lied to you? Those aren’t individual clouds up there; that’s just one big overcast mess blocking the sun.”
“That’s why we need you to work your magic, sir.”
“Well, I’m only a journeyman magician. What you need are cumulus clouds, the puffy ones like balls of cotton. Not cumulonimbus, not the big rain clouds, and not the wispy cirrus clouds either, but the cumulus clouds.”
“I know what cumulus clouds look like,” she said. “It’s not like quadratic equations, it stays with you. When the sky is full of cumulus clouds, what will your excuse be? Wrong phase of the moon?”
“I suppose everyone tells you this,” he said, “but you’re beautiful when you’re skeptical.”
She was sorting laundry when the phone rang. It was Cory Buckman. “Look out the window,” he ordered. “Drop everything and look out the window.”
She was holding the receiver in one hand and a pair of tennis shorts in the other, and she looked out the window without dropping either. “It’s still there,” she reported.
“What’s still there?”
“Everything’s still there.”
“What did you see when you looked out the window?”
“The house across the street. A maple tree. My car.”
“Janice, it’s a beautiful day out there!”
“Oh. So it is.”
“I’ll pick you up in half an hour. We’re going on a picnic.”
“Oh, don’t I wish I could. I’ve got—”
“What?”
“Laundry to sort, and I have to do my lesson plans for the week.”
“Try to think in terms of crusty french bread, a good sharp cheese, a nice fruity zinfandel, and a flock of cumulus clouds overhead.”
“Which you will cause to disappear?”
“We’ll both make them disappear, and we’ll work much the same magic upon the bread and the cheese and the wine.”
“You said half an hour? Give me an hour.”
“Split the difference. Forty-five minutes.”
“Sold.”
“You see that cloud? The one that’s shaped like a camel?”
“More like a llama,” she said.
“Watch.”