The Sun Seekers

by Emery C. Walters

  “I know one,” a red-headed girl named Larissa sang out. “My dad went to the Naval Academy!”

  “Okay, but maybe you’d better keep it to yourself for now!” said Mr. Jay, blushing. Her father hadn’t been the only Naval Academy graduate. He himself had gone there.

  Jacob, who was new this year, added, “My uncle is a rabbi. He says that a hero’s death can be seen as a culmination of a good life, a way of saying see, my life was worthwhile. So it’s possible that suicide could have meaning other than you pissed me off and now you’ll be sorry. That kind is just wrong, and stupid. It’s prohibited, in my religion, like murder. I mean life changes so fast anyhow, it’s bound to get better if you just wait.” He stopped talking and went back into his usual silence, but people looked at him, and not in a bad way.

  “Talk more about that,” Mr. Jay said.

  “Well, you’re walking along, just living and suddenly…”

  “Your bike slides in front of a car.”

  “Or you get sick and die.”

  “Or your cousin gets stupid and overdoses.”

  Mr. Jay blinked. Shit, what the hell had he started. “Let’s just draw,” he said, turning on one of the songs he had picked out. It was “The Banana Boat Song”. After that he had “My Generation” lined up. And some African-American field songs. There was “Dueling Banjos” and then the church litanies and sea shanties as well. He didn’t know if he’d been wise or stupid to do this, but after Colin’s death and the life saved earlier this morning, he felt it might be helpful. Art was always a good way to get to what people needed to express, but didn’t necessarily have the proper words for.

  He was worried about Danny. He didn’t think any of the other students knew that Danny had been the one who had saved a kid’s life this morning. He wasn’t sure how many knew it was Mr. Grogan’s son Joey, who was in the office with his father right now. There was, currently, no Mrs. Grogan to come pick him up and take him to his own school.

  If it hadn’t been so awful, he would have enjoyed the screaming match in the principal’s office earlier. Joey was crying, Mr. Grogan was sobbing, Principal MacFadden, a.k.a. MacFud, was shouting, two police officers were standing there patiently though he didn’t know why as Beau had already been to the station and brought back. Beau’s father, however, was also there in the office holding onto his precious son as if they might take him away again, and he had a loud voice which he projected very well for a non-theater person. He too was joining in the fray, defending his spawn, er, scion, at the top of his lungs. Ms. Wickers was spouting Shakespeare, and Coach Dub was just sputtering and waving his arms about and occasionally muttering something that might have been an Irish curse.

  Thinking about the riot, he circled the room, pointing out nice lines in this student’s paper, nice shading on that one’s sketch. All the time he kept an eye on Danny, and didn’t miss when he and his soul mate made eye contact, and touched each other’s hands or knees whenever they thought he wasn’t looking. It was so sweet. He was glad Whit was here, for Danny’s sake. Apparently, he thought smugly, their dysfunctions worked well together. Ha, he thought, I should talk!

  When he stopped by Danny, he was surprised when Danny said, “I’m so glad you don’t treat us like idiots. I like to think about things like this.” Mr. Jay noticed the boy’s eyes were glistening.

  As he walked around he mostly just listened. He had told the students on the first day that this was a safe room. They were talking about life, death, contrasts, randomness, and of course, Colin’s suicide. Selfishly he wished the boy had just written a note and taken an overdose, instead of…well. He’d certainly made a statement. Killing yourself for any reason, even to just end an intolerable situation, left such a long and permanent dark shadow on your family, your friends, and even on people who didn’t even know you, he thought. If all you wanted to do was hate people, you could probably do a better job by staying alive and making their lives miserable. And anyhow, like the one kid said, life changes so fast—you never know what’s going to happen next. There might be a party the next day, or something equally pleasant and totally surprising. That’s just the way life is—random? Maybe, but you can’t tell when it will be in a good way.

