What We Saw(58)

But there is a way to know.

There’s a video.

I glance at Ben, wondering if he might’ve been able to hear my thought, but he kisses me and helps me into the truck. He tells Will not to eat the leftovers before he gets home. He tells me he’ll be right behind me so we can study for our geology quiz.

I’m extra cautious driving home. Visibility is limited and my knuckles go white from squeezing the steering wheel, just like Rachel’s did grasping the edge of the table. As Will talks about Tyler and the tournament this weekend, I wonder which is worse: the fear of the unknown? Or knowing for sure that something terrible is true?





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE


HarperCollins Publishers

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thirty-two


“IMAGINE BEING SO dedicated to finding the truth about something that you’re willing to go against the prevailing thought of everyone around you, and become an outcast.”

Mr. Johnston is talking about a geologist named Alfred Wegener, but I’m sleepy and having a hard time focusing until he says this.

Last night, while Mom and Dad ate leftover Combo Plus, Will quizzed Ben and me on the differences between igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. I lay awake for a long time after I went to bed, phone in hand, typing “Coral Sands rape video” into the search field in the browser, then deleting it. I’m still not sure if I’m more afraid of knowing what happened or not knowing. Last night, I couldn’t bring myself to look.

“Sometimes inspiration just requires looking at things from a different point of view.” Mr. Johnston’s voice snaps me back into the present.

A map of the world flashes onto the screen. “Wegener was looking at the same maps everybody else had, but he noticed something nobody else had seen and formed a hypothesis.”


Mr. Johnston runs his pen along the eastern edge of the South American continent, pointing out its symmetry with the western edge of Africa. “Wegener hunted for clues on both sides of the Atlantic. He found the same dinosaur fossils in both places, the same plant species, too. For years everybody had explained this by saying that at one time, there must have been land bridges that crossed the Atlantic in a couple spots. But ol’ Alfred wasn’t satisfied with that answer, mainly because—well, look at it.” Mr. Johnston laughs. “How could you not see the big picture when it all fits together so well?”

Mr. J is fired up, his eyes glowing in the light of the projector. “The thing that sealed the deal for Wegener was when he found the same formations in the rock on both coasts. Sure, a plant or an animal could cross a land bridge—but rocks? How’d they get from one side to the other? The answer seemed simple to him.”

Mr. Johnston taps a button on his laptop and the map starts to move, the continents drifting slowly into one another. South America snuggling up to Africa. The world, assembling. This picture makes so much sense that when he returns to the previous image, it’s impossible not to see the way the continental shelves used to fit together.

“In 1912, Wegener presented this theory at a major conference. He stood up and told them all, ‘Hey, you guys. I think you’re looking at this wrong. I think the continents moved and took the plants and rocks and dinosaurs along for the ride.’ And guess what happened?”

Mr. Johnston waits. Lindsey raises her hand. “Miss Chen?”

“He was right?”

Mr. Johnston nods. “Yep. But that day? Nobody believed him. The whole scientific community was committed to seeing things one way: The continents were permanent; the land bridges had gotten washed away. Wegener spent years collecting evidence. He could demonstrate that continental drift was happening, but he couldn’t explain how. He was pretty sure it had to do with the centrifugal force of the earth’s rotation and the pull of other planets. His ‘capital T’ theory explained everything he observed, but he wound up becoming a pariah in the geology community.”

“Like a fish that eats people?” Reggie asks from the back row.

“That’s ‘piranha,’ Reg. But nice try. A pariah is an outcast. Somebody who gets shunned and avoided.”

Rachel pipes up. “What a miserable way to spend your life.”

Mr. Johnston nods. “Maybe. But what he saw changed the way we look at the world. Alfred Wegener is a scientific superstar because he was right.”

“How do we know?” Reggie asks.

“Yeah.” Ben’s voice comes from just behind me. “Did we ever figure out how this whole drift thing happens?”

“Sure did.” Mr. Johnston smiles. “There have been tons of new advances, but guess what the easiest way is to observe the continents floating around on the earth’s mantle today?” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone.

“GPS,” he says with a grin. “There’s an app for that.”

“Oh my god. Kate. Sit down. You’re pacing like a caged animal.”

I flop down on Lindsey’s bed as she continues to click around on her laptop. She is typing the email addresses of different varsity players into the search field on Reddit. She has been pairing these with different hashtags for about an hour now, looking for a video neither of us want to see, but have to find.