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((I think we're actually on 59-4, but the chapter labeling system is confusing me right now.  Correct as necessary...))


Something wakes her: a construction worker's call or the shrill dismissal bell.  The hard wind, perhaps.  The building trembles, and its skeletal frame groans in complaint.

The air is cold and befouled with chemicals, but she has no desire to leave.  It is as if she had woken in her own bed, safe in the tranquility which follows a heavy sleep, when one reaches out for the alarm clock pleading, “Just five more minutes!”

The building quakes again. 

For a long time Laney stares at the room below, trying to recall how she’d managed to get into this strange position.   When her memory does not surrender this, she sighs and palms her cell phone.

Tapping at the tiny keys and pulling meaning from symbols is both disorienting and exhausting, but Laney doesn’t trust her voice right now and can’t help but feel she makes less sense to people when she speaks.  So she sends a few text messages:

To Dave:  tks.   u get colins pics?

To Greg:  u get colins pics? hows that 4 a movi set?  : )

To Sylvia: sry wz mad.  wnt to help.   jus not blind.  wrng links blind

To John: sry.  lost time. c u tues

To her aunt Jean: sry.  frend sick at skool.  wil b home soon

To Adrien: u lied.  we r crazy.   we hav 2 b crazy so we dont go crazy.   how did u meet jack?

Her head begins aching when she fails to resolve what she remembers of the day.   It was all so…chaotic.  She needed to fit them together like so many misshapen puzzle pieces.   Laney closes her eyes again, reluctant to move – and not entirely sure how to climb down from here, yet.

Yes.

Got em.  :)

Sure.  No problem.

Ok.  Make sure the boys do their homework.


Jack?  Lost girl.  He's lucky too.  Not crazy, just not easy.

Later, in the early evening, while holding a cold pack to her raw elbow, Laney smiles fondly at her cousins bent over their homework at the kitchen table.  Assured they are well-occupied, she curls up on the couch in the front room, away from their curious ears, and calls Adrien.

Without greeting (either him or his voice mail), she continues, "Yes, crazy.  I saw it today!  Well, sortof...I think that's what happened from what Colin said. I changed. I know I did.  So I could process things.  She took it away and there was nothing left but me.  Just me.  Crazy. Like having the wrong adapter, so I couldn't plug in."  There is a pause.  "Have you ever been able to stop seeing them?

Not crazy.  That's the narrow end of the wedge there.  Sometimes, when I take too many of the drugs I'm supposed to take.  It's not complete, but it's like being asleep and waking around, I don't really like it.  I saw in the paper someone blew up a room at your school.  You saw it, was it scary?"

"I can't stand Biology, can take or leave Physics, but Chemistry's gonna be a blast,"  she murmurs words from the past, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling a moment before answering.

"I can't honestly say I knew it was going to happen.  Something was going to on my thirteenth day at school.  Not scared for myself.  I was outside.  But for my friends inside the room, yes.  Until after.  Then it was alright.  Then it wasn't alright.  I thought it was beautiful and wrong and my fault.  Stupid to think that.   It wasn't like being asleep for me today.   It was like the world moved on and left me behind.  It's always thirteen.  But it doesn't take a genius or superpowers to know not to provoke an unstable chemist, does it?  Maybe I did know, after all.  Have you ever killed anyone, Adrien?"

"I was good at math.  A few people, some deserved it, some I'm not sure.  I've had those days, dislocated.  Sometimes I just sit there until the world remembers me.  Or someone does.  I blamed myself all the time.  Then I realized it's really the other way around.  I'm there because of what I am, it's not happening because of me.  You know Jack?  I was going to call you after the explosion, but I thought you'd be hiding so I didn't."

