The Most Precious Substance on Earth Read online

  It’s different from that time in elementary school when she dyed her hair with lime green Kool-Aid and turned cool for a week. That whole week she had her lunch on the long, low, mud-coloured radiator at the front of the school where the cool kids sat in a stylish row—a gallery of spiked mohawks and half-shaved heads—while I ate in the cafeteria with all the other loser Grade 7s. When the Kool-Aid washed out, she came back. But I’m convinced that the romantic relationships of weird teens last forever. Weird teens know that they’ll never find better than each other. There’s proof of this in yearbooks: if you flip through a four-year set at the school library, there’s always that couple huddled by the lockers with their arms around each other—the gangly guy with the turtleneck and middle-parted hair and the girl with the Black Sabbath T-shirt, holding one hand up in a rock-on gesture. The following years they’re spotted in the backgrounds of other photos but with tighter or baggier pants and longer or shorter hair and more or less rocking on, and so it goes until you read the drippy messages in their grad profiles, announcing that they’ll be attending the same university accounting program. Neither is ever pictured with other friends. It might never be me and Amy sitting together and laughing again.

  I sit by myself and spend the class trying to imagine Grendel from Beowulf and drawing pictures of him all over my notebook in red pen. I compile monster parts from fairy tales I’ve read: wide white teardrops instead of eyes; teeth protruding from stretching mouths; heads that nearly aren’t there, dissolving into the lines of the page. Their torsos are blocky six-packs, short and disproportionate to long muscular arms, skin like leaves bulging with visible veins; their legs attached to a pair of skeletal feet, leaving bony, blood-filled footprints. They stalk over the page of notes I’m supposed to be taking. I pencil a crowd of mesh-faced men into the bottom right corner, axes and daggers cast uselessly aside, knees curling under them like paperclips.

  Mr. Mackenzie writes Mock heroic on the board and underlines it twice. In the background I hear someone call him “O Captain! My Captain!” because he is one of those teachers who tears up textbooks and says there shouldn’t be a rubric for poetry. Mr. M delivers an impassioned speech about some Alexander Pope poem. He asks me a question, but since I’ve been drawing monsters instead of paying attention, I only know that the poem has something to do with haircuts. I curse myself for not listening and wonder if this is karma for the time I invented a Hindu holiday as an excuse to skip school.

  “Disappointing,” says Mr. M, and his head tilts sideways under the weight of his disappointment. “You have to do the reading,” he tells me, “or there’s no point in coming to class.”

  I want to tell him that I have done the reading—I’ve done more reading than any of these fools—but he turns back to the blackboard and makes a joke about how his wife never reads any books either, with the exception of Harlequin romances.

  Mr. Mackenzie doesn’t seem to notice the romance corner of the room, where Amy and her boyfriend are caressing each other’s faces. I imagine them framed in a circle on a red paperback cover. In an article on the web, I read that if a boy touches your face, it means it’s true love. I read a lot of these articles and they always have useful advice.

  The boyfriend bends his neck to lay his head on Amy’s shoulder. With his googly eyes shut, he’s almost handsome. It’s the one time I’ve seen him look anything other than stupid. The only person’s head I can remember being that close to mine is my mother’s. It’s painful trying not to yearn for that peculiar, intimate warmth of a human skull pressing against you. Amy sighs her chin into the boyfriend’s palm. She pulls at his nose and he embeds his fingertips into her cheeks. I worry that they will gouge each other’s eyes out.

  * * *

  I wait for Amy by the side entrance after school as I always do, though I’m doubtful that she’ll show up. After ten or so minutes, I give up and duck into the library. Nobody’s using the computers, so I sign into my chatroom account. My screenname is Hrothgar14, though in retrospect, I probably didn’t need the 14. I search for Ronald.

  What a terrible day, I write to Ron1956.

  You’re early, he replies. What happened?

  Amy ditched me for her boyfriend, I type, and then, because it’s not like I’m in a committed relationship with this internet pedophile, I tell him that I have a crush on my middle-aged English teacher and about my moment of embarrassing inattention in class.

