Special topics in calamity physics - By Marisha Pessl Page 0,19

and kicked the candy bars.

But again—he was gone. There'd be no awkward reunion, no WHEN LOVE SPEAKS STOP THE VOICE OF THE GODS MAKE HEAVEN DROWSY WITH THE HARMONY STOP.

It wasn't until I dejectedly returned to the Photo Center that I noticed the shopping cart. Abandoned by the Drop-Off counter, jutting out into the middle of the aisle, it was empty—as I could have sworn his had been—apart from one item, a small plastic package of something called, ShifTbush™ Invisible Gear, Fall Mix.

Puzzled, I picked up the bag. It was stuffed with crunchy nylon leaves. I read the back: "ShifTbush™ Fall Mix, a blend of 3-D, photo-enhanced, synthetic forest leaves. Apply it using EZStik™ to your existing camo and you'll be instantly invisible in your woodland surroundings, even to the keenest of animals. ShifTbush™ is the accomplished hunter's dream."

"Don't tell me you're about to go through a deer-hunting phase," Dad said behind me. He sniffed. "What is that horrific smell —men's cologne, acidic sap. I couldn't find you. Figured you'd disappeared into that black hole known as the public restroom."

I tossed the package back into the cart. "I thought I saw someone."

"Oh? Now tell me your gut reaction to the following words. Colonial. DeWahay. Wood. Patio. Five Pieces. Sun resistant, wind resistant, Judgment Day resistant. Amazing value at just $299. And consider the Dellahay motto neatly inscribed on their cute little tags: 'Patio furniture isn't furniture. It's a state of mind.' " Dad smiled, putting his arm around me as he pushed me gently toward Garden. "I'll give you ten thousand dollars if you can tell me what that means."

Dad and I left Wal-Mart with patio furniture, a coffee machine and one paroled goldfish (freedom was too much for him; he went belly up after a day of living on the outside), and yet, weeks later, even when the Improbables and Highly Unlikelies had taken over my head, I couldn't let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wai-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles.

IV

The House of the Seven Gables

Naturally, for me, the idea of a Permanent Home (the definition of which I took to be any shelter Dad and I inhabited in excess of ninety days—the time an American cockroach could go without food) was nothing more than a Pipe Dream, Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, the hope to purchase a brand new Cadillac Coupe DeVille with baby blue leather interior for any Soviet during the drab winter of 1985.

On countless occasions, I pointed out New York City or Miami on our Rand-McNally map. "Or Charleston. Why can't you teach Conflict Resolution at University of South Carolina at This Is Actually a Civilized Location?" My head mashed against the window, seatbelt strangling me, my gaze dazed by the ceaseless rewinding of cornfields, I'd fantasize that one day, Dad and I would quietly settle somewhere—anywhere—like dust.

Due to his stock refusals over the years, however, during which he ridiculed my sentimentality ("How can you eschew travel? I don't understand. How can my daughter wish to be dimwitted and dull as some handmade ashtray, as floralized wallpaper, as that sign—yes, that one—Big Slushy. Ninety-nine cents. That's your name from now on. Big Slushy."), during our highway discussions of The Odyssey (Homer, Hellenistic Period) or The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck, 1939), I'd stopped even alluding to such literary themes as the Homestead, Motherland or Native Soil. And thus it was with great fanfare Dad unveiled over rhubarb pie at the Qwik Stop Diner outside of Lomaine, Kansas ("Ding! Dong! The Witch Is Dead," he sang facetiously, causing the waitress to frown at us suspiciously), that for the entirety of my high school senior year, all seven months and nineteen days, we would reside in a single location: Stockton, North Carolina.

I'd heard of it oddly enough, not only because I'd read, a few years back, the cover story in Ventures magazine, "Fifty Top Retirement Towns," and Stockton (pop. 53,339), marooned in the Appalachian Mountains, evidently quite pleased with its nickname (The Florence of the South) had been written up as #39, but also because the mountain city had featured prominently in a fascinating FBI account of the Jacksonville fugitives, Escaped (Pillars, 2004), the true story of the Vicious Three who escaped from Florida State Prison and survived for twenty-two years in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. They roamed the thousands of trails veining the foothills between North