The Here and Now (7 page)

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.

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 our 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.

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.