“Okay. But sooner or later I’d like to see you get out in the fresh air again.”
“Yes. Later. In the meantime we should speak of something else. Did you hand in your report today? How long will it be before you get your grade on it?”
“I already did.”
“You don’t sound happy.”
“She gave me a terrible grade.”
“Like an F?”
“No! Not that terrible. I’d kill myself. C minus. That’s terrible for me. It’s for credit. It’s going to pull my average down.”
“What didn’t she like about it?”
“She wants to think the jury was fine and upstanding, and that they listened to the facts and did their civic duty. And that reality is not subjective.”
“Oh. I see. She is a believer in the idea that there is such a thing as objective reality.”
Raymond stopped chewing and just sat a moment with a mouth full of cookie. But he couldn’t answer around it, so he chewed and swallowed quickly.
“You don’t think there is?”
“It’s hard to know. A very debatable point. But science now makes a good case that perhaps not.”
“What science? I never learned any science like that in school.”
“No, this would likely not be what they would teach you in school. Newer science. Quantum mechanics—that sort of science. Luis brought me a couple of audiobooks about it. It’s very fascinating, but then it stretches your mind until you think you might be a little bit crazy. The core idea is that a thing is not a thing until it has an observer. And the observer seems to play a role in what kind of thing it will snap into being. But beyond that—no need to be so esoteric. Let’s say I witness an accident, and I have one view, and you witness it, and you have a wholly differing opinion. And let’s say we argue and argue and argue, but in the end the truth is simply that we were standing in two different places. And that from my angle I saw things that from your angle could not be seen. Well . . . not all angles are physical or logistical. That’s all I’m saying.”
He chewed in silence for a moment longer, buoyed by the idea that the conversation was bringing life back into her demeanor. He reached inside himself and took a chance.
“Come to the market with me,” he said. “It’ll be fun. Just like the old days. We’ll talk more about this on the way.”
“Oh, Raymond. No. Please go for me. I am not feeling good, and I am just so very tired.”
Raymond was in his room, more or less minding his own business, when it all came up. And out.
It started over nothing. He placed his math textbook on the desk next to his laptop, but he had several books and stacks of notes lying around—he hadn’t been as good about organizing his desk as he normally would be—so it slid to the floor again. He sighed. Picked it up. Slammed it down on the desk again. It slid off again.
Next thing he knew, Raymond was scraping everything off his desk with one arm. The notebook computer landed on the carpet with a painful thump. Papers fluttered down.
But even that wasn’t enough. It only stoked the fire he felt inside. He lurched over to his bookshelves and scraped them clean, knocking all his books to the floor. He picked up a big handful, as if to put them back, but ended up bouncing them hard off the wall instead.
He looked up to see his mom standing in his open bedroom doorway, one hand on the knob. She had the toddler, Clarissa, on her hip. The little girl’s eyes had gone wide with fear.
Raymond stopped hurling and let the rest of his armful of books fall to the floor.
“Well,” his mother said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you how the trial went. Now I guess there’s no need.”
Raymond arrived at school more than fifteen minutes early and ran straight to Mr. Bernstein’s classroom. Literally ran.
The teacher stood by the window, leaning on the cold radiator and talking on his cell phone. He held up one finger to ask Raymond to wait.
Raymond’s report was sitting on Mr. Bernstein’s desk. He moved closer to it, then looked up at the teacher for permission. Bernstein met his eyes and nodded, then turned away to finish his phone conversation in private.
Raymond approached his paper, his heart thumping.
On the cover sheet, he saw a large red A+. “Excellent work,” the teacher had written underneath.
He flipped through the pages to see if there were additional notes.
“Good observations,” it said beside the conclusion.
Everything else he had written remained whole and not dissected.
He looked up to see the teacher standing in front of him. No longer on his phone.
“I thought it was an impressive piece of work,” Bernstein said. “Your thoughts about tribalism as it affects the justice system seemed very advanced to me. I was surprised to hear those observations from a teenager.”
“Oh. Well. I’ll be real honest. I based that on some stuff I heard from one of the attorneys.”
Raymond figured that, by not saying which one, he was staying true to his agreement not to quote the man.
“Okay. That makes sense. But it doesn’t change my thoughts about your grade. You understood what you heard, clearly, and you pulled it all together well. You made a compelling case.”
Raymond stood silent for a moment, not sure what he could—or should—say.
“What?” Bernstein asked. “You look . . .”
“It’s just that . . . Miss Evans didn’t like it much. She said my conclusion sounded like something a seventeen-year-old would think up. And she didn’t mean that as a compliment, believe me.”
“I guess different people will see it different ways. But I stand by my assessment. And I’m calling it an extra-credit assignment for English, so that A plus will count toward your final grade.”
“Good. Thank you! That’ll help balance off her C minus.”
“She gave you a C minus? Seriously?”
“I would never joke about a thing like that.”