The Here and Now

  The fact is, I was supposed to get rid of that sweatshirt, but I still have it folded in a plastic bag on the top shelf of my closet. I’m not sure why I saved it. But I guess that’s where my life of private deceit began. Maybe if people accuse you of stuff too much, you figure, you know, might as well.

  The second thing was the numbers. I was found wearing a New York Giants sweatshirt from God knows where and with big black numbers scrawled down my arm. Weird kid, I know. I have no idea how that five-digit number got there. Mr. Robert and my mom and the others were upset about that too. I promised I hadn’t written it. I think they could tell it wasn’t my handwriting. But again, when I had no explanation to offer, they thought I was being difficult.

  Mr. Robert was gentle about it, but Ms. Cynthia was downright scary. I can still remember staring at it in shame as she yelled at me, the way the ink bled into the fine texture of my skin. I also remember her scrubbing away at it with the rough side of a sponge until my arm was raw. They kept me in long sleeves and ordered me not to show anyone, but I did show Katherine. And then my mom took up the cause for days after, scouring it in the sink every night until it was finally gone. Those were some stubborn numbers. It’s not like I am going to forget them.

  December 22, 2011

  Dear Julius,

  I had another dream about you last night. Maybe because I’m always falling asleep in the middle of writing my letters to you. Because it’s late when I write them, and the lights are off and I mostly keep my eyes closed, you know, just in case. No wonder my handwriting sucks! (Sucks = is terrible. You hear that a lot here.)

  People use computers. Remember Poppy explained about those? I’m telling you, people here look at them all the time, like they’re stuck to one and have no choice. Teachers think it’s weird that I like to write everything on pieces of paper. Ms. Scharf said in the future nobody will write anything on paper, and did I want to get left behind?

  Yesterday we put lights all over the front of the house and bought a cut-down tree, which we put inside the house, and we put lights all over that too. Because of Christmas, which is a really big deal around here. I am not exactly sure what the main idea of it is, and I don’t think Mom is either, but that’s what all the neighbors are doing.

  Mom/Molly gets upset at me for going outside too much. She says kids here don’t do that, and it’s true. They watch TV or computers or phones or games instead. And not because going outdoors is dangerous or their parents say they can’t. They can go out anytime they want. Their parents WANT them to go outside. Staying inside is what they choose.

  Love,

  Prenna

  SIX

  As soon as Katherine opens the door the next morning before school, she knows something is up. Her eyes lock on mine, but she can’t ask.

  I follow her up to her room. Her dad leaves very early for work.

  I try to think of a way to couch it. “You know Ben Kenobi from the A and P?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s crazy as a loon.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was telling me all this stuff about stopping a crime that won’t take place until … I don’t know … I forget … it was the middle of next month.” I say it as casually as I can, but my eyes tell her to pay attention.

  Katherine nods slowly. She knows about the numbers. I don’t know if she’ll make the connection. Trying to be subtle, I scratch my arm.

  “Of course I got away from him as fast as I could, because he was acting too weird. It’s not like I believed anything he said.” I emphasize this for anyone else who might be listening.

  I can tell she’s calculating. We have a coded way of talking if we need to say things about our parents or our counselors or even about Ethan. I don’t have codes for this, but I do say, “Mr. Fasanelli didn’t assign anything for tomorrow,” which more or less means my counselor hasn’t said anything yet.

  “Well, that’s good,” she says.

  “Only a matter of time,” I say. “Might be twice as much work for the weekend.”

  The call comes right after school.

  “Hey, Mr. Robert,” I say, “what’s up?” My heart is hammering.

  “Well, Prenna, I didn’t want to wait until our regular meeting to ask you about your conversation with the homeless man you seem to have become friendly with.”

  I am scrambling to read his tone. My mom is giving me questioning looks from the kitchen.

  “Anything you’re concerned about?” he asks.

  I used to like Mr. Robert. I was so happy when I got assigned to him and not to Ms. Cynthia. He has a round, friendly face, and he always used to wear a tie with rainbows or frogs or something to amuse me. He makes his questions sound like he’s trying to take care of you.

  “Not really,” I say. “I mean, he’s crazy. I didn’t realize how crazy, so that’s kind of sad.”

  “Yes, it is.” I can hear that Mr. Robert wants more.

  “It made me pretty uncomfortable, to tell you the truth,” I say solemnly.

  “That must have been hard for you.” I can picture his face perfectly as he says this. He is frowning in his patronizing way. Maybe he is rubbing his fat chin, full of concern. He was Aaron Green’s counselor too. He probably used to say things like this to Aaron. But it was long before Aaron’s death that I had stopped trusting Mr. Robert to actually care about me. I guess overhearing his crisp, all-business approach to the disposal of my dead body had had something to do with it.

  “I mean, you know me,” I say cheerfully. “I’m always trying to be attentive to people. I think that’s important, and we’ve talked about that a lot, but I don’t think it makes sense for me to be friendly with him anymore.” I sound so phony I could throw up, but mercifully Mr. Robert is obtuse. They taught us to be great liars. So what do they expect?

