65
Keith Connelly’s Dream:
Grace
Nine years.
That’s how long ago Grace’s parents sat in this office pleading with me to
recall every scrap of conversation I had had with their daughter. It was a day just like today, in late March.
I remember looking out this window: sun blazing, temperatures in
the 60s after a long winter, the snow gone everywhere except for a few dirty
piles in the shadiest corners of the building. I had been looking forward
to a long walk. Grace’s parents came in at 3:00. By the time they
left, the temperature had dropped 15 degrees and night had fallen. Not
that I had the energy for a walk anymore, not after that meeting.
Grace had
run away. Understandably frantic, her parents were turning over every
stone. So they came to me, and I lied. I told them that I had
advised Grace to be more diligent with her studies. I told them that I
had cautioned her about her choice of friends.
I told them I had assured Grace I cared about her welfare, as did all of
those who worked with her at the school.
In truth, I had
completely lost my temper with Grace the last time I saw her. Perhaps
because she looked too much like my own daughter, then off at boarding school,
or because she rolled her eyes so often, or simply because she was the last
straw on a day full of belligerent students, I did not even try to check my
anger at Grace. I screamed and threatened and told her that her days at
this school were numbered and if I heard one peep of complaint from anyone in
the school, I would bounce her out so fast it would make her head spin. I
lied to Grace’s parents, making them believe that my last interaction with
their daughter had been supportive. To protect myself, to hide my shame,
and knowing that any story from Grace would not be believed over mine, I had
lied.
For most
of the meeting, I sat and listened to them unpack the catalog of difficulties they
had had with their daughter--her defiance, her sneakiness, the hints of her
drug use. I couldn’t do anything but make sympathetic noises and tell
them that their daughter would surely be back. “They come home,” I said.
“They think things will be better out in the world. We adults are just idiots trying to control
them. Grace will learn, though. You’ll hear from her. I’ve
been doing this long enough to know that.”
Grace
didn’t come back. Despite the posters, the alerts, the reward offers, her
parents never heard from her again. Now and then, I run into them at the
gas station or The Home Depot. Though they’re both younger than I by a
few years, they look old. The husband has put on probably a hundred
pounds; the wife looks as if she’s lost as much. Every time I see them, I
have an impulse to confess. I just say hello, though, and pass the time
with comments about the weather. We never bring up Grace.
Today reminds me so
much of that day nine years ago.
I am just finishing up a letter to Peter Gibson’s parents, warning them
about his abysmal attendance, when a woman comes into my office.
She takes off her sunglasses and gives me a firm handshake. “Mr. Connelly, do you remember me?” She looks vaguely familiar.
“I’m sorry. So many students over the years, I just
can’t…
“I’m Grace Parker.”
Fortunately, I’m
sitting down.
“Grace? I...I
didn’t realize you had...when did you…?” She laughs gently at my
confusion.
“I’m
back,” she says. “I don’t blame you for not knowing. Nobody does,
not even my parents. Don’t worry; I’m planning to see them. I was just
passing by here on the way, and I thought I’d stop in. I wanted to tell
you, Mr. Connelly, that if it weren’t for you, I probably never would have come
back. I mean, who knows where I would be? Maybe dead. God
knows I’ve been close. I’ve been through just about every kind of trouble
you could imagine.”
“I’m sorry
to hear that.”
“Nothing
you could do. I was bound and determined that I knew the right course for my
life.” Grace pauses and looks around. “This place hasn’t changed
much, Mr. Connelly. Even looks like the same plants.”
“Oh,
no--I’ve killed a few since you were here last.”
She
smiles, pauses and says, “You were pretty rough on me nine years ago.”
“I was,
Grace. Too rough. I lost my temper, but I want you to know, if it’s
any solace at all, that I learned something about myself and my profession when
you ran away. I can honestly say that, while I may still yell now and
then, I always stay in control. Not like with you. I was
unprofessional, and I’m sorry. If it contributed to your…”
“Hey,
whether you yelled or not, Mr. Connelly, I was going to leave. The point
is, you were right, and some of the things you said never left my mind.
Ever. You were the only one willing to really lay it on the line
and tell me the truth, no sugar-coating. I hated it at the time, but,
over the years, I came to understand you were right. I stopped by to say
thank-you, sir.”
I can’t
speak. Finally, I get out, “I appreciate that, Grace.”
“I’d
better be getting over to my parents’ house. Do you suppose they’ll have
me back?”
I don’t
mind that she sees the tears in my eyes. I tell her I know they will; I
absolutely know they will. I hold out my hand to Grace, but she hugs me
instead. “Thank-you,” she whispers, and then she leaves my office through
the same door she walked through nine years ago. This time, she’s heading
home.
