Variety Pack: Issue VII

9 THE DECIMAL PEOPLE

by Zachary Shiffman Prime numbers are the orphans of math. Unlike those lucky composites, they aren’t products of two other numbers. This is what I was thinking when I saw Jay Ferrer return to Mallory Middle School, three months after the crash.

I was outside holding the door for arriving students. Jay’s aunt dropped him off at the curb and he passed me and into the school like a dying storm, roiling with a natural anger but exhausted. His hair was curly and chaotic and his backpack sagged off of his wiry frame. Later that day, in my fifth period class, he spent the whole period drawing on the graphs in his textbook, making ladders out of y axes and toothy mouths out of parabolas. I hoped he wouldn’t flip to the pages on prime numbers and think what I had thought.

In the teacher’s lounge during eighth period I ate my turkey sandwich and sat in the same chair I had sat in when we learned of the crash. That morning all of the teachers’ eyes had been wide, the backs of our chairs untouched as Linda, the history teacher, delivered the news of Declan and Harper Ferrer’s deaths. My mouth tasted dead.

“They weren’t even speeding,” Linda said, wobbly-voiced. “Not even speeding,” she repeated. “53 in a 60. 53.”

And now, three months later, the dead taste was back. I pushed my sandwich across the table and looked out the window. It was gray and lightless outside.

“What should I expect?” asked Frannie Calvanese across from me. Copies of No Fear Shakespeare: Hamlet peaked from her tote bag. “I have Jay next period.”

“Quiet,” I said. “Not engaging much. Reticent, if you want to use that SAT vocab you love so much.”