The Impossible Knife of Memory(11)
“You’re going to school like all the other seniors.” He brushed the rust off his face. “But I’ll lie about the doctor’s appointment if you get me the vise grips and a beer.”
_*_ 2 _*_
Gracie texted me at 11:30 that night: fin wants your number who?
adrkabl fin no
ynot cuz
ynotynotynot
cuzcuzcuzcucuzcuz
I’d been cyber-stalking Trish for hours. She didn’t have any social media pages, at least not public ones. I found a couple of people from her high school class trying to track her down for a reunion, but no one knew where she was. They had all tried the phone numbers and addresses that I found in Texas, Nebraska, and Tennessee, but she wasn’t to be found.
Gracie buzzed me again:
y dos he wnt yr nmbr?
dunno ask him
Trish was mentioned in her mother’s obituary from three years ago. A couple of months after that, she was arrested for drunk driving. The paper didn’t cover her trial, if there was one. She probably slithered out of that, too. I texted Gracie:
so?
sowht
why does he want my number?
1 sec
I pulled a lighter out of the top drawer of my desk and lit a vanilla candle. The smell of mold from the wet insulation in my ceiling was getting stronger. (The roof leaked for a few weeks when we first moved in. It was going to be a while before we could afford to replace it.)
fin sez u stol hz pen
he’s a liar
he wnts it
I don’t have his pen
hes a swmr
?
finz a swimer buterfly u shuld c him nakd
the abs omg
when did you see him naked?
swm teem sutes betr thn nakd
*team
remove head from gutter, G
is he a good swimmer?
made states
he wnts yr lawrs number lawrs?
*lawyers
I peeked out of the curtains. Dad was still in the driveway.
he wnts yr crimnl hstry
tell him I killed my last lawyer cuz he annoyed me
I slipped my finger under the flap of Trish’s envelope and ripped it open. The sharp edge of the paper sliced into my fingertip. I swore and stuck my finger in my mouth.
he wnts 2 no if yr gay
yes
???? r u shur
you’re not my type G
wats yr typ?
people who can spell
fin sez he kn spl
It was cold outside, forty degrees. My father was still out there working on his truck, in the cold, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He said he didn’t feel anything.
I pulled my finger out and looked at it under the light. The cut was invisible until I pressed my thumb just below it. Blood welled up, a wet balloon that burst and dribbled over my thumbnail and dripped onto the envelope. I pulled the letter out of the envelope, keeping it folded, and smeared my cut on it.
My phone buzzed again.
do u no how mny grls wnt fin 2 cll?
cll?
*call
g’night G zzzzzzz
I turned off the phone, opened the top drawer of my bureau, and pulled out my hunting knife from under my pile of socks. (Dad bought it for me in Wyoming when he decided that I was old enough to walk alone at night from the truck to the truck stop bathroom.) I sliced the letter into paper ribbons and stuffed them in the envelope, then carried it, along with the candle, into the bathroom. After I shut and locked the bathroom door and turned off the light and opened the window, I held the envelope into the flame of the candle and watched in the mirror as the fire ate through the paper until I had to drop it in the sink so I wouldn’t get burned.
wtf??
????!!!!????
rilly????
want to go out with me? J ???
chill, im not gay
_*_ 15 _*_
My math teacher had a vendetta against me and as proof I offer the fact that I had not been told about Wednesday’s test. Or if I had been told, it was not made entirely clear exactly when the test was going to be, and the fact that we were talking Serious Test, not just a wussy quiz.
1. Find a polynomial with integer coefficients that has the following zeros: ?1/3, 2, 3 + i.
2. Matthew throws a PopTart at Joaquim while seated at the table for lunch. The height (in inches) of the PopTart above the ground t seconds later is given by h(t) = ?16t2 + 32t + 36. What is the maximum height attained by the PopTart?
3. It just got worse from here to the end of the test.
All of my answers were drawings of armored unicorns. Five minutes before the period ended, the principal’s voice lectured the entire school about how badly we’d screwed up last week’s lockdown drill. I drew a bomb attached to a ticking clock under one of the unicorns. Some guy I’d never seen before crashed into me in the crowded frenzy that was the math wing after class, sending my books to the ground and me into the lockers. His buddies, average IQ that of newly hatched turkey vultures, burst into laughter. The geometry teacher standing in her doorway looked me in the eye and then turned away.
“Need some help?” Finn knelt beside me and handed me my copy of The Odyssey.
“No.” I put the book on top of the stack and stood up.
“I can take him out if you want.”
“I doubt that.”
“Few people know this, but I am a trained assassin, skilled in jujitsu and krav maga. I can also, with a few folds, turn an ordinary piece of notebook paper into a lethal weapon. Or I can turn it into a butterfly, which is a great trick when I’m babysitting.”