Like most things that go in cycles, which is most things, Monday brought a renewal of the old Gel about as much as it would take away much of the new Jeffrey (Jeffrey 1?).
Now both sat at opposite ends of the classroom in double period english. They hadn’t spoken since their shared experience with Hunch on Friday afternoon.
Jeffrey could tell just by the way Gel laser-beamed her eyes only dead straight ahead at the board and Mr. Friggly, the teacher, that she had again risen above being merely human. He knew she must be as determined as ever to continue with her original plan, and that every effort would be made to be and stay as hard, detached, exact, and unyielding as she’d need to be to achieve that end (with the still-learning Jeffrey in tow).
“Can I have someone volunteer to read their poem?” voiced Mr. Friggly from the front, his high-pitch tone not nasally though still devoid of bass.
Jeffrey looked ahead, copying Gel, and met Friggly’s wandering eyes, which were magnified by the thickest of lenses to all but fill thin rectangle frames. There was an electric moment, which involved realizing two things at once: that he, Jeffrey, was about to be called on; and that, having forgotten the homework, he had no poem to read.
He wondered whether his special vision ability extended to composing spoken-word art on the fly, though felt the opposite of ready to let the question become an experiment.
Out of nowhere, Colin Frey rose at the back of the class, and appeared to continue rising, until he reached a height simply standing shouldn’t have accounted for.
Towering above the rest, blocking more than one pithy-quote wall poster from Jeffrey’s view, Colin held a spiral notebook delicately in his massive hands. He looked like a stone golem handling a tiny kitten with extreme care so as not to accidentally squeeze and squish.
“Yes, Colin,” called Friggly.
“This is my free verse poem. I think it’s supposed to not have any rhymes or anything like that. It’s about . . . well, maybe I should just read it and not explain?”
“Yes, Colin,” Friggly repeated. “Then you can tell us after if you would like us to discuss it or not.”
Colin nodded, a solemn gleam passing gradually across his broad face. “I found you beneath the bus,” he began, his shoulders widening to epic proportions as he inhaled before continuing. “I don’t know who put you there. I don’t need to know. But he or she and all the rest just watch. Some laugh. Some stay quiet.” He paused, his eyes searching the room.
Immediately, Jeffrey found himself swept into all that lay behind and beneath Colin’s searching gaze. Time might as well have ceased again (if again is even the right word for such a lapse). The universe, and any other -verses connected, fell still.
And Jeffrey was in the poem.
He saw the usual herd at the bus stop line, kids bunched into scattered clusters mostly by age. Colin’s backpack lay crumpled beneath the bus’s big back wheel, ready to be crushed as soon as the wheel turned forward even a fraction.
Jeffrey saw a young boy he didn’t recognize, and knew this must be the one who’d grabbed the backpack undetected from the ground beside Colin’s feet, and tossed it beneath the bus’s wheel. The boy stood, huddled and snickering, alongside a little cohort, both essentially overflowing with jolly glee. To the boys, the stunt had been akin to sneaking into a sleeping giant’s home and successfully stealing a golden goose just for bragging rights.
In Jeffrey’s vision, Colin somehow rose even higher than he stood already, far above everyone else on the curb, before stepping off alone to save his belongings.
Far away, Colin back in the classroom continued to read: “It hurts, the way they watch. I don’t know why. I didn’t know. I didn’t. No. Why?” He remained standing after finishing, a larger-than-life statue whose stillness and sunken gaze stayed at least as open to interpretation as the words of his poem, depending on Friggly and rest.
Jeffrey felt pulled so deep into the ocean of Colin’s open separation from both the bus line and classroom that he heard only the most rudimentary outline of Friggly’s words that followed about the poem being “...good, and…” And the rest was a blur, uncatchable, since nothing the teacher said touched anywhere near the lonely, confused, isolated desperation Jeffrey detected coursing through the two Colins standing unmoving and silent before each crowd.
Gel leaned the slightest bit forward, her dead-set stare hitting the periphery of Jeffrey’s vision(s) like a lightning bolt.
Had he somehow forgotten her presence in the room? Could Colin’s poem and the feelings surrounding it have really had that much of an impact?
Gel’s face looked so tightly fixed into such specific angles it could express only a single word, and nothing else . . . that word being simply: Don’t!
But don’t what? Don’t see?
Jeffrey wondered how many hours or days of brainwashing-via-mindless-content it would take for him to return to his old patterns of ignorant escape.
Could he ever actually give up for good the life of special insight Gel had helped awaken him to?
No. Not completely. Not anymore.
So, she must have meant something closer to don’t feel, or don’t get attached . . . that whole thing of their ability not being for helping individuals. He’d already known this would be a major hurdle for him to get past, especially considering how tied to Sarah he felt after having seen so deep into her heart and world.
But there must be good reasons for Gel’s rule, and now for her silent don’t.
He purposed to put all his energies into not letting himself be affected by sights like Colin getting laughed at by those two little trifling twerps, or gawked at and misunderstood (instead of helped) by that scattered line of brats or this complacent class and teacher.
Jeffrey peered back over at Gel, and hoped his face could communicate another single word of his own: How?
How could he choose to give Colin, Sarah, and anyone else over to whatever powers that be?
Seeing Gel’s cold strength renewed and harnessed afresh since their Friday rendezvous, he wished nothing more than to forsake the hot, turbid waters of his bubbling, interfering cares. If he could only follow her lead without letting himself be controlled by any feelings based on anything he saw, but just be and stay as precise and intentional as she (almost) always was. That way, they could live out their purpose, complete their mission, and discover the hidden doorway in Finnel’s lair and what lay beyond. Then everything would be set right, not just for one or two people, but for everyone.
