Evidence of Things Not Seen (10 page)

MAY 29 . TWENTY-FIVE DAYS MISSING

MR. M
C
CLOUD

Tommy was the brightest student I’ve ever had. I have to say teaching physics to the junior nerd squad was the highlight of my year. Kids like that make teaching a little harder. Better but harder.

Because you want to spend all your time with them and you can’t. You have to help everyone. I teach almost three hundred students a year here. From freshmen to seniors. As much as I would have liked to spend all my time doing special projects with the nerd squad, this is high school and I have to teach to the middle. That means you leave the smart kids and slow kids in the margin.

It’s tragic. It’s also why I stay. Because I love public education. It doesn’t always work right. And certainly all these standards and tests do not serve the kids, but this job is still the best way for me to reach the greatest number of kids and maybe make a difference, maybe help them see that their minds could make a difference.

I’m sorry, Sheriff. You didn’t come here to listen to my soapbox on teaching. You want to talk about Tommy.

First of all, don’t believe any of the bull crap the kids are saying about Tommy going into another dimension. Not possible. Yeah, Tommy was a freak about quantum. No question. But as for the space-time continuum folding over in some specific way so that Tommy was able to cross over to another time, no way. It’s fun to think about and I love conjecturing about all the possibilities with these kids, but we are not living in the panels of Marvel comics.

Yeah, I took a week in January to talk about modern physics. You know, particle physics. Just concepts; no math. It was outside the curriculum. I like doing it because it gives students an idea of what’s possible in college. Not all of them liked it or understood it. Tommy did. I’ve never had a kid get as switched on about it as Tommy. I gave him a bibliography of books and secondary resources to check out from the library. If he wanted to learn about particle physics, there’s plenty out there. He could have spent an entire semester doing an independent study on particle physics, but I had to go back to the curriculum.

One of the ideas that Tommy loved in quantum is that all possibilities exist. Nothing is certain unless you include all possibilities. Believe me, we had a lot of fun with that one. I gave them a quiz and Tommy turned his in blank. Not one answer and it wasn’t because he didn’t know the answers. When I asked him why, he said if I hadn’t observed him
not
doing it, then the possibility existed that he did do it. I hated to give him a zero, but the blank test was the only reality I observed.

Black holes? Time travel? We never talked about those aspects in class but I’m sure he read about it. I know he wrote about them in his journal. He was always writing in it. Or looking for it so he could write in it. That’s why I gave him a bibliography instead of books. He had trouble hanging on to things.

I read bits of it. Mostly he was wrestling with the big ideas in physics and conjecturing about our origins. Writers love the ideas touched upon in physics. And I don’t mean science-fiction or TV writers. Academics explore these topics as much as novelists. You don’t have to go far to have your mind effectively blown by quantum theory. It’s rocket fuel for the brain and the imagination and some high school kids like Tommy are ready for it.

Dangerous? Hell, no. Not any more so than that motorbike, if you ask me. A kid like Tommy, highly distractible and driving, now that’s dangerous. I was glad that they found the bike in the pull-out. If Tommy was still out there driving around, we’d probably be looking at a traffic fatality.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Tommy was somewhere on the spectrum. But he functioned pretty well. He was socially awkward but the kids seem to accept him the way he was. I don’t think it would it have made a difference if he were diagnosed. I think that leads to stigmatizing. When it’s all said and done, spectrum kids still have to function in this world. We can’t create separate little paradigms for each quirky kid.

Especially in high school. This is the time when these kids start making choices that define them. Like the nerd squad probably won’t be the nerd squad next year. Their science interests are starting to diverge. Like Tommy’s friend Rachel will probably go towards anatomy and physiology or AP bio; Izzy has more talent in math and equations than science, so I’ll probably see her in AP physics C, and James is on the pre-med track. I just hope he stays on the lab side. I can’t see him tending to patients.

Tommy? Who knows? He was one of those kids who had to endure high school to get to the good stuff. For some, high school is the highlight of their lives. That wasn’t Tommy. I could see him in a university with professors who appreciate really smart kids. Some kids take longer to come to a boil. You know, flourish. Go places. That was Tommy. I was glad he took to quantum. If anything, it gave a kid like him something exciting to think about.

Well, let’s face it, Sheriff. Tommy was sort of an outlier in the Fred Johnson High social test-tube experiment. He didn’t exactly fit in the categories of farmer, football player, or family man. These kids come in and out of our classes day after day and you know who’s going to get pregnant. Or who’s going to go to college. Or who’s going to stay on the farm. Some of ’em surprise you, but not many. I think we’re genetically predetermined. Like each of these kids is an element with certain properties and they’ll only go so far because that element reacts in predetermined ways.

