Have You Seen Luis Velez?(78)

Raymond approached his paper, his heart thumping.

On the cover sheet, he saw a large red A+. “Excellent work,” the teacher had written underneath.

He flipped through the pages to see if there were additional notes.

“Good observations,” it said beside the conclusion.

Everything else he had written remained whole and not dissected.

He looked up to see the teacher standing in front of him. No longer on his phone.

“I thought it was an impressive piece of work,” Bernstein said. “Your thoughts about tribalism as it affects the justice system seemed very advanced to me. I was surprised to hear those observations from a teenager.”

“Oh. Well. I’ll be real honest. I based that on some stuff I heard from one of the attorneys.”

Raymond figured that, by not saying which one, he was staying true to his agreement not to quote the man.

“Okay. That makes sense. But it doesn’t change my thoughts about your grade. You understood what you heard, clearly, and you pulled it all together well. You made a compelling case.”

Raymond stood silent for a moment, not sure what he could—or should—say.

“What?” Bernstein asked. “You look . . .”

“It’s just that . . . Miss Evans didn’t like it much. She said my conclusion sounded like something a seventeen-year-old would think up. And she didn’t mean that as a compliment, believe me.”

“I guess different people will see it different ways. But I stand by my assessment. And I’m calling it an extra-credit assignment for English, so that A plus will count toward your final grade.”

“Good. Thank you! That’ll help balance off her C minus.”

“She gave you a C minus? Seriously?”

“I would never joke about a thing like that.”

“And she said the conclusion sounded juvenile,” Bernstein repeated, paraphrasing. “And I said it sounded too advanced for your age. And it turned out to be based on thoughts you got from an adult attorney. That’s funny.”

“Yeah,” Raymond said. “I thought that part was funny, too. She seems to think there’s just one objective reality, and good people will all see it if they’re willing to.”

“Hmm,” Mr. Bernstein said. “That’s a nice, predictable world she’s living in. It must be very pleasant there. I almost envy her that kind of thinking.”



Raymond stepped into the school library after last period. He almost skipped last period to go, but he had done that once before, and the librarian hadn’t reported him. He hated to press his luck with that.

“Well, look who it is,” she said, barely looking up from her book. “How’s the self-taught Spanish coming along?”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I hate to even tell you. But it was kind of . . . for a specific purpose. That I don’t need anymore. So I haven’t done a very good job of keeping up with it.”

In fact, after he had returned the Spanish-English dictionary to the library, he hadn’t gone on to buy a phrasebook of his own. Because there had been no more Luis Velezes to find.

“Well, I just knew that was too good to be true. A student wanting to learn something just for the sake of learning it.”

“Don’t be too sure,” he said. “I came here to ask if you have any books about quantum mechanics. Not for any special situation this time. Just for the sake of learning it.”

“Interesting,” she said. “You almost renew my faith in students, Raymond. It just so happens I have a fair amount on the subject. Follow me.”





Chapter Sixteen




* * *





Despair

“I’m starting to get worried about you,” Raymond said. “You haven’t been outside for almost eight days.”

“Has it only been eight days?”

She looked up at him from her bed. Turned her face in the general direction of where he stood in her bedroom doorway. It was after ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. She was awake. But she still hadn’t gotten up and dressed.

“Time has been going so slowly,” she added. A bit wistfully, Raymond thought.

“I want my old friend Mrs. G back,” he said, surprising himself. He had thought it many times, but hadn’t expected to hear himself say it out loud. “I miss her.”

“She is here,” Mrs. G said in a thin and unenthusiastic voice.

“No. Not really, she isn’t. I haven’t seen her since the trial. And I’m getting worried about you. I think I should call that nice Velez family who invited us to supper. We could go tomorrow.”

“No, not tomorrow. Please, Raymond. Next Sunday. Or the Sunday after that.”

“Tomorrow is better. You’ve had plenty of time to rest, right?”

“Physically, yes, but . . .”

“I’m going to call her right now and tell her we’re coming tomorrow.”

“Wait!”

He was halfway out of the room, but he stopped. Because she sounded too serious to ignore. Almost approaching the border of desperate.

“Don’t go,” she said. “Don’t call. All right, if you want me to get outdoors, fine. Let’s go outdoors. But only you and me for now. Please. To meet new people, to be around a lot of people right now . . . I need more time. Tomorrow we will go somewhere, just the two of us. In a couple of weeks maybe we will go to supper with your friends.”