Hawk Mountain by Hawk Mountain (retail) (epub)

Author:Hawk Mountain (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

SIX

On the road to school there was a dead groundhog, and then, a little later, a part of a raccoon. Anthony spotted both and stared at them, enthralled, turning his head to see more. Todd, after the raccoon, stopped the car for fear that he’d throw up. He’d rolled the window down. He was tired, his arms were so sore that he could barely lift Anthony into the car.

The images of the groundhog, on its back with closed eyes to the sun and its long, yellowed, front teeth, followed him to his desk, where he sat with a copy of A Separate Peace. The book had a different cover now than when he was in school. Now it lacked the image of a sullen boy standing by a tree. There was a cartoonish tree instead, a silhouette of two boys, and the title floated across the top in a banner. No indication of the war in the book, the failed operation, the ways that boys cleave to each other.

Todd’s head ached at his temples. The kids in his homeroom told them they were here as he said their names. He barely looked up. Then the bell, and they left loudly, and a few minutes later his students came in with their bags and phones and gum. They took their seats loudly, the metal legs of the chairs groaning as they scraped across the floor. They would all talk till he talked, he knew, they would never be silent on their own, they were laughing and would keep laughing. I should’ve cut the leg off at the thigh instead, he thought, considering his sore shoulders.

“Tell me about chapter eight,” Todd said. They told him about chapter eight. It resonated with them when Finny said that there was no war happening, that it was all a conspiracy. It resonated because, they told Todd, they don’t trust anything anymore.

“How can you know if anything exists?” Colleen Miles said, and someone behind her groaned.

“Yeah, what if Colleen doesn’t exist?” another student said.

“No, think about it,” she said, “everything is, like, not real. On screens. If someone wanted to delete all the books and the music and everything, they could just do it.”

Todd listened to them go on with each other. This was something that had come up before. How everything they knew could be erased. With magnets, or by going to the bottom of the sea to cut the cables of the internet, or by sunspots. They’re worried or excited that nothing will last or that nothing exists in the first place.

“They love each other,” Todd said suddenly, and the kids went quiet. “Gene and Finny. But they have no idea how to handle it. That’s real.”

Banner Bolland laughed a little at the unbearable thought of it. Todd looked at him.

“You think it’s funny to be in love?” Todd said. “Have you ever been in love?” Banner laughed again.

“Come up here,” Todd said.

The class shifted, and one of the other boys put his head into his hands.

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