WATER FOR ELEPHANT [11]
I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. And I certainly can’t study. I stare at a single paragraph for a quarter of an hour but can’t absorb it. How can I, when behind the words, on the white background of the paper, I’m watching an endless loop of my parents’ deaths? Watching as their cream-colored Buick flies through the guardrail and over the side of the bridge to avoid old Mr. McPherson’s red truck? Old Mr. McPherson, who confessed as he was led from the scene that he wasn’t entirely sure what side of the road he should have been on and thinks that maybe he hit the gas instead of the brake? Old Mr. McPherson, who showed up at church one legendary Easter without trousers?
THE PROCTOR SHUTS the door and takes his seat. He glances at the wall clock and waits until the minute hand wobbles forward.
“You may begin.”
Fifty-two exam booklets flip over. Some people riffle through it. Others start writing immediately. I do neither.
Forty minutes later, I have yet to touch pencil to paper. I stare at the booklet in desperation. There are diagrams, numbers, lines and charts—strings of words with terminal punctuation at the end—some are periods, some question marks, and none of it makes sense. I wonder briefly if it is even English. I try it in Polish, but that doesn’t work either. It might as well be hieroglyphics.
A woman coughs and I jump. A bead of sweat falls from my forehead onto my booklet. I wipe it off with my sleeve, then pick the booklet up.
Maybe if I bring it closer. Or hold it farther away—I can see now that it is in English; or rather, that the individual words are English, but I cannot read from one to another with any sense of continuity.
A second drop of sweat falls.
I scan the room. Catherine is writing quickly, her light brown hair falling over her face. She is left-handed, and because she writes in pencil her left arm is silver from wrist to elbow. Beside her, Edward yanks himself upright, glances at the clock in panic, and slumps back over his booklet. I turn away, toward a window.
Snatches of sky peek through leaves, a mosaic in blue and green that shifts gently with the wind. I stare into it, allowing my focus to soften, looking beyond the leaves and branches. A squirrel bounds fatly across my sight line, its full tail cocked.
I shove my chair back with a violent screech and stand up. My brow is beaded, my fingers shaking. Fifty-two faces turn to look.
I should know these people, and up until a week ago I did. I knew where their families lived. I knew what their fathers did. I knew whether they had siblings and whether they liked them. Hell, I even remember the ones who had to drop out after the Crash: Henry Winchester, whose father stepped off the ledge of the Board of Trade Building in Chicago. Alistair Barnes, whose father shot himself in the head. Reginald Monty, who tried unsuccessfully to live in a car when his family could no longer pay for his room and board. Bucky Hayes, whose unemployed father simply wandered off. But these ones, the ones who remain? Nothing.
I stare at these faces without features—these blank ovals with hair—looking from one to the next with increasing desperation. I’m aware of a heavy, wet noise, and realize it’s me. I’m gasping for breath.
“Jacob?”
The face nearest me has a mouth and it’s moving. The voice is timid, unsure. “Are you okay?”
I blink, unable to focus. A second later I cross the room and toss the exam booklet on the proctor’s desk.
“Finished already?” he says, reaching for it. I hear paper rustling as I head for the door. “Wait!” he calls after me. “You haven’t even started! You can’t leave. If you leave I can’t let you—”
The door cuts off his final words. As I march across the quad, I look up at Dean Wilkins’ office. He’s standing at the window, watching.
I WALK UNTIL the edge of town and then veer off to follow the train tracks. I walk until after dark and the moon is high, and then for several hours after. I walk until my legs hurt and my feet blister. And then I stop because I am