What had Mrs Graves told him to do? Stay or leave? Her voice had bounced off the walls, like the ball Lavi sometimes tried to make him catch.
Ra-hul-ul-ul…
Only her tone had told him that she was impatient although she seemed to be smiling and talking slowly. He would have to ask Mom. Had she asked him to stay? Or leave?
He opened his eyes. He rubbed his toes against each other because that soothed him, and stared out of the window. The air was soft with early light. He saw the tree waving its green leaves at him and all the bands of light moving and bobbing as if everything outside his window was liquid, the shapes and colours oozing and blurring. He closed his eyes. The colours and shapes settled into one dark mass after a while. He opened his eyes again, slowly. It was his newest trick. Now the daylight had hardened, and everything seemed firmly in shape, fixed in place. What had Mrs Graves meant when she wrote a note for Mom? Did she want him to stay? Or leave? He continued staring and rubbing his toes together. Stay or leave? Rahul put his thumb in his mouth. His bear-shaped pillow seemed part of his body.
On 23 September 2003, Miss Hennessy had spoken in a very loud voice to him. He had stared at her. His head felt odd. He did not realize that it was her voice that was making him feel that way. It sounded distorted, like the car radio when Lavi turned the knob. It came and went, ripping the air to shreds.
‘Don’t you want to be normal, Raoul?’ she said. ‘Why can’t you do what the other kids are doing? You are doing this just to piss me off, I know. I know you can understand if you really want to. Why can’t you trace the map, just like the others?’
Rahul stared at her, then down at the map.
Miss Hennessy grabbed his backpack, marched up to the corridor, and flung it down. The kids in class stared at her.
‘Mind your own business, kids,’ she said. ‘Finish your work.’
A faint chlunk was heard. Rahul continued to sit at his desk, looking down at the map. One of the kids ran to see what had happened.
‘Get back to your place, Janie!’ Miss Hennessy said.
‘But, Miss Hennessy,’ said Janie, ‘Mr Whitney, the fifth-grade teacher, is picking up Raoul’s backpack. I think he’s going to bring it up here!’
Miss Hennessy held the sides of her desk.
A few minutes later, Mr Whitney came to the door. ‘I found this in the quad,’ he said. ‘Someone threw it down. Does it belong to anyone here?’
‘It’s Raoul’s,’ Janie said.
‘Quiet,’ said Miss Hennessy. ‘I’ll take that, thank you,’ she said to the other teacher. She put it on his desk.
‘Son, you could have hurt someone,’ said Mr Whitney to Rahul. ‘Don’t do that again.’
Rahul stared at him. Mr Whitney looked at him for a few moments, shook his head, and went away.
Mom walked through the door.
‘Morning, darling!’ she said. She came close as though to stroke him. Rahul shrank back against the pillows. Sometimes his skin felt very raw, exposed, as if it had been pared down like an onion to its tender purple core, like when Ariel cut one up in the kitchen. It hurt when people touched him. Their fingers felt coarse and scratchy as though they had been in the sea and then on the sand on the beach.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Mom, her voice low. ‘I won’t touch you without asking you. May I touch your forehead?’
Rahul stared at her. Mom stroked his forehead. It made him feel shivery. He moved his head out of her reach.
‘Get up, dear. You need to shower and eat something before school.’
Rahul stared at her.
‘What did Mrs Graves tell me? To stay or to leave?’ he asked.
Mom’s body became straight and hard. She looked at him. She went up to his desk and looked through his backpack. She saw the note sticking out of his diary. She pulled it out and read it.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d brought me a note from Mrs Graves, Rahul?’ she said, her voice like Lavi’s guitar strings when he held them down and plucked them.
He looked at her. She was pressing her hands together, the way he was supposed to when he was angry or tense, when he needed to control his runaway mind and pull it back to now.
She was trying to be calm.
Rahul felt the breath go out of him.
Mom was mad at him. He had a whooshing sensation in his head. The colours and the lights moved in bands again as though he were underwater, in a swimming pool. He tried to resist the sound of the water and float up to the surface.
‘Mom, are you mad at me? Mom, will you talk to me?’
‘Rahul, I am not mad,’ she said.
Mom spoke softly when she was trying not to shout.
‘It’s just that you remember stuff clearly from years ago. You know the exact time and date when something happened, stuff no one else remembers. You remember what you wore, what other people wore, what people said. Why can’t you remember what happened yesterday? Why couldn’t you tell me about Mrs Graves’s note?’
‘Mom, don’t be mad,’ he said, staring at her. ‘Are you mad?’
‘Enough now, Rahul,’ Mom said.
He looked at her. ‘Are you tired, Mom?’
‘No, darling. Let’s get you ready.’