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Authors: R. A. Nelson

Teach Me

BOOK: Teach Me
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Table of Contents

 

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

 

the physics of falling

in the crackling forest

eating paul

ecstatic time machine

swimming to mars

cat splitter

in the beginning

golden ticket

sound crazy

aboriginal eyes

empress of grease

kissing africa

deeper

physical observations

closer

wonderland

angle of his light

my personal planet

magnification of breath

dawn of creation

nova apples

two

the house of tomorrow

electromagnetic love

throbbing star

woman exponential

river suicide

hydrogen snow

heat death of the universe

lessons learned

yellow wedding

moon wife

memory scents

naked beasts

killer comet

dishes make love

big black blue

zeb in mourning

push

the dripping years

critical mass

hearts on mars

lizard killer

shovel of fire

the parent particle

rosetta stone

tender earthquake

for the dead

sexual skeletons

mouth work

the inertia tree

the cold number

bean genes

peppercorn ice

escape velocity

wet

smaller

looking for lincoln

chamber music

the color of love

and do it anyway

sting

mechanical death

growing season

neural meat

the language of leaving

come back for me

remember

mountains of time

arm crazy

raining words

adoring machine

closing doors

water days

x-ray heart

Teach Me

 
RAZORBILL

 
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada, Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,
Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,
Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,
Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

 
Copyright 2005 © R. A. Nelson

All rights reserved

 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

 

 
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

http://us.penguingroup.com

To my family: Deborah, Zachary, Alexander, Christopher, and Joseph.

—EMILY DICKINSON

acknowledgments

In memory of Dona Vaughn. Thanks to Sue Corbett, Diane Davis, and the generosity of the YAWRITERS list for establishing the Dona Vaughn Work in Progress Grant to honor this wonderfully giving writer. Thanks also to Stephen Mooser, Lin Oliver, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators. This grant helped make this book possible.

Thanks to my matchless editor and friend at Razorbill, Liesa Abrams, whose amazing mind and indispensable talents have made me a better writer. Thanks also for the invaluable contributions of Eloise Flood, Margaret Wright, Karen Taschek, Christopher Grassi, Polly Watson, Andy Ball, and Archie Ferguson.

Thanks to my extraordinary agent, Rosemary Stimola. Rosemary is simply perfect. I couldn’t ask for a better champion and friend to chart my career.

Thanks to my writerly compatriots, Kathleen O’Dell, Linda Zinnen, and Charis Kelly. Their priceless support helped my career become a reality.

In memory of Linda Smith and thanks to Linda Sue Park and the dazzling denizens of
write4kids.com
. I’m grateful to Jon Bard for putting it together.

To Brian Nelson, Craig Nelson, Randy Nelson, Ronnie Nelson, Rikki Nelson, and Doris Nelson, thanks for believing through all those years of typing and dreaming.

Hey, Ms. Gonzalez, I did it!

the physics of falling

Welcome to my head.

Let’s hit the ground running. I will get you up to speed. We need a short learning curve here. Those are things my dad likes to say. He works for NASA. He spends his days figuring out problems like this:

If an object weighing 8.75 ounces traveling ten thousand miles per hour strikes the earth, how big a hole does it create?

Answer: One exactly the size of my heart.

Call me Nine.

Everybody does. When I was three, I couldn’t pronounce Carolina; it came out Caro
nina
. My math-crazy father thought that was cute and shortened it to Nine. I’ve been a number ever since.

Right now I’m sitting with my parents in Mom’s Victorian room, surrounded by drapes with tassels, photographs of long-decomposed relatives, muscle-bound furniture. The sofa is covered with pictures of golden English villages I am desperate to live in that don’t exist. And on today’s menu:

The are-you-a-lesbian conversation.

Not that Mom would ever use that word.

I’ve broken her heart. She’s drowning in hay fever tears. All because at this penultimate moment in my eighteen-year-old life, two weeks before the senior prom, I’m just not interested.

Mom sobs explosively into a Kleenex. She’s allergic to her own head. She just got a new perm. If she sneezes one more time, her sixty-year-old mucous membranes will flop out on the Cavendish rug.

That’s right. My parents are old. Older than satellites, rock ‘n’ roll, or color TV. They married late; I’m the only fruit of their looms.

“But you’re so smart, Nine,” Mom sputters.

Exactement,
I want to say. Don’t you know that boys don’t like smart girls? But men . . .

I look out the window so they can’t see my eyes.

My teacher, Mr. Mann, said the same thing the day the craziness started that knocked my heart out of its orbit. He was standing under a tree with an angel halo of moonlight around his face. Then he asked me this:

“Did you know Emily Dickinson wrote a poem with your name in it?
Awake ye muses Nine, sing me a strain divine.
Not one of her best, I’m afraid.”

Two hours later, behind the Wal-Mart Rule the World Super Center, he kissed me.

“Why doesn’t Schuyler come around anymore?” Dad says, bringing me back to Earth for a fiery reentry.

Schuyler’s my best friend. We’ve known each other since the supercontinent Pangaea split apart. Well, second grade. He and Dad have always liked each other. Schuyler is family in this house, the brother I never got to have.

I’m hiding from him.

I don’t want him to know what I’ve done. The trouble I’m in. How far, how fast I’m falling.

“He’s busy,” I say.

“But what about any of the other boys?” Mom says. “What about that one in your—”

“I’m invisible,” I say to keep from saying anything else.

Dad laughs. “Invisible?”

Dad’s an engineer. He thinks in spaces, measurements, volumes.

A six-foot chunk of girl-woman with a thirty-five-inch inseam and brown chair-stuffing hair can’t be invisible. Not the Kevin Bacon/Claude Rains movie kind, where you take off the bandages and poof, disappear.

I’m this kind of invisible to boys: I see you, but I don’t care. I’m not going to look a second time as long as we both shall live. But to men . . .

“It’s not just the prom, darling.” Mom goes down the list.

I’m not sleeping. I talk too little. Lose my college paperwork. Push away my favorite Spamburger Helper. Disappear to God knows where doing God knows what. Is it dangerous? Illegal?

What am I supposed to tell them?

That my heat shield has failed? That I’ve fallen to Earth and disintegrated? That no one can reassemble the pieces of my life and tell the story of my death?

“It’s nothing,” I say.

BOOK: Teach Me
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