  “I think that’s wise, Prenna.”

  He says that a lot. I used to think he simply meant I was being wise. By now I know he means If we find you talking to that man again, you will be sorry.

  After school the next day I ask Katherine to come swimming with me at the indoor pool at the Y.

  On account of us being obliged to act like normal girls, and not do weird things like swim laps at the Y with our custom-made glasses on, I have taken to swimming when I want to talk honestly with Katherine. Mr. Robert must suspect what I am up to, because the last two times Katherine and I went swimming we both got reprimanded. But the real takeaway for me was that he didn’t mention any of the things Katherine and I had talked about—and I had tossed out a few highly controversial tidbits just to test the theory. We’ll get reprimanded this time for sure, and maybe even punished. Last time, Mr. Robert couldn’t come up with a convincing reason to ban swimming in a pool, but he’s probably come up with one by now. It may be the last time we are able to get away with it, but I take the risk anyway.

  “I can’t stop thinking about the number,” I tell her once we’re paddling in the deep middle of the underheated pool.

  Katherine nods. Without my glasses my vision is so poor that she’s not much more than shapes and colors, but I can tell her lips are a little blue. “I didn’t get it at first, but I do now,” she says carefully.

  “All this time I’ve been trying to figure it out and I never thought it was a date. Now I can’t think of it any other way.”

  She’s afraid to talk. I can tell. This is dangerous, and, as I said, she isn’t one hundred percent sold on my glasses theory.

  So I hurry ahead. I say the thing I shouldn’t say and shouldn’t even think: “What if he’s not crazy? Or at least, not crazy about everything? What if this date is real and there is something he needs me to do?”

  Katherine nods again. I know her expression without being able to see it very well. Her green-brown eyes are wide open with worry for me.

  “Should I talk to him? I know I am not supposed to, but what if he contacts me again? I can’t just let this date come and go and not do anything, can I? He says o
ur people aren’t fixing anything, just hiding. I am so afraid that is true.”

  Katherine’s alarm, even blurry, is hard to ignore.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll stop. I shouldn’t involve you in it. I accept getting myself in trouble, but I don’t want to do it to you. I will shut up now.”

  “I don’t mind. It’s just I am worried for you,” she says in barely a whisper. “That’s all. Please, please be careful.”

  I paddle around in circles, trying to get warm. “I think I have to talk to him,” I say. I am terrible at shutting up.

  February 12, 2011

  Dear Julius,

  You just can’t believe the stuff they have here. There is this place called “the mall” where they’ve kind of walled in a whole town of different stores, some of them as big as canyons, where they sell millions and millions of things, way more than people can even buy. Not because they CAN’T buy them, usually, but because they already have so much stuff in their houses that they don’t need them. When the mall closes at night, there’s still practically as much stuff left to buy as there was in the morning when it opened. People don’t rush around or line up in giant queues as you might expect. It’s just normal here to have all this extra stuff around that you DO NOT EVEN NEED.

  I’m not sure where it all comes from, because you never see anybody making anything.

  Love,

  Prenna

  SEVEN

  Every day after school for a week I walk through the park and then past the A&P. I haven’t decided for sure what to do about the old man yet. As I try on the idea that he might know what he’s talking about, I can’t help having all these questions. For now I just want to see him. I even try the community center again, but he’s not in any of these places.

  “Have you seen Ben Kenobi lately?” Ethan asks me on Monday at the end of the school day, taking the thought straight out of my brain.

  I’ve been avoiding Ethan since the incident at the community center. I don’t want him to ask me why the old man wanted to talk to me or what he said. Ethan seems to understand this. But now he’s standing at my locker, chewing gum.

  “No. Not in a few days.” I put my history textbook in my backpack. I clear my throat. I can’t let anything lie. “Why?”

  “I have something I want to give him. There’s this paper a scientist wrote at the place I interned last summer. I think he would find it really interesting.”

  Something in Ethan’s manner seems a little artificial to me, a little manic, and it’s not just the gum.

  I’m not sure what to say to this. There is rarely an unwanted silence between Ethan and me; we can usually fall back on banter. But today we stare at each other. Neither of us quite knows what to do about it.

  So he keeps talking. “She’s brilliant, this woman who wrote the paper. She’s just come out of MIT in physics, doing this work on traversable wormholes that is just wild. Her real field is wave energy, so this is like her hobby.” He pulls the paper out of his book bag and hands it to me. It is full of diagrams and equations.

  “You can read this?”

  “Mostly.” He looks up, realizing he’s forgotten to be the guy who needs help on his physics problem sets. He finds a wrapper in his pocket and spits his gum into it. “I mean, not all of it, obviously. But I’ve been fascinated by this stuff since I was, like, thirteen years old, since I had this … well …” He stops and looks at me. He opens his mouth and closes it.

  “Since what?”

  “Since I … Nothing. Never mind.” Ethan’s forehead is crimping with agitation.

  It’s always me who’s cautious, me who’s secretive, me who talks myself into corners. Very strange to see Ethan acting this way. Frankly, I think I do a better job with it.

