Jessica Powell's Middle School Math

Each morning I wondered if the fog had come for someone new.

I’d get to school and look around my algebra class and check the empty seats. There’d always be one or two kids missing. We wouldn’t know right away who had been plucked from their homes or who was simply out sick with a cold.

By the end of the school day we usually had it figured out. The kid’s mom would discover the bed empty, say something to a neighbor, and the news would subsequently push its way across our town like ink spreading in water, like the fog itself, which slowly rolled in each night, swallowing first the avenues, pushing into the park, then the lake, and finally the forest at the city’s edge.

“He was taken,” we’d hear, and the girls would huddle after school and dissect what they knew—what the boy had last said and to whom, and whether he’d be different when he came back. Whether the fog would change his opinion about any of us; whether he liked Lisbeta or Kami or Trella, who, by the way, was really hoping he would ask her to the Halloween dance/sit next to her at lunch/invite her to his house.

Of course he likes you, Lisbeta/Kami/Trella, we all would nod, and me perhaps the most vigorously. The other girls didn’t pay much attention to me, but in middle school you’re either in the group or you’re far outside it and that’s not something you yourself get to decide. So you better always be nodding in support of the people who do. It’s better to be included but somewhat forgotten in the group, than to be clearly identified as an outsider.

All of those girls claimed to have been taken by the fog, but the truth was you didn’t really know. It wasn’t like the fog left you branded; the change, they said, was mainly internal. Sometimes I’d sit in class and let my gaze wander—Trella’s ponytail, Jana’s chipped pink fingernails, Elle’s wannabe surfer shirts. Had they or hadn’t they, I wondered. What did they have that I didn’t? Other than boyfriends and periods and dewy skin and shiny hair…

I was convinced there was a logic to it, that the fog was like all other milestones in our young lives, awarded to us when our bodies were ready for it. I studied the girls in my algebra class, tallying things like who was the most physically developed and how many friends each had, cross-referencing those statistics with who had been taken by the fog, all in the name of developing a formula that explained what you had to rack up before the fog would take you. You got one point if you were wearing a bra. Two points if you had gotten your period. Three points if Lisbeta or Trella called you at night to catch up. Four points if you had a boyfriend.

Minus one point if your parents gave you a kiss when they dropped you off at school. Minus two points if people knew you got straight A’s. Minus three points if people saw you talking to Trista Machlan with the crusty nose. Minus four points if anyone found out you spent lunch period hiding in the girls bathroom.

I was running a deficit, but constantly refining my formula and score.

“You may be the smartest person at this school,” the Algebra teacher, Mr. Han, said cheerily one day as he handed back our tests. The row of kids seated in front of me turned around to look and I melted in my chair, embarrassment steaming from my pores. Minus a million points.

*

But there was at least one other person the fog hadn’t come for: Grayson Hardy.

All the girls loved Grayson. I pretended not to—what was the point? He’d never be interested in a girl like me, who faded into walls as flat as her chest. But I did love him and had done so since he transferred to our school the previous year. From the first time I saw him, each movement, each gesture, chiseled away at me, freshly breaking me each day. In Algebra, I wrote our names together in my notebook, hiding them in flowery doodles alongside my equations.

“I didn’t do so well on last week’s test,” Grayson said one morning as he sat down next to me, one of the few empty chairs left in the room.

He pulled out the handout Mr. Han had given us for homework the day before. Mine was filled with numbers written in my tidy handwriting but his was totally blank.

He had never spoken to me before and I didn’t know what to say. But it was obvious what he wanted, and I was happy to oblige. I pushed my paper towards him.

“I was gone last Friday when Mr. Han explained linear equations,” he added, as if he had to explain why he needed my homework, as if the truth wasn’t sufficient—that being handsome and perfect was reason enough for the world (or at least me) to solve your math problems for you.

Grayson gestured towards the window. Except for the farthest point on the horizon, the fog was completely receded, leaving visible the school’s green field, and beyond it, a few miles of houses and small storefronts.

“The fog took you?” I asked.

He nodded but kept his eyes on my sheet as he began to copy my answers.

I knew he was lying.

I knew because I knew everything one could know about Grayson Hardy. With my eyes closed I could describe each line of his face, his light brown skin and hazel eyes, curly brown hair bleached at the tips the way kids in our town got during the summer months, when it was the sun, not the fog, that set the rhythm of our days.

I knew he was lying because I had biked to his house the day he didn’t show up for Algebra. Everyone said he had been taken by the fog, and I believed it—just one more logical, inevitable distance between his reality and mine.

But I had to know for myself.