“Can I have another volunteer?” Friggly posed.
Colin lowered himself back to his seat, all but collapsing in a booming huff of defeat.
No students spoke up or rose to read. Each suddenly became preoccupied with something at a unique distance, in a different direction, as if all were lookouts on a ship about to be propelled any which way.
“Mangelo, how about you?” offered Friggly, the teacher’s thin, light tone causing his question to fall short of passing for any kind of command.
Peck’s eyes clouded over with what must have been horror upon returning from their particular point of escape.
Then rising like a sped-up weed creeping toward light along a curvy wall, he clutched his trusty tablet device with a claw-like machine grip and sauntered this way and that, generally approaching the front.
The room remained quiet as Peck tapped and swiped, his needlepoint face bobbing softly from side to side.
But too much time passed, and Friggly uttered, “The assignment was to write a poem to read to the class and then possibly discuss. Mangelo, do you have a poem for us today?”
“Y… Yes,” managed Peck, still finger-drawing in loops across his screen.
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
Small, muffled laughter escaped from somewhere at the back of the room.
Jeffrey took a long, full breath, letting the air exit his lungs as slowly as he could. He had one aim: to not let whatever Peck was about to read get to him emotionally.
Yet already, from nowhere, the image of the young Peck smiling wide with an arm around the equally smiley dog, Cuber, brought hints of a doomed joy Jeffrey could neither dismiss nor shake himself free from.
Waiting for Peck to read became the slow climb at the start of a roller coaster.
Jeffrey willed himself with all his worth to channel and embody Gel’s character, telling himself over and over, This is why we’re here. I have to learn to learn to let go. I must master this!
“Ok,” mumbled Peck, his stance mirroring that of a non-chirping cricket. “Here’s what I got…” At last, his whirling fingers came to rest. He glanced up from his screen in the direction of the class, then down. “A bomb hits,” he began, “but aimed to drop through surface cracks and scrape the core. The deep explosion rocks the enemy, and they fall. It’s over. We won. But…”
Jeffrey watched from above as a Peck only slightly smaller than the current one got surrounded by a ring of kids in an overtly chipper, bright classroom at a foreign school. The largest assailant . . . rough, with scummy, faded clothes and uneven hair . . . punched at Peck’s chest, hitting with fingertips instead of knuckles.
Jeffrey felt the blow. It cut but failed to break the skin, rocking the smaller Peck back a step, and releasing a spring of stinging tears that caused Jeffrey’s sight to blur.
Another in the ring, dressed all in white with a silver chain going out from and back into his back pocket, launched his arm in a wide circle arc, slapping Peck hard across the shoulder and neck.
Jeffrey winced, expecting to soon see a red handprint-welt emerge to cover his own collarbone.
A third kid, tiny and sinewy, stepped in from the other side and back-elbowed Peck in the ribs.
Jeffrey almost doubled over and cried out.
He knew in a flash this was no isolated incident . . . no single event taking place at a certain time on just one day. This was the culmination of a war. Years of such treatment, he realized, were fixing to be ended as he felt and watched an animal snarl overtake the young Peck’s put-upon face.
And Jeffrey looked on, almost satisfied, as the Peck in his vision launched a hook-like arm and hand across over his head to grip the hard plastic back of the nearest chair. The heavy weight and sense of give were palpable as Peck wrenched the seat up from the floor and hurled it back at that first attacker.
Jeffrey didn’t see the impact. He missed whatever happened next. But he somehow felt Peck’s three enemies shrinking down and cowering away.
He also felt what followed, though knew he’d fail to explain the feeling in terms any clearer than a general confusion about big changes to everyday plans, and forced new beginnings.
Back in the present classroom, Peck came to the end of his poem, reading, “But we can’t ever, ever go back.” He then stood, just as motionless and vulnerable as Colin had been not long before, waiting.
“That was very short,” said Friggly. “It is true, we did not set a required word count. Free verse poems can be as long as they need to be. Yet I think your poem needs more. I am sure the meaning is clear to you . . . the deep bomb blast, and the aftermath . . . but no one listening or reading your work will catch that meaning unless you give them more to go on. It needs further hints to show what you already see. Does anyone else have any comments?”
Silence continued to permeate as Peck stayed standing, once more scribbling with pointy fingers at the face of his tablet screen, until at last it became more than obvious no one had anything to add.
“Gel, what do you think?” Friggly uttered in that matter-of-fact tone teachers seem to love to fall back to whenever they start to lose control or attention. “How could Mangelo improve his poem here?”
Jeffrey watched Gel out of the corner of his eye. She remained perfectly still, her face revealing nothing of any internal thoughts or reactions taking place.
After the longest pause, she said simply, “It’s good the way it is.”
“Well, why?”
“After the war, or whatever the war represents,” she explained, “the person who won and lived on is still traumatized. All they can remember and think about is just the basics: who, what, where, how… They’re definitely not thinking, What’s the hidden meaning? or How can I make this a poem? So, the poem is good. It does what it’s supposed to do because it’s just those few simple lines.”
“Uh-huh,” Friggly quivered. “I am not sure that I catch your meaning. Maybe you could think about it and try to explain better another time. Anyone else?”
You might say Peck was saved by the bell, since the intolerable “ring” indeed released him from being awkwardly propped before the whole english class.
But really it was Friggly who got freed. For there are only so many times in a row an educator can call, “Anyone else?” or “Who would like to…?”, get no response whatsoever, and not feel like a failed, fraudulent center of attention.
Peck shuffled back to his desk as the rest all rose to leave.