  After a pause, Ronald types, Pretend I’m him.

  I suppose what Ronald wants me to do is to enact a sexual fantasy I have about Mr. M via the internet. It’s true that I spend much of class time and my own time fantasizing about my English teacher. I imagine us in a warm fireplaced room with burgundy wallpaper and claw-footed furniture, but we’ve disdained this furniture to sit on the floor. We read to each other from a copy of Beowulf—Mr. M holding the book as I turn its pages. Our heads are pressed together, and my hair is draped over one of his shoulders. In this fantasy I have flaxen hair despite being Indian, and I’m wearing an empire-waist gown and a wreath of flowers on my head. Mr. M is dressed similarly in eighteenth-century garb, like maybe a navy waistcoat and white pantaloons. We sip from glasses of wine…no, goblets of wine…no, chalices of wine, and we’re uttering guttural words to each other in Middle English. The fireplace flashes behind us like an unanswered chat window.

  The problem with these fantasies is that I never actually get past the reading part, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to describe to Ronald. To diffuse the situation, I type the letters LOL.

  What’s so funny? Ronald asks.

  I try to think of something provocative to ask him. I write, How old were you when you lost your virginity?

  There’s a long pause before he responds, Haven’t we had this conversation before? Which doesn’t make sense because Ronald and I have certainly never had this conversation before, or even this kind of conversation. Our imaginary dates have remained pretty tame and educational, what with my Encarta facts. It occurs to me that I am not the only teenager Ronald talks to on the internet.

  He starts typing long strings of barely legible text filled with a shocking number of typos. It’s sort of sickening, and I feel a cloud mushrooming under my ribcage as I realize he’s describing all the things he’s going to do to me, except I don’t understand most of the terms. I open up a separate window to look them up on Urban Dictionary.

  He begs for a response. I’m thinking of his pictures and how he could be a guy that works at my dad’s office. My dad could be right there in an adjacent cubicle, entering formulas into his computer with the Lord Ganesha desktop wallpaper, working overtime for the money to send his daughter to medical school. I haven’t yet told him that I plan to get an English degree and specialize in pre-1800 literature.

  Ronald’s words grow more garbled. He’s employed the F-word at least four times. Then there’s a pause. He must be waiting for me to say something. I consider the keyboard and then type the letter m repeatedly so it seems as though I’m moaning, and I follow it with exactly seven exclamation points.

  You are so beautiful, Ronald types, though he spells beautiful wrong. I assume he’s looking at my pictures. He says, Are you still having a terrible day? Let me come over and comfort you.

  Through the library door, I see Amy and her boyfriend in the hallway. They are facing each other, hunched over sideways as they peel the floor together, in a long, unbroken strip. They move slowly, focused on the ribbon of varnish that passes through their collaborating hands and curls and trails behind them.

  It’s possible that Ronald is talking to four different girls right now, four different fourteen-year-olds typing covertly in their high school libraries before catching the bus home. One by one they must sign off, until he’s left with a single girl who…does what? Answers the phone and talks to him? Invites him home?

  Okay, I type to Ronald, I can be home in fifteen minutes. I gi
ve him my address to enter into MapQuest.

  I can’t wait to see you, he types. I don’t let myself think about what he means by the word see.

  As I leave the library, I spot Amy and the boyfriend turning the corner at the end of the hall. I head in the other direction, towards my locker. On the way, I notice the door of the English office is partway open.

  When I knock on the door, Mr. Mackenzie tells me to come inside. I shut the door behind me and begin speaking without making eye contact. I count the posters of authors that line the top third of the room’s walls.

  “I just wanted to apologize for class today,” I say to him. He’s wearing one of his blue shirts and standing, half resting on the desk. The other English teachers have all left. I realize I’ve never been alone in a room with Mr. M.

  “That’s all right,” he says in his infinitely understanding way. “You’ve just got to stop being distracted in class. I know you love this stuff.”

