Satan being inside his brain. He’s raging about cell phones, and the importance of letting the whole world know what’s going on, and some of the other kids are madly texting, as if the act of communicating what the bad man says will save them. Noah isn’t so sure about that. He thinks the bad man might really do it. He might press the button and turn them all into sticky red jelly beans. Then all of them would go to heaven—or not—Noah hasn’t decided yet about heaven, whether it really exists or whether it’s like Santa Claus, to make people feel better. He likes to think of his father as being in heaven, but if his dad was really in a place like that, wouldn’t he find some way to let his son know? Unless there are rules, and Noah supposes there might be, rules about not talking to those left behind. Rules as complicated and hard as calculus. He knows calculus exists because Mrs. Delancey has a book about it in her desk and Noah sneaked a look, and to his surprise could not immediately understand the contents. Whatever it is, calculus is more than arithmetic, more than algebra, more than geometry—it’s all of them mashed together, making something completely different, but at the same time tantalizingly familiar. Differentials? What are those? The formulas and symbols looked intriguing, as if they might contain all the answers about everything there is to know, including whether heaven really exists.
More than anything else, Noah wants to live long enough to understand calculus, and have his mom read him a bedtime story, and get up and have breakfast, and go to school as if nothing bad had ever happened. So he’s thinking really hard about what to do. How to get away without being turned into jelly beans, or doing something that will turn Mrs. Delancey into jelly beans.
Meanwhile the bad man rages at them.
“I see a black moon rising and it’s calling out my name!” he shouts, bobbing his head and pretending to strum an air guitar like on Guitar Hero. Then the bad man seems to correct himself, like a funny skip on a DVD. “Text the world, I want to get off! They’ll be coming round the mountain, boys and girls!” Then, shouting so loud he spits: “Don’t move! I swear to the prophet, I WILL BLOW THIS BITCH!”
Now he’s waving around the detonator button, pointing at it with his gun as he grins, showing all of his small yellow teeth. He holds the pose for a few beats, as if he knows that his picture is being captured on cells.
“Noah?”
Somehow Mrs. Delancey has slipped along the bench and is beside him, a comforting presence, a still point in the chaos of fear and confusion that radiates from everybody in the gym, including the bad man. She pitches her voice for him alone, her mouth a mere inch from his ear. “I want you to go and hide,” she whispers. “Hide in the air duct, Noah, like you did before. Can you do that for me?”
“I’m scared to move.”
She hugs him. At this moment, in this place, she smells like home. Like flowers and bread and home. And so he doesn’t want to leave her side. Doesn’t want to risk doing something wrong. Something that will make the bad man press his crazy button and send them all to heaven.
“Listen to me, Noah,” Mrs. Delancey says in her beautiful, lilting voice. “He’s not focused on anything but himself. All you have to do, slip down through the space between the benches, like you did before. He won’t be able to see you. Hide, Noah, please? For me? Hide in the air ducts, okay? I’ll come to find you when all this is over.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. Now go.”
As the bad man raises his fist, shaking the detonator and screaming something about children of the grave, Noah slips under the bench, through the narrow gap, into the stands. Into the familiar geometry of the supports and trusses that hold up the benches. The last time he did this, slipped away into the space under the stands during an assembly, he got in a lot of trouble. Mrs. K was really upset with him then, told him he might have been injured and nobody would have known where to look for him. Noah thought it was pretty funny, the way he’d run along under the benches, tugging at dangling feet to make the girls giggle and shriek. Mrs. K didn’t think it was funny at all and his mom had to come to the school and take him home. But that was last year. Things were different last year. He was younger then and he didn’t have Mrs. Delancey. Mrs. Delancey who understands him, and wants to save him.
Hiding in the air ducts sounds like a really good idea. It will be snug and cozy in there. Noah discovered the attractions of the ducts last year, when he brought an adjustable screwdriver to school, removed a metal grate, and then shinnied around on his tummy, just as he’d seen in the movies, where air ducts were often a means of secret escape. The big difference was that the ducts at school were way too small for anybody even slightly larger than he was—Matt Damon wouldn’t ever fit, no way!—and they didn’t really go much of anywhere useful. Retreat a few feet and you ran into a fan, baffle, or filter system. So basically they were good for hiding in the classroom and making spooky echo noises to amuse your classmates. This is the booger monster and I’m coming to get you ooh ooh ooh! Even Mrs. K couldn’t keep a straight face when she marched him to the office. Booger monster? she had said, breaking up. Where do you get this stuff?
What Noah knew from his previous experience, and what Mrs. Delancey obviously knew, as well—there were a couple of fairly large duct openings under the stands. Part of the circulation system for the sock-smelling gym. He hadn’t attempted to access the ducts at the time—it was too much fun tugging on dangling feet—but once he climbs down to the floor beneath the stands—there’s pee dripping down from the benches, ick!—he makes a beeline for the wall, locates one of the ducts.
The duct is, like all the others, covered by a metal grate. The problem is, he no longer carries the adjustable screwdriver. Because of his previous ‘behavioral problems,’ the screwdriver set has been forbidden. Too much like a weapon, they said. He might poke out somebody’s eye. To which his mom had said all he needs for that is a pencil. Wrong answer. For a whole week they didn’t let him have pencils and he had to fill in the answers with a crayon, like a baby! And his mom was so mad she cried.
Noah has some change in his pockets, but none of the coins fits the special slots on the screws that hold the metal grate in place. He’s hurrying because the crazy bad man is shouting again. Scary shouting that doesn’t make sense.
“Don’t mess with success! Heed the prophet! I bite the heads off bats! Leave the earth to Satan and his slaves! Into the void, boys and girls! Into the void!”
A moment later there are gunshots, and children screaming. Teachers, too. Is that Mrs. Delancey? Has something happened to Mrs. Delancey? Has she been punished for helping him escape?
Fighting his fear, Noah creeps to the front edge of the gymnasium seating on his hands and knees and looks out through a slot between the benches.
The crazy man is running around in circles, firing his gun straight up in the air. He looks as frightened as the screaming children. Smoke is pouring out of his little janitor cart. Huge amounts of thick black smoke, billowing over the floor and into the stands.
The crazy man kicks at the cart as if he wants the smoke to stop, as if he doesn’t understand what’s going on. That’s the really weird thing. He looks genuinely puzzled. He looks scared.
When the smoke begins to filter under the stands, enough to make him cough and make his eyes sting, Noah retreats back to the air duct.
Stupid people taking away his screwdriver! He hooks his fingers into the metal grate and yanks with all his might.
To his surprise the grate swings open on its hinges. He climbs inside just as the whole building begins to shake and the air goes black with
