Rising (3 page)

         
“Hey, did you read that poem by Robert
what’s-his-name for Mrs. Jaden’s class?
 
I totally forgot,” said Ben.

         
“Robert
Frost.
 
Yeah, I read it.
 
I’ll catch you up at lunch.”

         
“Hey.
 
What’s wrong?” asked Ben, noting my irritability.

         
“Oh, nothing really.
 
I just couldn’t sleep last night—bad dream.”

         
“What was it about?”

         
I tried to remember, but again only
snatches came to me—streak of lightning, the burning stone, sugar cane, and a
hissing creature coming toward me.
 
It
was what I felt more than remembered that troubled me; that ominous feeling
that comes before something terrible happens.

         
“That’s the weird thing.
 
I can’t really remember.”

         
“Who wants to remember?
 
I just forget about bad dreams.
 
Wake up and brush ‘
em
off.
 
No worries, man.”

         
I laughed.
 
Life seemed so easy for Ben.
 
He always lightened the mood.
 
I guess that’s why he was my best
friend.
 

         
“We better hurry.
 
Bell’s gonna ring.
 
See
ya
at lunch,” he
called back to me as he headed toward the B Wing to his Chemistry class.

         
Beau
Chêne
High School had a central commons area with benches and tables where students
gathered for lunch.
 
At the center of the
commons area was the statue of our mascot—a fierce bobcat, one claw up and
ready to strike.
 
The rest of the school
spread out around the commons area.
 
The
A Wing housed the business and principals’ offices as well as the library and
teachers’ lounge.
 
The B Wing housed all
of the Science and Math classrooms; the C Wing held the English and Fine Arts
classrooms; the D Wing housed Social Studies and Languages; and the E Wing
jutted out into large classrooms for Woodshop and Home Economics then fattened
farther out into a connecting gym.
 
If
viewed from above, I always thought the campus would look like a giant left
hand spreading its fingers wide.

I walked briskly to Mr. Hampton’s World History
class.
 
I always looked forward to first
period because Mr. Hampton’s monotonous drone about the ancient pyramids or
Roman battles or whatever the subject was of the day nearly put everyone to
sleep.
 
Personally, I’d always been
interested in history.
 
It was just poor
Mr. Hampton’s pathetic delivery of the facts that made it so boring.
 
The advantage for me was that I felt content
from everyone’s lulled senses in the room.
 
It gave me a sort of break from my emotional intuition.

Sidling into the third row, my friend Mark was
already there.
 
His usual Cheshire-cat
grin spread across his face.

“Hey, dude.
 
Check out Deanna’s new tat,” he whispered.

Mark pointed to the girl in the second row,
leaning forward so that her shirt lifted and revealed her lower back.
 
There was a golden
guppie
swimming up her spine.
 
Mark made a
fish-mouth face as if he were gasping for air.
 
I shook my head.

“Hey, maybe I ought to give her another shot at
going out with me,” he said, smirking.

“I thought you said she was too childish for
you.”

“Looks like she’s growing up.
 
I’m thinking about going
fishin
’.”

He pantomimed casting an invisible fishing pole
and reeling her in.

“Maybe you ought to try to go one week without
a new girlfriend,” I suggested, although I knew I was wasting my breath.

“Hey, that’s an exaggeration. It’s about every
two weeks.”

The bell rang for the morning
announcements.
 
I disregarded Mark’s
comments.
 
He was always excited about
some girl, whether it was an incoming freshman he had never laid eyes on or a
girl he had known since middle school who suddenly developed curves.
 
Summers could do wonders for late-blooming
girls.

World History was predictably dull, although I
wondered how anyone could make Roman gladiators sound boring.
 
Calculus was no better.
 
On the other hand, physics was very
different.
 
For the past few weeks, my
classmates and I had been tortured by a number of feeble-minded substitutes for
the former physics teacher, Ms. Perry, who abruptly moved away with her new
husband to some small mountain town in Kentucky.
 
I’d been cursing her ever since for
abandoning us to this torture by boredom.
 
Today was the first day of the new teacher, an
actual
teacher with an actual degree.

“Mr. Phillip Dunaway,” said the tall,
intelligent-looking man in the front of the room after the tardy bell
rang.
 
“I have been teaching for 13
years. I am excited about this opportunity to run the Science Department here
at Beau
Chêne
High School.
 
I’ve mostly taught biology in the past, but physics
is my second love of the sciences.
 
So,
this will be great fun for me.
 
Well,
enough small talk.
 
I’m a man of action,
so why don’t you all gather around over here.”

I was wondering, ‘what small talk?’
 
I was so used to at least a twenty minute
speech about nothing important from new teachers, blabbering away about their
goals and dreams yet to be accomplished in the classroom.

Mr. Dunaway stepped away from the front of the
room to the lab tables in the back.
 
At
first, no one moved.
 
Since early
September, the entire class had been wasting day after day completing
worksheets, texting friends, sleeping, studying for other classes—anything but
actually learning Physics.

“Well, come on.
 
Don’t be shy.
 
I don’t bite, not
very hard anyway,” urged Mr. Dunaway with a forced chuckle.

No one laughed, but it encouraged us all the
same.
 
