BRONTE
37) PHOSPHORESCENCE
The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we’re so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible.
I mean, look at airplanes—come on, how could they not be impossible? These gigantic metal things you’d need a massive hydraulic winch just to get off the ground? Please! They used to say, “If man were meant to fly, he’d have wings”; but it didn’t stop poets from dreaming, did it? Then a few hundred years ago a man named Bernoulli came up with an elegant mathematical principle about pressure, air density, and velocity—and bingo! Poetry became poetry in motion, and now objects bigger than blue whales are filling the friendly skies, thank you very much.
I think small children are far more in tune with the wonder of it all, far better than the rest of us more “sensible” and “mature” folk. They look at every little thing, from fireflies to lightning, and stand in awe that such things exist. Sometimes we need to be reminded that that’s how we should feel…but, on the other hand, if we felt that way all the time, we’d just marvel at the fireworks and never get anything done.
I will reluctantly admit that I am also a victim of species numbness. I, too, have taken the wondrous and have magically made it boring. Fireflies contain reactive phosphor; lightning is just static. Yawn.
I will also admit that Tennyson and I came to accept Brewster’s mystical talent far too quickly. Even though I tried to hold on to the wonder, I couldn’t. The fact that he could heal—and steal—the hurts of others became a commonplace fact. That was my first mistake. Because once you stop marveling at that firefly you caught in a jar, it sits on a shelf with no one to let it out.
38) COTILLION
Before Uncle Hoyt had his steamroller accident and Brew took on the worst beating of his life, I was busy enticing Brewster out of his shell. Tennyson had become his personal trainer; but my role was far more intimate, as well it should be. I was Brew’s muse extraordinaire, determined to caress him into a meaningful social life. Having read various books on psychology, I thought I had Brew figured out. All he needed was a little encouragement. Of course I couldn’t have been more wrong, but I’ve never been very good at abandoning theories.
“You need to reinvent yourself,” I announced to him at lunch one day, holding his hand across the table for everyone in the cafeteria to see.
“My current invention works just fine,” he said. “People stay away from me; I stay away from them.”
I shook my head. “Not anymore. You, my sad, poetic stud, are not a loser; and it’s time you stopped acting like one. The days of you skulking around the school are over.” He tried to eat, but I was holding his eating hand, so all he could do was clumsily stab at the food with a fork in his left fist.
“Maybe I like skulking.”
“You’ll like having friends more.” But he didn’t seem convinced, only concerned. “Are you going to look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t want friends?” I gave him back his hand, but he didn’t switch the fork, leaving his hand available for me to take again. I smiled, marveling at all the little things that mean so much, and wondered when I had become so cloyingly Hallmark.
“It’s not that I don’t want friends,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
But good idea or not, I was going to make it happen. The next in a long line of Brewster-related missions. As I’ve said, I’m not the most popular girl in school, but I’m not unpopular either. That makes me socially balanced, which means my friends are balanced, too; and those are the types of people most likely to warm up to Brew. I called over my friend Hannah Garcia, because she can slide a turtle out of its shell without it even knowing.
“Hannah,” I said as she sat down with us, “Brewster is under the delusion that he’s socially inept.” Brew threw up his hands. “Bronte!”
“Oh, don’t get out the heart paddles!” I told him, then turned back to Hannah. “As I was saying, he’s been
