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#Post#: 113--------------------------------------------------
Shadow Boy
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: January 7, 2020, 8:53 am
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Marion watched nervously while Mr. Oldes, the biology teacher,
handed back the chemical drawings that had been last night's
assignment, glucose, fructose, amino acids, methane, and a few
others that were building blocks of life or poisons of death or
warmed the earth unbearably when humans produced tons of them.
Mr. Oldes handed back even the most minor, daily homework face
down which made it more important than it should have been. The
papers made a slishing sound as Mr. Oldes placed them in front
of each student. He said nothing to Marion as he skipped her and
returned Zia's assignment. Zia and Marion sat together. There
were times when they were joined at the hip, and Marion felt
grateful for that. It could have been claustrophobic, but it
wasn't because they were turning out to have different
extracurriculars and foreign languages. Marion was once again
thankfully she had survived the latter half of French 1 on
Skype.
Then Marion began to wonder what happened to her assignment. Had
she done something horribly wrong? Had Mr. Oldes lost the
assignment? Had he simply forgotten her? Marion did not like to
get forgotten and she usually made enough trouble to prevent
that, but Mr. Oldes was not Uncle Niles or Aunt Judith.
"I want to show you all a great example of the second chemistry
assignment's diagrams. Ms. Broyde is that OK with you?"
"Sure," answered Marion who still wondered what happened to her
assignment, until she saw it on the document projector. The
carefully drawn colored dots for different chemicals, the
straight lines and the drawing of hemoglobin, too big to diagram
like sugars and amino acids, but still a beautiful porphyrin
that Marion had sketched in three dimensions as well as drew in
two because the biology book said that large molecules (and even
small ones) had three dimensional shapes. The two dimensional
diagrams were really a kind of formula because the places for
the bonds between carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen were important.
"These are accurate diagrams and illustrations. You see how soft
and round the hemoglobin molecule is. That's the way most large
molecules look from what we can tell, how how do we 'see' these
molecules?" asked Mr. Oldes.
The boy with thick glasses, the one to beat, in geometry, shot
his hand into the air. He was also the one to beat in biology.
Somehow Marion pictured him as an old man with a comb-over
because his light brown hair was parted way on the right side of
his head, and he had a round, clean shaven, face with a very
pink complexion. "Electorn microscopy," answered thick glasses.
"And what is an electron microscope?"
"A microscope that shoots beams of electrons instead of waves of
light to picture objects. The electron waves are smaller and
have a higher frequency so you can see smaller objects than you
can with light."
"Great answer Mr. Siegert."
"Now we are going to move an order of magnitude up in size," Mr.
Oldes lectured. This was going to be the cell, but first they
were going to discuss what made life and viruses, whether they
were alive. Oded Siegert, the boy with thick glasses and the
retched comb-over asked about prions.
"Does anyone know what a prion is?" asked Mr. Oldes.
Marion raised her hands. "Yes Ms. Broyde," Mr. Oldes looked at
Marion who looked away. "It's a misfolded protein that makes
other proteins misfold. It's hard to kill and get rid of. It's
what causes mad cow and chronic wasting in deer."
"Very nice. To answer your question Mr. Siegert prions are not
considered living things even if they cause disease. Now viruses
are another matter...."
Biology left Marion exhausted. She had Nonwestern Studies next
and they were still discussing Japan and looking at its strange
history. "There is so much in this world I will miss," Marion
told herself. She wished she had been older and been able to see
the sights in Tokyo. Now it would be years before she went back
again, if she ever did.
"Thanks for the answer about prions," a male voice intruded on
Marion's musings. She looked up to find Oded Siegert moving down
the hall. They had Nonwestern, English, biology, and geometry
together. She should have known him better, even if he was a
slightly overweight version of a typically under-developed boy.
At least he was intelligent and accomplished. It was not his
fault that boys matured later, which sort of made fourteen year
old males blurs. He deserved better than to be a part of that
blur.
"You're welcome," Marion replied.
"And your drawings were really great. Have you considered
medical illustrating."
"Who's going to hire me?"
"As a career."
"I don't think that far ahead," Marion confessed.
"Why not?"
"I just don't." Marion was not sure she could tell Oded about
her parents. "It's complicated."
"We don't have family table for lunch. Want to eat with us?"
"When did you become a plural?" Marion thought.
"If I can bring my roommate. I don't want her eating alone."
"Sure....Sometimes I eat with my roommate too."
"And when your roommate is not around?" Marion remembered eating
alone in the Malta Middle School cafeteria. Eighth grade was
awful. She was glad that was behind her.
"Come on, we'll be late for Nonwestern," Oded reminded her.
#Post#: 144--------------------------------------------------
Re: Shadow Boy
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: February 4, 2020, 12:06 pm
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In geometry Tuesday morning, the students finally had enough
axioms memorized to tackle proofs with parallel lines. Triangles
came next. One hundred and eighty degrees makes a triangle.
Supplementary angles make a triangle's angles, sort of. If you
let it, all the pieces would fit together. Marion was confident
of that.
When it came time to go down to the board, only four kids were
interested, a girl with caramel skin, artificial curls and
magnificent earrings to match her striped, short sleeved,
sweater, a boy in a rumpled button down, Oded Steigert, and of
course Marion. They took turns while the rest of the class
half-dozed.
Art came next, and Marion felt restless. Practicing dives in the
chlorine smelling pool took her out of herself, but she was
nearly finished with the watercolor and ink rendition of a child
staring out the window of a Tokyo hotel room. Project planning
left her at sea.
"Great job, Ms. Broyde," Mr. Jinoffe, the geometry teacher said
as Marion took her seat. "Does anyone have another approach?"
Oded raised his hand. His proof was longer but in a way more
thorough. It also touched on an axiom that hadn't been
assigned. Marion was not sure if either her proof or Oded's was
what math people called "elegant."
Lines of text and quickly drawn diagrams on a white board did
not qualify as anything but oddly clumsy imitations of whatever
logic ruled the universe. Humans did not usually get to see such
logic up close. It was friendly. It was pure, but it was
gossamer thin in this polluted, real life atmosphere. The pure,
sweet, logic at the deepest heart of things was fragile as snow
flakes, though just as real. In the heat of an ordinary body, it
melted away. Proofs on the white board were paper snowflakes
made by carefully folding copier paper and using a sharp enough
scissors, a simulacrum of the real thing.
Marion thought it was sweet while the boy in the rumpled button
down shirt photographed both her and Oded's proof though it
meant he hadn't put his cell phone on the charging dock. "Don't
worry Mr. Jinoffe," button down offered. "I have it on airplane
mode, but the camera still works."
In the hall after geometry, Oded jostled Marion. "Want to come
to lunch with us?" he asked. Marion thought of button down.
Button down probably had his own friends, and besides he was
nowhere to be seen. "OK," Marion replied.
Marion wanted to explain to Oded that Zia could not stand Farley
and with good reason. Farley needed to improve his manners. He
wasn't mean. He just acted ugly, but intro art was in
Wolf-Shjenrubin and Oded had to get to music theory which was in
the same building. Zia was just going to have to be displeased.
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