  Finally he said, “Ten minutes, then we’ll talk about what you created, if you want, or else just talk to each other. But the thing is,” he had to swallow hard now, as he knew he might be pushing too far, “if any of you are feeling like Colin did, there will be counselors in the gym after school, and even more so, I’m in the phone book, and so is my address. I will listen to you day or night. I will not judge. Hell, if you want, I won’t even grade your papers! Why should I, if you’ve drawn what you feel? It’s your art, after all, not mine.”

  * * * *

  They were all expecting the bell to ring any second now, but to their surprise, the lights went out instead. Mr. Jay got up and locked the door. He looked out the windows, which were blindingly white and full of snow. It looked like a blizzard had come up without anyone even noticing, so busy over their drawings had they been.

  “Just stay in your seats,” Mr. Jay said, “on the off chance it’s something serious. If not, someone will be around to tell us—ah, the back-up generator just came on.” With that, the lights came back on, got stronger and stronger, and then blew out with a loud popping noise. At the same time the loudspeaker buzzed, crackled, and the principal’s voice intoned, “Not to worry, the power’s out and the storm is bad. We may all be staying here tonight. We’ll decide that later. Just stay…” crackle, brrrack and then silence. Another boom.

  Everyone ducked, and some of the students actually hid under their desks. Danny managed to look up from under theirs and saw Mr. Jay’s long arm and hand come up over his own desk, grope around on top of it, and grab a book. “Not to worry,” he said, “We’ll all just cower here like rabbits with a wolf pack sniffing around and I’ll read!”

  People groaned, including Whit, and laughed nervously, including Danny, whose hand was buried in Whit’s armpit, clutching her side. Whitney thought about turning so it would slide over her boobs but then she realized what she was thinking. “Ugh! Huh uh! No way. She smiled in relief when it didn’t. Me, confused much? she thought with Dusty chiming in, What were you thinking! I’m gonna hafta bitchslap you girl, oh wait, that would hurt. She told her inner him to just shut up. Dusty did, but then grabbed at Danny instead. “I’m scared,” he whispered, lying through his fat ass, or her stupid teeth, “Hold me!”

  Gosh, Whit/Dusty thought, if anyone knew what I was like on the inside, they would lock me up in the nuthouse. But wow, she had used to believe that completely. Now she knew she might not be normal, as it was used to define average, but she was certainly normal when it came to being herself; transgendered. It made her feel strong.

  Mr. Jay’s voice started on a sour note, he cleared his throat, coughed to cover up his voice breaking like one of the students, and began. “‘Chapter One; Men’s X-Rays: the ten worst items ever removed from someone’s…’ No. What is this?” There was a loud boom that shook the building. Suddenly Mr. Jay was standing by the window, bookless. Danny noticed that he left it under his desk. I’ll have to remember to slide over there later and get it—it’s just starting to sound good, Danny thought.

  “Was that thunder?” someone called out.

  Mr. Jay took a deep breath. They could all hear it quiver on the way in, soothe on the way out. Mr. Jay was, apparently, woo-woo. “Yes. It’s light enough; I’m going to hold up your drawings one by one and we can claim them, ignore them, and/or discuss them. Whatever. And how about if those of you who brought snacks and lunches share them out up here on my desk? We can make the best of this lockdown, or whatever you want to call it.”

  So it was that they all ended up enjoying the next several hours immensely. It didn’t hurt at all that the room had its own small bathroom attached, either.

  Mr. Jay held up the first drawing. It was signed, Jacob, the boy with the rabbi fo
r an uncle. “What’s this all about, Jake?” Mr. Jay asked, sounding confident, though it was obvious they all knew he was as nervous as everyone else. He was chewing on a fingernail and sitting on the desk, swinging one foot.

  Jacob went up to the desk and held his picture up higher so everyone could see better. “Well, I’m going to be an architect like one of my ancestors. He was born in Poland and then ended up in Israel and he built all these houses, see like this one? It looks like an amusement park ride, or a parking garage, but it’s really all apartments spiraling around a central open area, and has all these patios so everyone has a view.”

  “Why?” asked someone.

