As I wrench myself away from the the gravitational pull Silas seems to exert on me, my fingers intuitively search for my cell phone. I pull it out and press a button on the side to check the time. Two minutes past four. It astounds me that so little time has passed, though I’ve found my own path to a new world and visited a second with Silas. All our conversations, all our journeys, all that I’ve learned, happened in the space of an hour.
It then occurs to me that I’m fifteen minutes late to pick Ada up for her dance lesson.
“Shit,” I swear, under my breath, breaking into a jog. A few minutes later I’m jamming the key into our old Camry, revving the engine, and lighting out of the school parking lot. As I drive, I pray, as always, that the shadows won’t find me. Not that I’m afraid of my own harm if I were to get into an accident—I’ve proven to myself enough times that that’s an impossibility—but I worry endlessly about crashing into someone else, ripping someone else’s life away….
I swerve up in front of the elementary school pick-up line to see Ada glancing anxiously around, the last of the younger students waiting to be picked up. Her eyes light up as she recognizes my car, and the smile on her face brings one to my own. As the after-school supervisor walks her over to our car, I roll down the window and try to look serious as I prepare my apology.
“Gosh, Mr. Charles, I’m so sorry, I—”
“You don’t have to apologize, Noomi,” he says, the creases around his mouth deepening into canyons as he meets my eyes. “I know no one cares for her sibling so much as you do. I imagine it was something very important that kept you.”
I can’t help but smile back. Mr. Charles was one of my favorite teachers when I was at that same elementary school, and one of the first people to treat me, not as someone mentally handicapped, damaged, or even dangerous, but as a person. He was a science teacher, and when I was older, I learned that he was actually an experimental physicist who retired early to return to his true passion: children. He stayed late after school to read books to me that taught me to be brave, and to tell me stories of other children who had experienced the same pain I had. Even now, years later, the papery skin on his hands and the dark brown wrinkles in his face make me think of comfort, friendship, and happiness.
“It was, Mr. Charles. Thanks for watching Ada for me.”
He watches patiently as Ada swings into the back seat and buckles her seat belt.
“Be safe now, Noomi. I hope to see you around the library again sometime soon.” He shuts the door after Ada.
“I’ll stop by soon, I promise.” I wave as I roll up the window and drive away. “Sorry I was so late, little peach. I lost track of time.”
“It’s okay,” Ada says, her tone indicating that she’s already forgotten all about it.
“What did you do at school today?”
“A science project.” It’s always difficult to get her started about her schoolwork, but once she gets going, it’s hard to get her to stop.
“The science project you told me about the other day?”
“Yeah.” Her head rolls to the side as she looks out the window. “The one with magnets.”
“Well, did you learn anything new?”
“We played with iron magnets and set them up in different arrangements and drew pictures of the patterns the little pieces of metal made around the magnet. Ms. Nguyen told us that opposites attract, and showed us how to put the positive and the negative end together so they’d pull towards each other. But the positive and the positive just push away from each other. I thought that was pretty funny.”
YOU ARE READING
Porous
Teen Fiction*Trigger Warning* Depression, suicide, and mental illness are subjects dealt with in this story. I have a history with suicide. When I was three, I attempted the first time. A year later, my second, and not five months after that I tried again. Th...
