Stanzi—Tuesday Morning—I Crawl Through It
Today is Tuesday and I can see Gustav’s helicopter parked on the football field. I skip homeroom and go to him.
Yesterday we visited Kenneth and Patricia in the bush. We told them how we feel about each other.
Gustav said, “We’ve decided to fall in love.”
I said, “My doctor recommends against it, but sometimes doctors are wrong.”
Gustav is on the football field with his physics teacher, who still cannot see the helicopter.
“It looks brand-new,” I say.
Gustav says, “I waxed it.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
Ms. Physics seems curious enough. She seems open-minded. She wants to see the helicopter. She looks at me and says, “Point to the tail.”
She says, “Point to the altimeter.”
I step up into the cockpit and I look at all the dials. I know it’s the one marked ALT, but in case I’m wrong, I ask Gustav, “It’s the one marked A-L-T, right?”
“Yes.”
I point to it.
Ms. Physics says, “Where is the pitch lever?”
I shrug. “I’m not a pilot.”
Gustav climbs in the passenger’s side and points to the pitch lever. “Here is the pitch lever and here is the engine oil gauge and I removed part of the horizontal stabilizer in order to make weight on my last flight.”
We are two high school seniors floating in front of a physics teacher.
And still, she cannot believe.
As I walk the hallway with my late pass, I walk past open classroom doors. In one room, they are having a mock trial. In another, they are filling test tubes with suspicious liquids. In another, they are having a race on the blackboard. In another, they are writing a play for kids in middle school. The play is about being a good sport.
When I reach the biology room and weave my way past the dead formaldehyde frogs, I find my box full of evidence. It has been sealed with sturdy packing tape. My clipboard is gone.
I look for Mr. Bio but he’s not here. His briefcase isn’t next to his desk. His lab coat is hung on a hook by the door.
It’s just me and the frogs.
I pretend that one of the frogs is Mama.
I pretend that another one is Pop.
We have a conversation about Ruthie, my dead sister. We have a conversation about how she didn’t know what a wombat was. I tell them I was a bad big sister.
Mama weeps, mostly.
Pop tells me I was a great big sister. “Remember how you taught her how to braid Mama’s hair?”
I open a drawer in the lab to find a tissue for Mama-frog. Her tears will overflow the formaldehyde jar soon. When I open the drawer I find the tests. Just the answer sheets. Thousands of little dots. Tens of thousands of letters.
I’m on my knees by the drawer. I take out stacks and stacks of answers and place them on the floor. The drawer is ten feet deep. It’s ten feet wide. I empty it. I’m cold and sweating. In the very back of the drawer, there is a hole.
I crawl through it.
I fall through a chute of some sort.
“YOU HAVE BEEN ASSESSED!” the principal says as I land in her chair, in her office, on her lap.
We are surrounded by heaps of paperwork. She’s eating peanut butter crackers and asks me, “Don’t tell anyone, okay? I’m not allowed to have peanuts.”
“Okay.” I shift on her lap to make us more comfortable.
“How did you get here?” she asks. “From the parking lot?”
I point up. “Biology lab. A drawer.”
“Oh, that.”
“I was supposed to be cataloging evidence.”
“Investigation is over,” she says. “We found our man.”
“Man?”
“Yes,” she says, picking up the crumbs of her crackers by touching each one with a spit-soaked finger. “He’s out on the lawn for public display.”
On the front lawn of the high school, there are a hundred students in a circle. It reminds me of the drills, but there are no drills.
In the center of the circle is Kenneth, the dangerous bush man.
The students throw things at him. Countries and capitals, history, dates, names, triangles, circles, rectangles, infinitives, clauses, equations, couplets, limericks, theories, debate points. Someone throws hydrogen. Someone throws radium. Another throws xenon. I see Lansdale Cruise in the crowd.
“Why are we doing this?” I ask her.
“He can take it,” she says.
“Everyone here is guilty,” I say.
“Everyone here knows it,” she answers.
China arrives. She’s holding a piece of paper that says Irenic Brown. She throws it at him. The crowd stops hurling shapes and phonetic symbols and x and y. Kenneth, the dangerous bush man, says he knows what to do with Irenic Brown.
“I know what to do,” he says. “Only no one will let me do it.”
China looks as if she knows what this means.
When I listen to the crowd thinking, I hear they know what it means, too. I consult myself: Do I know what this means?
I think it means we must start paying attention.
I know the odds of this happening are very low.