  “Well it’s based on geometry and um, a-asym—off balance on purpose. And that’s sort of like life and death; it’s supposed to be all perfect and strong and well planned and yet, um, there’s all these abrupt changes and it makes you feel off balance. I guess that’s how I felt, off balance.” He blushed beet red, shoved his glasses back up his nose, and went and sat down again.

  It made Whit feel like she knew him better. It was a nice feeling, warm. Aloud she said, “I never thought about things like that, before today. Off balance, that’s exactly how I feel, too. And how Mr. Jay is going to feel if he doesn’t settle down and sit more securely.”

  Everyone laughed at that, including Mr. Jay himself. He slid back to where he was sitting more securely on the desk, nodded and said, “You’re talking about morphology—the study of shapes. Great insight, Jacob.”

  Danny got brave. “I liked how you tied it all together, Jake,” he blurted. “Oh, I see you have mine!” he said, after looking at Mr. Jay, who was holding up his drawing of Bernie—before and after. In it he had two faces, both hovering over a figure lying face down in the snow. “Can I tell about it?”

  Three kids and the teacher said yes. Other heads nodded. One girl said, “Is that a man or a woman?”

  “Yes!” Danny said, standing up and walking over to take his picture. He pointed at the two faces. “It’s both the same person, see, only one is male and the other is female. Can it be the same person? Well duh. I have eyeliner on but does it make me a woman?”

  “Not where it counts!” said a boy. People laughed and groaned.

  “So in the midst of life we are in make-up?”

  “In the midst of life we are in sex-change?”

  “What about the figure on the ground?” Mr. Jay asked, taking control.

  “That’s the thing; looking at it, you can’t tell if that person is dead or alive, male or female. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat turned human.”

  “Huh?” asked half a dozen kids.

  A boy, and every class has one like him, Matt the math nerd, quipped, “I heard that the cat is radioactive, and hence has eighteen half-lives…” Everyone turned and stared at him. He pushed his glasses back up his nose, and smiled eerily. Mr. Jay laughed though.

  “I have another one,” Matt said. “What did Mrs. Schrödinger say to Dr. Schrödinger? ‘Erwin! What did you do to the cat? It looks half dead!’” A couple of kids, and Mr. Jay, groaned. He added, “When you get to the picture of a cat inside a box, that’s mine.”

  “Ask the physics teacher, Mrs. Pratt, about Schrödinger’s cat. That ought to get class interesting,” Mr. Jay said to the roomful of confused faces.

  Matt said, “See, the cat is in a box and you can’t see it—it’s like the person on the ground in Danny’s picture. Is it dead or alive? The answer is both. I don’t get it either, but there’s lots of jokes about it. Heck at my grandfather’s funeral…After the service, everyone came back to our house and all the guys were telling the worst jokes they knew. People were laughing their as…butts off.”

  * * * *

  Danny had sat down, quite done, and surprised at himself as well. Nobody was shouting at him or anything though, so he guessed it went all right. He was pleased at having Matt understand.

  Whit pinched his thigh and beamed at him. “Later, sweetheart,” Dusty promised.

  “We have time for one more,” Mr. Jay said, looking at his watch. “Anyone particularly want to do theirs?”

  “I do,” said a girl with braces and a lisp. She was tiny but feisty. She went by Ellie Mae for some reason, but her name was really Delilah. When Mr. Jay found her picture and held it up, she stood up and said, “This is based on something weird that happened to me this past year. I have to admit I was really scared at the time, but later I thought it was more comforting than anything else. Remember when I was out for a couple weeks in October? I had pneumonia and almost died, or, maybe I did.”

  Everyone was silent. Some felt bad because they really hadn’t even noticed she had been out. She looked taller standing so straight, her eyes looking in turn at everyone. She had stage presence, someone had muttered, and indeed she did, she had her audience in her hand and they all rode the emotion in her voice. “I had this dream one night. I dreamed I was at my grandfather’s house in Milwaukee. He was going on a trip somewhere far away and I was going with him. We didn’t bother packing any clothes because he said we wouldn’t need anything. I asked him if it would be warm there and he said, ‘You’ll see as much sunshine as you could ever want.’ That made me feel happy, cuz I hate winter!”

