my late entry wordlessly and gestured to a seat directly in front, so I never had a chance to look behind me, and her name on the roll call meant nothing. I didn’t see her in calculus because she wasn’t there. It was biology where I saw her for the first time, striding in with a pencil in her hair and the hard plane of her textbook slanting against the curvature of her chest. She was dark-lipped and black-haired with Egyptian eyes, and wore a loose yellow dress that softened the withering severity of her features. She sat down across the room from me and spoke secrets to the girls who fell in place around her. Somehow the geometric bracket of her chair made her all the more beautiful; I could see how her lower back arced away from the plastic and how the cruel flatness of the seat accented the teardrop of her rear, and as she switched her legs I could see the tender underskin of her knees unseal and reseal with sweat. I didn’t want to speak to her or meet her. I just wanted to watch her for the rest of my life.
Mr. Gottschalk took attendance. Justin Ambrose’s first name had been misprinted Justine on all the attendance sheets, and this was the third class in which I had to watch him shrug off the chuckles. The next name called was Celeste Carpenter, and she, the girl, raised her hand. A tiny woven bracelet fell from her wrist to the swell of her arm. Celeste—that name rang a bell, but how could I possibly know her? I leaned forward, trying to see around dozens of uglier bodies, but from where I sat, only the barest outline of her face was visible.
“There’s no Joey Crouch? Going once, going twice …”
How long had he been saying my name? Seeing Gottschalk go back to his list, I raised my hand and blurted, “Here!”
Nearly everyone in the room turned. I was met with the faces of my new life: inquisitive, territorial, bored, amused. I felt the red that colored my face, remembered my stupid duck-in-sunglasses T-shirt. I couldn’t help it: I looked at Celeste Carpenter. She had found me as well.
Gottschalk looked up. He was a short, thick man with a triangle of dark hair rising from the top of his head. There was something swollen about his face, as if the underlying structure had been made from tied balloons, then painted over with skin. “Mr. Crouch, splendid of you to join us!” He bent his balloon-animal face. “The name is unfamiliar. I take it you are new?”
I nodded but was so far away I couldn’t be sure that he saw it.
“Stand up,” he said.
I gripped my desk. It felt scummy, hard, and real—unlike this moment.
“Mr. Crouch,” he said. “Do as I say. Stand up.”
I slid sideways from the chair and stood. My vision rocked. Far below, students’ eyes twinkled up like street-lamps.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we call a teachable moment,” said Gottschalk. “Observe Mr. Crouch. This is his first day here. He is ill at ease. These feelings incite within him distress. But this is not psychology class—that’s upstairs with Mrs. Keaton. This is biology, and what we’re interested in here is how the exercises of the mental induce actualities of the physical. So take a look at Mr. Crouch. What do you see?”
My arms hung flat at my sides. I stared at the teacher, afraid to look anywhere else. There was giggling, but no one said anything.
“I only know two of your names thus far, so I’m forced to call on Mr. Ambrose, Mr. Justin Without-an-E Ambrose,” said Gottschalk. “Mr. Ambrose, meet Mr. Crouch. Tell me what you see.”
There was an edginess to Justin’s appearance that I had seen too many times before. It was the desperate look of the bullied finally given occasion to bully. I braced myself.
“I see sweat?” Justin ventured. The class roared as if prompted by a maestro. I reached one hand to steady myself against my chair but it was too many miles away. Justin was right, of course. The stains from my morning run still shadowed my pits. I felt a drop of perspiration clinging to an eyelash and I tried not to blink. I see tears! I could almost hear Justin Ambrose’s jubilation.
“Very good!” said Gottschalk over the merriment. “Sweat, aka transpiration: courtesy of the good old hypothalamus, the body generates water as a means of thermoregulation, a process