Spontaneous (20 page)

R
emember those yearbooks I had hoped for? Oh, we were getting them all right. A newly formed committee was soliciting candids so that they could create something bound and printed to celebrate our resurrected senior year. Still, we all knew it wouldn't feel like an
official
yearbook without formal shots against the standard blue backgrounds. So we had Picture Day, a Tuesday in early April set aside for senior portraits. It was normally something kids did on their own time and dime, but the only photographers who interacted with us were journalists who had little interest in snapping the same boring shot over and over again. So we set up a makeshift studio in an art room and everyone shuffled in to model for Kylton Connors. Rather than submitting senior quotes, members of the yearbook committee decided to wear T-shirts with witty sayings on them. There were a few
WRAP IT UP
,
SHORT STUFF
s in honor of Brian, but most of the witticisms had come out of the mouth of Jane Rolling.

Tess's
GO P
ET A DOG ALREADY
#
RIT
D
, for instance.

“What does that even mean?” I asked her when she walked out of the art room after her photo shoot.

“It means people should do something kind that makes them feel good and makes someone else feel good,” Tess said. “It means take a breath, calm down, connect with yourself and others.”

“Jane Rolling, the Rumi of our generation.”

“I think she's quite witty and charming. A real inspiration.”

“If you say so. But then again you're not the best judge of character. You think Mr. Spiros is hot.”

“I think he's
fascinating
. It's different.”

“You adore that tuft of hair that peeks out from his polo.”

“He's a man,” Tess said, blushing. “Men have chest hair.”

“And back hair,” I said, scrunching up my face in disgust. “Admit it, you want to have his babies. You want to be his little Jane Rolling.”

“I don't.”

“You want his quadruplets. You want four of his little gyros popping out of your hoodilly. Opa! Opa! Opa! Opa!”

“Did you just call my theoretical babies gyros?”

“I did.”

“Did you just call my hoodilly a hoodilly?”

“I did.”

“Get help, dear.”

It was conversations like this that I missed the most. They used to be all day, every day with Tess. But by this point, I was lucky to have them once a week. Tess was consumed. “By school,” I told Dylan and Rosetti, but the truth was, she wasn't there too much.
She showed up for yearbook committee meetings, but it seemed the only reasons she ever attended classes were to occasionally gawk at Mr. Spiros and to humor me. She didn't even visit the beach, which seemed like sacrilege for a girl who understood the spiritual value of sand between the toes.

“I think she's almost got the case cracked,” I said to Tess as we rounded the corner and headed toward the cafeteria.

“Excuse me?” she replied.

“
Lady Nightshade
,” I whispered, and I checked my flanks for witnesses. “
She's here all the time now and I've been providing her with tons of intel
.”

Tess stopped, grabbed my shoulders, and did her own check for spies. “She's here all the time because she likes it. You vouch for her, so people think she's cool. Then she gobbles up the gossip you send. If her phone is on vibrate, then she's probably in a constant state of orgasm because of all your texts.”

“I
provide
her with
intel
,” I said, pulling away and starting to walk.

“For instance?”

“Um, this morning I told her that Ijichi Benjiro thinks American iodine deficiencies are to blame for everything. Also that Cole Hooper is building a suit of armor out of duct tape. You know, to make sure his body stays together?”

“Really? Really?”

“Okay, it's not primo stuff, but she's a pro. Things that seem inconsequential to us might be a big deal to her. Besides, you told me to keep the burner, so you must believe it's useful.”

Tess tapped my noggin with a finger. “Remember, I told you it's
useful because at some point we might have to use it to contact
each other
. Not Rosetti. That woman has nothing to do with it. You're the only person I trust, Mara, and if my theories—”

“Your theories?” I barked at her. “You shit on everyone else's ideas but you aren't exactly sharing yours.”

Tess took a breath and said, “I'm not sharing because I don't have it entirely figured out. And what I have figured out is . . . difficult.”

“Difficult like I won't get it?” I said with a huff.

“Of course not,” she said with genuine concern in her voice. “You're brilliant, honey. I mean difficult in that it will be hard to accept.”

“As if anything these days has been easy to accept. Try me.”

We'd reached the cafeteria, where Kiki had promised a “farm-to-table luncheon in celebration of the spring harvest.” From a distance, it didn't look like much more than a big old pile of kale but, nevertheless, the line to get a plateful was wrapped around the room.

“Have you heard of the infinite monkey theorem?” Tess asked me as we took our place behind Jared Jarowski, who was as oblivious to us as he was to personal hygiene.

