Second hour pre-calc is filled with jocks and preps and other social elites whom Liz considered more than acquaintances but less than friends. They considered themselves much more than that, though, so when Ms. Greenberg says, “Take out last night’s assignment,” the class just stares at her.
Finally, a braver and slightly desperate student speaks up. “C’mon, Ms. Greenberg. You can’t really think that we’re able to concentrate at a time like this. . . .”
Ms. Greenberg fixes him with her piercing signature stare. “Were you at the hospital last night, Mr. Loven?”
“No,” he mutters.
“Then I expect you were neither physically nor emotionally incapable of completing your assignment. Please take it out.”
Turns out, most people didn’t finish the assignment. Ms. Greenberg docks points from all of them.
After going over the homework and answering questions for the three people who actually did it, Ms. Greenberg, ignoring the incredulous stares of the class, hands out note packets for the lesson. She writes Liz’s name across the top of one and puts it in the folder marked ABSENT.
“Ms. Greenberg . . .”
“Yes?”
Carly Blake hesitates. She plays soccer with Liz and they usually sit at the same lunch table, but she’s no closer to Liz than any of her other more-than-acquaintances-less-than-friends, and I think Ms. Greenberg knows this. Certainly her look doesn’t waver as Carly’s lip wobbles.
“I just don’t think . . . I just don’t know if we can—I mean, Liz is just so . . . and we’re all so worried . . .”
Ms. Greenberg actually glares at her, and Carly trails off into silence. Ms. Greenberg puts down the note packets and looks around the classroom. No one meets her eyes.
“All right,” she says. “That’s enough. I want you all to remember that Ms. Emerson is not dead. Stop acting like she is. Until I have been notified that she is, indeed, destined for a coffin, I refuse to believe that she is. So yes, I will hold her notes and schedule a day for her to make up her quiz, though I’m sure she’ll blatantly ignore both. For those of you who are using Liz’s accident as a reason to neglect your work, I assure you it’s a weak and despicable excuse.”
If another teacher had given such a speech, the class would have mutinied. A lot of things can be said about the student body of Meridian High school, but no one can accuse them of disloyalty. Liz is theirs, and they would have defended her to the death—or to a detention, whichever came first—if they needed to.
But Ms. Greenberg has long been loved and hated for her bluntness, and there’s something in her gaze that makes them all feel terribly ashamed.
There, in that classroom, I feel the tides turning. The period ends, and everyone rushes off. The rumors shift. All gossip, they say. Liz isn’t on her deathbed. Liz is no longer dead, but recovering. After all, she is Liz Emerson.
Just before third period, Julia comes back to school. For the first time in her life, she is a mess.
Having spent the night at the hospital, she wears the same sweatpants and shirt with the hole in the armpit. There are shadows beneath her eyes, and she is so pale that her skin is almost green.
From the moment she steps foot in the building, she is surrounded by sympathizers, but she hardly notices.
Julia has had her share of tragedy over the years, but they were tragedies contained within her world—her parents’ divorce, her brittle and strained relationship with her father, the death of her gerbil. Liz’s accident, however, is a terrifyingly immense thing, and try as she might, Julia cannot keep it within herself.
She left the hospital in a vain attempt to escape it. She came to school, and it found her here too.
Next, chemistry.
Liz was supposed to take it during her sophomore year, but due to scheduling conflicts and an extraordinarily unhelpful counselor, she is stuck taking both chemistry and physics during her junior year.
It’s really a pity, because Liz had been looking forward to chemistry since the brief unit in sixth grade. It was the colors that had initially attracted her, the vibrant blue of the Bunsen flame and the dusty red of copper and the deep violet of hydrates. It was the logic of balanced equations, the certainty that when element A mixed with element B, compound C would appear. It was like predicting the future; it was like magic. Most of all, it was being: of having to be so careful with the hydrochloric acid, of accidentally burning herself while lighting a match, of discovering.
Only, by the time she finally got to take the class, school had already stopped mattering.
Today there is no lab. There is no lecture. The class sits silently, in a darkness lit only by the episode of MythBusters on the screen.
They stare at the empty chair. They remember the first day of fifth grade, when Liz arrived and disrupted Meridian as only she could. Liz Emerson, they think, has always been a force to be noticed.
They are wrong.