“Sure.”
Dustin flashed me a what-the-hell-is-going-on look, to which I shrugged even though I knew she probably wanted to ask me where my project was. I figured she’d give Calvin a pass, but she was going to flunk me for sure.
When the last student had left, Ms. Fuentes sat on the edge of her desk and smiled.
“About my roller coaster—”
“That’s what I want to speak to you about.”
Great, I thought. Here it comes.
“Remember when I told you I belonged to a group of hobbyists who build model roller coasters and that we meet a couple of times a year to show off our designs?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“We’re meeting this summer, and I’d like to ask you, and Calvin of course, for permission to take your project with me to show them.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s really quite ambitious,” she said, like she hadn’t heard me. “I know I said you’d have the opportunity to present them in class this week, but I couldn’t wait to see yours and Calvin’s in action. It’s reckless and creative, and it could have failed spectacularly, yet you boys pulled it off. I’m extremely proud.”
I wasn’t sure I was hearing Fuentes correctly. “You have our project?”
Ms. Fuentes nodded. “Calvin’s father brought it in this morning.” She walked toward the back of the class, where the other projects were set up and crowded on the tables and shelves and floor. I didn’t spot ours at first, but then I saw it on a shelf in the corner. Completed.
I walked past Ms. Fuentes to our roller coaster. Calvin had finished everything. The corkscrew, my barrel roll, the extra loops. He’d even added cheesy ancient-Egyptian-inspired decorations to the mounting board and around the track, and had given our coaster the name “The Ozymandias Orbiter.” I watched as Fuentes set the car at the bottom of the first incline. The last time we’d worked on it, we still hadn’t figured out how to propel the car up the track, but Calvin had devised a brilliant solution.
“How’d you come up with the idea of using an electromagnet to repel the cars up the slope?” she asked.
“Calvin did that,” I said in awe of him. Even with everything he’d been through, even though I’d betrayed him, Calvin had still finished our project.
“It’s ingenious.” Fuentes plugged in the magnet and turned it on. The three linked cars shot up the incline and barreled along the track smoothly. For thirty-eight seconds, I held my breath and waited for the cars to detach and fly loose from the track, but they never did. They reached the end—which we’d discussed coating with a spray-adhesive to slow the cars, and which Calvin seemed to have done—slowed, and came to rest.
“Wow.” The word slipped out, and I cleared my throat because I didn’t want to clue Fuentes in that this was the first time I’d actually seen the roller coaster in action outside of the computer simulation.
Ms. Fuentes nodded. “Honestly, I was worried this project might be too advanced, but you all, especially you and Calvin and Dustin, proved up to the challenge. Good work.”
“Thanks.” The thing was, despite what I’d constantly said to Calvin, I didn’t really care about the grade. I was caught up wondering what it meant that Calvin had finished the project on his own and had his father bring it in. Had he completed it as a peace offering? Was this his way of letting me know he’d forgiven me?
“So you don’t mind if I hold on to it for my group?” Fuentes asked.
“Sure, yeah.”
Ms. Fuentes’s face lit up. “Wonderful!”
“Thanks, Ms. Fuentes.” She probably thought I was thanking her for the praise, but even if Calvin still hated me for betraying him, she was the reason I’d gotten to know him. Regardless of how things turned out—if I found Tommy, if the universe collapsed and swallowed us all—the time I’d spent with Calvin had made the last few months bearable. More than that, Calvin had become part of my life, as real as Tommy.
Ms. Fuentes continued to beam with pride. “So, have you decided where you’re going to college? I assume you are going.”
“University of . . .” I stopped myself. The University of Colorado didn’t exist anymore. Colorado didn’t exist anymore. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Well, regardless of what school you choose, I suspect you’ll do great things. My college years were some of the best of my life. There’s more to learn than you’ll ever know.”
“I guess,” I said. “But, and I know this is going to sound weird, I think I’m going to miss high school.”
“Maybe, but the world is bigger than you can possibly imagine, Ozzie, and you’ve only just begun to explore it.”
The irony of her statement wasn’t lost on me. “Ms. Fuentes? Remember when you taught us about particle-wave duality?” She nodded. “And you showed us that video on the double-slit experiment?”
“Fascinating stuff,” Ms. Fuentes said. “Some days I think I would have enjoyed specializing in theoretical physics.”
“Well, I was wondering: If observing atoms is what causes them to decide how to act, does that mean we shape reality?”
Fuentes furrowed her brow and took in a long, deep breath. “That’s a somewhat esoteric reading of the theories.”
“Is it? If the world around us is in a state of flux until we observe it, how do we know that our intentions and thoughts don’t impact what it will become?”
“Because we don’t actually change anything, Ozzie,” she said. “It’s all about perception.”
“I don’t follow.”
Fuentes tapped her lip with her index finger. Then she said, “Let me show you something.” I followed her to her desk and waited while she rolled the overhead projector in front of the whiteboard. She hunted around until she found a sheet of paper. She folded it into three even sections.
“When I fold the paper like this,” she said, “it forms a triangular prism. Three equal rectangles that connect to form a triangle.”
“Uh, okay?”
“Now, when I hold it up to the light, what do you see?” Fuentes positioned the paper on the overhead so that its shadow was projected on the whiteboard.
“Aside from your hand?” I said. “A rectangle.”
“Right. And how about now.”
“A kind of flattened hexagon.”
“Right again.” Fuentes turned the paper on its end. “And now what?”