Reality Check: Dream 65
ü
Keith Connelly’s blood pressure two minutes before presenting the
Second Annual Grace Durnan Memorial Scholarship to Abigail Kolinkowicz: 164/100.
ü
Note in Keith Connelly’s personal journal: “Top goal for school year: expel Zander Paolino.”
66
Peter Gibson’s Dream:
iMe
The official story, the
cover story, is that first I got a concussion falling off a skateboard, and
that kept me out of school for a week, and then, the morning I was going to go
back, I woke up feeling like complete crap. I could barely move; I could
barely swallow; I felt like someone had stuffed my head chock full of packing
peanuts. My mother thought I was faking it at first, that I was used to
staying at home so I was trying out the old pseudo-flu. She did the
usual: came into my room five times, each time telling me more loudly to
get up. I just groaned. She brought in a pitcher of cold water,
made like she was going to dump it on my head. I croaked out, “Go ahead.”
When she heard my voice, she knew I wasn’t kidding. After two days
of me not getting better, off to the doctor’s I went again. The verdict
this time: Mono. Two weeks minimum out of school, maybe more.
That,
like I said, was the official story--the e-mailed report that went out to the
school nurse, the administration, guidance, my teachers. They could send
me the instructions and materials to try to keep up, but chances were that I
wouldn’t be able to do much.
So here I
am, three and a half weeks after my supposed dumb skateboard move, coming back
to a hundred variations of “Where the hell have you been?” I tell them:
Can you believe it? First a concussion, then mono.
Typical response: “Dude, that’s rough.” Pause. “How’re
you gonna catch up?”
Thankfully,
my cover story is only that. Otherwise, after only half a day of going to
my classes and realizing how totally lost I am, I’d be tempted to crawl back
into bed and never come out. No, I don’t have to feel that way because of
what I’ve actually been doing in my
absence.
Apple and
Windows, in an unheard-of alliance, collaborated to create the most powerful
operating system and interface yet launched: The iMe. I am the
prototype. For the past three and a half weeks, a crack team of
technicians has transformed my room into an elaborate laboratory--a sealed off,
completely undercover clean room. Even my own family was not allowed into
the space. In the center of the banks of computers, the miles of cable,
the sheets of plastic, the intense army of techs covered in clean suits head to
toe--in the middle of all that...was me.
So now
here I am meeting with Ms. Warren, my sophomore English teacher. She rattles off my list of work and the due
dates: Finish reading Frankenstein; create 30 multiple-choice
questions on the novel; memorize 50 vocabulary words; write the first draft of
a paper that demonstrates why the book is still applicable to today’s society;
create a collage including at least 20 different images; write a paragraph that
mirrors Shelley’s use of sentence structure and punctuation. With each
one of these assignments, Ms. Warren hands me a flurry of papers and gives me
an avalanche of explanations--all stuff that would have definitely overwhelmed
the old version of me. Equipped as am with a subdermal network of wiring
creating an interface directly between my brain and the Internet, not to
mention hundreds of software innovations created specifically for the iMe
application, I take it all in and feel the machine that is me eat it for
breakfast, a light one at that.
As Ms. Warren speaks,
iMe transcribes her words into a text document for later reference. The
papers she hands me I could toss right in the recycling bin since the moment I
glance at them, they’ve been scanned and stored. The 50 vocabulary words
are already “memorized,” which is to say I can whisper any one of them and see
the definition in my peripheral vision (interactive contact lenses, of course).
Only 20 images for the collage? I’ve already started to scan
through the top 100 pictures iMe has selected from its search of Frankenstein,
both the original text and the critical writings about the novel from its
publication up to the present day.
Ms.
Warren has stopped talking and is staring at me. I’ve been so busy starting my work that I must
have missed something. “Sorry?” By
the time Ms. Warren has sighed and shaken her head, iMe has played back her last
four seconds of talking, about how she also expects me to keep up with the
current class work. I quickly say,
“Oh, right, I’ll do my very best to keep up, Ms. Warren. ” I know this
sounds a little wimpy, but the iMe installers have warned me not to act too
confident; after all, this is top secret stuff, and I can’t let on that I’m
returning super-charged. iMe will need to be rolled out carefully to
maximize profits. In fact, the release probably won’t be for another year
or more. In the meantime, though, I am the very lucky guinea pig.
Ms.
Warren surprises me by getting a little soft. Contrary to rumor, maybe she
does have some sort of heart. She says, “Peter, maybe we need to spread
these assignments out a bit more. You’re looking a little lost.”
What she
interprets as me looking lost is actually me being totally distracted by the
functions zooming around inside me, all designed to make short work of her
homework. The collage is done. The vocabulary is a non-issue.
