Wonder

thirty-seven

Malcolm Decter was alone in the house—well, except for Schrödinger. Caitlin was at the school dance, and Barb had gone out grocery shopping at Sobey’s, which was open twenty-four hours a day. He decided this was the perfect time to make his YouTube video.

“Are you sure there will be a lot of participants?” he asked as he fiddled with the controls for the webcam in his office.

“Yes,” replied Webmind through the computer’s speakers. “Over four million people worldwide have committed to the event, including thirteen thousand people who could reasonably be said to be famous: writers, artists, politicians, business leaders.”

“Politicians?” said Malcolm, surprised. Politics had always seemed the last place for a person like him—and not just because he couldn’t make eye contact and didn’t like shaking hands with strangers.

“Yes. Comparatively few in the United States; politicians there carefully craft their public images—or have them crafted for them. But even there, several mayors, congressmen, and senators have pledged to participate; in fact, many others are composing their blog posts or recording their YouTube videos even as we speak.”

Malcolm nodded. Of course, Barb wasn’t going to participate, and Caitlin was exempt; a decision had been taken to ask only adults to step forward. Malcolm wasn’t sure if his daughter qualified anyway although she surely tended that way.

“All right,” said Malcolm. “I’m ready.”

“Excellent. I know it is hard for you, but please try to look directly at the camera.”

Malcolm nodded and clicked the record button with his mouse. Suddenly his mouth was dry—he hadn’t expected this to be a difficult thing to say. He had a cold cup of coffee on his desk; he took a sip—he could edit all this out before uploading, of course. The webcam was at the top of the monitor, and on the screen he had Microsoft Word open, displaying the speech he’d prepared.

“I am not given to speaking much,” he read, “so forgive me for using prepared notes. I was born in Philadelphia, and now live in Waterloo, Canada. I am part of a minority that is deeply misunderstood. People have very confused ideas about us. Many are frightened of us. I’ve even heard it said that many people wouldn’t want their daughters or sons to marry one of us, and I know of people who have been denied jobs or promotions because they share this trait with me. But being what I am does not make me bad; being what I am does not make me dangerous; being what I am does not mean I don’t love, or hurt, or have a sense of humor.

“My name is Malcolm Decter, and I’m here today to tell the whole world what I am.” He took a deep breath, let it out, and then said, loudly and clearly. “I am an atheist.”

As the dance was winding down, Caitlin and Matt spoke again with Mr. Heidegger. He was excited to hear about her trip to New York, and he reiterated how much he missed having her in his class. “However,” he added, “young Mr. Reese here has been doing a good job of keeping me on my toes.” The conversation continued so long that they ended up being the last ones to leave the gym. Mr. H exited by the door that led directly outside.

Caitlin’s mom had said they could call for a lift home—and Caitlin thought that might be a good idea. After all, who knew where Trevor had gone? And he did have a history of confronting Matt while walking home.

But, as they’d seen earlier, it was a lovely evening—if cold, to Caitlin’s Texan blood—and Matt convinced her to walk. First they had to get their coats and her purse, though. Caitlin no longer had a locker here, so they’d put everything in Matt’s, up on the second floor.

By the time they got upstairs, everyone else had left and the lights were off. There were no windows in the corridor, although each classroom door had a small one, and some light was coming through from the street outside. EXIT signs were glowing red—the first such Caitlin had seen in the dark—and LEDs flashed on what Matt said were smoke detectors.

She’d been to Matt’s locker once before; it was very close to where her own had been—naturally enough, since they’d both had the same class for homeroom. The first time she’d gone to Matt’s locker—the first time they’d gone out together, for lunch at Tim Hortons—had been just seventeen days ago.

How fast were things supposed to move, she wondered? Yes, the singularity was all about acceleration, about things happening more and more rapidly, about a headlong rush into the unknown, but—

Matt seemed to be having more trouble navigating in the dark than she was. He’d walked this corridor at least as often as she had, but she’d done it for over a month while blind. She never consciously counted paces, but her body knew how far to go, whereas he kept looking at the doors they were passing, trying to read the dim room numbers marked on them.

She took his hand and took the lead. “It’s down here,” she said. She was reminded again of the days before the school year had begun when she’d come here to practice walking the empty hallways. It was easy for her to stride briskly now since the corridor was wide, straight, and deserted.

They reached Matt’s locker—again, he was looking at the number plates attached to their green doors, while she just knew that this was the right spot.

Caitlin’s locker had had a padlock, and although she’d known the numerical combination, she’d learned to open it by touch—so many degrees to the left, so many to the right. While Matt fumbled in the dark with his lock, she continued on down the corridor another twenty feet, which brought her to the door of the room that had been their math class. She peered through the little window.