I finished school early that day because there was a ceremony at the local newspaper for the best essay. Mine—on “Increasing Fairness in our Electoral System”—had won top prize. Mom didn’t make me return to school afterwards. Instead, I grabbed my bike and rode to Grayson Hardy’s house.

I crept along the side of the house and lifted onto my toes to peer into a window. I quickly deduced from the room’s colorless calm that I was staring at his parents’ bathroom. An electric razor lay alongside one corner of the sink. Alongside the other, a box of tampons—the top still open, as if its contents had been wrenched from it before a rush out the door.

That meant Grayson’s mom had gotten her period. Of course she did, she was middle-aged just like my own mother. But it still seemed like proof of my own inadequacy; yet another reminder of the difference between me and all other women on the planet.

I stayed there for a moment, even though it was clear no one was there. Then I tried the next window—a laundry room, also empty. I kept going.

If Grayson had been taken by the fog he wouldn’t be anywhere at home. He’d be swimming through the mist, perhaps bumping into other daytime travelers, each of them exchanging small smiles or nods of acknowledgement. Or that’s how I imagined it, like you were on this mystical journey that would forge a bond between you and the others you met along the way. The experience would unite you forever, something that set you apart from your past, and brought you into your future.

If the fog had taken Grayson then we wouldn’t see him until the following morning, when it would leave him near the bay, the last spot before the fog relinquished its grip on our town. He would look dazed as he walked back home; foggers wore glassy-eyed expressions that tended to last for days after their taking. “The fog’s in your eyes,” people liked to say to anyone wearing a dreamy expression.

But Grayson wasn’t a fogger, he was a liar. I knew because I spotted him that day in his living room.

He was lying on the couch sleeping, tissues dropped around his body like delicate white flowers. Yes, Grayson was special and untouchable and would never talk to a girl like me. But on that day Grayson just had a cold.

When he returned to school, everyone crowded around him and asked if he had been taken. Grayson smiled but did not answer—which was how all the kids who had been taken responded, as though the fog’s white tendrils were a secret still curling inside them. At lunch he sat with Trella, one of the prettiest and most popular girls. After school, from across the asphalt, I watched as Grayson and Trella kissed against the handball wall, a slow kiss through a filmy haze, and I wondered how many points Grayson still needed before the fog would choose him. Because Grayson defied my math: he had all the points in the world and it still didn’t seem to be enough.

*

Grayson was copying my answers in a scratchy, unsure hand. I stared hard at his numbers, his—or rather my—x’s and y’s, as if I thought that something new about the two of us would be revealed through these equations.

Mr. Han wrote a problem on the whiteboard and turned to face the class. His face was old and sagging, but his expression was always filled with hope, even though we usually let him down. Lately he had been trying to get me to join the Math Club—had gone on and on about some trip they took each year to compete in a contest. But ever since he had complimented me in front of everyone, I had taken to leaving class last. It gave him a chance to stop me, but at least no one overheard it. I liked math OK, if only because there were rules and rules led to answers. But join a Math Club? Minus a trillion points.

I prayed Mr. Han wouldn’t call me now to the whiteboard to solve a problem. I hated standing in front of everyone, the way I sweated under their collective gaze. Don’t call on me, don’t call on me.

He called on Miki Hernandez instead. As Miki walked to the whiteboard, I noticed that Trella’s friend Lisbeta was staring at me. The fog had come for her a few years ago, before anyone else. She had been the first one to appear in class with that misty, mysterious expression, the one to respond to our questions with demure smiles and enigmatic phrases like “It changes everything” and “I can’t explain it but…I feel different now.”

Once, I had overheard her compare notes with Trella while I was hiding in a bathroom stall during lunch period. They were at the sink, talking in giggly half-whispers. Trella claimed that ohmygod being in the fog felt like she was on a waterslide, while Lisbeta said that it was more like riding a hammock alongside the ocean. Lisbeta said she was gone the whole day, while Trella was sure only an hour had passed. The fog entered your body, no no no the fog surrounded you.

The fog hurt just a little, no no the fog is wonderful, it’s what doing it is going to be like. Who will you do it with? Grayson? Grayson, definitely Grayson.

The fog is a lie, I told myself as I listened to them. They’ve made it all up.

But I knew they hadn’t. Even my mom talked about it this way. “Breath. Warm breath across your skin,” she had once said, back when I wasn’t embarrassed to ask her about it. “It feels like a bath of air.”

Mom paused, her eyes closed, and her face melted into an expression I wasn’t used to seeing. Her fingers touched her neck, then her collarbones. Then suddenly her eyes shot open and she blushed and quickly rose to make dinner.

