Chalk Boy
by Charlie Rogers
Three minutes before day’s end, I notice the clock’s ticking backwards.
Before clicking forward to mark a new minute, it stumbles backward for a few seconds, over and over. Am I the only one who sees this?
Mrs. Tumolo drones about doomed French monarchs, her red-rimmed glasses perched halfway on the bridge of her nose. Her dull monotone lulls me, tiptoes around a daydream that lingers behind my eyelids.
Nathan leans towards me with a whisper to break my trance. “I’ve got a secret.”
A secret. I have one too.
I wonder if he knows mine. Is he ever suspicious of the way I let our knees touch under the desk we share in physics lab? Every time he snares me with his magnetic grin, every time I’m drawn, helpless, to the gravitational pull of his shadow-colored eyes, I wonder: does he know?
Mrs. Tumolo presses her old black eraser to the blackboard, wiping away scrawled words before I’ve had the chance to read them.
“It’s big. Call me after school.” His eyes dart away, as if afraid someone’s listening.
Three hours later, his mother is not concerned.
“No, Nathan’s not home.” She sounds impatient; I imagine I’ve interrupted her game show. A moment of silence in her chaotic house. I picture her in their kitchen — a mid-century museum I’ve only seen once — with a teal mixing bowl cradled in the crook of her arm, the phone wedged against her ear.
I hang up the phone and trudge back to the school, scuffing through a faint snowfall, still in my uniform shirt and tie, my shiny shoes. My homework’s finished and my father’s not home. No one to notice or miss me.
The gate hangs open, but the surly janitor has already locked the doors. The pale green of a parked sedan disappears under restless snowflakes in the side lot. I crouch by the statue of the Virgin and fish into my parka’s inside pocket for a crumpled packet of smokes. It’s the most rebellious gesture I can conjure, to smoke beneath this venerated statue. I peer up at her carved face, her blank expression. Too young for motherhood, I think, the weight of such responsibility.
Nathan sometimes meets me here, sharing cigarettes and laughs. Not today. I wonder about his whispered secret, imagining myself mapping its walls in darkness.
Then I wander home. To nobody.
Three days later, everyone gossips and no one knows anything.
We know you’re all concerned, our teachers say. I’m sure Nathan’s fine, the vice principal tells us during an impromptu assembly. We believe he ran away. To where? I want to ask, but my leaden arm won’t rise.
When I look around the assembly, or any classroom, I don’t see concern. Nobody knew Nathan, except me. Maybe I didn’t either.
I’ve got a secret.
What I notice from my classmates is their jealousy: for the attention the missing boy is getting, for his escape, for the air he must be breathing somewhere outside these stuffy rooms. Free from overbearing parents, or distant, distracted ones. Free.
Did you hear about the missing boy? They ask each other.
The missing boy. His name is Nathan. I want to tell them, remind them.
They want to understand how this will impact them. Can we get an extension on the term paper?
“I heard about your friend.” My father doesn’t look at me. It’s another Sunday and there’s football on the television.
Three weeks later, Nathan’s still in the news.
And I am too, sometimes, as the last person he spoke to. In my awkward interviews, my voice cracks as I repeat his words—call me after school—speaking them a hundred times. I always omit what preceded them.
I’ve got a secret.
In Mrs. Tumolo’s class, the clock still clicks backwards before that last bell, our release. Some of us glance around at one another, nervous. The safety promised to us by our parents and teachers has punctured like a birthday balloon. Others joke. Nathan never mattered to them.
He was beside me in most classes, passing me notes all day, caricatures of our bored teachers and self-important classmates. Or he’d sit in front of me, where I’d lose myself in the topography of his back, his faded blue shirt straining against his shoulder blades, and I, a quiet explorer, would daydream that one day I might reach out one arm, one finger, to explore further.
Those seats are all empty now, occupied with nothing but his absence, the secret he never told.
I’ve got a secret, too. No, now I’ve got two.
Three months later, he’s forgotten. Searches abandoned. I don’t see his face on the news, or mine. No one jokes about his disappearance anymore, or bothers to mention his name.
He’s vanished again, first his body, then his name. Like a smudge on a chalkboard, wiped once, twice.
His seats remain unfilled, a buffer of emptiness around me, a chasm I can’t cross.
I try not to forget. His dimples. The curled tendons in his fingers as he gripped a pencil, sketching words into drawings, grinning at his cleverness. I sometimes close my eyes to summon him, my palm against his heart, his fingers around my throat.
He often smelled of off-brand deodorant, except in gym class, when his scent mirrored my own, an unexpressed animal desire. His uniform would cling to his soft musculature.
The weight of his absence smothers me as I gaze into another space he’s vacated.
Nathan. Where did you go?
Our secrets remain unspoken and the clock recoils once before lurching forward, the reckless passing of time.
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