Chapter 9:

The school in the morning has a specific quality that the school at lunch doesn't have and the school at the end of the day doesn't have — a quality of not yet, of potential that hasn't been spent yet, of a day that is still in its packaging, still sealed, still containing all possible versions of itself before the opening of it collapses those possibilities into just the one that actually happens —

I take the long way around.

Obviously I take the long way around. The long way around is not a decision I make anymore, it's just the way I walk, it's just the route, it has been the route for long enough that the original decision has dissolved completely into habit and what remains is just movement, just feet taking the correct path without consulting anyone —

Four minutes added.

Worth it.

The morning is doing what mornings do which is exist with complete indifference to whether anyone is ready for it. The sky is the particular grey of a day that hasn't decided yet what it's going to be — not threatening, not promising, just present, just the atmospheric equivalent of a face doing approximately nothing —

I respect that.

I keep my bag strap on my left shoulder. I keep my eyes level. I keep my face doing the thing — six minutes and twenty-two seconds confirmed this morning before the left corner did the involuntary thing, which is better than yesterday, which is incremental progress toward something I'm still deciding whether it matters —

I am twenty meters from the east entrance when it happens.

And by it I mean a hand closing around my wrist from the left, from the gap between the equipment shed and the outer wall of the gym, from a space I have never identified as a threat vector because it's a gap, because it's the kind of space that registers as empty, as transitional, as not-a-place-anyone-is —

Someone is in the not-a-place.

The hand is pulling.

I go because the alternative is a scene and a scene requires a face that does things and my face is currently running on a six-minute confirmed neutral that I'm not prepared to compromise this early in the day — so I go, I'm pulled into the gap between the equipment shed and the outer wall of the gym, into the specific shadow of it, into the not-a-place —

There is a girl.

She is — I'm going to attempt a catalogue and I want to note in advance that the catalogue is going to be incomplete because she is not holding still, she is not a static subject, she is already moving even while standing in place, already animated with some internal momentum that has nothing to do with external events, that is just — her, just the way she occupies space, which is completely and without apparent concern for whether the space was expecting her —

She has a baseball.

I register this.

I register this specifically because the baseball is relevant information in a way that most details in a given moment are not and my brain has correctly identified it as requiring immediate classification — is the baseball incidental or is the baseball the point —

She throws it.

Directly at me.

At my face specifically.

The baseball hits me in the shoulder because I turned slightly at the last second not because I closed my eyes — I want to be very clear that I did not close my eyes, my eyes remained open throughout, this was not a reflex born of composure or courage or any quality that reflects well on me, it was simply that the baseball arrived faster than the signal to close my eyes could travel from my brain to my face, it was a processing delay, it was not character —

"Ow," I say.

She claps her hands.

Once. Twice. Three times. The specific clap of someone who has witnessed something that confirmed a hypothesis they were testing — not performative applause, just the physical expression of being right about something —

"You really don't close your eyes," she says. "Pretty damn cool." A pause. "Badass, hello."

I look at her.

I look at the space between the equipment shed and the outer wall of the gym.

I look at my shoulder where the baseball hit it.

"This is kidnapping," I say. "You know that."

She grins.

The grin is — I'm not going to describe the grin in detail because the grin does not require detail, the grin is self-explanatory, the grin is the kind of grin that exists without needing anything from the person receiving it, that is just a thing happening on a face that happens to be pointed in my direction —

"Hello," she says again. "Do you know me?"

"Do I know you," I say.

"That's what I asked."

I look at her.

"No," I say. "I don't know you."

"Good," she says, with the specific satisfaction of someone who has confirmed another hypothesis. "I'm Sky."

She says this the way people say things that are simply true and require no elaboration. Sky. As if the name explains something. As if the name is the complete sentence.

"Okay," I say.

"You're Michael Potter."

"Apparently."

"A lot of people call you the mysterious handsome man," she says. "I wanted to see if you were to my liking."