I followed him along with the rest
of the class.
 
On the table was a glass
filled to the very rim with water.
 
He
then demonstrated an experiment on surface tension, dropping quarters in one by
one.
 
The water became concave, bending
and swelling with each fallen quarter, able to withstand much more weight from
each quarter than expected before finally spilling over the edge.
 
He then went on with a cool explanation about
liquid particles being drawn together when in contact with a gas, such as
air.
 
I know, most kids wouldn’t find
that cool at all.
 
Actually, most of the
class seemed to drift away the longer he talked, but it was my kind of
thing.
 
He kept most of us captivated
with another experiment where a needle floated on the water’s surface until the
bell rang for lunch.
 

         
As I wandered out to our lunch table, I
was still pondering the malleability of water and other elements when hit with
powerful forces when I felt a stirring tension in my chest.
 
Ben and Melanie were already seated at our
usual table nearest the bobcat statue.
 
They were obviously debating something rather excitedly.
 
This was nothing new for those two.
 
I felt their heated exchange before I even
heard their voices.

         
“You are absolutely insane, Benjamin
LeBlanc,” said Melanie in her dry tone, “Slaves did not
want
to remain enslaved by their masters.
 
They simply had few options to go elsewhere.”

         
“Exactly!
 
They knew they had it better with their old
slave-owners rather than trying to go out and make it on their own.”

         
“How ludicrous.
 
The reason they had no options is because no
one would give them a chance because they had been slaves.
 
Even after the treaty ended the war, people
didn’t suddenly start seeing them as equals.”

         
“It just seems they would’ve been
happier where they were born and raised with the people who took care of them.
 
What makes you the expert anyway?”

         
“Um, I think I have a better idea than
you do, my fair friend,” she said, pointing to the darker complexion of her
arm.

         
“That doesn’t make you an expert.
 
You weren’t a slave.”

         
“Chances are that my ancestors were.”

         
“Whatever,” said Ben matter-of-factly,
taking an overly large bite of his hot dog, completely unflustered.

         
Poor Ben.
 
He was entirely outmatched.
 
He didn’t have a chance of outwitting
Melanie.
 
Somehow, I think he knew it.
 
He just liked pushing her buttons.

         
“Should I sit somewhere else while you
debate?” I asked casually, sitting anyway.

         
“It wasn’t a debate,” said Mel.
 
“It was a silly boy’s view on the luxurious
lifestyle of a share cropper.”

         
“Silly
boy
?
 
I see no boy,” said Ben
in his light-hearted manner, his mouth full.

         
“Here, let me help you,” said Mel, stuffing
her compact mirror in front of his face.

         
“Mr. Hampton would be proud that he
actually stirred someone up in your class.
 
No one stays awake in mine,” I added, trying to lighten the mood.

         
“It wasn’t Mr. Hampton.
 
It was that idiot Trey Hawkes in 2
^nd
period, who is only in our class because he failed last year,” said Mel.
 
“He said that sharecropping was the best
thing the ex-slaves had, and they probably preferred it since it was the
closest thing to slavery and they couldn’t think for themselves anyway.”

         
Mel spit the entire sentence out in
one breath, obviously perturbed.
 
My
other sense started to pinch in my chest.

         
“Trey is an idiot,” I said, feeling
the anger rising in her, “just ignore him.
 
Why were you talking about sharecropping in World History?
 
He was lecturing about gladiators in my
class.”

         
Ben suddenly pretended not to hear the
question, staring off in the other direction.

         
“This one here,” said Mel, pointing to
Ben, “thought that since gladiators were slaves, but were getting money for
their fights that they were just like sharecroppers.
 
How’s that for a dumb analogy?”

         
I laughed, despite Mel’s scowl.
 
She looked like she wanted to set Ben on
fire.

         
“What’s so funny?” asked Jessie,
sitting next to me.

         
None of us acknowledged Jessie at
first.
 
We were all looking at the girl
standing next to her.
 

         
“Hey, guys.
 
I think most of you know my cousin Clara,”
said Jessie.
 
“She’s taking English IV
this year, and I was hoping one of you might have it next period, so she’ll
know somebody in the class.”

         
Jessie introduced each of us to
her.
 
Clara nodded politely around the
table, letting her eyes rest a second longer on mine.
 
My other sense awakened with a blow, nearly
knocking my head back. As always, I kept my face blank and stayed in control.
 
I’d trained myself not to show any outer
signs of my feelings.
 
And now, I
couldn’t even put it into words if I tried.
 
This girl gave off an unearthly wave of calm that somehow felt
overwhelming to me.
 
It made me
lightheaded.

         
I’d seen her with the girls’ soccer
team before. They usually practice the same time we do.
 
I remembered Jessie talking about her every
now and then, but I’d never met her face to face.
 
She’s a pretty girl, very pretty.
 
But, hell, there are lots of pretty girls
here.
 
That wasn’t enough to interest
me.
 
Most teenage girls were so moody and
emotionally hysterical that it was exhausting just being around them; for
example, the pity party in the parking lot this morning.
 
Blocking all of those feelings would drive me
crazy.
 
Jessie and Mel were fairly
level-headed, emotionally speaking, which made it easy to be around them.