'I love you Jenna, have a good first day back at school, see you tonight.' read the note, and I stuffed it roughly into my pocket with a sigh--another good morning with letters instead of words. The promise of an after-dinner game of cards or something like quality time was slim, and I would even wonder if Dad would actually be home tonight when I thought would be acceptable. I pushed past Jasen who was trying to find a cereal bowl when I heard a knock on the door. "Jen, can you?" he asked, so I put my apple down to squeeze past him again. "Password?" I called through the thin wood, and Antony leaned on the door with a grin to the peephole. "Oh-hi." he said it like one word. Antony had messy brown hair, large eyes and a pink lipped smile. I smiled back even if he couldn't see. "Good morning." I said, opening the door gently until Antony walked, wrapping his arms around me in seconds when I rested my head under his chin. I let my arms circle his waist as Jasen waved from the kitchen to Antony.
"Hi there. How's it going?" Jasen called as Antony moved his hands to my shoulders. "I'm alright. I was just going to walk with Jenna to school." he said, the persuading green eyes meeting the unassuming brown ones of my brother as Jasen nodded with a bite of cereal. "Cool, have a good day you guys." he said. I quickly grabbed my bag and schedule, back in a flash to walk with Antony. It was the first day of junior year so we had to head to classes early so we knew were they could be. The morning was bright--a classic August day full of warmth and buzzing insects all around us. Dawson High School was only a half mile away from shops and attractions, and about a full mile from homes in the urban area beside the bustling downtown city in the middle-life of Modesto. Antony laces his fingers in mine, holding me closer than usual as we walked but not allowing me to make a V with our arms. "Tony, you alright?" I asked. He stared ahead, just watching the world in front of him before answering.
"Why won't you change your classes? We could have more than just one together. Don't you want to spend time with me?" Antony pouted, pulling me to a stop on the sidewalk. I held in a sigh, it would just make him angry to hear that. I didn't want to talk about this now, not again, because I loved my classes as they were. It was sort of the point I only had one class with him.
"Tony, you know I do! That's not fair, you know I wish I could, but I'd have to get a parent signature, and Dad won't be back til Thursday, the last day for changing classes." I soothed him, trying not to get him riled up. "You know I would if I could." Tony wouldn't smile at me.
"You can't just write it for him?" he asked, so I pulled my hand out of his, angrily, and a little hurt by that. He expected me just to do that for him, forge my father's signature so he could see me more. "I'm not going to do that! Tony that's not going to work, and why would you ask me to do that? And I could only change one class as it is. You'll just have to see me at lunch and right after." I said, firm but with a sweet voice. I tried to keep walking, but Antony had come up behind me swift to grab my arm, fiercely. My body was now a much cooler degree than the weather would have it. "Jenna, stop it. You need to calm down." he said, snarling in my ear as I lost my previous drive of anger. He was right, as usual. I was out of line.
"Alright, I'm sorry. I'll think of something." I said before leaning against him gently, my back pressing on his chest when his head swooped down to kiss my cheek--his arms tightly securing me against him before letting go while we walked, hands laced once more. "I just want to spend more time with you. I'm selfish." Antony murmured in my hair, tracing his nose against my temple while we walked and I warmed to him again. Back to good old Tony. "I love you too." I said back, almost in a monotone, but I keep the dead in my voice at bay. As soon as we get to school, his lacrosse friends jostle past me for a spot to steal, but Antony pulls me closer.
"Tony! Hey!" they called, and he punched each playfully in turn. Last year he was the star player, so this year he would be on the varsity team for seniors mostly. "Yo, Tony, how was your summer?" one called, and Antony pulled me in front of him. "Look at her, I think it was wonderful." He was so sweet at times. His friends all jeered at him, making kissing faces as they all began to wrap arms around each other like drunks. "Ah, young love!" they laughed, and Antony let me go when I told him I had to search for classes, but it was with a pulled face pathetically masking bitterness. I'd hear more later, but I had to hurry. I passed my first period Chemistry, my second period English, so on and forth. When I had marked all my places on my map, all I had to do was go wait by the Chemistry class. I heard someone singing off-key, loudly around the corner as I heard Casey run up behind me, it was some musical song. "But it's the pelvic thru-u-ust--that really drives you insa-a-ane! Let's do the Time Warp again! Jen!" she shouted, sprinting to me as she jumped on my back. Casey was a young model, so the weight that pushed into me wasn't substantial, and she was pretty much all even distribution on the weight.
