RADIOACTIVE

Billy Tesla glowed in the dark.

All the other kids whispered about Billy’s nimbus but none could agree on its color. Sally Davis claimed it was blue, suggesting depth and spiritual richness; Suzy Rollins disagreed, insisting Billy shone a passionate, volatile red; Randall Johnson thought green, like an alien or nuclear waste; and Tootsie Campbell said Billy was just plain crazy—what difference did the color make?

Billy himself trudged through the halls of Riverside Junior High, his backpack slung over one shoulder. Even during the day, a faint trace of light flickered beneath his skin, causing his classmates to swerve away as he passed. Although Billy noticed this, he’d grown used to it and besides was too preoccupied with a geometry problem to be overly bothered. His mind swam with shapes, grids, angles, equations. He felt he stood at the brink of discovery, that a stunning breakthrough grew slowly but inexorably within him, squeezing his skull but remaining, for the moment, tantalizingly concealed. Billy longed for the moment of release yet feared its power. Was it possible for an idea to be so overwhelming that it destroyed the world? Billy clenched his teeth.

His head cleared as he turned the corner and entered the wide central corridor. Twin rows of lockers stretched down either side, fluorescent tubes flickered overhead, and hordes of students in sneakers and jeans swarmed across the checkerboard tiles. The air smelled of sweat and ammonia.

The three o’clock bell had just rung, signaling the end of classes. Billy struggled against the crowd surging toward the exits behind him.

“Move it, glow boy,” said one student.

“Weirdo creep,” said another.

At last Billy reached Room 27. He stood in the open doorway, propped against the frame. Inside, Ms. Appleton, her back turned, wiped the blackboard with an eraser. The motion of her hips, firm within the tight sheath of her dress, mesmerized him.

“Ms. Appleton?” he said at last.

“Billy!” she cried, whirling to face him.

“Sorry to startle you.”

Slowly, Ms. Appleton circled the large desk, brushing a strand of yellow hair from her eyes. Her luscious lips pouted. “You’re early,” she said.

Billy gulped. “I couldn’t wait.”

She smiled. “A bit of advice, handsome,” she said, winking. “Be careful not to seem overanxious. Girls prefer patience.”

“I—”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re a smart boy. You’ll learn.” She leaned back against the desk and crossed her ankles. “Have a seat.”

Billy entered, shuffled past Ms. Appleton, and slumped into a chair in the second row. He dropped his backpack to the floor.

Ms. Appleton smiled kindly. “So what did you want to see me about?”

Billy’s gut clenched into a knot. Beads of sweat formed on his brow. His hands trembled. “Poetry,” he mumbled.

“Are you having trouble understanding it?”

“No, ma’am. The poems you read in class—they have a strange effect on me.”

Ms. Appleton’s eyes narrowed with concern. She scooted back into a sitting position on the desk. “Can you explain what you mean?”

“It’s like I can see them in my head as you read—and feel them all through me.”

The teacher laughed. “That doesn’t sound like a problem. That’s how it’s supposed to affect you!”

Billy nodded. “But it’s got to where I can’t get enough of it. Lately I’ve been staying up all night reading poetry.”

Ms. Appleton grinned. “I think I understand, Billy. That’s very sweet.”

“No, ma’am,” Billy said. “This is something I can’t explain. I have to show you.”

“Show me?” She looked worried. “Show me what?”

Billy’s body slumped with dread. Then, steeling himself, he stiffened his posture, opened his mouth, and—in a booming voice several octaves deeper than normal and many times louder—spoke. The room quaked.

“But, first, whom shall we send
In search of this new world? Whom shall we find
Sufficient? Who shall tempt with wandering feet
The dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss,
And through the palpable obscure find out
His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight,
Upborne with indefatigable wings
Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive
The happy isle?”

By the time he had finished, three windows were shattered, a light fixture spitting sparks swung by a wire, Ms. Appleton’s desk had toppled backward, and the young woman’s bare legs waved helplessly in the air. Plaster dust sprinkled from the ceiling.

Billy sat frozen in his seat, paralyzed by shame.

Ms. Appleton’s legs flopped out of sight. A moment later, her head appeared, peeking over the fallen desk, eyes crazed with fright. When at last she spoke again, her voice emerged as a hoarse squeak. “I think you’d better go now, Billy.”

“I’m real sorry,” he said.

“Just—just—” She flapped her hand, shooing him out the door.

Billy fled.

Back in the corridor, now empty of students, he raced alongside one row of lockers, his backpack bouncing against his spine. Through the open transoms above the doors of the music room, he heard the student band mangling In the Hall of the Mountain King. As he approached the next intersection, a trapped bluejay swooped around the corner, then veered upward to batter itself against the dingy skylight.

Billy turned and stumbled to a halt in front of Room 33. He hunched over, gasping. Then he straightened himself, sighed, and walked through the door.

Mr. Lindsay sat with his feet propped up at his desk in the far corner, nursing a cigarette and blowing smoke out the open window. When he saw Billy enter, he hastily stubbed the butt out in a saucer and flapped his hand to clear the air. Then he swung his legs down, leaned forward, and smiled. His gray hair stood in wayward spikes on his head. “Hello, Billy,” he said kindly, then coughed.

“Hello, sir,” Billy said.

“Are you—lost?”

“No, sir. I wanted to ask you something.”

“Ah!” He coughed again. “Well, I hope it’s about physics!” He roared with laughter, stopped abruptly, then raked his fingers through his hair. He seemed to shiver, leaned back again. “So?”

