Jeffrey Teller awoke at six, as usual, and could not get pods fast enough into his ears. He had nothing specific in mind to watch or listen to, just the general idea of content . . . voices and moving images he could connect with without really having to try before and during whichever routines would come.
Today was Tuesday, a school day. So, the buzzing of barely seen sights and partially picked up sounds covered shifting to the downstairs dinner table, stuffing papers in folders and his backpack, scooping and swallowing fresh apple-laden oatmeal, and changing as few clothes as possible (a puzzle he’d unconsciously mastered) before emerging out into the harsh brightness and loud distance of outside to wait for the bus.
Then seated next to no one, staring out at repeating cycles of everyday nothing, there was no way Jeffrey would have been able to respond if asked to list the videos he’d half-occupied himself with for the day thus far. But he could say he’d enjoyed them, mostly, and mostly still likely was.
The deep engine rumble vibrated up from the window he leaned against, lulling him into a quiet sense of steadiness (if not peace). The content in his ears continued, and he sank ever deeper into it, as into his seat, far away from the chirping babble erupting unpredictably all around.
Earpods and the like were banned in homeroom. So, you could say Jeffrey had to awaken all over again between 7:50 and 8:10, aided by two rounds of shrill digital bells. He still found the bells to be as much of a shock as ever, even though such bells had punctuated most his weekdays now for years. In fact, Jeffrey hated those morning bells more than he hated just about anything. And it wasn’t merely because they seemed to launch his heart up somewhere between the sides of his throat and top of his head. His deep disdain had more to do with the bells kicking off the seven hours that followed . . . seven hours of feeling like having nowhere to hide.
His heart dropped a little (not in a good way) when he realized the second harshly unnatural shriek meant that, since it was Tuesday, his double math period would begin in five minutes two doors down.
He rose dutifully and shuffled forward in a lopsided line toward the door.
A few faceless classmates he could have maybe identified if he’d cared enough to look split from the rest along with him. Together they flowed like non-conscious blood vessels down and around to where all would now find themselves stuck.
Mr. Hensler, the math teacher, had never not been late. But today, like magic, Hensler stood already at the board as Jeffrey drifted mindlessly to his usual seat. Problems that almost matched the previous homework had been copied up in black and solved (with work shown). Now the last of a set of page numbers and exercises were being scrawled in green in a crude box off to the side.
Moments later, Hensler retired to his big swivel seat at the front, and to his open laptop, presumably to some more interesting secondary (or primary) life and job . . . something which teaching math seemed to afford the man ample time to pursue in between his swift bouts of copyings at the board.
Jeffrey felt jealous of Hensler then. Really, he always had. He’d even consider giving however many years of his life it would take over to the rigors of college calculus and geometry if it could mean later spending more than half his time on something fun as trapped students busied themselves duplicating formulas with adjusted figures, using backs of texts to confirm or correct their replicate work.
Maybe it was good no one knew what mysteries Hensler’s laptop really held. It could be anything . . . trading stocks, reviewing movies, gaming online, writing novels…
Jeffrey stared down, but not exactly at the space below where he’d written out the terms of the first problem from the board. The space was there, and his eyes certainly seemed to rest on it. But what he saw, instead, was the absence of the screen that had been his faithful companion all morning. What he heard was the lack of recorded voices and other pod-delivered sounds . . . a gap unfillable by a room’s worth of mumbles and scratches of pencils across paper. He didn’t even hear his own pencil gliding loosely along, hovering like a surfboard up and down the front of an arcing wave.
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His first thought when his mental eyes fell back to join his physical ones was of how bleak and dry his black-grey lines and squiggles appeared on the dingy white, branching as the spindliest of twigs amidst a snow-swept winter backdrop.
But then seeing the full picture he’d drawn, having used the shapes of numbers and equation symbols as bones in a skeleton to fill in, his second thought was a warning not to panic: It’s happening again…
His third thought, aimed at self-preservation, came too late.
“WHAT THE…!?”
Jeffrey’s gaze shot sidewise to meet the eyes of Mangelo Peck, a rail-thin boy whose face took the term snot-nosed to all new levels. Peck stood, peering down and over at Jeffrey’s strange math drawing.
Giving himself about two seconds to uncover and put forward a good explanation . . .and failing . . . Jeffrey slammed the page over.
But it was too late. More faces had followed Peck’s exclamation.
“What was that?” asked Penelope Risos, probably the friendliest girl in school. Definitely the nicest in Jeffrey’s grade.
“Nothing,” said Jeffrey, his first spoken word of the day.
“No, it looks like a…” Peck began, bringing claw-like fingers to whittle some at the protruding point of his chin.
“A face!” concluded Deardra Bansho, not one to be left out of any conversation.
“It’s nothing,” insisted Jeffrey, hoping no parts of his own face were steaming, let alone turning red. His urge, not uncommon, was to rise and simply bolt out of the room.
“Jeff, are you drawing instead of working?” ventured Hensler from the front, which caused the entire class to go dead silent and still, bringing every set of eyes to rest on Jeffrey.
Jeffrey hated being called Jeff about as much as he’d hate to be called Ffrey, but not nearly to the degree he hated being watched. “No, I…” he began, and wondered how to continue. No, I just don’t like when things get so quiet and we’re supposed to be working on something. It’s like my mind won’t let me just . . . just be here, I guess. It has to fill in every gap with…
But with what?
He had no idea.
This time, his mind had filled in gaps with a pencil-sketched face sporting tendril hair and fire-streak eyes.
A few weeks ago, it had been a pack of human-headed animals colored absentmindedly in markers across the green construction paper the music teacher, Mrs. King, had used to line her walls for St. Paddy’s Day.
Then there was that time during his oral report on scuba diving when Jeffrey had lost track of his notes, his memory, and even himself, and just started making up rules for interacting with underwater creatures, not really even considering the words that left his lips and made the whole room cringe.
Why did it seem like everyone else knew how to be in class and do what was expected while still joking around and chattering in a completely acceptable, normal way? Why was Jeffrey Teller the only one doomed to be so weird . . . especially whenever his mind wandered freely during whatever assigned activity?
It sure wasn’t like he was looking for attention. He knew his public foibles were by no means cries for help.
He longed for his trusted earpods then, and for the comfort of endless interchangeable videos to escape to without having to think or try.
As visions of being forced to commit to working himself at all times like some spazzed out video game character filled Jeffrey’s inner vision, the rare voice of Hensler called forth a second time, softly ordering, “Jeff, go ahead and go to Dr. Finnel’s office, ok? I can’t have you disrupting class.” And with that, the lackadaisical math teacher’s eyes were pulled like gravity back to the mysteries of his screen.
Horrified, Jeffrey rose, painfully aware of being the only one standing this time.
As soon as he’d sheepishly rounded the doorway, and collapsed out into the empty, corkboard-lined hall, he shuddered at what he knew to be dark and pungent, icky horrors to come.
Yet since he’d left his backpack in class, he began to run the single straight line that stretched farther than could be seen from either end.
Pumping his arms, he felt his sense of shakiness and worry start to stir into something closer to frenzied excitement.
He came to a full sprint, flying across with toes barely glancing the linoleum like a stone skipping out perfectly across a shimmering lake.
In his mind, he was a beloved hero messenger . . . rightly believed in and counted on by all . . . sent to warn a neighboring kingdom of a coming threat.
But even completely absorbed in his run, he felt so silly to let himself think that way.