Hell no, I’m not being dismal. It’s the way it is. I mean, some of these kids may find themselves in unusual circumstances. They may get torqued in such a way that their properties change. Experiments can turn strange corners, you know. Some kids break out of their predetermined fate. But not many. Not many of us change our destinies or step out of our well-worn paths. If people accepted this idea, they might be a whole lot happier. I mean, someone has to wait on you at the Home Depot. Why can’t it be someone who’s happy about it? Why can’t it be someone who’s accepted the fact that that’s who they are, that’s as high as they’ll go?

No way. I did not preach this idea to my students. James came up with that line of thinking all by himself. What’s more, I don’t agree with it. James is very smart, but his whole elitism ethic is a way for him to camouflage himself. Well, let’s just say that this neck of the high desert is a little conservative and it’s easier for James to come off like an IQ Nazi than what he is. That’s all I can say. Sorry.

As a teacher, you’re outside the day-to-day drama. If you’re paying attention, you know your kids better than they know themselves. You know when someone has a crush and if they are going to act on it. You know who is getting beat at home. You can see turf wars. You see flirtations. You see kids hiding their true feelings. I used to get worried about all the things I saw. I may not be a parent but I still feel protective of these kids. I thought I had to do something about it. You know, intervene. Tell the counselors. But it took me one four-year cycle to see that everyone survives. Everyone. There are ups and downs, crises and triumphs. But everyone survives in one way or another. Maybe you want more for these kids than survival. But after you’ve been doing this for twenty years, survival is not so bad.

Besides, being different isn’t a bad thing. Like I said, Tommy was really brilliant. I couldn’t tell what elements or compounds he was made of, but he was really smart. I thought he’d find his way eventually, but he hadn’t come to a boil yet. Like he had undeveloped properties. Maybe ones that haven’t been discovered. I’m probably pushing this analogy too far. Scientists can be poets, you know. Or philosophers.

Past tense? I didn’t realize I was. I guess it’s habit. It’s the end of school. I always use the past tense with my students when school’s done. I think we’re all looking in the rearview mirror by the end of May. Like I said. Habit. I assure you I have no knowledge of Tommy’s whereabouts and I did not see him in the pull-out when I drove home. If I had, I might have stopped. You know, asked him what he was doing. Maybe told him to watch out.

Let me show you something. Tommy wrote this in the margin of the last test he took in my class. He got done early, I guess. I keep holding on to it even though school’s over for the year. It seemed like something he would want to put in his journal.

I want to believe he’s out there. I want to be able to give this to him. Three weeks is a long time not to have any clues. I drive by that pull-out every day, back and forth to work. There’s always someone stopped there. As smart as he was, Tommy was pretty innocent. Some drifter could have approached him. Who knows? One question—even “What’s your name?”—can turn in a thousand different directions.

JUNE 5 . THIRTY-TWO DAYS MISSING

LOST

Karla stands in middle of the pull-out. The pickax in her hand is sticky with blood and brain and hair. She hears the gurgle in the man’s throat and then silence. Just her own breath. Hot and sharp. In and out.

She rubs her face. It’s wet. Sweat stings her eyes. How could she be hot? Isn’t it nighttime? She looks up to find the full moon that had been hanging above her windshield all night long but it has fallen. Almost to the tree line.

On the ground near her feet is a patch of white. At first it looks like a bit of the moon’s shadow through the trees. But it’s too bright. Karla reaches for it. She wasn’t expecting to pick up a sheet of notebook paper. She thought it would be a napkin that had blown out of someone’s car. Or some other bit of trash. Karla turns it over and sees a few lines of handwriting.

Karla turns the paper over hoping there’s something else on the other side. She wants to know more about Alvin and Ruby and whoever wrote this funny little note to himself. Or herself. It seems like the stupidest and most important note in the world. She wishes that she had written it. She wishes she knew an Alvin. She wishes she had a bike with a name she’d chosen.

She looks around. Has she been to this pull-out before? Its semicircular shape looks familiar. Or is it a different one? It has to be different. She’s miles from Texas City. Miles from the pull-outs there. Miles from the bars and honky-tonks and the long flat stretches of highway cutting through the marshes. Where is she? What time is it? This time of night always confuses her. Is it late? Or is it so early the sun isn’t up? It’s like the compass of time doesn’t work in these blank hours. Always Karla feels unmoored, like she’s drifting and lost.

Her momma always woke Karla up at this time of night. Sometimes with yelling. Sometimes with giggling. Always with smell of cigarette smoke drifting over her like a gauzy blanket. This time, her momma was giggling. Karla lifted her head off the belly of the stuffed bear she used for a pillow and peeked over the edge of the front seat. Cigarette smoke curled around her momma’s thick, dark hair. She was staring straight ahead and laughing. Karla could see a pair of red lights, like eyes, staring back at her momma. The tip of her momma’s cigarette flared as the car surged faster. Karla felt the speed press in on her stomach. The car shifted and jerked her body across the backseat of the car. The plastic upholstery was cold in the new places she touched. It woke her up more.