"Hi Case!" I smiled, swinging her around as she laced her arms around my shoulders. "Yo. How's it going? How's your summer been?" She asked over my shoulder, her pale skin that matched mine almost shining as it caught the sun with the makeup she had glistening. She was tall too, for a fifteen year old, she was five foot seven. Her light hair was up in a short pony-tail today, and she looked her best as usual. "Long. Antony and I didn't get to see much of each other." Darn. Casey made a pout face, dropping off of me but towering past my height of five foot four.
"I'm sorry, doll. I got to have six out of nine flights of mine cancelled on the way to random shoots. Not my favorite, flying." she shuddered. Her deep seeded fear of planes came after, while walking home with her sister in New York, the Sears Tower beside her began to burn and raining glass and cement. She moved to California shortly thereafter, going into modeling when she was only ten. "It's ok doll." I smiled back. The bell made a dull chime over the intercom system, and we walked in first seeing as we had stood there. "Good morning Mrs.--" I began, immediately closing my mouth. On the board was WELCOME MRS. DONAVON'S CHEMISTRY CLASS in a very masculine scrawl, and definitely not a Mrs. was sitting at the teachers desk. Very dark, drooping hair draping over his face made it hard for me to tell what he looked like, but he was a tall teacher with a lean figure. He sat as if he were mourning with his fingers in front of his face, his elbows resting on the table in front of his computer, or maybe he was asleep. As everyone, over six minutes, filed into the class--they were very quite as most had just rolled out of bed. The final bell made it's ugly noise as if a nasal laugh at us, and the teacher slowly raised his head, sneezing. A chorus of "bless you's" followed as he smiled, his hazel eyes looking over the seating as nobody took the front row, just as the notes on the desks there had asked in a capital lettering.
Quietly, he pulled out a green marker, changing the message from Mrs. Donavon to Mr. Carver. He was much taller than I expected, around six-foot-something-tall as he faced the class. Mr. Carver silently pulled out beakers from under his work station at the front of the class and put the containers with milky liquid on the corners of a few desks, all of them randomly placed and some with phrases like 'And we all shine on' or 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds' and 'Coolest Nightlight Award' as he talked.
"So! You think Chemistry is a pipe dream of bubbling chemicals you'll never really mess with, or electric experiments like you never thought about--which is good, because you think you won't have the chance anyways." Mr. Carver headed to the back room, pulling out strange little pointed wires wrapped in copper circles, placing those on desks too. With each one, he wrote down quickly on his hand a number from the bottom of the wire-strung little boxes with antenna that I recognized as Tesla coils. On my desk, from a box on the front table, he placed a deep jar of water, a small little piece of metal, and a Bunsen burner with tweezers as he sent me to the next row back for 'safety reasons'. As I sat two rows away from the jar, he sat upon my desk.
"Well let me tell you something. Everyone here already knows Chemistry. Your body gets cold and you're shivering, your body gets warm and you begin to sweat. You put baking soda with vinegar in the first grade to watch it bubble. This is not first grade. You are all mature adults, I hope." he said, the class was silent but so alert, I could have cut the focus with one of the Tesla coil's wires.
"If you can all become young adults and not a bunch of children, then, well..." he leaned over, typing in something over the computer as a deep hum rebounded across the room through the speakers. Mr. Carver sent a student to turn of the lights, and the class was lit from the beakers on random desks so bright all features were shown around the class as a gasp sent up. Mr. Carver was smiling even brighter. With another tap on his computer, another frequency changed though and the beakers fluxed with the sound waves in visible ripples and people began to clap, sending the liquid into overdrive. "You too can do this." Mr. Carver finished, turning off the sound as he asked everyone with the Tesla coils to flip their switches. It was like watching a thunderstorm in the class, contained by the thin glass surrounding it, random Tesla coils suddenly zapping either blue, purple or white. I began to make a shadow puppet with my partner Casey as the light slammed into the walls quietly. A few people joined in, making things I've never seen in the shadow-puppet world.
