The Field (3 page)

“That doesn't make any sense. You object to the pledge using the rights granted to you by the Constitution?” Paul says.

“It's ‘the man' that I object to, the establishment, the right wing government. Not the Constitution.”

“Okay, whatever, let's not get off on that tangent. So what did the Dean do?” I ask.

“Well, on the way down to the office, I called my mom to alert her to the situation. When I arrived at the Dean's office and explained my position, she laughed and told me to go easy on Mr. Smitson. She sent me back to class with a note. On the way back I called my mom to tell her the situation was handled.”

“Wow. This would only happen to you, Cole.” I lean back in my chair and balance it on two legs while holding on to the edge of the table. “You just can't go with the flow.”

The bell rings. “Man, they only give us like ten minutes to eat,” Paul says and shovels the last few bites of spaghetti into his mouth.

“Paul, that is just gross. Would you at least close your mouth?” says Will. He pushes back his chair and picks up his tray. “See you guys at practice.”

“Adios.” I reply. I walk over and deposit my tray on the conveyer belt piled high with trays and trash slowly disappearing through a flapped window into the kitchen. Our first team practice is after school today. The hard part about competing with the other keepers for the starting spot is that most of the time we all train together, separate from the field players, since our position is so specialized.
I'll have to strike the right balance of competitiveness and cooperation to make the cut
, I think as I make my way to my afternoon classes.

M
Y MOM IS
in the kitchen when I get home from practice. I toss my backpack on the kitchen table, open the fridge and take out a gallon of milk.

“How was your day?” She asks me the same thing every day.

“Good.” I pour myself a glass of milk and rip open a package of Oreos from the pantry.

“Anything interesting happen? And don't eat too many of those; dinner's in about half an hour.” This question must be from one of her parenting books, designed to elicit conversation, since she uses it a lot.

“Well, Cole wore rainbow-striped toe socks and got sent to the Dean's office,” I reply, pulling a stool out from under the counter at the island and sitting down.

“For wearing toe socks?” She's rinsing green beans in a bowl at the sink and turns to look at me incredulously.

“No, for refusing to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”

“Oh, please. Don't they have more serious discipline problems than that? Really.” My mom's actually not that bad, just kind of lame. She and my dad are pretty easy to talk to about
stuff—when I want to talk, that is. They don't freak out too much when you bring things up.

“Yeah, the Dean just laughed about it and sent him back to class.” The back door to the garage opens and my dad walks in. He puts his keys and wallet in one of the cubbyholes over the desk and his briefcase on the floor, then comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Hey! How was the first day back at school and the first day of practice?” He sits down on the stool next to me and takes a cookie.

“Not you, too! No more cookies please! Dinner'll be ready soon,” Mom exclaims as she fills a pot with water and dumps the beans into it.

We ignore her and keep eating. “It was okay. AP Environmental Science seems pretty good. Lots of field trips.”

“Where to?”

“The Benton County Wind Farm and the Coal Gasification Plant. Maybe some others.”

“The wind farm is pretty amazing. I drove past it last spring on my way to one of our satellite campuses. All of a sudden in the middle of the cornfields, these giant turbines appear. There must be hundreds of them. I've read that it's going to be the biggest wind farm east of the Mississippi when it's completed. Not what you'd expect from the coal belt. Makes you proud to be from Indiana.” He puts his hand over his heart in an exaggerated gesture of pride.

“I guess so.” I'm about to tell them about the internship when my dad asks where Marcie and Drew are.

“Drew's down the street with some friends and Marcie should be dropped off from cross country practice any minute
now,” my mom answers. Marcie is my fourteen year old sister—she's a freshman this year, and Drew is in third grade.

“All right, then. Is there time for me to go for a run before dinner?” Dad asks.

“Sure, if you swing by the Reeds' on the way back to get Drew.”

“Consider it done.” He starts getting up from the island.