He can hear the smile in her voice, "I don't know Jack.  Only just met him.  Turns out he's been giving some friends lessons or something.  I think I found a place where it's alright to be forgotten.  But they'll be rebuilding it soon.  I don't know where I'll go after that.   What do you do?  How do you um...deal with it, I mean.  Thanks for considering it, Adrien.  Though I don't think I could have talked to you.  I wasn't handling things well.  The explosion.  I thought I should stop.  Die, I mean.  I didn't want to, but it felt like I was supposed to.  Then someone said...well, something very much like you just did.  Coincidences, you know?  I just happen to be here, now.  He asked me if I knew you, Adrien, after he saw something I had drawn.  It's very strange the way he doesn't disturb anything.  Like a ghost.  Lucky, you said.  I guess I'm being a gossip, because I was hoping you'd tell me more about him, so I don't have to ask him myself.  I may never see him again."

"I do jigsaw puzzles.  He's okay, and yeah he doesn't make too many waves.  It's strange, like he belongs everywhere but isn't connected to anything.  They help me shut out the rest of the world.  I tried Sudoku, but there are always messages in them.  My friends hate when I do the jigsaws with the back facing up.  sometimes though, even though I see the picture, I can't make the pieces into it, but I can get them to fit together.  Not always, but sometimes.  He's pretty old, the result of some project back in the second world war.  You get used to it.  I used to try hard to make things make sense.  I majored in math, and sometimes it's hard to let things not add up.  Chemistry huh?"

"Yes, apparently there was something going around- a chemical - that made people hate each other, like want to hurt them.  I don't think they figured out who made it, yet.  Or if they did, they didn't tell me.  Mom wouldn't let me not be good at math.  She's a teacher. Was. It's a means to an end, though.  You get manufacturers' defects sometimes.  Ones that are cut wrong.  I'd rather draw or paint, but I have to find something more disciplined, structured.  Or a structure.  Or a person, maybe.  They said he was a soldier.  He doesn't look that old.  Why was he looking for a lost girl?  Chemistry's more involved, a study of relationships and catalysts. I think I like seeing seeing results, not just theorizing. My luck to attend a school where the chemistry teachers are psychos.  Seems appropriate, somehow.  This week it's the school shrink. Funny.  I don't know why Jack was there.  I would've liked to have seen his home.  I'll bet it's as strange as he is.  Have you seen it?  Plans change."

"I don't think he has a home.  He lives in hotels a lot I guess.  But we get the defects a lot.  I never really thought about chemistry that way, math was always more ordered.  I did computers too, when it got too hard for me to make the math make sense.  Like I said, it was some experiment.  Psycho?  He blew himself up huh?  He does all sorts of stuff like that, friends of the family I think.  Some pretty bad people took her, they wanted to experiment on her.  I've never been able to paint or draw.  I guess that's why I liked math.  So, if he blew himself up, did he have a good reason?  Did he have any reason?  The whole time I was watching the news story all I could think was that it sounded strange.  They said it a lot too, strange occurance, strange circumstances, strange pattern to the glass.  Why did they use that word so many times?  Was it strange?"

Laney nods, though he can't see.   "I only found two links to Strange.  Do you think I should look for more?  Sorry. Dr. Strange is the shrink my friends think is up to something.  We've no proof at all, just...strange patterns.  Maybe I'm mistaken.  It's not that he fits everywhere, it's that he belongs nowhere, so passes by with no effect.  Hamilton was the chemistry teacher who blew himself up, Adrien.  Anyone who experiments like he did, with no regard to ethics or scientific method is unstable, in my opinion.  I'm pretty good at researching things online, but lately the computer's been...scaring me a bit.  I've kept to pen and paper.  Yes, it was strange.  But I don't know that it was Strange. Um...sorry. Dr. Strange.  Not my doctor.  He just evaluates me every week for the school.  He has some kids we think might be...um...being used.  Special ones.  Like us.  It is beautiful, Adrien.  You should see it.  The room, I mean.  The one where he died."

"A field of chaos which can be precisely mapped with math.  Destruction like that is always beautiful.  Were they working together, Hamilton and Strange?  Why did Hamilton have a lighter, does he smoke?  Belongs nowhere might be right, I never thought of it that way.  Evil isn't necessarily psycho, I mean it helps sure but it's not really necessary.  I use the computer because it's something I'm good at.  Maybe your medium is painting?  One of us is a photographer, he sees all kinds of things in blurry pictures."