“Is that the one about how a monkey in a tuxedo will always be funny?” I asked.

“Don't be dumb,” Tess replied. “You know what I mean. Put infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters and one will eventually come up with Shakespeare.”

“Oh, you need
infinite
monkeys and typewriters,” I said, slapping my forehead. “That's why my novel never came together! Back to the laboratory.”

“Hilarious,” Tess said with a groan. “I'm being serious. Think about the whole infinite monkey theorem and the whole Murphy's Law concept of anything that can go wrong
will
go wrong, and you might start to believe that we live in the one particular universe among infinite universes where the monkeys and Murphy's Law have conspired to make a bunch of us blow up.”

“Okay. I get about nine percent of what you're saying.”

“What I'm saying is that it's a load of crap. Randomness is a lazy explanation. Universes aren't random. They have laws. Carla is right to think there's something inside of us, but how it got there is not important, because maybe it's always been in there. Maybe our problem is that a genetic switch has been flipped. It's more complicated than an on/off button, obviously, but the important thing to focus on is how to switch it off. Before we go off. Because, seriously, I doubt some general in a war room is determining our fate.”

“So what's happening to us then?”

“The Dalton twins blew up within minutes of each other. Well, they were born within minutes of each other, right?”

“So it's associated with our birthdays? Because Dylan turns eighteen in like fifteen days and—”

“Yes, but it's not like we're all on the same clock. It's like milk going sour or bread going moldy. Buy a bunch of loaves of bread and cartons of milk and leave them in the refrigerator or on the counter or out in the sun and they'll all go bad on different timelines. Like us. Since we've had different experiences, diets, and so on, our bodies have aged differently. The Daltons were born the same time and had as similar an upbringing as two people could
possibly have. Therefore, they exploded at essentially the same moment. As for the rest of us, like milk or bread, it's only a matter of time, but it's different times.”

“It hasn't happened for months. Don't you think it's possible they did something back in the tents to fix us.”

“If they fixed us, they'd let us know. Trust me. It's possible that they accidentally did something to slow things down, but I guarantee this thing isn't over.”

“And there's no way to check our sell-by date? Assuming Doc Ramirez and that gang were on the up-and-up, why didn't they see this in our platelets and whatnot?”

“Because they didn't know what to look for. And that's what I've been working on. Finding a specialist, possibly a geneticist, who does know what to look for.”

“Any leads?”

“Actually, I heard someone else might have already beaten me to the punch.”

“Who?”

Tess pointed across the cafeteria to a circle of kids who had their phones poised on, you guessed it, Jane Rolling.

“Christ,” I said. “What'd she do now?”

“It's not what she did,” Tess said as she pulled up a Wikipedia entry on her phone. “It's who she brought.”

Tess raised the screen. There was a portrait of a woman with a deeply tan and round face, sparkling eyes, and a popped collar. Below the image was one word:

Krook
.

D
r. Rolanda Krook arrived on Wednesday morning adorned in khaki and sporting mirrored aviators. I first noticed her standing at the door to Room the First, her face framed in the little window. When Mr. Spiros spotted her, he opened the door and asked, “May I help you?”

“Don't let me be a bother. Go on with your class, go on,” Krook said in a soft but indeterminate accent, the type that revealed she either came from money or wanted us to think she did.

“And who might you be?” Spiros asked.

Jane Rolling stepped out from behind Krook, slipped into the room, and announced, “This is Dr. Krook of the Farthing Institute. She flew in on a red-eye this morning and she wanted to come immediately and observe our class.”

“Well, that is some dedication,” Spiros said. “Welcome, Doctor. Have a seat in the back if you like. We were just discussing
Cartesian philosophy and the ontological argument. Are you a fan of Descartes, Dr. Krook?”

“I am a fan of all who question the nature of the world,” Krook said as she floated between the rows of desks. She was not a small woman, but she moved like a dancer. She slid into one of the few available chairs and sat in the corner with her legs crossed. Jane sat next to her, sporting a grin boisterous enough to be kicked out of church.

“Okay then,” Spiros said. “Where were we? Oh yes, perfect islands. What constitutes perfection in an island? If God is omnipotent, as Descartes says, then he could create a perfect island, right? But an island has certain restrictions, does it not? It needs to have a body of water around it. Would a perfect island be infinitely large? If so, then how could it have water around it?”

“You could say that about anything,” Claire remarked. “Everything has restrictions.”

