Period 8 - By Chris Crutcher Page 0,50
and since the night I cheated on Hannah, a hell of a lot more doesn’t than does. I know I’m obsessed, so it’s all running together, but . . . wanna hear something really crazy?”
Logs laughs. “Don’t stop now.”
“I was looking back on the night I messed up, when Mary asked me to dance.”
“And . . .”
“I swear, there was this look on Arney’s face when she asked me. It was like he sicced her on me. Then the day you and I saw her up at the lake; that day she came back, she said there were things she couldn’t tell me. ‘Awful things,’ she said. I thought she was talking about her dad, but now I’m not so sure. Arney . . .”
“You think Arney is actually involved in Mary’s disappearance.”
“Couldn’t be, right?” Paulie says. “He’s a fucking kid, like me.”
“I think you’re probably pissed at him, Paulie, but some of this stuff is easy to check out,” Logs says. “Tomorrow I’ll see if I can track Mr. Wells down and find out if he knows where Mary is. We’ll go from there. Until then, there’s nothing to do if you don’t get more messages from Mary, so why don’t you go home and try to get some sleep.”
“Because I have to go home and get at least one paragraph down on my senior thesis, or I’m going to be stuck in this hellhole without you.”
Logs puts his hand on Paulie’s head. “Go forth and write as if your life depended on it, grasshopper, because it does. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
Draft V
What do you do when you know your brain isn’t developed enough to do the right thing? Brain scientists tell us the adolescent brain isn’t quite “cooked” yet. The evolution of the individual follows the pattern of the evolution of the species. The emotional brain—the instinctive brain—has been fully evolved in those species in line to turn into humans for millions of years. The rational brain—evident only in humans—has been evolved for, in relative terms, a blink of an eye. (Medina; Brain Rules). The development of the individual brain follows that same pattern. The emotional aspect is fully formed at an early age, but the rational aspect doesn’t become fully developed until the early to mid-twenties (Medina; Brain Rules). Which accounts for why teenagers often do what seems like some spectacularly stupid shit.
But to say that the rational brain isn’t fully developed in adolescence isn’t to say that it isn’t almost there. The more we know about where that development is headed, the better chance we have of making better, more adultlike decisions.
(Okay, that’s further than I’ve gotten before. Taking my partially developed brain to bed.)
Paulie hits the light and lays his head back on his pillow, staring out his bedroom window at a starry, moonless night, imagining being Bruce Logsdon on that day toward the end of 1968 when he first saw a photograph of our blue ball hanging in the void of space, and all that couldn’t be seen from that distance. His mind drifts toward semiconsciousness when suddenly Mary’s face flashes before him. What if she’s out there in some tortuous situation and can’t call for help? What if her last text ever was to his phone? Was she suicidal? “Might not make it back” could mean a lot of things. sory I got u into this. What? What did she get him into? And what is the danger? His imagination is driving him crazy. The one person he’d give anything to talk to has nothing for him but contempt. Truth be told, as angry and hurt and disappointed as he’s been, he’d do anything to make up with her.
Logs rolls into the school parking lot an hour early and lets himself into the main office, determined to clear up as much of the Mary Wells mystery as he can. He brings up the Wellses’ numbers on the office computer: home and cells for Mom, Dad, and Mary, noticing that Mary’s number does not correspond to the one that popped up on Paulie’s phone last night. He slips a note under Dr. Johannsen’s door: Please call my room ASAP. Logs
He walks through the breezeway, into the math/science department foyer and toward his room, lost in thought.
“Hey, Mr. Logs.”
He looks up to see Hannah Murphy on the carpeted hallway floor next to his door, writing in a notebook and texting.
“Hannah. You’re early.”
“You have no idea.”
“Been here awhile, huh?” Logs glances around the empty