What We Saw by Aaron Hartzler

Dance was nearly washed away. So was the factory where Candy’s husband, Jim, worked with my dad, making lightbulb sockets for the glove compartments of every GM car built in North America.
    The factory owners decided not to rebuild and moved the plant to India to be near cheap labor. Miss Candy decided not to rebuild and moved Jim to Gary, Indiana, to be near her sick father. The ballet girls eventually found that their last dance option in Coral Sands was the drill team.
    They all wear a lot of eyeliner during performances, but most of them wash it off afterward. Stacey doesn’t wash hers off. She has no problem attracting guys—any guys. All the guys. Jocks, preps, burnouts. Sometimes, it seems as though she’s dated half the junior class. But mostly Stacey likes the guys withlong hair and trench coats. They’ve got the weed, after all.
    I know that Dooney loves to smoke out. Maybe that’s how the party got moved to the basement after I left. Stacey had weed and Dooney wanted to smoke, so everybody went downstairs. There have been plenty of rumors that Stacey and Dooney have been talking to each other, even though Phoebe has been Dooney’s girlfriend since last summer.
    Having a girlfriend has never stopped Dooney from flirting with other girls. A random kiss at a couple parties, an ass grab in the hallway; then Dooney and Phoebe fight and get back together a week later. I don’t know how Stacey ended up in that picture with Dooney and Deacon, but I have a hunch that her access to the best pot in Coral Sands was a factor.
    I glance over at Lindsey’s desk. A page in her binder is already covered with notes I’ll have to borrow later. As I tune back in, Mr. Johnston clicks through some slides on his laptop.
    â€œWe’ll be taking a field trip to the Devonian Fossil Gorge in a couple weeks,” he announces. There are groans and moans as he holds up his hands and waits for things to quiet down, pausing at a shot of the reservoir spillway just outside of Iowa City.
    â€œThe floods of 1993 and 2008 stripped away fifteen feet of sediment left by glaciers in the last ice age,” he explains. “I know you all find this thrilling, but it finally gave us a horizontal plane where we could observe fossils. It’s actually pretty cool. I’ll have permission slips for you on Friday.”
    He clicks to a close-up of the bare limestone at the base of the reservoir. I catch my breath as the outlines of a hundreddifferent fossilized organisms pop into sharp focus on the screen. It’s beautiful. The floodwaters that carried away Miss Candy’s studio and my dad’s job left behind the outline of an ancient world, evidence of the way things used to be.
    â€œRemember,” Mr. Johnston says, “nothing is exactly as it appears. The closer you look, the more you see.”
    There are still ten minutes of class to go, but something outside the window catches my eye. A hawk circles the trees at the back of the parking lot. She soars out of sight over the school, then appears again and perches on a nest lodged at the highest branches of the tallest oak. Is this what Stacey is always staring at?
    Nothing is exactly as it appears.
    The closer you look, the more you see.

nine
    IT WOULD SEEM there’s an epidemic in our cafeteria today, and its only cure is interaction with a smartphone. Everyone is staring at their screens, strangely muted, eyes open, mouths closed, like the whole student populace decided it was a good idea to take it down a few decibels.
    Usually this place requires earplugs, especially at the farthest tables by the big glass doors where the Buccaneers gather to graze. Leave it to our landlocked alumni association to come up with a pirate-themed mascot. Maybe it was a subconscious connection to our ancient history—the same reason our French class got such a kick out of conjugating all of the verbs a la plage (“to the beach”) with Ms.