“Exactly,” Spiros said. “Descartes believed that if you can imagine a perfect God, then that God had to exist, because existence is part of perfection. But you are courting contradictions when you argue perfection.”

“There's no arguing with this perfection,” Clint Jessup said, flexing his muscles and pointing at himself with his thumbs. It elicited a respectable number of laughs.

“True enough, Clint,” Spiros said. “You are the one thing philosophers can all agree on.”

“I happen to know that Dr. Krook has some theories on perfection,” Jane added.

Spiros's eyes widened. “I'm intrigued. Enlighten us, Dr. Krook.”

Krook chuckled—a real belly rumbler—and uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “Miss Rolling has undoubtedly read some of my work on cellular perfection.”

“So you're a biologist?” Spiros asked.

“I have a PhD in molecular biology, as well as an MD with a residency in oncology and hematology,” Krook said. “But that's neither here nor there. It has been my studies with the Wooli tribe of Papua New Guinea that has been most vital to my work.”

“Even more intrigued,” Spiros said. “Go on. Who are the Wooli?”

“The Wooli are the world's last group of endocannibals,” Krook said with a smug smile. “Meaning that when someone in their tribe dies, they consume the ashes. In a beverage, usually. Sometimes in a stew. They call this ‘drinking the dead.' What few people know, however, is that this practice has its origins in the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion.”

Spiros folded his arms, thumbed his chin, and said, “News to me. And I've actually read a bit on New Guinea.”

“Then you know that the diversity of languages and tribes there is astounding,” Krook said. “And the Wooli is probably one of the least known, but most fascinating, among those tribes. Spontaneous combustion is actually common in their villages. Their bodies burn rather than explode, but I suspect what happens to them is not that dissimilar to what is happening here.”

“And yet have any of us heard of this?” Spiros said to the class.

Jane's hand shot up. Tess started to raise her hand, but reconsidered.

“Okay, one remarkably studious young woman has heard of it,”
Spiros said with a nod to Jane that surely made Tess a little jealous. “And yet you'd think this would be international news. You've seen the circus we've had to endure.”

“I hardly think the same reporters would be willing to take the treacherous ten-day journey into the jungle to find the Wooli,” Krook said. “And when they got there, they'd hardly be welcomed as guests.”

“But you have made this journey?” Spiros asked.

“Many times. I have been there for the last six months. I only learned about your town's predicament when I made a provisions trip to Port Moresby and saw a video clip some local children were sharing. It featured young Jane here. She's quite popular in the capital.”

Jane was absolutely beaming. I know “Big in Japan” is a thing, but I guess so too is “Big in Papua New Guinea.” I turned to Dylan to see his reaction and he was as enthralled as the rest of the room, clinging to every word.

“Surely you brought a camera with you to document this
phenomenon
?” Spiros asked Krook.

Krook shook her head. “We are all aware that camera footage can be manipulated and the Wooli would never agree to being filmed in the first place. That is all besides the point.”

“What's the point then?” Spiros asked.

“The point is that I have seen this happen,” Krook said, and she finally removed her shades to reveal a pair of brilliant green eyes that popped from her olive skin. “It seems inexplicable, but there is an explanation. This is evolution in progress. In a quest for cellular perfection, the cells are self-destructing.”

“Cellular perfection?” Spiros said with a cocked eyebrow. “Can't say I've ever heard of that, either.”

“Ah, but, Mr. Spiros,” Krook said with a finger wag. “I have no doubt you have also never heard of my mother, and yet she exists. I am proof of that. As educated as you are, sir, I'm sure you will admit there are some things that are out of your purview.”

“Guilty as charged,” Spiros said with a sly smile. “I have yet to uncover the secrets of a woman's heart.”

I turned to Tess, who was shifting in her seat and trying to hide her face behind her bangs. I mouthed,
Bullshit?
She shrugged, and then slowly raised her hand. Man oh man, I was hoping she'd blow the lid off this sucker.

But Jane stole the spotlight again, blurting out, “Tell him about the snooze button, Dr. Krook.”

“Ah,” Krook said. “Thank you, Miss Rolling, for reminding me of my reason for being here. Assuming they don't die from other causes first, spontaneous combustion is an inevitability in the Wooli tribe. But it can be delayed. I have created a treatment that my husband has given the delightful moniker ‘snooze button.'”

You couldn't hear much over the din of questions that were suddenly shouted. Though I'm pretty sure I could hear Tess sigh as she lowered her hand. Well played, Krook's husband. Well played.

After all, what teenager doesn't love a snooze button?