And there was Zach. If velocity affected the mass of all objects, it wouldn’t affect Zach Soderberg. Zach would be the Amendment, the Correction, the Tweak. He was a lesson in durable materials, a success story of sustainable good moods. He was c, the constant.
On Thursday, in AP Physics, I returned from the bathroom to find a mysterious folded piece of notebook paper sitting on my chair. I didn’t open it until class was over. I stood very still, right in the middle of the hallway with all those kids gushing past me with backpacks, sagging hair and lumpy jackets, staring at the words, at his schoolgirl’s handwriting. I was refuse in a river.
HOW ARE YOU
I’M AROUND
IF YOU WANT TO TALK
ZACH
I kept the note folded in my backpack for the rest of the day and surprised myself by deciding I did want to chat with him. (Dad said it never hurt to glean as many perspectives and opinions as possible, even those one suspects will be unsophisticated and Calibanesque.) Throughout AP World History, I found myself fantasizing about going home not with Dad, but with Patsy and Roge, having a supper not of spaghetti, lecture notes, a one-sided debate of J. Hutchinson’s The Aesthetic Emancipation of the Human Race (1924), but roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, a discussion of Bethany Louise’s softball tryouts or Zach’s recent paper on The American Dream (the most ho-hum of paper topics). And Patsy would smile and squeeze my hand while Roge embarked on an impromptu sermon — if I was lucky, “The Fourteen Hopes.”
As soon as the bell rang, I hurried out of Hanover along the sidewalk to Barrow, up the stairs to the second floor where I’d heard Zach had his locker. I stood just inside the doorway and watched him in khaki pants and a blue-and-white striped shirt talking to that Rebecca girl, the one with prehistoric carnivore eyeteeth. She was tall, propping a stack of spiral notebooks against her jutted-out hip, her other bony arm hooked on the top of the lockers so she resembled an angular Egyptian character scrawled on papyrus. And something about the way Zach gave her his full attention (aware of no one else in the hall), the way he smiled and ran that giant hand through his hair made me realize he was in love with her, that they were doubtlessly both Kinko’s employees always shoulder-to-shoulder and engaged in tons of color-copying, and now I’d stand there trying to talk to him about Death with that Hieroglyph breathing down my neck, her eyes sticking to my face like smashed figs, bushy black hair flooding her shoulders like the River Nile — I couldn’t do it. I spun around, darted back into the stairwell, shoved open the door and raced outside.
I also can’t overlook the Good Samaritan Kindness of another occasion, that Friday in Beginning Drawing, when I, exhausted from the sleepless nights, dozed off in the middle of class, forgetting about my Line Drawing of Tim “Raging” Waters, who’d been chosen to sit at the center of this week’s Life Drawing Circle.
“What on earth is wrong with Miss Van Meer?” roared Mr. Moats, glaring down at me. “She’s green as El Greco’s ghost! Tell us what you ate for breakfast and we’ll make a point of avoiding it.”
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 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.