“I’ve been having strange dreams,” Billy said.

“Dreams? Great jumpin’ teakettles, son! That’s hardly my department.”

“I know. It’s just that in these dreams I see diagrams and formulas I don’t understand. I remember them clearly enough—so I thought I might show you.”

Mr. Lindsay sat motionless with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. His nose twitched. Then he swiveled suddenly in his chair to face the blackboard. “Chalk’s in the tray,” he said.

Billy stepped forward and began scribbling. His arm moved so quickly that it seemed to slant in several directions at once. The chalk clicked and squeaked. When he’d finished, he backed away to look at what he’d done. He saw an oblong vertical diagram containing, at the top, a rectangular box from which a narrow shaft descended to a circle at the bottom. Arrows pointed downward along the shaft, and flames leapt from the base. Cryptic mathematical notations floated on every side.

“That’s it,” Billy said.

Mr. Lindsay stared silently at the board. He leaned back in his chair. He grumbled, sighed, then leaned forward again. He lit a cigarette. Smoke jetted from his nostrils.

“Billy,” he said. “You’re not trying to be cute are you?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re telling me you dreamed this?”

Billy nodded.

Mr. Lindsay winced. “That’s Little Boy, Billy.”

“Who?”

“A bomb. A nuclear bomb. Great jumpin’—”

“Oh!”

Mr. Lindsay held up his hand. “Let’s agree, Billy, that I don’t have anything to worry about. You’re a bright young man, but this—”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve given me a turn, son. Now do me a favor—scram!”

As Billy closed the door behind him, he nearly collided with Sadie Spade, who marched hell-for-leather down the hall with a tower of notebooks in her arms.

“Aaah!” she cried, spinning away from him. The notebooks wobbled precariously. Then she regained her footing, braced the tower beneath her chin, and stamped her foot. “Billy!” she wailed.

Billy stood entranced by Sadie’s bobbed black hair, her milky skin, her piercing blue eyes. In a flash he saw the two of them sprawled out on his bedroom floor, surrounded by books, engrossed in a chemistry problem of overpowering complexity.

“Jeez!” he said, regaining himself. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

“Where do you think?” Sadie huffed. “I’m only the Class Representative in four very important organizations, which in case you didn’t know meet every week after school all on the same day, and I simply have to be at all of them and not just be there but come prepared, too. Oh, how would you know anything about it? Last time I checked, you aren’t involved in anything! Really, Billy, how do you expect to get ahead when all you do is wander around dreaming and mumbling to yourself?”

“Ahead?”

Sadie groaned. “Billy, you know I like you but somebody needs to tell you and it might as well be me—you don’t have the first clue.”

“I guess you’re right,” Billy said. “Need some help with those notebooks?”

Sadie sighed and shuffled forward. “Grab the top half,” she said.

As they walked together down the hall, each with a load of notebooks, Sadie regaled Billy with her thoughts. Billy nodded along.

“—and then I don’t know how it started but there I was at one end of the table with Mrs. Hatley sitting beside me, and she is just the sweetest lady, you know? Well, all of a sudden Mr. Thorpe, who is at the other end, rears up like a cobra and starts screaming about ‘lack of respect’ this and ‘proper procedure’ that. I thought he was going to kill us. And then—” She stopped abruptly. “Billy, are you even listening?”

Billy blinked. “Yes.”

“Yeah, right. Come on, we have to go to the annex.”

They turned and approached a pair of glass double doors. Passing through, they emerged into a sprawling courtyard. A narrow path led from the main building to the annex at the far end, and the ground on either side sloped away into grassy, shallow basins where hundreds of students milled and shouted. The sunlight blazed.

Billy and Sadie marched forward. When they’d made it almost halfway across, Billy tripped on a crack in the cement. He toppled forward, arms flailing. Notebooks scattered everywhere.

As he hit the ground, Sadie screamed. A notebook landed spine-down on his head. Astonished cries rose from the crowd.

“Check it out!”

“Awww!”

“Glow boy bites the dust!”

“Spaztastic!”

Sadie whirled about in fury. “What’s the matter with you people? Don’t you have any compassion? Any decency?”

“Spaztastic!”

Billy, who had risen once more to his feet, touched Sadie on the shoulder. “Take it easy,” he said. “I just realized something—I’m ready now.”

Sadie blinked at him. “Ready for what?”

“Watch.”

Billy stood with both legs firmly planted. He lifted his arms above his head and held them there, crossed at the wrists. He looked straight up into the sky. The crowd hushed to a bewildered murmur.

“Billy,” Sadie whispered. “What are you doing?”

With a sudden crackling roar, two beams of light burst from Billy’s eyes. Everyone, including Sadie, hit the ground. Billy’s body shone like a stoked ember—fiery, incandescent—and hovered a few inches above the path, his features locked in a tortured grimace.

The beams of light ascended the sky, parallel at first, then twisting around each other before forking off in opposite directions and fanning out to form the two halves of an enormous dome that clapped down over the courtyard, sealing it in darkness.

The air quavered with electricity. The dome walls flickered.

Then formless shapes and clouds of color appeared, gliding over the surface of the dome, followed quickly by recognizable images—faces of classmates, town landmarks—rendered in ghostly pastel smudges, haunting and translucent.

These images circled and circled.

Billy twitched, shuddered, and collapsed to the ground.

Sadie wept.

And at that moment, without warning, everything changed.