I was
surprised to see Garrett in history that day.
I had thought he would have been sent home. We were coloring a map of the United States
Time Zones--a fantastic use of time. My
map was all red because I only had a red crayon (to be honest, I was impressed
that I had a crayon. This is why you
never clean your backpack, although the jelly beans may not come into future
use.) I thought that was funny--ironic
to have an all Red America. The
Republican Party was making a comeback or we lost Cold War II, or I--I’m sorry,
I’ve gotten off topic again.
When I
asked Garrett what happened he shook his head and shrugged. After prodding him for about fifteen minutes,
I got his side of the story.
Garrett
left us, on his quest to save Daniel’s soul.
His plan was to lure Daniel from the table on the pretext of having a
question about homework, and then explain to him the idiocy of Daniel’s
actions, and convince him to rejoin the light.
As he approached, however, he began to experience “a sense of
foreboding”--yet he muscled on (what a hero.)
When he reached the table, he noticed that the “mindless, soulless
androids” that were on their mind-control devices (smart phones) had “shoved
Daniel into the corner.” Garrett thought
he would make “an easy target.” However,
when Garrett approached Daniel, Daniel turned his head.
“He
pretended not to see me. Did he think I
would back down?--if so, he was awfully mistaken. I realized then that the situation was more
dire and my intervention more necessary than ever before.” My stomach twisted. I was experiencing my own “sense of
foreboding.” (The problem is that I’m
hopelessly empathetic. It’s pathetic how
empathetic I am--I’d rather be sympathetic.
If I were sympathetic, I wouldn’t feel physical pain when I heard this
story. But then I--oh never mind.)
What
happened next, according to Garrett, was that Garrett brought up a question
about Physics. He claimed to need
help--which was entirely plausible, because Garrett spent most of Physics
trying to incite some kind of small scale revolution, against what, I still did
not know. When Daniel would not
acknowledge him, Garrett said, that he “raised his voice, in case Daniel had
not heard me.” I knew Garrett, and knew
that his voice only had two volumes: soap-box loud, and sports commentator on
crack loud. I imagine that when Garrett
asked for help the second time, his screams turned all the heads at the table
(this is of course, my invention. But
between the reader and me, we can assume that it happened.) Then Daniel, it seems, asked why Garrett was
yelling at him “in the manner of a real jerk.”
But that
did not stop Garrett--no. “I grabbed his
shoulder, shook him, and told him that the second order nonhomogeneous
differential equation was calling his name; that it needed to be solved. From the way heads turned, I think I got the
attention I was after--commanded it. It
was a legitimate question too--I have no idea how to solve one of those.” I covered my face with my hands. If Daniel hated us before...The image of all
the hair-styled makeuped air heads turning to see Garrett screaming about
calculus based physics in Daniel’s face made me cringe.
“You said
what?”
“Well, I
had to say something.” Garrett frowned
at me, unable to understand my reaction.
“Then he hit my hand away, and told me to leave.” Resigned to the madness, I shook my head, and
in a monotone said.
“Now why
would he ever do that?” Now you can see why I don’t think I’m crazy. If I’m crazy, I don’t know what Garrett is.
“I have no
idea. But then I said if he had a
problem he should say something instead of sitting on it like a syphilitic old
hen.”
“A what?”
“A
syphilitic old hen. Then he hit
me.” Garrett threw his hands in the
air. I stared for a second, then put my
head on the desk. Were hens even
susceptible to syphilis? “Can you believe he hit me?”
“How
unreasonable.” Buy the whole novel, or read a longer sample here