"Colin's pictures are very good.  I haven't seen Greg's.  It's better looking at someone else's work, more productive I mean.  Is it that way with you, too?  My paintings go wrong lately.  Oh, I'm so not getting into a good versus evil debate with you, Adrien.   Not after today. I told you, only two links between them.  No proof of anything.  He's very good, if he's psycho. Or evil.  Whichever.  I - sh*t.  You just reminded me I was going to pull some records with Strange's signatures on them.  Um...sorry.  What were you - smoke?  No, I don't smoke anymore, but I still carry a lighter.  I wonder where it is?  Melted to nothing, probably.  I don't want to see him there, Adrien.  It's a safe place. Mine. I don't want anyone else there."  Another pause.  She rubs her eyes fretfully and sniffles.  "I should try, I guess."

"Or not.  Choice is all we have sometimes.  I don't really debate good and evil, I guess they're subjective.  I should let you go.  My toaster is on fire again.  Call if you need to talk."  He doesn't end the call, but he puts the phone in his pocket like he might have after a call.  Laney can here the sounds of a smoke alarm, and then some crashing and mild cursing, then the call ends.

Laney gapes at her cell phone in horror for a second, then bounces up to check on the boys - and inspect their own toaster. Rick's writing required much critiquing, and Joey decided now was a great time to dump all 64 crayons onto the table for categorizing...

Twice he was mentioned.  Two links.  It had to mean something.  She sends a text to Colin:
hv u seen hamiltons room?



Once the house is silent, long past the time Laney normally falls asleep, Laney slips downstairs through shadowed rooms, into her uncle's office.   There she locates her own files from school and Sunday's newspaper,  and she carries them back to her room, hugging them close to her chest.  She spreads them out onto her bed, seeking anything related to her evaluations, both future and past, the ones performed by Dr. Strange.  When she finds enough signatures and/or notes, she begins duplicating them into her drawing pad.  In moments her careful copying becomes a manic scribbling.

She stops when her pencil sinks so far off the page and into her bedspread that she can't continue.

The words form uneven sentences.  Each line written bisecting one or more others.  His signature draws her attention for a minute.  Hugo Strange.  The teacher that blew himself up was Stephen Hamilton.  S and H.  H and S.  High School.  Hamilton's classroom was 417.  The office Strange has is 147.  When she studies the sentences they form an accidental crossword.  Hypnotic Suggestion are the words formed where the sentences cross.  Strange smokes a pipe, which he lights with a lighter.  Except last time she saw him in the parking lot, he was using matches.

Not yet. I mean to.

can sneak u in morng if u want





Laney's never tried to light a pipe, let alone a pipe in damp or windy weather, and can't imagine why that would be so strange.  Except it was Strange.  How the hell did Adrien know about a lighter?  She rifles through the newspaper for the follow-up article on the investigation of the explosion.  They would never have released details like that, and the chances of a lighter surviving the heat are...  That's a lot more connections than two.  Oh, my god, we thought Hamilton was experimenting on his own like he did before...Was he working alone before?

She rolls over onto her belly and texts Dave, regardless of the time:
do u still hv papers on hamiltons past? need them

The urge to go, right this minute, to the school, to her hiding place in the ruins of Hamilton's folly, is almost too great.  Laney looks anxiously about her silent room for an anchor, something to keep her here for the night, and finds herself reflexively crumpling the news article into a nearly illegible wad.

deal.

She chews on the lime green plastic phone a moment.

To Dave: cant now. fam asleep. 1hr b4 class. prkng lot.  thks

To Colin: 1hr b4 class. prking lot

As quietly as she can, Laney gathers up the files and returns them to their rightful place.  The abused newspaper she keeps, paging through it another hour, until her eyes are too heavy to hold open.