"Beautiful rabbit, Jenna!" Mr. Carver called, and I immediately stopped bashfully. He asked everyone to turn off the coils with a call for a volunteer. "May I have somebody come up to help me with my last experiment?" he called, so many people raised their hands with enthusiasm after the two shows. "Hum...the young lady in the blue shirt!" he said, so I shook my head. "I didn't raise my hand." I called back, so he broke into a smile. "I know. Get up here." Mr. Carver replied, lighting the Bunsen burner as I made my way up to the darkened class front. "Here, hold onto these. Food dye. Squeeze the blue and yellow in, then stir." he asked me gently, so I quickly poured the cups together with a quick stir of a spoon as it clanked around the jar. "I'm going to say fire can't burn under water. It can't. Nope. It's not natural." he said, putting the sliver of metal a little ways above the fire. "Can't it?" Mr. Carver asked, setting the class on edge.
"Everybody, please, put on the glasses at the edge of your desks. If you do not, I will be forced to send you outside." he called, and had me count everyone as they put on their darkened glasses eagerly. "In the back, too! And then everyone can come up to these desks for a good visual. Prediction time! Who says it'll burn for just a short time?" a few hands raised up while he nodded. "How about a few seconds, which is still cool?" Mr. Carver tried. Suddenly, on the end of his tweezers, the sliver of metal lit so bright I couldn't stare at it very long. "If you try to stare at it, you'll be sorry. Ow, this is hot--!" he said, dropping the fire now into the water. It sizzles, it makes steam...but never extinguishes. The metal hits the bottom of the jar with a tiny pink that is only heard because everyone is quiet. Through the green water, everyone looks sickly while Mr. Carver stares at a stopwatch. "You guys, we just hit fifteen seconds." he announces to the delight of the class.
"Chemistry isn't a pipe dream! It's amazing! Fire burns where it would normally snuff out, sound makes light inside water, a thunderstorm can be channeled. If you listen to me, if you all do well in this class--come to me when you need it, do your work, we can do things like this every other week, I promise. But you all have to help me out before I can help you have fun. We have just enough time to watch this burn out, so if I could have everyone stay where they are and just keep calm. We just touched one minute alight under water." Mr. Carver grinned while everybody clapped once more. I sat beside Casey, talking about how we enjoyed the class.
"Case, I may be happy to go to school now." I laughed with her shrug as a response. She was just looking behind me at the teacher. "I dunno, I may want to come to class for the candy. Eye candy." she purred, nudging me as I pushed her back. "Dating, sorry, didn't notice." I smirked back but Casey gaped at me. "How can you not, he's so cool! Not to mention cute! You're a junior, you have a right to look, Jenna." Casey teased, but I glared back to her. I took cheating jokes seriously, so I just shook my head until she was very quiet and the bell rang again for us to leave. As we packed up, I took a look over at the jar, then at Mr. Carver who caught my eye. He was looking back at me. The metal in the water has slowly, quietly, gently dimmed and as a smile bridged the gap between us...the fire had faded. With a rush I exited the class when the warm breeze hit me I realized I wasn't breathing deeply as I normally did, actually quite shallow.
Casey and I gathered where we were supposed to go, heading into the English class where I smiled when a teacher was there that I recognized. "Mrs. Sanchez!" I smiled elated when she saw me. I put my papers down, laughing and getting a hug. Mrs. Sanchez was one of those intellect teachers, she talked to you honestly and openly while you worked, treating you as an equal. None of this hand-holding, just promoting not passing work that all other teachers put out for you, in hopes for a good rating. "Hi dear, how was your summer?" she asked, and I sat on the top of a pale brown desk. "It was fine, just hung out. Yourself?" I prompted, getting a list of places she went to in Europe for her thirty-fifth anniversary to her husband after his term in Afghanistan. I listened with the utmost politeness until the bell rang for order again. All through the class, I couldn't sit still. I was electrically charged, so I thought, from the previous period where my mind was so stimulated I felt like sitting still was hard enough.
I got a text about ten minutes from the bell ringing. Hey meet me @ lunch by ftbal feld in a hasty text, undoubtedly with a bad mood behind it. With a sigh, I shoved my phone into my pocket next to the note my Dad had left me, reminding me that he wouldn't be home, Jasen would be somewhere, and all I had to look forward to was time with Tony today at lunch and a class after that. It reminded me how lonely it could be when you were a nobody, with only a few friends and even less family, and a whole bunch of time to yourself with the uncharted feelings in the darkness of solitude.
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