There is a loud crack, like a gunshot, and your head jerks up. It was the sound of a book hitting the floor.
“Who remembers Newton’s third law of motion?”
A girl raises her hand and says, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
“Correct. I pushed the book forward and it fell off my desk. The action was pushing. The equal and opposite reaction was that the book moved forward. The foreseeable consequence of the action and reaction was that the book fell to the floor.”
The teacher picks up the book and holds it out to the class as though it were a newly discovered and potentially dangerous vertebrate.
“According to the concept of Chaos Theory, in any sufficiently complex environment, any action, even a simple one, will create a series of chain reactions that are unforeseen and unpredictable.”
The teacher looks at you now. You close your textbook to hide the brochure you were looking at.
“A butterfly flaps its wings in China, and six weeks later a hurricane forms off the coast of Florida. You can’t foresee that. Or, for instance, I didn’t know that by pushing the book and it falling and smacking the floor, that young Master Billy here would wake up and join the class. That was unforeseen. And could this unforeseen outcome set off a chain reaction? Perhaps the startling sound will leave Billy a bit more alert when he leaves here. And maybe that alertness will cause him to be aware of his environment in a way he would not otherwise have been. Maybe he’ll make decisions that will impact the rest of his day. Or the rest of his life. Or maybe he’ll just remember not to daydream in class. It is unforeseeable. And that’s the point.”
You are bright red. You don’t like attention of any kind.
A boy in the back raises his hand. He is a smart boy and does not mind drawing attention to himself.
“If the sequence of events is untraceable, then how do we know the events share a cause-and-effect relationship? How do we know the hurricane wouldn’t have happened anyway?”
“We don’t. And that’s a good point. So you, Hunter, fall into the Is it chaos or is it fate? camp. And that’s reasonable. Chaos theory is just that. A theory. Of course fate, as a theory, doesn’t hold much water either. That’s worth keeping in mind. But let’s assume—for the moment—that chaos is indeed a valid theory. Now let’s look at it on a global scale. If our action is to cut down all the world’s rainforests, what are the possible reactions?”
“A greenhouse effect. Global warming.”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“The ozone hole over the Antarctic could get even bigger.”
“Maybe”
“We lose possible cures for AIDS and cancer.”
“Maybe.”
“We speed up the return of the Ice Age.”
“Could be.”
You do not offer an answer. You never speak in class unless forced.
“Maybe, maybe, maybe. See, we really don’t know what the reaction will be, but we’re pretty sure it ain’t gonna be good. It’s a question of control, of which we have very little.”
Someone, the smart kid, asks, “But if we can anticipate, don’t we have control? In the microcosm of this classroom, couldn’t we have anticipated every possible reaction of your action of pushing the book to the floor?”
“No. Even in this closed environment, the possibilities are beyond number. When scientists were preparing to detonate the first atomic bomb, many of them believed a chain of reactions would ignite the atmosphere. Ignite the atmosphere. Think about that. But they went ahead and did it, didn’t they?”
The bell rings, but you stay seated because the teacher is still talking and you want to hear the rest of this.
“So, anyway, the next time you toss out an old newspaper or throw away an aluminum can without recycling it, remember Chaos Theory. For your every action, you set off a chain of events beyond control. Think about it.”
You follow the last of the other students out the door and you hear the teacher say, “See ya’, Billy.” You half lift your hand in acknowledgement, but you don’t turn around.
Outside the classroom, two bigger boys run down the hall, weaving through the crowd. As they rush past you, one of them slams you into the wall, and the other slaps the books out of your arms. Already halfway down the hall, one of them calls back to you over his shoulder, “Buggie!” Then they both emit high-pitched giggles that sound like jungle animals.
You gather the books up and put them in your backpack. You should have done that before you left class, but that would have taken too much time and the teacher might have tried to have a conversation with you. Teachers are always trying to engage you in conversation. And when they do that, it makes your stomach hurt. And your stomach hurts right now. It hurts bad. It always hurts bad before you have to see Mrs. Hamby. And you do not think that you can endure both the meeting and the pain at the same time. You need to ease the hurt.
The hall has emptied, and you have ten minutes before your meeting with the school psychologist. You head for the boys bathroom.
You take the last stall, the handicapped one. This is your favorite not because it is the biggest, but because the lock on it still works and because it is directly under the overhead ventilation fan.
You unroll a handful of toilet paper from the dispenser. You already know the perfect amount. You wad it up into a ball about the size of a rodent brain with a bit angling off from it like a brainstem. You will hold it from the brainstem.
From your jeans pocket you extract a yellow Bic lighter, stolen from your stepfather, Harvey Peruro. You set the toilet paper rodent brain afire. The trick is to get a clean burn so that there is no smoke. Regardless of the ventilation fan, if there is smoke, it will permeate the bathroom and give you away. You watch the flame take hold, and as soon as it does, the pain in your stomach vanishes. You do not know if it is simply that you forget about the pain, or if fire acts as a painkiller. It doesn’t matter. The flame is beautiful, calming. It pulsates like an orange rose. A burning blossom. A fire flower.
And then, still standing over the toilet, you use your other hand to unbuckle and drop your pants, push down your underwear, and it feels good to have your genitals exposed to the air. No shame. No self-consciousnesses.
You know your cock is kind of small. From gym class and the mandatory showers. Most of the boys your age have bodies of substance. Bodies thick with bulk and muscle or lean with speed and innate strength. Pendulous penises that sway with weighty arrogance from strange dense growths of dark pubic hair as they walk around the locker room.
Your pubic hair only just started to come in last summer. Harvey seems to enjoy referring to you as a late bloomer, and the few times that a drinking buddy of his comes to the house, Harvey inevitably points out that you are a late bloomer so as to explain your skinny pale body and voice that has only a hint of masculine timbre. It all seemed to start around the same time all the stuff with your mother happened. You just kind of stopped growing. The doctor called it delayed puberty. They are supposed to start giving you hormone shots, but then the doctor said that could exacerbate the conduct disorder. And you’ve been held back a couple of grades. Learning disability stemming from emotional trauma. Again, the stuff with your mom. You kind of have a lot of problems.
And so you have only a little bit of pubic hair that has sprung up in two modest patches, each about the size of a quarter, around the base of your dick. The hair is so fine that the light has to hit it just right in order to be seen. In the locker room you keep your back to the other boys because you do not want them to point out the smooth hairless contrast of your boyish body to the sprouting mannishness of theirs.