Chapter Five: Unexpected
______________________________________________________________________________
Meg and Calvin, straining to peer through the trees, saw nothing.
Then Charles Wallace cried, "My dragons!"
They turned around, and they saw, there by the great rock –
Wings, it seemed like hundreds of wings, spreading, folding, stretching –
And eyes…
How many eyes can a drive of dragons have?
And small jets of flame…
Suddenly a voice called to them from the direction of the woods, "Do not be afraid!"
______________________________________________________________________________
Two weeks, four days after Jared disappeared from school, he reappeared again.
Kim, feeling the long-term effects of depression ever more painfully as the days had passed, came to an abrupt stop when she rushed into school and saw him at his regular place by his locker.
If she hadn't have been so shocked and so happy and so relieved to see him she might have noticed that he was not joking with his usual group of noisy friends. She might have noticed that he seemed to have grown about eight inches in the brief two weeks, four days he had been out, reaching a height that now towered over her small frame. She might have noticed that he looked like he had traded muscles with a body builder. She might have noticed that his shoulder length black hair was now cut short around his ears.
None of this she noticed, however, in her wordless joy to have him back.
It did not take her long to suspect that something was different though when she walked into the cafeteria.
Jared was sitting at a table in the corner with only one other person. For one thing, it was unusual for Jared to sit by himself. Unlike Kim, he seemed to need to surround himself with people – to engage with them instead of observe them. However, what was even more unusual was that he was sitting with Paul Ohanko.
As soon as she saw it, she halted. Paul had rather a reputation around the school for having a short temper. And since he had had that weird growth spurt a month ago his temper had become even more … unpredictable. Kim had always assumed that Jared and Paul were polar opposites.
Paul caught her gaping and scowled. Slowly his hands began to tremor as she continued to stare. The trembling increased until Jared grabbed his arm and began speaking to him quietly in a fierce voice. Paul dragged his eyes away from Kim and took deep breaths. As soon as Paul returned to his usual stillness, Jared turned around. Jared's back had been to Kim the entire time, but when he turned he saw nothing.
By this time Kim was huddled at her corner table, disguised by shadows.
She took deep, calming breaths, blushing furiously and panicked at the hatred and anger she had seen in Paul's eyes when he caught her staring. More troubling, she thought about the sadness she had seen in Jared's.
Jared – who continually joked about his cheese antipathy and played pranks and enjoyed the sunshine and the rain…
Kim watched Jared throughout the entire lunch break. No one else came to sit at their table, and Jared and Paul talked quietly with each other until the end of the period.
Kim walked to English class with a strange sense of anticipation. She wanted desperately to see Jared up close. Maybe then she could understand what made him so sad. If she could understand, then maybe she could help him or care for him like she had been trying to these past few years…
She didn't want him to particularly notice her help. She didn't need thanks or gratitude. But she did want him to notice her. Was that too much to ask?
Apparently, it was.
Jared stared down at his desk, never speaking, for the entire lesson.
And he did the same thing the next day….
And the next day.
And the next day.
Finally, four days after his return – on a Friday – he looked up when Mrs. Chosovi asked him a direct question.
"Can you tell me anything, Mr. Tala-Hania, about the social conditions of Dickens' world that provoked so much of the author's anger in David Copperfield?" she asked.
Kim was not so much shocked that Jared answered (for he was smart, even if he paid little attention in school – and she had always been sure that there was much he knew that he never let on to his friends) but by the timbre of his voice. It was low and gravelly, but somehow warm at the same time. A deep bass voice….
Kim stared at him in shock (and, truth be told, in adoration) the entire time he was speaking, paying little attention to the words he actually spoke. He could have been speaking a foreign language for all the notice she took of it.
And then she abruptly realized that he had stopped speaking several moments before and was looking straight at her for the first time.
Kim desperately wished that she could say something – anything – that was smart or witty or funny. But she could only turn swiftly around and stare down at her desk in embarrassment, her face flushing. Out of the corner of her eye she could still see him staring, and her cheeks turned a shade darker.
But before she had turned away, she had seen a strange look on his face... At first it had been open-faced shock… It almost had a feeling of childlike vulnerability to it – the kind of look that Joey had on his face whenever he was trying to be brave but failed – but much more intense … visceral…
That look of shock was just changing over to something else when she looked away… something much more powerful… with an adult awareness and passion to it so different from the child-like surprise of a moment earlier….
But Kim, with all her skill at observation and analyzation when it came to people, was completely unsure what Jared's expression meant. It was unlike any look she had ever seen before on a face.
And to be perfectly honest, the intensity of it scared her to death.
Feeling her face flush even darker, Kim swept her black hair from behind her ear, using it to shield her face (and, truth be told, silently wishing her hair was longer). As soon as she did so, she could see through the screen of her hair Jared shifting in frustration.
The moment the bell rang, Kim grabbed her backpack, not even bothering to shove her English book into it, and ran out the door. She heard Jared calling for her to wait, but she didn't want to think about it…
She was never really sure afterwards why she ran away from him. Was she afraid that this notice was too good to be true? Was she afraid of the intensity of his newfound interest?
Or was she afraid of finally, actually experiencing what she had dreamed about since the sixth grade?
Kim didn't know how, but she did make it to her last period class in record time. Her skill at maneuvering crowds helped her now. She skimmed quickly and effortlessly down the hallways, hearing Jared's more awkward attempts to reach her fade into the noise of the school.
She turned a corner and collapsed into the classroom, slumping into the last seat of the class, furthest away from the door, breathless and confused.
Had what she thought had happened really happened?