The novel is read, meaning I can access any part of the story I need
whenever I need it. The multiple choice questions will probably take me
five minutes of decision-making--automatic iMe functions have chunked the novel
into the most important concepts, one for each 30th of the book. I’ll
just need to choose which ideas I want to focus on and then pick from the
generated array.
None of this is
cheating, by the way. I’m not plagiarizing. iMe has uploaded and
analyzed every paper I’ve ever written, so when I put together the multiple
choice and the papers, I’ll be using my own language. The paragraph is
about done. I’ve quickly chosen a topic--swimming lessons. Now that
iMe has accessed everything in my personal database about this experience and
created a template of Mary Shelley’s most common sentence structures and
punctuation, it’ll be practically a fill-in-the-blank assignment. Still,
I’m going to have to work on looking like I’m paying attention when teachers
talk to me. Humble is good. Lost might raise suspicions.
“Uh, I
really appreciate your help, Ms. Warren. I think I can handle the makeup
work with the schedule you’ve given me. I mean, you know, I’m all over my
concussion now, ha, ha. No more skateboards for me.”
“Well,” she
says doubtfully, “we’ll see. You keep me apprised of your progress.”
A voice in the back of my head defines the word “apprised” and I answer,
“Oh, yeah, I’ll definitely keep you informed, Ms. Warren.” Her eyebrows
lift a little and I think, That’s right, you’re not the only professor in the
house anymore.
As I leave the
room, I say good-bye and thank-you very much and I’ll work really hard to get
all the make up work done. Truth its, it’ll
all be finished within the hour, along
with every other assignment I get today. As I check out the hallway full of
students rushing around to get to their next class, their next test, I can’t
help feeling like a god looking down on all the puny humans. What am I
going to do with all my time?
That
question stays with me for about half a second. It’s gone when I see Roya
Sundaram. My gaze hangs on her long enough for iMe to kick in. Within seconds, all her on-line information,
from Facebook postings to the fact that her father is an insurance salesman, has
been fed into me along with general information about all the Roya-like girls
who have ever existed. Suddenly I’m knowing exactly how to approach this
set of curves that’s been making me crazy for the past year and a half, and the
likelihood of me kissing her within the next week is hovering around 97%.
If there was ever a concussed, barely-mono-recovered, totally overwhelmed
kid in this world, I am definitely not him.
I am iMe, and iMe is
awesome.
Reality Check: Dream 66
ü
From e-mail sent from Guidance to Peter Gibson’s teachers: “This poor kid has had quite the string of
bad luck—first a concussion, then mono, now a bout of depression. Let’s put our heads together to see what he
can salvage of the year.”
67
Roya
Sundaram’s Dream:
P.O.V.
I watch myself walk
through the door of the high school. I’m not thrilled with what I’m
wearing today. I took a risk with a turtleneck. I like the comfort
of it, but I see that it makes my head seem to float above the rest of my
outfit. The turtleneck is black, which particularly adds to the effect. I
shouldn’t have worn the turtleneck. Who wears turtlenecks anymore?
Maybe they’re coming back, but they’re not back yet. As I look
around, no one else is wearing a turtleneck.
I pass by
Diana Broomquist and give her half a smile. She gives me the same sort of
smile back, but just as we are side by side, she says, “Hey,” but by the time
I’m able to say “hey” back, she’s already gone. She’s going to think I’m
a snob; I know she is. I see the interaction in my mind’s eye, replay it
from Diana’s point of view, and I definitely come off seeming like a snob.
I can’t afford to come off like that to Diana. She has a lot of the
friends I’m trying to be with, and if she starts saying I’m a snob, it could
ruin my chances with that whole circle.
I get to
my locker and begin my daily battle with my lock. How many times have I
gone through this? 36, 12, 11. Spin to the 36, spin past the 12
once, hit it the second time, then spin back to the 11. Why is not
working again? I try it twice. No go both times. I puff out
my cheeks and breathe out heavily, letting the lock clang against my locker. I
realize I’m making too much noise. I’m coming off like a lowly freshman
who can’t handle her locker.
I instruct myself,
correcting the image I should portray: Step away from the lock.
Crouch down and reach into your bookbag. Pull out your notebook.
Look at an empty page as if you’re actually checking something.
Keep pretending to read. Make an upward motion with your eyebrows
as if you found the thing you were looking for. Nonchalantly put the
notebook on top of your bookbag. There, that’s a much better look.
Jarrod
Towne passes me and says hi. I turn to him a bit too quickly and say,
“Oh, hello. Hi.” “Hello, hi?” Could I possibly come off more
desperate to please, more eager to be liked? Damn it! I might as
well have been the freshman in the losing battle with the lock. Jarrod might
at least have been a bit amused by that picture. Me with my three-word
greeting--the I’m-surprised-to-see-you “oh,” and then the too-formal “hello”
followed by the forgive-me-for-being-so-formal “hi.” What was that?