  People laughed. “Yeah, yeah I know, Minnesota is worse than here! Anyhow the dream went on and then I was back in my room and someone was sitting on my bed beside me. See that sort of gray figure in the picture? That’s them. I’m the lump in the middle, under the blankets. There’s even my cat, Woody, on top of the quilt.”

  She looked around again at everyone, savoring and drawing out the moment. It was theater. “The person there said to me, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you until you’re back in your body’, and after a while I woke up. My cat was standing staring at the door and all her fur was sticking straight out. Her back was arched and she was obviously scared to death. I stared from her to the door, and saw someone pass by it in the darkness, just a blur. They went into the sewing room, which is just next to my room. I leapt up with my heart pounding, ran into the hall and slammed the door to the sewing room shut. I screamed for my Mom and she came running. As she was coming the phone rang and I heard my father pick it up.

  “I was standing there sweating with fever and shivering with cold, pointing at the sewing room door. My mom opened the door and of course there was nobody there. As she took me along back to bed, my father called out to my mom, ‘Helen? It’s your mother. Your father’—that would be my grandfather—’just passed away’.”

  She looked around at everyone again. Danny was thinking what a fabulous actress she would make. Ellie Mae did not ask the obvious question, had she herself died and actually been at her grandfather’s side? But it was in everyone’s mind.

  “At the funeral—I didn’t get to go but I was at least getting better—my grandmother asked my mom how I’d managed to be with Grandfather when he passed away. She said it gave him great comfort to have me there, even though I never said boo to anyone else. And then I just disappeared. Other people had seen me there, too. But—to this day—I have no idea. Was I really there? Wasn’t I in my body? I guess I’ll never know.”

  She sat down abruptly, having gone white near the end. Her tablemate took her hand and smiled at her. “Wow,” he said, “Girl, you are awesome!” and she managed a smile.

  * * * *

  “That’s all for now,” Mr. Jay said after a moment. “I think the principal is going to speak and tell us what is going to happen, between the loss of power and the blizzard, I have no idea what he’s going to decide. He will have spoken to the school board and probably the police and weather station by now, I should think. It might depend on whether the back-up generator is working or not.”

  The loudspeaker crackled and snapped. Finally the principal came on. “Is this damn thing working yet? For—oh, it is? Fine. Great. Here’s the word. We have enough power to warm one or two rooms. Those of you who live nearby or whose parents have managed to get here t
o pick you up—I know some have shown up already in Hummers, trucks, and on Sno-cats—and one idiot came on skis, oh sorry, we’ll call out your names and you can come to the office, sign out, and go home. The rest of you, including those who normally ride the buses, which are definitely not going anywhere, are to come to the auditorium around midafternoon or whenever your classroom gets too cold or dark. We’ll all be sleeping in there tonight.

  “There’s plenty of food, even though it might not be cooked to your liking. Not that that’s new. There will be entertainment—the band has promised a concert, the glee club also…(someone groaned, “dear God, no,” in the background). Oh, sorry. And there will be a talent show and an art show. If you hear your name, get your sh…—ah, things and come up to the office. Is this piece of sh…thing still—oh, shit, it is?” And then with a long hissing ‘f’ sound, some clunks and a whine, the intercom died down.

  “An art show? Nice of them to tell me,” Mr. Jay said. “Let’s do another set of drawings then, something to display, hopefully something funny or uplifting or full of color and sunshine.”

  “Fake it while you make it if you have to!” a boy shouted out.

  The girl next to him punched his shoulder. While he was dramatically moaning in pain she said, “Stay at school overnight, he said. It’ll be fun, he said.”

  “Go big,” Mr. Jay said. “Big, big art. We’ll cover the walls and make another layer of insulation.” He added, “By the way, we have glow sticks and I think Mr. Grogan’s room does, too.”

  “I can’t get through on my cellphone, haven’t been able to all afternoon,” someone said. Others chimed in, saying they hadn’t been able to either.