*

Back in class, Lisbeta’s perfect face scrunched ugly for a second, and I dropped lower in my chair, imagined myself sinking into nothing. In middle school, if you weren’t popular then you were prey, and a pretty girl sizing you up was almost never a good thing. Their cheeks were flush from the blood they drew from the rest of us.

Then Lisbeta blinked and tilted her head slightly, and I realized she wasn’t staring at me but rather Grayson.

Though Grayson wasn’t looking at her. He had finished copying my answers and was now staring out the window intensely, as if he was willing the fog to return. I bet he ran through the same mental calculus that I did each day.

“Do you ever wonder what it’s like?” I asked him quietly, and I was shocked by the sound of my own voice. My words wobbled and hovered between us; I glanced down at my pencil so that I didn’t have to look him in the eyes.

“What do you mean?” he answered, and I could actually hear the sound of his body tensing, a quiet but electric rustle. This was not the Grayson who strolled confidently across campus, the one I once saw take a casual swig of beer in front of a teacher. This was the Grayson who was keeping a secret, just like me.

Emboldened, I spoke again.

“The fog,” I said. “I haven’t been taken either.”

“I’ve been taken by the fog,” he said quickly, but he didn’t look at me. He pushed my homework back across the table and didn’t speak to me for the rest of the class.

*

I’d blown it with Grayson. I should’ve let him copy my homework; I never should’ve opened my mouth. Then maybe he would’ve sat next to me again the next day and the day after, and then eventually we would’ve exchange a joke about Mr. Han’s water bottle, which everyone knew wasn’t filled with water but rather vodka. And then one day, one day, we would’ve talked about the things that really mattered.

I was so mad at myself that when I got home I grabbed one of my dad’s beers from the fridge. I wasn’t supposed to touch his beer, but I was sick of being denied everything.

Disobey your parents. Plus two points.

I didn’t like the taste but I forced the beer down, and soon I started to feel lighter, like Grayson could walk in and I’d tell him about what I saw when I looked out the window around twilight—the ribbons of fog layered upon each other, advancing towards my house with purpose. It had to have purpose, and there had to be a system behind it. Because if it had no purpose, why would everyone act like it did, and why would I want it so badly?

At some point I passed out on the living room couch.

I awoke in dark fuzziness. My head hurt, my hands could feel something sturdy below me. The air was damp and there was a wetness between my legs.

I closed my eyes again and now I could hear it in my ears, a gentle wind surrounding a supreme quiet, like I was floating above the ocean. A moisture moved across my face like lace.

“Mom?” I called out.

There was no answer in the fog.

I wasn’t scared, too many people had already been through this for me to be scared. But I was anxious about what it meant, about why it had finally picked me.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I wanted to savor this, but I couldn’t shake my anticipation. I was waiting for something to happen. For the sky to turn light again or for another traveler to cross my way. What would I see? Who would I see? What was I supposed to do?

The answers did not come.

Eventually I opened my eyes. It was still dark out. I pushed against the surface below me and realized, from the way it depressed under my hands, that it was fabric. Felt.

I was still on the living room couch.

I was disappointed and ashamed, but most of all relieved: at least no one had witnessed my mistake.

I felt my way to the light switch on the wall, my mortification building with each step. How silly to think I was in the fog. I was just drunk, a silly thirteen-year-old who got drunk off one beer and suddenly thought her life was transformed.

But in the bathroom, I discovered that I had just gotten my period. Plus ten points—the most points I had ever had.

I looked around the small space of our bathroom—white tiles on the floor and along the tub, against which the small streak of brownish blood in my underwear seemed an exclamation point.

Things would be different now.

*

The next day at recess I asked Joli, my sometimes friend, for a pad. I didn’t really need one—my mom sent me to school with a box of ten pink-colored pads after I told her the news.

“You’re a woman now,” she cooed. I took an extra pack from her bathroom, just in case.

“Do you want a pad or a tampon?” Joli asked, without looking up from her phone, like what I asked her was nothing at all.

And to her it was nothing at all. She had gotten her period two years earlier. For the longest time, it felt like I was the only girl in school to not get mine; at some point the other girls simply stopped asking because it seemed unfathomable that anyone could get their period so late. Like someone who got their drivers license at thirty, or had their first sip of alcohol at twenty-two.

“Ugh, don’t you hate that time of month?” Joli said, and I nodded but secretly I was thrilled. I spent all of math class touching my foot against my backpack, where the pack of pads sat in the middle pocket. Soon my breasts would start to grow and I would get prettier. I was certain of this, though Joli was neither particularly pretty nor buxom, and she’d been at it for two years now.