Why do I have to get so flustered when guys like Jarrod walk by?
All right, class will
be starting soon. Have to get myself together. I need to pull this
off--unlocking my locker without looking as if it’s my third attempt. No
deep breaths, no signals of anxiety. I need to look like I just arrived
at my locker and I’m very confidently spinning it to the 36, the 12, the 11.
Done. Now a smile, just a tad, to indicate assurance that it will
work. Pull down. Yes! No.
My face registered too much relief just then. Why should I look
relieved when I knew it was going to work? I’m not having a good day.
Every image of myself I’m creating is just off.
Just
then, Heather Demeres comes up with a camera around her neck. Heather is
generally a nice person, but when she has that camera, she’s in yearbook mode,
and then she must be feared. “Candid!” she yells and lifts the camera to
take a shot.
“No, no!” I raise
my hands. I see the image of me with my hands raised like I’m in an
old-fashioned stick-up, with my mouth in a circle from saying the O of
No, and the picture looks ridiculous. Before I can shift my
expression, Heather snaps the photo. The sound of the camera when she
pushes the button seems strangely loud, practically echoing down the hallway.
Heather
looks at the display on the back of the camera and says, “Very cute. Look
for it in the yearbook! Did you put in an order yet?” I don’t even
have time to respond when she’s off looking for her next victim.
As I walk
toward Spanish, something feels different. I’m taking a familiar path,
passing the normal lockers, walls, rooms, bulletin boards, other students.
Yet everything seems new now, in sharper focus. It’s like when I’m
home watching a show on the computer and the Internet is slow, the picture is
just slightly blurry, but then the bandwidth gets uncluttered and the show
snaps into focus. Sometimes it feels like I’ve put on 3-D glasses.
The walk to first
period is like that. The drunk driving poster has been there for at least
two years; I’ve passed it hundreds of times, yet I feel as if someone has
painted the bloodstain on the pavement a much more vibrant red than I ever
remember. It’s really disgusting. Jonica DuMoulin walks by with two
of her friends. They’re chatting together and don’t acknowledge me.
Jonica is short. That’s not new information. If someone asked
me to describe her, I would have said she was shorter than me. Today,
this morning, I notice she’s shorter than just about everybody. She can’t
be more than four and a half feet tall. How strange that I never saw that
before, how short she is.
The walls are
two-toned—light green on the bottom and white on the top. That’s fascinating. These walls in
this hallway are two-toned! Are all the walls in the school like that?
I want to know. I’m suddenly very curious and excited about my
surroundings. Why do I feel this way?
In
Spanish, a class that usually bores and baffles me, this feeling of newness
hangs on. I notice that Senora Backus is wearing a multi-colored blouse,
a typical top for her, but she’s clearly taken care to coordinate it with her
earrings and her eye shadow. When she talks about the culture of Spain, I
raise my hand and ask her if she’s ever actually been to Spain. All this time I’ve been in her room and seen
all the posters of Spain and listened to her lectures about the customs of the
place, but suddenly it occurs to me that Spain is a long ways from here.
And Spanish is a language very different from English. And Senora Backus
is many years older than I am and not from around here. I actually want
to know if she’s been to Spain, so I raise my hand and ask her. “Yes,”
she says. “I believe I’ve mentioned several times that I was actually
raised there until I was a teenager. My father taught at the University
of Madrid.”
“You
moved to the United States when you were our age? Really?”
Senora Backus
smiles and nods, surprised by my interest. I’m surprised by it, too, but
it’s not fake. She keeps talking about why she lived in Spain and what it
was like to move here. I find the story amazing. I find the world
amazing! Why, though? Why do I feel such a lightness now, such
curiosity about things that have always surrounded me?
I look
over at Dawnelle Grossman and Sarah Malleck. They’re not paying any
attention to Senora Backus. They’re leaning their heads close together so
Dawnelle can snap a selfie.
That’s it! I know
what’s missing, and by its absence, everything looks entirely different to me
now. My cameras have shut off.
I’m not looking at what
I look like. I’m sitting here--listening, looking, smelling, feeling,
experiencing, being--and that’s all. I’m here. Just here. Not
beside myself, above myself, behind or ahead of myself, second-and-third
guessing myself. My self is not a thing at all, not until now when I’ve
realized the loss.
But it’s
a loss that feels like a gain. I shut off the realization. I just live.
Reality Check: Dream 67
Consecutive days Roya Sundaram updated her Facebook
profile with a current selfie: 315. 