I process this.

The mysterious handsome man.

I examine this phrase from several angles. The mysterious component I understand — mystery is just the word people use for someone whose behavior they can't predict from available data, and my behavior is probably unpredictable from available data because the data most people have on me is outdated and the current version of me is operating on a different set of parameters that I haven't made public — mystery is just an information gap, it's not a quality, it's an absence —

The handsome component I'm going to set aside because it's not structurally useful information and I don't have sufficient context to evaluate its accuracy and I have other things to think about —

"Am I," I say. "To your liking."

"Jury's still out," she says cheerfully. "The not closing your eyes thing is promising. The kidnapping comment was good. I'm collecting data."

I look at the east entrance. Twenty meters. The bell in approximately three minutes.

"Can I leave," I say.

"Sure," she says. And then, before I've fully processed the sure — "Meet me after class though. I want to see how far I can push you."

I look at her.

She looks back.

Her face is doing something I don't have a category for — not the managed expressions, not the 0.4 second adjustment, not the professional smile reassembling itself, not the 0.8 seconds of genuine unmanaged reaction — something else entirely, something that is just openly and completely itself, that is not performing or protecting or deciding anything, that is just — present, just a face being a face in real time without running any background processes that I can detect —

I can't catalogue it.

I try.

It doesn't hold still long enough.

"Noted," I say.

I go to class.

---

The hallway is the hallway.

I walk through it running the Sky data through every existing model and the Sky data keeps breaking the models, keeps arriving at outputs that don't correspond to any existing category, keeps — she threw a baseball at my face, she clapped when I didn't close my eyes, she called it badass with the specific sincerity of someone who means the word literally and not as social currency, she said jury's still out about whether I'm to her liking with the same tone you'd use to describe a film you're not sure about yet, she —

I can't place her.

This is uncomfortable.

I have placed people. I've placed people who have known me for years and people I've spoken to for thirty seconds and people I've observed from across a cafeteria and people I've invented entire interior lives for from a shoulder collision — I place people, it's a thing I do, it's an operating system feature at this point —

Sky doesn't get placed.

Every time I try, the model produces an error.

I walk past the main stairwell. Through the science wing corridor. Past the bulletin board with the poster for the spring performance that someone has drawn a small cartoon on in the bottom left corner — I notice this every time I pass it, I've been noticing it for three weeks, I've never identified who drew it but the drawing is of a very small dog wearing what appears to be a graduation cap and the dog looks deeply uncertain about its academic achievements which I find —

I find it funny.

I don't say this.

I keep walking.

The baseball hit my left shoulder and my left shoulder is currently providing feedback about this in the language of dull insistent ache which is the body's way of saying something happened here, this location was involved in an event, please acknowledge the event — I'm acknowledging it, shoulder, I'm acknowledging the event, the event was a girl named Sky throwing a baseball at my face because she wanted to see if I was to her liking —

The jury is still out.

I don't know what to do with that either.

---

Class ends.

The room empties with the specific sound of thirty people deciding simultaneously that they need to be somewhere else — chairs, bags, the collective momentum of people who have been sitting for fifty minutes and are now exercising their right to move through space —

I stay in my seat for eleven seconds.

This is a genuine calculation. Not the eleven minutes of the cafeteria which was just the counting, just the converting of time into a unit I could hold — this is an actual decision tree running in real time. Meet her after class, she said. I want to see how far I can push you.

The variables:

I don't know her.

She threw a baseball at my face.

She collected data from my reaction to the baseball the way I collect data from unmanaged facial expressions at the maid cafe — same instinct, different instrument, which is a parallel I've noticed and am not going to examine right now —

The school is strict about after-class loitering near the equipment shed which is presumably where she means, which means if I go I'm already starting from a compliance deficit —

I don't know what she wants.

I don't know what I want.

I pick up my bag.

I go.

---

She's there.