I looked around Algebra class, silently adding up the girls whose club I’d now joined. How would they find out I was now one of them, all of us bonded by our small, shared affliction?

“Don’t you hate this time of month?” I would say to them in a mock groan. Or: “The principal is so mean when she’s on the rag.”

I liked to listen to myself say these things, recognizing that the words we used to describe our shared milestone was a part of the milestone itself.

I noticed that Grayson wasn’t in class again. I told myself that old me would have ridden to his house on my bicycle to check, but new me, a woman, didn’t need to do such immature things.

But the real reason was that I didn’t need to check on Grayson: I already knew what had happened to him. The fog had come for him.

I was the only one who knew. No one else talked about it because they thought he had already been taken. I was the only one he would be able to confide in when he returned. The two of us, together, had become something new.

*

Grayson was back in school the next day and I paid special attention to where he looked, and what he looked at. He moved more slowly, as if savoring each moment his foot touched the ground—as one would expect from a person who spent the previous night floating through the sky.

Grayson stopped next to my desk in Algebra. He stared at me intently as he asked whether the seat next to mine was taken. He could tell I was different now.

As I moved my backpack off the spare seat, Grayson’s friend came by, dropping off the mesh jersey Grayson had apparently left at the previous day’s away game.

The realization hit my brain with a thud. It was a soccer game, not the fog, that took Grayson away.

This new information threw me, and I couldn’t help but turn towards him, search his face for contradiction. He looked so different to me and yet he was the same Grayson, the same beautiful Grayson, still waiting for something to transform him.

I had misinterpreted the languor in his movements. Perhaps the tiredness I saw in his eyes was sadness. Maybe he saw that I had changed but he had not. That we were once united in something and now I had been pulled from him like all the others. Given the latest developments, the fog would probably come for me before him.

It was true: I was a woman now, on my way towards something bigger. But like him, I wasn’t there quite yet. I would tell him this, it would make him feel better.

I turned towards him, my body warm and a smile on my lips—probably my normal smile, but today it felt different, more purposeful, as though it suggested a promise I might or might not keep. I felt powerful.

“Grayson,” I said.

“Huh?” He turned halfway. He blinked twice, as though trying to get a good look at me, a stranger he was meeting for the first time. I leaned forward just slightly, twisted the small gold chain on my neck. This is it, I thought.

Grayson Hardy speaks to you. Four points.

Grayson Hardy asks you what you’re doing after school. Six points.

Grayson Hardy asks you to the dance. One thousand points.

I wouldn’t care at all about the fog if I had a thousand points.

My lips parted, ready to speak.

“Um…” Grayson’s gaze darted toward Mr. Han and then back at me.

He could tell just from looking at me that I was changed. Special.

“I was wondering,” he said, “do you have last night’s homework?”

I drew back, my chest a crumbling cave. I felt my eyes welling up, and so I fixed my gaze on Mr. Han’s long piece of chalk. It knocked against the whiteboard in a woodpecker-like staccato, so sure of itself.

I could feel Grayson waiting beside me, hoping I would pull out my homework and solve things for him once again. I knew I would give it to him, because what else could you do when it was the most handsome boy in school? But for just a minute, I would make him wait, make him live in the uncertainty of my generosity. He shouldn’t be so sure that the world would always give him what he wanted.

Sad, angry, a burning inside me, I glanced out the window and looked for a sign of the receding fog. But there was almost no trace of it now.

I pushed my homework over to Grayson, then turned my attention to the whiteboard. Mr. Han was standing back, admiring his handiwork.

x + y = 0

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Grayson squinting at the whiteboard, trying to make sense of it all. We hadn’t seen this equation before.

He’d probably ask for my homework again tomorrow. And the day after, and the day after that, and we would never talk, and I would never be anything to him other than the girl who always finished her homework. There were no points to be won here. I was nothing, worse than nothing: a decimal that repeated and never changed: .333333

I tried to focus on the class and copy Mr. Han’s equation in my notebook.

x + y = 0

My pen traced the 0 in loops, adding and subtracting as I always did.

Perhaps Grayson was x, and I was y, and we were nothing until the fog took us.

Or Grayson was x, and I was y, and the fog was the 0 that encircled us both.

“Do you know this one?” Grayson asked me.

My pencil stopped and I looked up. His beautiful face so innocent in its desire.

“X equals negative y,” I said. “They are the same but one is the negative value of the other. Like opposites.”

He stared at me blankly, like he needed me to repeat it, and I hated math so much in that moment. I hated being good at these things that meant nothing.