The door was near the front of the classroom, so she was looking in at Mr. H’s desk, with its chair neatly tucked in, and obliquely at the green board along the front wall. It had writing on it, but she couldn’t read it from this angle and in this degree of darkness. She was curious about what the class was studying now, so she took the doorknob in her hand; it was cold and hard. She half expected the room to be locked, but it wasn’t. She pushed the door open and walked in to have a look at the board, but—

Sigh. For everyone else, it was habit, she was sure, ingrained over a lifetime. But she still never thought to hit the light switch as she came into a room. She turned to head back toward the door and her heart skipped a beat. There was a strange shape silhouetted in the doorway, with bizarre lumps and—

—and a voice that cracked. “Here you go,” Matt said, and Caitlin resolved the image: he had his coat draped over one arm, and her jacket and purse held in his other hand, extended toward her.

He stepped into the room. She came toward him, intending to flick on the light, but—

The thought came to her again. How fast were things supposed to move? How fast in this crazy new world?

She also thought about what her mother had asked: Do you like Matt in particular, or do you just like having a boyfriend in general?

And, of course, even before tonight, the answer had been the former: she really, really, really liked Matthew Peter Reese, and she knew with the same certainty she knew any mathematical truth that he really, really, really liked her.

And after tonight—after seeing him be so brave and so strong—she knew she more than liked him.

As she reached the door, she dimly saw the bank of four light switches set against a metal rectangle. She raised her hand, but then—yes, it was time—changed its trajectory and instead pushed the door shut.

And there they were, the two of them, in the dark, with Matt holding their coats. It was dim enough that Caitlin couldn’t make out his expression—but she knew which one it had to be. She closed the small distance between them, put her arms around his neck, moved her face toward his, and kissed him long and hard.

When they finally pulled back a bit, Caitlin could feel herself grinning widely.

“Hey,” Matt said, softly.

“Hey, yourself,” she replied.

But here? she thought. Here? And then: Why not? There was no place in the world where she felt more safe than in a math classroom.

She took her denim jacket and purse from him, and then took his hand, and she led him to the back of the room, behind the last row of desks. There were posters on the rear wall, and the graphics were big and bold enough that she could make them out: illustrations of geometric principles and conic sections.

She opened her purse, pulled out one of the foil-wrapped condoms her mother had given her, and handed it to Matt, whose mouth dropped open.

She smiled and put the purse on a chair. She spread out her denim jacket on the tile floor. She then took his jacket, which had a nylon exterior and was puffy—its chest and sleeves were filled with feathers or something else that was soft—and lay it on top of hers. And she took the condom back from him and conveniently set it on the outstretched sleeve of his jacket.

And then she smiled at him again, and crossed her arms in front of her chest, and took hold of the bottom of her silky top—which was still blue in some abstract sense, she knew, but looked black in this light—and pulled it over her head, revealing her lacy bra.

“Um,” said Matt softly, and “uh…”

Caitlin grinned again. “Yes?”

“What if we get caught?”

She came toward him and started unbuttoning his shirt. “I’m no longer a student here—they can’t expel me! And you? They like you too much to kick you out.”

Matt laughed. “True enough.” He helped undo his buttons, and when his shirt was off, he reached behind her and valiantly tried to unhook her bra. After thirty seconds of no success, Caitlin laughed and did it for him. His hands slid around to her front and cupped her breasts, and he said, very softly, “Wow.”

“Thanks,” she replied, equally softly.

He hesitated a moment. “Um, just, ah, just so you know, this is, ah—it’s… it’s my…”

Caitlin looked up at him. “Your first time?”

He turned his head slightly away. “Yeah.”

She reached up and softly touched his cheek, gently turning his head back toward her. “I know,” she said. “It’s mine, too. And I want it to be with you.”

He smiled, and it was wide enough that she could see it in the darkness, but it faded after a moment. “Um, what about—you know—I mean…”

“What?”

Matt dropped his voice to a whisper. “I, uh, I don’t think I can do it with Webmind watching.”

The eyePod was in the left front pocket of her tight jeans. She undid the metal button and unzipped the fly—it was easier to get the device out that way—then pulled it out and held its one button down for five seconds. Her vision shut off; everything became a featureless gray. Before that had happened, she’d noted the position of the closest desk, and she set the eyePod carefully on its surface. She then shimmied out of her jeans, smiled at where she knew Matt was, found his hand, and led him down onto the bed of coats.

“Fortunately,” she said, pulling him close, “I’m very good at doing things by touch…”