I quickly say, “Have you heard anything about an important physics professor visiting at the university from the Overet Lab in France? He's going to teach a couple of AP Enviro classes.” I pause. “And he's offering an internship in his lab for second semester.”

“Wow, really?” My dad sits back down. “So, you're interested? I haven't heard about him, but I wouldn't in the English department. What about you, Jill?”

“I might have heard something, but archeologists don't mingle too much with the physics department, either.” I have their full attention now. My mom's leaning on the island, dish towel in hand. As professors at the university, my parents are
really
big on education, so I figured they would be all over this.

“He's a nuclear physicist studying alternative energy sources. The internship could be cool.”

“So, do you want us to look into it for you or anything?” my dad asks a little too casually. “We could call some of our colleagues to put in a good word.” My parents are always so helpful. It can be annoying.

“No, definitely not. I don't even know anything about it or how he will choose the intern.”

“Okay. Well, let us know how it goes.”

As I'm gathering my gear to take upstairs and get in the shower, Marcie comes in nosily from the side door and dumps
her bags—she has at least four, and I have no idea what she has in all of them—all over the floor by the door.

“Hey!” my mom says. “How was your first day of high school?”

“It was great! Sara is in my English class and I have ‘A' lunch with a lot of my friends.” She takes my stool at the island and I decide I'd better get upstairs quick to shower before she gets in and uses all the hot water.

A
FTER DINNER
I go up to my room to get started on my homework. Even though it's just the first day of school, my teachers didn't hold back on assignments. It's mostly reading, so I stack the pillows on my bed against the headboard and get my iPhone so I can listen to music while I start the novel we're reading for English. It's
A Farewell to Arms
by Hemingway, which is supposed to be pretty good, so I figure it's a good place to start. Ralph, the mutt we got from the pound last year, jumps on the bed and makes a nest in the comforter by my feet. He circles around several times and then lies down with a sigh, nose to tail.

My room's not too bad. I've got a full-sized bed and matching dresser that was once my grandparents', and even though my mom wanted to ‘decorate,' I held out and only let her paint the walls. It's kind of a mess, but I like it that way. Actually, I just don't put away my clothes, so they're all over the floor, and fortunately my parents aren't too crazy about making me keep my room clean.

I settle in and start reading. After a while I feel myself getting sleepy. I have to keep re-reading the same words over again and my eyes are drooping. Even the tunes aren't enough to keep me awake. A full day of school and then two hours of practice really
take it out of you. Then two or three hours of homework on top of that? It's nuts, really, what they expect us to do.

I close the book and lay my head back on the pillows. I'm thinking I'll just close my eyes and rest for a few minutes and then start back in. That feeling you get of floating away just before you fall asleep starts to come over me and I must have dozed off for a while. The explosion rocks me from my sleep.

Flashes of orange, black and yellow light explode in my head along with a tremendous crashing noise. I jerk abruptly awake and cry out. Ralph is so startled, he jumps up and barks at me. At first, I think something must have happened outside or downstairs, because my room looks the same as always. But then I realize it was some sort of awful dream. A nightmare. I sit on the edge of my bed with my feet hanging over the side and hold my head in my hands. I'm so shook up that I'm actually trembling. I take a deep breath and blow it out.
What the hell?
I don't usually have nightmares. I know I must dream, but they never stay with me long in the morning. This was really vivid. Scary. It felt like I could actually hear the explosion.

Studying isn't going to happen until I can get my heart to stop pounding, and I figure I could do with a little fresh air and change of scenery. “You wanna go for a walk?” I say to Ralph. He definitely knows that word because he immediately jumps down from the bed and starts wagging his tail. He races ahead of me down the stairs, looking back to see if I'm coming for the promised walk. In the kitchen, Drew is sitting at the table doing his homework with my parents nearby in the family room ready to offer their help. Like I said, they are very helpful. Not that it's a bad thing, I'm just saying. After a certain point, you don't want their help all the time anymore.

