Safety At His Command

Chaos Theory

“Maybe I should expect something more,” Mr. Saunders proposed, now gaining exasperated sighs from the rest of the room. “Yes, I think one more expectation will suffice considering the grand example some of our students today have aided us with.”

William could feel the eyes on him again while his father spoke. Part of him was delighted that he could take the focus back from Malorie, less so from Brian, but if the focus wasn’t there, then he was back in control of the mess, and William liked the off kilter power it had given him. At the very least, whatever his peers had to say, they wouldn’t be directing it at her, and that was good enough for him.

“And what would that be?” William pushed.

“Ever eager, hmm?” Mr. Saunders replied, a tut in his voice as he lifted his gaze to deliver it throughout the room. “My personal favorite theory is chaos theory which, I presume you have all heard of the butterfly effect?” he asked even though it wasn’t a question.

If they didn’t know what it meant, he expected them to by the end of the day so that their papers reflected it precisely.

“Does the movie count as a point of reference?” Brian asked. His face gave nothing away in terms of whether or not he was mocking the man.

“I suppose,” his father seemed to uphold the idea for the name of science, even though this was an English class. “But if any of it is applied from the scenes within the motion picture, your thesis paper will hold no validation and you will need to recreate the work again.”

The breath the entire class seemed to be holding had been groaned out of them all at once.

“Ah, yes,” he replied. “I think we’re getting the idea of the paper now. If it doesn’t reflect you and your decisions, as well as what you would change if you could go back in time, and the butterfly effect of responses that could have continued on after that change you would have hypothetically made within your paper, you’ll need to redo the entire work until it does.”

“So, just to clarify…” Malorie steps in again. “You now just want those four elements to be present and not the psycho-analytical response to it?”

“Oh no, I need all of it,” he replied, adding exactly what he wanted to the outline of expectations that he had up on his monitor. He then hit print and had them passed around the room expecting them to come up with and hand in their thesis statements by the end of class, which happened to be in fifteen blessed minutes.

William groaned inwardly again for the millionth time as he prepared to get up from his chair to get a piece of paper from the left of the room where his father kept all of that extra stuff on and around the heater to keep the room cooler. The man genuinely believed that by keeping his students chilled that they would have quicker response times being that they were more awake than being warm. It made sense to a degree but it didn’t do anything for him to watch his would-be girl shiver, or one worse, accept Brian’s sweatshirt when it should have been his that was given.

That would be far better, he imagined, making his way between his father’s desk and that of some girl he never paid attention to. She looked up at him, ready to accuse him of taking something off of her desk but when she double checked, it was all there. He wouldn’t do that to her, no matter how bitchy she seemed. He would, however, do it to his dear old Dad who had been down at the other side of the room to make sure each of the rows of students had received their outline expectations. He would look out for a girl he liked that was now being served a paper outline that he could have completely avoided giving her if he just stayed silent. He could take the sticky note and get rid of it somehow, he thought as his head swiveled back to the mess of a desk the man had anyway.

How was he going to remember what he wrote if William swiped it and made a scene about anything else?

Mr. Saunders wouldn’t.

His mind worked in retaliation and that was it.

So while he thought he won this round, William was gearing up for his own.

“When is this due by?” he feigned interest in the work as a whole completed piece.

“End of the month,” Mr. Saunders said, then looked up from handing out the stack to the last row to catch him as William plucked the stack of post-it notes up off of his father’s desk. “Put that down,” he commanded his son.

“Nah,” William replied with mock seriousness. “These aren’t yours and I need one for this date you’ve set.”

He can feel it again, the way she looks at him as he handles the notes his father took on her. William does his best to hold onto the moment, to acknowledge her, but it’s risky. He already needs to pretend he actually wants to use the stack for something related to class and the assignment so that he can push the envelope that much further. His plan was to make sure he disrupted his father enough so that he couldn’t possibly remember what he wrote down. If he couldn’t remember, he couldn’t repeat the note on a new sticky. William would have been her savior, and that was the overall objective.

“They are mine and you would do right to respect your teacher’s things and put them down,” Mr. Saunders warned in a tone that said I am your father.

William plucked at the top and curled the note into a ball in his hand while he flipped it to remove the back paper and retrieve a clean sticky note for his memo.

“Nah, they aren’t. Just because the school pays you to be here, it doesn’t mean the supplies they aid you with are yours,” William bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. He had to get this done with and sit before his father made it back to his desk to snatch the item back from his hand.

As his father stalked back to his desk, William gave another morsel of information to his fellow, undeserving classmates, before placing the item face down on the desk, “You know for a germophobe, I’m surprised that you don’t flip it over or take from the center of the pad.”

After that questions started popping up from behind him, all interested in this new fact about their teacher. Stories came up about celebrities that had similar issues as well as how they truly believed another teacher had the same problem but that it was totally avoidable in English class rather than Biology or Chemistry. Those classes were prone to germs, a lot of his peers agreed.

“Thank you,” Mr. Saunders retorted while he stood at the front of the class trying to get their attention back on the task at hand. “What William decided to share was a lie. I am not a germophobe.”

“Do any of you think that this could spiral out of control in Mr. Saunder’s chaos theory? This would be a good time to practice the thought, don’t you think, teach?” William continued, gaining the glare he used to cower from when he was younger.

All the while, Malorie watched his hand, the one that cradled a shard of her story, find its way into the belly of his sweatshirt’s pocket. He mercilessly worked it past the sewn in hem of it and down into the fabric where sand and change would mysteriously fall into, never to be fished out again.

Her secret was safe with him.

At least for now while the rest of the class harped on his father’s germophobic tendencies within the chaos theory until the bell rang.