Chapter 3: Day Three

On the way to school the next morning, Mike spoke about his own plans. “Obviously, we can’t be gone by tonight, so we’re going to make it orderly. We can probably find an apartment with a lease start date of November 15th, and once we get in, we’ll start moving our stuff. I hope that’s okay.”

“Mike, I like you and I like Joanna. My issue isn’t with chemistry, it’s about who is going to be in charge. Take as long as you need. If you need time off for it, I’ll pay you anyway. In fact, if there are any expenses at all, I’ll cover them.”

Mike sniffed. “Joanna says that if things fall apart, in six months money won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. That we should try to convert our savings into real goods or we won’t have any savings.”

“Do it fast,” Christopher said to him, agreeing. “I’ve been tracking prices. Food is up about a fifth in two days. I’m betting they put in limits today and rationing by the weekend.”

“I know what’s up at the mine,” Mike said with assurance. “I’ve known my entire life. Your great grandfather didn’t want any accidents with explosives, so the magazines are not only secure, but well hidden. I’d like to use one.”

“No problem, Mike. I wouldn’t trust the road from the town up to the house though. I’m afraid it’s going to get hit by one of the secondary meteor strikes after the big impact. One of the bridges.”

Mike opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. “I was about to say that’s a pretty small target. Then again, maybe not.”

“The WPA built those three bridges in the thirties. My great grandfather designed them and supervised the construction. He might have had an idea that at some point those bridges might bring the sort of riff-raff he didn’t much like.

“Get this — he told them the drill holes he left at the base of each pier were ‘strain gauges’ that you could stick a six foot steel rod in and if it bound up, that would show that the pier had shifted and the bridge needed to be checked. Not one of them knew he was using mining drills to make and check the holes.”

“I sure as hell wish I could have met the old pirate!” Mike exclaimed. “He must have been quite a piece of work! I guess it’s true: that sort of thing skips a generation or two now and then.”

“It would seem so.”

“Didn’t there used to be a wagon road?”

“There was indeed. There were only two bridges along it, and they were both wooden trestle bridges. In 1936 a lightning strike burned down the longest bridge. My great grandfather had a replacement ready for either of them, but since the highway was done, he just left those timbers soaking in a creosote sump. They’re still there, and the plans are still in his library.”

They arrived at school and Christopher reminded Mike he’d need the van in the evening and Mike and his wife motored off.

Sure enough, four familiar faces were waiting for him outside the main doors. They led him around the side of the gym, which was just a long blank wall, with a couple of emergency doors, all locked, along it.

It was Amy who spoke again. “I suppose it should be some consolation that we found out now and not in June when you’d have been off to college. It stings, Christopher, do you understand?”

“You thought the four of you knew pretty much everything important and didn’t need any advice or had to ask any questions.”

She blinked. “Are we that transparent?” her voice was a whisper.

“Amy, the four of your are probably some of the few people in school who didn’t know it. True, most of these other people are dumb as stumps. And if asked, most of them would have lied to you or pled ignorance — Lord knows, some of them would have been telling the truth.

“But not everyone here is like that. And you were no more eager to listen to people like me than you wanted to hear from them. So yeah, I have some idea.”

“And you were lucky?”

“Heavens no! The Internet is where I live! You never have to see people and they can’t see me! All that people know about me is by what they see I can do. I make good observations and I take good pictures. I make sensible proposals. None of them care about anything else. I ran into a home schooled guy who is at MIT now, two years early, who told me about this.”

“It was a shock, Christopher, knowing we’d screwed up so bad. Worse, that you were there, talking to us, rubbing it in, even if you had no idea what you were doing. You didn’t have to tell us about the SATs, you didn’t have to tell us about the asteroid. We have a shot at going to college early if everything turns out okay; we have a shot of living through what we all think is coming, if things don’t work out.

“All of us, Christopher, owe you our lives twice.”

Chris shook his head, “Concentrate on one thing for now: getting through this. What’s in the past has passed. My great grandfather said it: the measure of a man is how long he lays there after he’s been knocked down and what he does when he gets back up.”

She nodded. “That said, we missed more school yesterday than any of us has ever missed before. It’s too important. We can’t miss more, not now; not until we’re sure.”

Christopher grinned. “And I’ve been missing school since I was in first grade because of headaches, sore throats, rashes on my stomach — you name it.”

It was Lisa’s turn. “Sydney and I, our parents can afford college for us. Amy’s parents can. Brenda’s — they have trouble paying their rent on that dump of a trailer they live in. Her only hope of college is a full scholarship; so she’ll be our Valedictorian, the student with the best GPA in the school, and the highest SAT score.”

That stopped Christopher. “You’re throwing the fight? You’re throwing the Valedictorian award?” He was stunned.

“Sure, why not? Who cares? We don’t! The stupids care, and the stupids at the colleges care — but we don’t. We know each other and we know who is the smartest.”

Christopher held his hands out, palms forward. “I don’t really want to know. It’s a surprise is all. I thought you were all after it.

“Look, I’m cool with whatever you four want to do. If you want to keep going to class, keep going to class. I’ll be in class today until lunch; after lunch I’ll be in the computer lab for the rest of the day.”

“We’ll see you at lunch,” Brenda told him and the four headed into the building.

Christopher shook his head and headed off to his first period class. It was a joke, of course. Mr. Finton taught physics and Christopher was pretty sure he knew ten times more about the subject than his teacher did. Physics was one of the few classes he equaled the four girls’ grades in, and it was a matter of pride that he did so. All five of them had perfect marks in physics; it had never occurred to him to wonder about that. Did they have egos as well? Were they getting perfect marks because they knew none of them would gain an advantage from physics, so why try to beat Chris?

As usual, when he sat down in the physics class the four of them were at two lab benches in the back of the room, as far from the door as they could get.

Christopher mused on that. Everyone else in the class was in alphabetical order except for those four. He himself was in the back as well, but his was the closest chair to the door. The four had almost always been seated together in all of their classes since middle school and only rarely had they not been put in the same class.

Thinking back, the teachers who hadn’t let them all sit together, or be in the same class, were some of the lamest teachers in school. The four never talked in class. They always had their homework ready and you had to actively discourage them from answering every question you asked.

Considering the antipathy towards the four, it was rather surprising. Someone had been protecting them, he suddenly realized. And all this time he’d never suspected! And right now he had no clue who. Then he laughed. There was one possibility and one who was almost a dead certainty. Principal DeWitt was an old codger in his late 60’s who had taught most everyone’s parents, and not a few of the grandparents of the current student body.

Christopher had heard the man welcome the returning students each year and had written the man off as an ineffectual bumbler. Mrs. Gretchen Latham was the possibility — she was the counselor for most of the juniors and had been around since before Christopher and the girls had started school.

Dr. DeWitt had taught at the school or been the principal for more than forty years. He knew everyone in town, and if the rumor was true, he’d had a substantial number of the townsfolk in his office to receive “extra instruction” from the “board of education.” You couldn’t paddle students these days, but his punishments were still legendary. So, not only wasn’t he stupid, he was watching out for the four. He mentally saluted the old man.