On nights when Daisy and Bron both happen to rack out early, like tonight, Karl and I sometimes break out a couple of cold ones.
“Any way we can get the Red Sox game on that thing?” I’m staring at the massive monitor in the middle of the room, which is currently showing the main street of town. Might as well be a still life.
“Nope. It’s a closed circuit. I could probably rewire it though—if I wanted to lose my job.”
“Can’t have that,” I say. “I’d have to manage my own beer supply.”
We’re both quiet for a while, then Karl asks, “So, is this really what you do for a living—just make stuff up?”
I guess that’s a fair way to put it.
“Pretty much,” I say. “I write books and just hope people read them.”
“Are you on any bestseller lists? Got a fan club? Any groupies?”
“Well, I’ll be honest with you, if Tyler Bron didn’t love my books, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
Karl looks puzzled. “Tyler Bron?”
“Right. He’s read everything I’ve ever written—such as it is.”
Karl sets his beer down and looks straight at me. “You’re kidding, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is… ask anybody who works for him… Tyler Bron has never read anything but a textbook in his entire life.”
Chapter 23
IN HIS wildest dreams, Bron never imagined himself walking a kid to school. First, he’s always had a hard time imagining himself with a kid. Second, that’s what those big yellow buses are for, right?
But here he is, just as the sun starts to burn off the morning cool, walking alongside Gonzalo toward the low stucco building that houses grades K through twelve. Fewer than a hundred kids in all, with a lot of mixedgrade classes. And from what Bron knows already, a really overstressed faculty.
“So who’s your science teacher?” asks Bron. He wonders why the school’s science scores are so low. Lack of effort? Lack of interest?
“Mister Vern. He’s funny. He’s cool. Everybody likes him.”
“And what about you, Gonzalo? You like science?”
“Más o menos,” says Gonzalo. “It’s okay.”
“Okay?” Of course, Bron is prejudiced. Science was his favorite subject from day one. Bio, chemistry, physics, astronomy—you name it, he loved it. Astronomy, especially. Never got a grade below ninety-eight, and to this day he disputes those two points.
Gonzalo leads Bron through the school’s narrow corridors. Already, the place is packed with kids and bursting with noise. The decibel level is off the charts, and the pitch of the young voices makes the sound even more intense. Bron backs against the wall as two skinny girls in braids whip past him at top speed. Crazy energy.
“Ladies! Please! No running!” a teacher shouts from a classroom doorway. No use. They’re long gone.
“That’s him. That’s Mister Vern,” says Gonzalo, picking up the pace.
Bron recognizes Vern from the diner. Late twenties, already balding—with the remaining wisps of hair flying out wildly in every direction. Sallow complexion.
Stooped posture. Tired eyes.
The day hasn’t even started, and this guy already looks beat.
Chapter 24
Three hours later
“So, did you learn anything?” asks Vern with a weary smile.
Bron is sitting with the teacher at a round table at the edge of a courtyard behind the school. There’s no cafeteria, so the kids are lunching on whatever they brought from home. Vern is chewing on a peanut butter sandwich, his wild hair waving in the breeze. Tyler just finished sitting in on Vern’s class—and the truth is, he learned a lot.
“You really love science, I can tell that,” Bron says.
Today’s lesson was on dinosaurs, and Vern gave it his all—with uninhibited imitations of pterodactyls and theropods, complete with sound effects. The kids went wild, Gonzalo included.
“I do love it,” says Vern. “And I love kids. I just wish there was more we could do here.”
“For example?”
“Well, for example, computer studies and online research. If I’m not mistaken, the only computer in town is somewhere in the back of the library.”
“It exists,” says Bron with a smile. “I’ve seen it.”
“Basically, we’re holding the program together with Elmer’s glue and Scotch tape,” says Vern. He takes another bite of his sandwich. “Are you in the sciences, Tyler?”
“A little bit. Aerospace. Research. Satellite stuff.”
“Excellent. Where’d you go to school?”
The exact phrasing of the question allows Bron to give an honest answer. “MIT.”
Vern pauses midbite. “Okay. I’m officially impressed.”
Bron sees no point in mentioning that he’s still forty-eight credits short of a degree.
As the kids finish their lunches, the courtyard echoes with raucous laughter and yelling and the sound of athletic shoes squeaking against the tile pavement. Bron and Vern are at the edge of a wild churn of activity—so hyper it makes Bron’s pulse race.
Out of nowhere, a soccer ball flies toward Bron’s head. He flinches just as a kid soars past for a midair interception—inches from his noggin.
“Nice save, Gonzalo,” says Vern. “Excellent form.”
“?De nada!” shouts Gonzalo, spinning and laughing as he heads back across the courtyard.
“Perfect example right there,” says Vern. “Gonzalo is as bright as they come. Wants to learn. Handles anything I throw at him. But at some point, I just run out of ways to keep him interested.”
“Gonzalo’s great,” says Bron. “I like everything about him except his rooster.”
“Zapata?” asks Vern, rolling his eyes. “I’m with you there. I’d put that damned thing in a pot.”
A bell rings. A few of the other teachers start to wrangle the kids back into the building. Bron and Vern bring up the rear, collecting the stragglers.
“Great talking to you, Tyler,” says Vern. “And listen… if you ever want to do a guest lecture or something, let me know. We need all the help we can get.”
The whole time, Bron’s brain has been turning. He’s never been comfortable just standing in the front of a room and presenting. Not his style. But he does have one thought. Something really cool—but not easy to pull off.
“Let me ask you a question,” he says.
“Sure,” says Vern.
“What’s the school policy on field trips?”
Chapter 25
Two weeks and a lot of permission slips later
It’s an exceptionally starry night, just as Bron promised.
On a small plateau five miles from the school, the entire student population of the town is squirming excitedly in their sleeping bags. The kids are all wide-eyed and looking up—as special guest Tyler Bron outlines the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere. It’s an astronomy lesson in the wild, taught by a guy who clearly knows his stuff.
Vern recruited a few of his fellow teachers to chaperone. He even got Franklin Delgado, the school principal, to show up. Delgado wears a perpetually sour expression—the look of a guy who’s totally given up on life. But thirty-two years ago this month, he earned his master’s degree in astrophysics, with a specialty in quarks. He loves outer space. And though he’d never admit it, he hasn’t had this much fun in a long, long time.
Sunny’s here, too. After Bron’s help in the stockroom, how could she say no?
The kids are wide awake. Some are staring through cardboard tubes that serve as telescopes. But the person who’s most pumped is Tyler Bron. The sky is stunning—wide open and endless. Out here, away from the town lights, the stars seem close enough to touch. It’s not much of a stretch to say that, right now, Bron is pretty much in heaven.
Once he gets the kids quieted down, he leads off with astronomy’s greatest hits: Orion’s Belt. The Dog Star. Arcturus.
Then he moves on to Ursa Major. With broad sweeps of his arm, he outlines the figure of a huge bear four hundred trillion miles away, give or take.