The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(17)

I thought kids were supposed to love the summer? No homework, slip-n-slide, hot dogs, &etc.

Exactly. All year there’s hw and tests and so much to do u can’t even think, then one day a bell rings and it’s like stop everything, go outside, here’s this piece of plastic and some nasty boiled meat on a bun, time to have FUN!

I’m not sure I understand. I want to.

There’s too much time. U just float around in it like a speck. Sleep in. Hang out. Watch tv. Go online. Go to the beach. Get burned. Eat shitty fast food u don’t even like. What’s the point?

Is that what you do? Or, what do you do with all that time?

Nothing…think.

:) What do you think about?

U don’t really care abt this do u?

I care about you.

It’s stupid. Just…Is there something more to me than all this stuff I’ve been given? What if there’s not?

Talk to me, he wrote. Tell me a secret.



—

One afternoon in early February, Mr. Ellison took Abigail into the clock tower to research a yearbook article about the school’s history. Students weren’t allowed up there, but she was an exception.

He unlocked the door and guided her through the dusty dark to a steep wooden staircase. She began to climb, cobwebs clinging to her wrists and hair. She coughed. Mr. Ellison followed, his breathing heavy in the close space.

Finally she climbed out onto splintered floorboards, blinking in the sudden light. The belfry was a small, square room with arched windows that had looked dollhouse-sized from the ground but now revealed themselves to be enormous. It no longer held actual bells; to mark the hours, the secretary played a recording of bell-like sounds that had been donated by the class of 1978.

Mr. Ellison emerged behind her, and bent to catch his breath. After several uncomfortable seconds he straightened and smiled at Abigail, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm.

“I can see why people don’t come up here much,” he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed, pulling a sticky string of cobweb from her hair. But she was interested. She began to circle the room, running her hand over the scribbled yellow walls. Paint flaked and powdered in her palm. The walls said:

THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE IS NOT HATE BUT IN-DIFFERENCE.

DEFY THE LAWS OF TRADITION.

DROP ACID NOT BOMBS.



It was afternoon, and sunlight slanted through the windows. Directly below them, on the school’s gated front lawn, kids sat cross-legged on the grass or sprawled dramatically across one another’s laps. They looked like toys. The sun made their skin gleam like plastic; their backpacks were comically small. Above them, and farther out, were rooftops, treetops, an azure sky that softened and blanched as it stretched past the Bothin Marsh and over the bay to San Francisco. The city’s white and ash-gray towers shadowed to slate against the sky. At the waterfront, the rectangles of the Embarcadero Center skyscrapers, where her parents worked—her mother managing stock portfolios on the thirty-second floor and her father trading futures on the thirty-eighth—stood clearly against the horizon, but she couldn’t make out the details of windows or stories or lights.

Mr. Ellison moved behind her, reaching over her shoulder to point to the city. His body pressed heat against her back. “Isn’t it strange,” he said, “how close it is and yet how far away?”

“We can see the world,” she said, “we’re just not allowed to touch it.”

“You’re allowed to do anything you want to do,” he told her.

She smiled. At the same time terror licked up her spine and made her neck begin to sweat beneath her hair. She wanted to turn and look at him, but didn’t.

Outside, a bird’s small head bulleted toward them—thudded against the window. Abigail shrieked and jumped. Mr. Ellison steadied a hand on her hip. The bird reeled back and disappeared.

Heart pounding, Abigail peered out the window to see where it had gone—was there any chance it lived? She shouldn’t have cared, and yet she did, intensely. Pressing her cheek to the sun-warmed glass, she saw it, a pigeon, lying side-splayed on the roof like something sleeping. Its gray eyes glossed open. Its belly shaded by the protective fold of a wing. Abigail flinched. Turned away from the window, and into Mr. Ellison’s arms.

She pressed herself against him, her cheek to his chest. His cotton dress shirt lay soft against her skin. He smelled unexpectedly like sandalwood, and she realized that he had anticipated this moment—in his bathroom that morning, he’d stepped towel-wrapped from the steaming shower, shaved his face, swiped deodorant through the hair under his arms like it was any other day, but in the last instant he had paused, thought of this moment, her, Abigail, and dabbed his neck and wrists with this cologne.

When she craned her neck to see him, he smiled a gentle, closed-mouth smile. Tucked her head back down and vised his arms around her. His heart was kicking at her ear. It was a human heart. It was not a teacher. It did not know or care about the yearbook or the SAT. It belonged to her.

—

Through the rest of the winter, their problem was simple: they had nowhere to go. His apartment was off-limits. He had a wife—Abigail had seen her pacing the aisles of Mill Valley Market—with smooth, nut-colored hair and high cheekbones, a ballet neck and a Pilates body. She would wander around with nothing in her basket but a jar of organic lingonberry preserves and a square of dark chocolate, as though the abundance of actual food overwhelmed her. Abigail wanted to feel bad for Mrs. Ellison, she seemed so sad and lost, but she was too beautiful to sympathize with.