  “Since you what?” I probably shouldn’t ask. The counselors are probably tuning in to everything I say and do right now exactly as I say and do it.

  Ethan is eyeing me carefully. “It’s just that I had this very strange experience when I was thirteen. I went fishing at this creek not far from my house …” His expression is bewildering to me, just as it was the first time I talked to him. Like he’s looking to me for some kind of understanding.

  “Yeah?” Suddenly I am wondering why, if this is so important, he never told me about it before, and why he is telling me now.

  “I don’t really talk about it much. I mean, I told my folks at the time and they had no idea what to make of it. I made some drawings to show them, and they made an appointment to show me to the school shrink.” He laughs, but it doesn’t seem to strike either of us as funny.

  Slowly the hubbub in the hallway is dying down, and now it’s quiet enough to measure the full weirdness between us.

  “I told Mona—Dr. Ghali—the physicist I was talking about. And actually, I told Ben Kenobi. I showed him drawings. He’s the one who, well, anyway …”

  “Ethan, what? What happened?” I am getting nervous and impatient. I don’t know where this is going, what it has to do with me, or just how much trouble I am potentially getting us into, and yet I can’t seem to hold back.

  “Just this strange kind of … disturbance in the air over the river. Really hard to describe, and then …” Still that searching look.

  “What?”

  He shakes his head. He looks tired and uncertain. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

  Mr. Robert calls twice before dinner and I don’t pick up. This is not okay. The cell phone I carry is for his convenience more than mine, though he would never say so. You can sometimes get away with a couple of standard excuses: I’m so sorry—I lost my charger and now my phone is dead. OMG, my phone didn’t even ring, isn’t that weird? But I am at the very outer limit.

  I go over to Katherine’s house right after dinner. My mom gives me a heavy look as I walk out the door. The windows at Katherine’s house are dark. Katherine and her dad aren’t go-out-at-night people. I try to think of comforting excuses on the way home. It’s not curriculum night or college night or science social night at school, is it? Could be, right?

  “Mr. Robert called,” my mother tells me as soon as I walk in the door.

  “I misplaced my phone,” I say lightly. “I must have left it in my locker at school.”

  “Make sure you get it tomorrow,” she warns me.

  “I will.”

  “He wants you to stay put for the rest of the evening and come home directly after school tomorrow, and I assured him you would. He said he’d be in touch about speaking in person before your next scheduled session.”

  I am already halfway up the stairs.

  “Prenna?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Everything okay?”

  I need to say something. She needs to feel like she’s doing her job. “The homeless guy from the parking lot at the A&P said a bunch of weird stuff to me because he’s crazy, and Mr. Robert wants to follow up. That’s all.”

  Later on I sort of, oops, drop my phone out the back window of my house. Before I do, I make sure it’s not supposed to rain. It lands among the daffodils that I myself planted. Now my phone really is misplaced. Darn.

  I think about what Ethan said. I try his words a hundred different ways. A thousand. There is no way I am going to sleep tonight.

  Katherine is not in school the next day. I am starting to panic. What am I going to do? I am in agony. I wait by Katherine’s locker between every class, hoping I am wrong. Hoping she’ll show up. Maybe she just had a sore throat or something.

  I can’t stand the idea of going home after school, especially because of being ordered to. It occurs to me: I could wait for Mr. Robert to find me, or I could go find him.

  He’s not at his office the first time I check. The second time he is.

  “Prenna. Just the girl I’ve been trying to reach,” Mr. Robert says, opening the door for me.

  Without thinking, I go and plant myself on his couch as I’ve done for the last four years. “Where is Katherine Wand?”

&nbs
p; He sits down and creaks around in his swivelly office chair. He adjusts his glasses, no hurry at all. “Katherine has decided to complete the semester at a terrific boarding school in New Hampshire.”

  I glower at him. “Katherine has decided?”

  “Please watch your tone, Prenna.”

  I take a deep breath. “Why did she decide that?”

  “Frankly, Cynthia and her father encouraged her,” Mr. Robert says evenly. “Among other things, we felt perhaps the two of you needed a break. I think you are putting her in a difficult position, discussing inappropriate subjects with her and demanding her secrecy. She is very loyal to you.”

  I am translating as he goes: they wanted information from her and she wouldn’t tell them, so they sent her away. It’s almost certainly not to a terrific boarding school, but it’s probably some measure short of actually harming her. Probably a community safe house. At least, I pray it is. It may or may not be in New Hampshire.

  “Katherine didn’t do anything wrong. Why are you punishing her?”

  He creaks back in his chair and crosses his arms over his fat stomach. He, like a lot of the adults in our community, has taken a bit too much advantage of the abundance of easy food they’ve got here.

  “We’re not viewing this as a punishment, Prenna. This is an opportunity to take her out of a difficult and possibly compromising situation.”

  Blah, blah, blah. What I’m wondering is, why don’t they send me away? If it suited their purposes, they would put me away in a second. They’d give my mom the same lame-ass story about the terrific boarding school, and she would support them, no problem.