“I'm going to take Ralph on a walk around the block.”

“Take Speck with you, too.” My dad calls from the couch.

“Alright. Speck, do you want to go for a walk?” Speck leaps down from her spot on the arm of my mom's chair and scampers over to me, her whole body wagging with excitement. She's our Cairn terrier and she wouldn't be my first choice for a walk because she has to stop and sniff everything, but how can I deny her such joy? Their leashes are hanging on a hook by the back door. Ralph sits stock still waiting for me to snap it to his collar, as if to say, “I'm a good dog, look how good I'm being for my walk.” At least that's what I imagine he's thinking. Speck, on the other hand can't keep still, and wiggles all over the place in anticipation, making it hard for me to clip on her leash.

I open the back door and they scramble down the steps, pulling me along. Night comes late in August, and the sun is just now setting. It's a fantastic sunset with streaks of purple, blue, pink and orange in the western sky over the trees and the rooftops. Large, dusky blue clouds on the horizon almost look like low hills in the distance. The eastern sky is dark with a few stars already winking.

We walk down the driveway with Ralph pulling on his leash to go forward and Speck sniffing around in the bushes. As we walk into the pool of light under the street lamp at the end of the driveway, it abruptly blinks out. It's not that big a deal in and of itself, but it happens to me a lot. Enough so that I've started to become aware of overhead lights going on or off when I pass beneath them. It mostly happens with street lamps and lights in parking lots and garages. This particular light does it a lot, but it doesn't always do it, which makes it even weirder. It's kind of unpredictable, so that I'll forget about it for weeks and even months, and then
blink
it happens again.

I take the dogs to the end of the block and then turn around and come back. When we pass under the light at the end of the driveway, it abruptly comes back on, startling me, its glow illuminating the night and creating elongated, giant shadows of me and the dogs on the pavement.

I
T'S A FEW
minutes after the first bell, and I want to get to class at just the right time. I pause at the door and work up my courage.
It's no big deal, I'm just going to sit next to her
. I'm hoping she's already sitting at the seat by the door where she's been the last two days. If it's close to the second bell, then I can just grab the seat behind her like I'm in a hurry. When I step through the doorway, I avoid looking toward the back of the classroom where Will and Cole and I usually sit, so I don't have to make eye contact with them. That would be really distracting. Renee is in her seat by the door. Thankfully, the seat behind her is empty, and I slide into it just as the second bell rings.
Perfect
. As I pass by her, I get a hint of lemon and I catch her eye. “Hey,” I say.

“Hi, Eric.” She smiles at me, crinkling her green eyes. My nervousness disappears, and I smile back.

I glance up at the front of the classroom as I pull my books out. Mr. Ogle is there and so is another dark-haired man taking papers and a flash drive out of his briefcase.

“Alright everyone, time to pay attention,” Mr. Ogle begins. “As you recall, I told you that we would be honored this year to have the distinguished Dr. Auberge from the Overet Nuclear
Institute teach some of our classes on alternative energy sources. He is here today, so please give him your undivided attention.”

Renee's father
. Somehow that seems more important to me than his being a prominent physicist.

“Good morning. I am pleased to be here with you today. It's exciting for me to talk with our next generation of scientists, as you will be on the forefront of making the new discoveries that will most likely change the world as we know it.” He speaks with slightly accented English like Renee and has the same glossy dark hair. Physically, he's not very imposing—he's medium height and medium build—but he has an intensity about him that grabs my attention.

“For the first part of my lecture, I will talk with you about the work that I do at the Overet Nuclear Institute and France's Nuclear Energy Commission. Then I will touch upon the studies and experiments I will be conducting during the two years I am at the university on a research sabbatical. Please feel free to ask questions as we go along.” He leans down to insert his flash drive into the laptop and pulls up his presentation. A picture of two large circular towers against a cloudless blue sky appears on the screen.