  My backpack almost drops from my shoulders when I hear him use the word love. I walk up to him and say, “I do love this stuff. I love books. I’m even trying to get through Beowulf, though I admit it’s going a little slowly…”

  Mr. M has chalk dust on the pocket of his shirt. I reach across the arm’s length between us and brush the chalk off the fabric with my fingers. He frowns in a way I haven’t seen him do before, the skin of his eyebrows pulling together and downward.

  Here is where it’s like the CD skips—a glitch in time. He lifts the shoulder straps of my backpack and slides them off my arms. He picks me up as the backpack thumps to the floor, and places me on the edge of the desk. The lights in the room are white rectangles in rows across the ceiling, and I look at them because I’m not sure if I’m supposed to look at Mr. M, whose head I want to hold in my hands, but I have this awful feeling that the second I touch his face, his features will turn to chain mail, the metal cutting the tips of my fingers. He pushes his head close to my neck and when he exhales, he smells like coffee, like cough drops, like an old man. He places my hands on the crotch of his pants, and I realize I am supposed to unbutton them. And so I do, very carefully and very slowly, recognizing the beige-ish fabric of the pants; they’re one of the articles of clothing I have memorized and written down in my notebook, where I also keep track of my mom’s invented idioms and my better homework grades, and where I record when a day is particularly beautiful. He moves one hand to grab my upper thigh, and the other hand under my shirt to grip my naked spine like it’s the spine of a Norton Anthology.

  I think of five things: Thought number one is of all the times I’ve seen him pick up a book in class and slam it face down, pages spread open on the table. Thought two is wondering how far around the school hallways Amy and her boyfriend have gotten, hand in hand and laughing. Thought three is Ronald searching my neighbourhood for house number 53, parking in my empty driveway, and pressing the round white doorbell, thinking he’s about to rape some stupid little girl. Four, I hope my parents arrive home soon, so when this is over, I can phone them to pick me up. And five, I remember the time I overheard Mr. Mackenzie saying to another male teacher, “What a dog,” in reference to a girl, an expression I didn’t know people still used. It had taken me a moment to realize what he meant, before I convinced myself that I must have misheard him, before I pictured the head of a dog on a female human body, sad-faced and teeth bared.

  The Wave

  STUDENT COUNCIL Election Week at Sir William Alexander High School is like Oktoberfest in Munich—total chaos. When I arrive back after a few missed days, the hallways are vivid with neon Bristol board signs boasting slogans like Vote for Brett. He’s a Safe Bet! There’s one that says Free drinks on Sarah hanging over the water fountain. Kids are flinging around quarter sheets in every shade from goldenrod to lilac, printed with their campaign platforms. Suspended from the ceiling is a painted banner announcing tomorrow’s assembly, where each candidate will have five minutes of stage time. From what I hear, much of this is spent lip-syncing.

  I’m later than usual. Everyone is hustling down the hallways because the Mission: Impossible theme song has started to play, telling us we have three minutes to get to class. Some shrimp in sweatpants darts in front of me and zigzags down the hallway with his fingers pantomiming a gun; pretending to be a federal agent, I guess.

  My first class is Music. I hurry in that direction, past the guidance office and the library, past kids handing out packs of Bazooka bubble gum and homemade buttons with their campaign slogans stamped on them, past Amy and her boyfriend smooching outside the boys’ washroom like a couple of perverts. Her mouth breaks away audibly from his as I walk by, and she calls out, “Nina? Where have you been?”

