Excerpt from T.W.I.C (Chapter 7, first draft)

The teacher’s lounge at the Brooklyn High School reeked of nuked lean cuisines, Jamaican beef patties and stale coffee. Ms. Simon rarely ate lunch and when she did, she ate with the students. She told her colleagues that it added a dimension to her relationship with them but the truth was the thought of this smell and the “TV static like” white noise of the tenured teachers decaying hope made her dizzy. Most of them had given up a long time ago and promised her she would too. The weight of the metal detectors, the blatant disrespect, archaic books, senseless violence, the administration’s ridiculous policies and the overall lack of effort by the children and parents made the cross of the systemically flawed educational system impossible to bear. Mrs. Ingram, the 11th grade English teacher told her on her first day; “Today you feel like you’re walking on water, tomorrow you’ll feel like you’re drowning on solid ground.” That was almost six months ago and although every once in a while Ms. Simon had to take a really deep breath, she was tougher than her petite frame and sensible T.J Maxx clothes let on and being born and raised in Bedstuy made her a really good ground swimmer.

The only teacher that seemed to notice her unusual presence was the physics teacher Mr. Petrick.

“Greetings Nina, what brings you to this scurvy galley?” He was trying to wipe off the remnants of a beef patty from his infamous lab coat which hung down to the floor and concealed his feet. No one had ever seen Mr. Petrick without his lab coat. Ms. Hennent said she’d even seen him wearing it on a Saturday at a mall in New Jersey eating at Chipotle. Some of the teachers swore he was naked under it. Naked or not, Nina had liked him right away. He had a lanky Krameresque frame with a curly Arnold Horshack afro, translucent green eyes and the remnants of a cockney accent that he embellished. He seemed to be the only teacher with any significant number of years that still had that impish gleam in the back of his eyes that showed he loved to teach and inspire even when no one was taught or inspired.

“I came looking for you Jonathan.”

Nina was the only teacher that called him Jonathan. The others called him Johnny, John or even JP. He not so secretly loathed any abbreviation of his name and appreciated Nina for noticing.

“Then consider me flattered and at your service,” he gallantly replied half bowing.

“I want to talk to you about one of our mutual students, Grayson.”

“Ahh yes Mr. Benjamin, quite a remarkable young man. A classic example of one of Herr Einstein’ theories.”

“What do you mean Jonathan?”

“Why Ms. Simon surely you’re familiar with the young patent clerk’s famous theories? Mr. Benjamin is the personification of energy not being created or destroyed only changing forms. He, for lack of a better term, has been here before.”

“And by here you mean?”

“Why the three-dimensional expanse in which all material things exist of course. We are focused points of conscious energy weighted with a physical structure, you see Ms. Simon our atoms entrapment in our DNA is a transient biochemical event just as in an astrophysical sense our entrapment in the solar system is a transient phase and if one could somehow use a sort of sub-atomic muscle memory to” ... the look on her face stopped him short.

“Your furrowed brow tells me I’m not making much sense.”

“I’m sorry Jonathan, I understand your point and in a more pedestrian sense I agree with you. He is well beyond his years and seems to absorb information effortlessly. Almost unbelievably so.”

“Surely you don’t suspect some sort of rouse?”

“I honestly don’t know what or if I suspect. Maybe he’s an autistic savant. I don’t know. If he were thirty he would be one of the most brilliant, creative, insightful, beguiling people I’ve ever met or heard of for that matter but at seventeen he is”...

“A case study”, he said finishing her thought.

“Exactly”, she agreed.

“How’s he doing in your class?” She knew what Jonathan was going to say.

“He’s finished.”

She didn’t know he was going to say that. “What do you mean finished?”

“He has turned in all my assignments and completed his midterm and final exams.”

“But it’s only November.”

“It would seem that time is also relative Ms. Simon.” Petrick smirked. “I can’t in good conscious confine him to my class when I cannot offer him anything he doesn’t already have. And if I’m being completely honest he made the tests up for me. How’s he doing in your class?”

“Well he’s certainly not finished, she said ribbing him.

“Only because it’s your first year and he’s not familiar with your syllabus or lesson plans. He only shows up for your class.”

“The other teachers don’t have a problem with this Jonathan?”

“With what? A student who completes all his assignments gets straight A’s, helps to raise the standardized testing scores and has the courtesy not to show up and further disrupt and already overcrowded classroom. Look around you Ms. Simon the only thing these, for lack of a better word, educators, have a problem with is that more of their students, or sons or husbands for that matter, aren’t like him. He gave Mr. Gereon a stock tip last year that made him a small fortune and Mrs. Williams swears he saved her marriage and cured her of her fear of heights.”

Nina laughed.

“It’s quite true.” He joined her laugh.

“Have you ever met his parents?” Her laughter subsiding.

Almost on queue Grayson nonchalantly walked into the teacher’s lounge and directly to the brown stained coffee pot. He poured some of the three day old thick mud into a styrofoam cup and turned right around and starting walking toward the door. Some of the teachers nodded his way and Nina swore that Mrs. Jackson, the guidance counselor, bit her bottom lip and winked at him.

“Jonathan, Nina,” he said casually acknowledging their presence as he walked past the two of them and out the door into the hallway.

Nina looked at Jonathan her face a ball of confusion.

“Puzzles me as well, he said in response to her look, I don’t know how he drinks that abysmal concoction either.”