to prepare for this day: how to not spill on herself, or have a menstrual calamity, or call her Teacher Advisor her homeroom teacher like she did last week like some junior high school loser. When she drops into her desk, the barrette clipped crooked and poking at her scalp so hard she’s seeing a galaxy of stars, a boy at the back of the class neighs at her and his posse all laugh. She hooks her unicorn pen out of her unicorn pencil case and clicks it once just as her Teacher Advisor Mrs. Mochinski rattles out the announcements in her tin-can voice, — Yearbook club meeting in roooooom 210, graduation committee meeting at 3:15 in the band roooooom, math club meeting tomorrow at lunch in compuuuuuuter lab 14, and Madison, the girl who sits behind Faraday, not a friend of Faraday and her unicorns, taps Faraday on the shoulder and whispers, — Patrick Furey’s dead. That’s why he’s not here for a second day in a row. Look!
Faraday whips around in the direction of Patrick Furey’s desk, her hair fanning out in the sudden wind, Patrick Furey’s desk empty, Madison sucking on the corner of her cellphone, already murmuring to Jennifer next to her. Madison tucking the cellphone into the dark valley of her cleavage. Faraday clutches both hands around her pen. Jennifer’s leaned over to Juana, who leans over to Maurizio, who leans over to that boy Ginger who sits at the front and who’s juggling erasers and grapes from hand to hand as though they are stars and planets. His erasers and grapes abruptly bounce and zing to the floor.
Faraday raises her hand neatly, her elbow tucked in, spine straight.
— Mrs. Mochinski? she asks. — Where’s Patrick today?
— Patrick? answers Mrs. Mochinski, busily fitting a new stick of chalk into its metal holder. — I don’t know. He’s away obviously.
Mrs. Mochinski’s chalk snaps, so she fishes another one out of the box. — Okay, time to call attendance, people, so listen up! she says.
Ginger raises his hand to ask to go to the bathroom and bolts out the door, his backpack hooked over his shoulder.
Then Mrs. Mochinski calls attendance and the bell drones, and Faraday and all these alive people get up and traipse to their different classes, crowding and bottlenecking each other out into the aisles between the desks, out the classroom door as if Patrick Furey isn’t dead. Faraday neatly prints the biology teacher’s chalkboard notes about human kidneys on a sheet in her binder, her letters round as cherry pies, the vertical and horizontal lines straight and strong, her diagrams of Bowman’s capsule and the loop of Henle each the exact width of a quarter, her fingers touching her barrette, the lined paper, the bag, a bisected kidney including cortex, medulla and nephron the width of a quarter, her hair, the boy, click the pen, her hair, that boy, her barrette, her bag, unclick the pen, her bag, her hair, the loop of Henle, click, a boy, the boy, that boy, unclick, oh boy, why that boy, the jarring rumour drilling her between the eyes, suddenly that boy, her hands crashing down from the barrette and her hair, the pen unclicked, an illustration of a kidney belonging to a dead boy, the size of a silver quarter.
The buzzer sounds, a thumb jabbed into the back of her skull, and knapsacks sprouting from backs, book bags like blood-engorged ticks swinging from armpits, the occasional jutting wheelchair handle in the hallway groping her, oomphing her in the ribs, jabbing her in the loop of Henle; she weaves toward social studies class and she cannot believe she now personally knows a person who is dead. Except: no minute of silence. No silent prayer. No special assembly. Rumours fluttering and roosting in the hallways. The walls of the school echoing and hammering with unicorn hooves only Faraday can hear.
— I heard he fell off the balcony in his building.
— Garrett said he was hit by a car.
— Accidentally poisoned when he bit into a poinsettia plant left over from Christmas.
— Crushed in a trash compactor!
Faraday blows her cheeks out into balloons of frustration.
— Maybe he’s on a train to Antigua! she explodes to Madison right after lunch in the bustling lineup outside their classroom. — Maybe he’s not dead at all!
Madison, chewing on the corner of her phone, shrugs her shoulders.
Mrs. Mochinski, in her chalk-splotched black pants and lady’s feathery moustache, rattles out after them in the hallway to keep the noise down please, while fiddling with her brooch. But throughout the day — as they scarf down their lunch, after biology, social studies, math and religion, when Faraday has to bound from one end of the school to the other across the cracking tiles, the fresh gobs of chewing gum, around a janitor’s yellow mop bucket— she doesn’t see Patrick Furey anywhere. After lunch, in chemistry, French, then English. In English, again with Mrs. Mochinski, the chair where Patrick Furey normally sits, angled away slightly from its small table so it looks like he’s just stood up to go to the bathroom and will be right back.
And, except for Madison’s tiny gigantic rumour, Tuesday is as predictable and unkempt as any other. Almost. She learns that the ancient Greeks placed coins under the tongues of their dead loved ones, about afferent and efferent arterioles, though she knows she will forget the difference before the next test. What should be remarkable is that, for the first time ever, Madison is talking to her, a lot of people are talking to her, and she actually has a conversation with the goth girl who sits across from her. But instead, what’s remarkable is that goth girl whispers that she’s sure as fuck the boy killed himself because why aren’t any of the teachers announcing that he’s died?
— Like, if he’d been in a truck accident they would have said, says goth girl. — If he’d been randomly shot on his way to the snowboard shop, fuck, man, they’d be like, he’s been in a drive-by shooting, but they’re not. No one’s saying a fucking thing. As if him not coming to school because he killed himself is something ordinary.
Goth girl drums her nails on her desk as she whispers, each of her fingers drumming on the fake wood surface, her fingertips galloping across neurotic fields. And goth girl’s parents switched her to this school, a fucking Catholic school, on purpose because Catholics are supposed to be more disciplined, right? They aren’t allowed to commit suicide. Right?
Tap tap tap tap tip tap, goth girl’s fingers say.
— Right? Goth girl’s eyes wide in the rings of charcoal eyeliner. — Right? Fuck! Right? She reaches over and grasps Faraday’s arm.
— Yes, exhales Faraday, her eyes prickling at the clammy touch.
— Suicides go to hell. It’s a sin for Catholics. It’s a technicality with no loophole, says goth girl, her fingers drumming a hole in the cover of her paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet.— Well, a girl drank something in the bathroom of my last fucking school and a janitor found her still fucking twitching on the floor, a fucking non-Catholic school this was, and maybe I’m cursed, fuck, I’m hoisting this curse with me everywhere I go, like I thought hiding among Catholics and their fucking crucifixes would protect me, how wrong was I? I blame society! You can’t run away from society, no matter how fucking hard you try.
Tiny spit bubbles fleck goth girl’s lips, Faraday stares at the goth’s black, chipped fingernails, the flecks of dry skin in her moonless black hair.
The goth’s eyes, globby with eyeliner, abruptly turn shiny, her tapping fingers trembling and uncertain, so Faraday turns away, scribbles the first words of the notes on the board with her unicorn pen on an empty lined page near the middle of her notebook.
Goth girl’s fingers resuming their synchronized, millipede-foot tapping.
Faraday