  I think about stopping, but then I see him—Mr. Mackenzie—walking towards me. He’s striding down the crowded hallway, wearing one of his blue button-downs with a white undershirt, and he’s a few metres away and then two metres away and then half a metre and then only centimetres. I could reach up and smooth his collar. I’ve stopped moving, and kids are pushing at my sides in a zombie horde to get to class. He’s a foot or so taller than me and looking directly forward. When it’s clear he isn’t going to make eye contact, I turn my eyes forward, too. Our gazes are two parallel lines. They don’t meet. I remember how his face feels: his stubble at my neck, his cratered acne scars against my skin, my head pushed back—and I want to throw up everything I’ve ever eaten. I can’t stop myself from turning my face just enough so I can see his eyes as he passes by. I’m a pathetic sunflower. A candidate for secretary waves a flyer in his face. Mr. Mackenzie takes it. Smiles. Stares straight ahead to his first classroom. He doesn’t stop.

  * * *

  In music class we practise scales and I’m thankful for the tedium, the clear airy notes, the damp reed between my teeth, the methodical click of my fingers on the keys. The oboe’s black resin is cool against my palms. As I play, I imagine that Mr. M is watching. I’ve been imagining this for days. I don’t think too much about the details and logistics: something involving a hidden camera and him crouched over the computer in his office or house, adjusting the volume and zoom for a closer view, a more precise sound.

  When I set my oboe down to hear our conductor chastise the percussionists, Amy, in the chair next to me, leans over and whispers, “What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians?…A drummer!” She waits for me to laugh and so I do, though it comes out sounding like I’m underwater, sucking in liquid as I try to get air. Amy laughs at the weirdness of my laugh, and then I laugh for real. I’m not even thinking about this morning. Mr. M must not have seen me in the hallway. I imagine him watching us laugh, until the conductor throws his baton in our direction.

  * * *

  Second period is Science. The teacher announces that we’ll be doing dissections. The Satanists at the back of the room start cheering. “I’m so glad you’re excited,” Mrs. Oberoi says, wearing her T-shirt with the Periodic Table of the Elements on it and rocking on her heels. “And here’s what we’ll be dissecting…” Suspense as she pulls something out from behind the desk. “A leaf!” Everybody groans. One nerd laughs hysterically, and Mrs. Oberoi dashes over to his row to give him a high five. I’m relieved that for once we’re not doing some chemistry experiment where I have to worry about melting my skin off with sodium hydroxide.

  Amy’s my lab partner—we’ve managed to be in all the same classes this term. She makes up a song about xylem and phloem to the tune of the theme song from Sharky & George, a children’s cartoon about two fish detectives who solve crimes in an underwater city called Seacago. It’s like Dick Tracy, but with fish. The summer after we first met, we watched the whole series together on YTV.

  “Xylem and phloeeem…” Amy sings, then turns the microphone (a nearby test tube) over to me and waits for me to complete the line.

  “…transports water to stems and leaves…”

  “…Xylem and phloeeem…”
>
  “…two of nature’s mysteries.” We are excellent jazz improvisers. There is no topic we can’t adapt to the tune of Sharky & George.

  “Girls, that glassware is not cheap!” says Mrs. Oberoi.

  Amy doesn’t know how to use a microscope (unsurprising—she doesn’t know how to use a Bunsen burner, either). I imagine Mr. Mackenzie watching me slide my scalpel down the leaf’s glossy surface, watching me show Amy how to clip the slide into place. I pose my hands subtly, as though I’m a hand model, feeling the thrill of his approval.

  “So I tried calling you all week,” says Amy. “Were you sick?”

  I carefully turn the knob to raise the microscope stage. “Yeah, basically.”

  “Oh, that sucks. It was bizarre not hearing from you.” She props an elbow up on the lab bench and eyes me, waiting.

  I missed three days of school. When you add that to the weekend, that’s the longest I’ve gone without speaking to Amy in almost three years.

  “I was calling to check if…” She hesitates, watching as I adjust the microscope focus. The lens is all smudgy, so I wipe it with a scrap of lens paper.

  I think she might say she was calling to check if I was okay. I have this feeling like my sinuses are full. Like maybe I really was sick.

  “If?”

  She says it fast: “So Sam wants to put in a last-minute bid for Student Council. I wanted to see if you’d be willing to be his, like, speechwriter?”

  So that explains the hesitation. She knows I don’t really like Sam.