I'm thirty seconds late which is thirty seconds of accumulated compliance deficit and she's there, leaning against the equipment shed with the specific ease of someone who has never in her life thought about what to do with her body when other people might be looking at it, who just — stands, just exists in a posture that isn't performing anything —

I'm about to close the distance.

I don't close the distance.

Because ten meters to my left, coming around the corner of the main building, is —

Lia.

Not across a cafeteria. Not a constellation. Not a shape at a distance I can manage by keeping my eyes level and my face doing approximately nothing and my internal monologue running a careful perimeter around the fact of her existence —

Ten meters.

Close enough that the constellation resolves.

She's carrying three books and looking at something on her phone and she hasn't seen me yet, she's still in the moment before the moment, still just a person moving through space without having to decide what to do with her face —

And I see her.

Not the composite. Not the version assembled from recorded observations filed before I lost the right to keep recording. Not the 15 degree head tilt catalogued from across a room.

Her.

She looks —

I'm not going to describe it.

I'm specifically and deliberately not going to describe it because the describing would require me to stay here, to keep looking, to be present in this ten-meter proximity for the additional seconds that description requires and I am not — I can't do this right now, my face is at six minutes and twenty-two seconds confirmed and this is not a situation I've prepared for and the background process is running very loud and my shoulder still hurts from the baseball and Sky is ten meters to my right waiting for me and Lia is ten meters to my left not yet knowing I'm here —

My body makes a decision.

My body has been doing this. Making unilateral decisions. The legs in the east corridor. The getting up when I heard the keys. The running to class when —

My body is running.

I don't experience the decision to run. I experience the running. I experience the specific sensation of the athletic body, the one that didn't get the memo, the one that is still the loud energetic middle school version on a physical level even when everything else has changed — I experience that body doing what it was built to do, which is move fast, which is cover ground efficiently, which is get from one place to another in less time than should be reasonable —

Under a minute.

The corridor. The east stairwell. The second floor. Ms. Reyes' classroom door, which I hit at speed and enter with momentum and stop inside the doorway with the specific stillness of someone who has been running and is now attempting to present themselves as a person who has not been running —

Ms. Reyes is at the board.

She turns.

The class turns.

I feel the turning.

My face does approximately nothing. My shoulder aches. My lungs are making a quiet case for additional oxygen which I'm denying them on the grounds that the request would be visible —

"Mr. Potter," Ms. Reyes says.

"I'm sorry," I say. My voice is level. I've confirmed this. "My sister — she was late this morning. I had to make sure she got sorted. It ran over."

This is true.

Chloe was late. I did sort her. The sandwich exists as evidence. The shoe by the radiator. The bus pass in the front pocket. All of it happened, all of it is real, all of it constitutes genuine lateness and genuine sorting —

The application of it as an excuse is where the truth gets thin.

It gets thin in a specific place that I can identify precisely. Between the true thing that happened and the implication that it's why I'm late now. There's a gap there. A small gap. The width of a girl named Sky and a secluded spot and thirty seconds of running from something that was ten meters away and hadn't even seen me yet —

I give myself one rule. No lying.

I'm going to need to think about what happened to the rule just now.

Not here. Not in front of Ms. Reyes who is looking at me with the expression she uses when she's decided to accept something without confirming she believes it — I've catalogued this expression, it has a specific quality, it is the expression of someone who is filing the presented information in a folder labeled requires more data rather than the folder labeled confirmed —

"Sit down," she says.

I sit down.

Third from the back. Left side. Wall adjacent.

I put my bag on my lap.

I look at the board.

I don't look at anything else.

My shoulder aches.

My lungs have received their oxygen quietly and without further complaint. The background process is running at a frequency I can feel in my back teeth. Outside the window the grey sky is still deciding what it wants to be —

I open my notebook.

In the margin, very small, I write: the constellation resolved.

Then I close the notebook.

I don't write what I saw when it did.

Some things you leave in the gap where the description should be.

You just — leave them there.

And you go to class.