I ignored her.
It wasn’t that Arden had ever done anything untrustworthy. It wasn’t that she’d spread gossip. Still…I wasn’t ready to be completely candid with her.
Luckily, or as it turned out, unluckily, I was saved from answering by a commotion at the other end of the cafeteria. From her vantage point, Cass was the first to see what was happening.
“Uh, Houston, we have a problem.”
I turned and followed her gaze to a sight that filled me with immeasurable dread: my brother, standing on a chair, giving a speech.
I couldn’t hear what he said over the noise in the room, but from the way he gestured, it was clearly an exciting topic.
“Please excuse me,” I said stiffly to my friends.
I marched across the cafeteria, jaw once again clenched so tight I could’ve shattered teeth.
My rage increased when I got close enough to hear him. Fratricide (Fratricide: the killing of one’s brother.) was becoming more appealing by the second.
“So I ran outside,” Ishmael preached, “just in time to see a meteor whizzing through the air!”
The crowd around my brother made noises of approval and urged him to go on. Only one person standing in the back was unimpressed.
“Who cares about a boring meteor?” the guy mumbled, shuffling off to another section of the lunchroom.
Ishmael frowned after him for a moment before someone else asked, “Then what happened?”
“Right. Anyway, so I saw the meteor…the fiery meteor, and… Hey! What are you doing?”
“Show’s over,” I announced, tugging Ishmael off the chair.
“Gideon… Ow! Come on, what’s your problem?”
I didn’t speak until I’d pulled him safely away from the center of the room. “What are you doing?”
“I was… Nothing.”
“Nothing!” I snapped. “I specifically told you to keep your mouth shut.”
“Dude, you’re being way too uptight,” Ishmael said, shaking my hand off him.
Was I? I felt a twinge of doubt. It wasn’t the first time I’d been accused of being uptight. (Also: stuffy, rigid, tense, and boring.)
“I just don’t see what you could possibly gain by talking about this.”
Ishmael seemed to consider it. “I dunno. I mean…does it really need to be about gaining something? Can’t I just like telling stories or whatever?”
“Yes. You can like telling stories. But I like having a future. And my future involves attending MIT and getting a job with NASA and making an important discovery that rocks the field of space exploration. Do you understand?” (MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s top-ranked universities; known for its emphasis on the physical sciences and engineering.)
“I actually don’t understand at all.”
I took a deep breath and spoke firmly and slowly. “Your storytelling could get me in legal trouble that derails my entire future. We could go to jail for this.”
“Dude, that’s definitely not going to happen.”
Ishmael’s confidence that all outcomes would turn out favorable for him amazed me. In a way, I admired it.
“Just please tone it down,” I said, a pleading note entering my voice.
“Okay, okay,” Ishmael conceded. His expression clouded. “Apparently, meteors aren’t that interesting anyway.”
“Good. Then you have no reason to keep talking about them.”
Without any real expectation that he would stay quiet, I returned to the table with my friends, which had unfortunately filled up with other people.
“What was that about?” Arden asked.
“Just my brother being his usual attention-seeking self,” I replied.
In between bites of pizza, Cass said, “Ishmael’s lucky he’s so freaking cute. Otherwise he’d never get away with anything.”
Interlude
Musings on Attractiveness
Do I think my brother often “gets a pass” because he’s conventionally attractive? Yes. I do.
Despite his fondness for Hawaiian shirts and an aversion to combing his hair, Ishmael has always been good-looking.
And I…
I wouldn’t say I’m ugly.
But I don’t share my brother’s above-average height, strong jawline, or unexpectedly graceful way of moving. I certainly don’t share his unblemished skin.
I don’t consider myself ugly, but I’m not handsome either.
Before you jump to conclusions, you should know I don’t resent Ishmael for this. Being conventionally attractive has never been an ambition of mine. Unlike so many people who say “Looks aren’t everything,” I mean it. I would never trade my mind for my looks.
I’m not even claiming I have superior intelligence. But my mind calculates data in a way that’s specific to me, the same as yours does in a way that’s specific to you. And I love it. I love my mind. It means more to me than my appearance ever could.
Still, I’ll concede that based on our looks, Ishmael and I have had very different life experiences. I’ve seen the way people treat him. Everything he does seems charming, and a smile can get him out of trouble.
And maybe in the context of the explosion and everything that followed, Ishmael’s attractiveness benefitted me too. After all, from the very first moment, we were in the situation together.
Interview
Subject #1, Ishmael Hofstadt: The thing is, at lunch, when Matthew said meteors were boring, I realized he was right. I mean, don’t meteors fall practically every day? And what about meteor showers? Like, a thousand meteors all fall at the same time. That’s why I changed my story…just slightly. I wanted it to be a little bit cooler, that’s all.
Event: Interview
Date: Sept. 8 (Fri.)
I went straight to my lab after school. For all of my attempts to put the previous night from my mind, I had to see if the seismograph worked. Kepler twisted around my feet, purring for attention, or maybe just expressing his own eagerness to see the results.
And there they were, the results of my experiment. The seismograph functioned perfectly. What’s more, when I opened my laptop and pulled up OSU’s seismography data, I saw that the explosion had registered there too.
I’d succeeded. Sure, there had been more trouble than expected, but isn’t trouble worthwhile when it’s in the name of science? Shouldn’t the first priority always be the pursuit of information, of discovering new and exciting things about the world?