Glass Shatters Read Online Free PDF Page B

on the count of three, I heave my weight against it, turning the knob at the same time. The door groans open, and there’s a rush of air, the room releasing a long held breath. The room feels like an artifact. I can’t tell if it belongs to a ten-year-old child or a forty-year-old man. There’s a queen-sized bed with a forest-green duvet folded over the sides, a vase of dried flowers once alive, a bookshelf featuring dense volumes on hydrozoans and cell mutation. But there are also baseball jerseys in the closet clearly sized for a young boy, an ant farm tipped over on one of the shelves, a Ouija board leaning against the books, worn copies of Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five . The wallpaper, a faded striped pattern that’s also forest green, feels decades older than the springy gray carpet coveringthe floor. A pair of men’s dress shoes sits next to a couple of scuffed sneakers, a framed Matisse print next to a Felix the Cat poster. I pick up the men’s dress shoes, brown oxfords that lace up on top, and slide them on my feet. They fit perfectly. I feel a draft filter through the room and pull back the blinds to discover a broken window, right in the center, a circle with jagged edges about the size of a mouth. I wonder if it was just an accident, a neighborhood kid hitting a baseball too far. I suppose the hole is also the size of a fist.
    A compartment in the headboard of the bed rests slightly open and I reach my hand in. There’s a stack of old newspapers going back chronologically in time. I read over the headlines, the black ink rubbing off against my fingers.
    “Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret to Immortality?
Charles Lang Thinks So”
(January 26, 2008)
    “Charles Lang: How 3-D Printing Body Parts
Will Revolutionize Medicine”
(October 15, 2004)
    “Charles Lang Awarded the Overton Prize in Biology”
(August 13, 2001)
    I turn back further, back through the 1990s, the late 1980s. The papers are yellow and moth-eaten, and I’m concerned that they may just spontaneously disintegrate. I’m most shocked by the photographs of me, shaking hands with professors, pointing and gesturing at scientific charts and graphs. I’m grinning in all of them, absolutely beaming. I look happyand healthy, young and optimistic. I realize that Ava wasn’t kidding when she said I was famous. I keep hoping to see Julie in one of the photographs with me, but there are none with her.
    I finally stop at an article printed in September 1986. There’s a large black-and-white photograph of a teacher in the center, a group of forlorn third-graders huddled on the auditorium stage behind her. One of the children is the small boy from my dream, Charles, the one who was curled up on the couch, waiting for his father. Of all the children, his face is the most absent, the most destroyed.

    September 25, 1986
    Age Eight

    T o I know that many of you may be wondering why we’ve gathered here today. Why are there so many people in suits with big cameras and microphones? Why are there big black vans in front of the school? Why did the mayor come by this morning to raise the American flag?” The teacher pauses to collect herself. She wears a black dress and black flats, her hair pulled back into a stiff bun. One of the students raises his hand, then slowly lowers it as he looks around the auditorium, realizing that the teacher was not expecting an answer to her questions. Reporters continue to bustle around the students as a middle-aged couple poses for photographs on the stage.
    “The reason for all of this is that ten years ago today, a man came into the school and shot several children, and one of them died. His name was Gordy and he was in my third-grade class, just like all of you are. Gordy was very smart—he wanted to grow up to be a veterinarian—and he was also very kind. He was always sharing his lunch with other students, and he earned many merit badges in Cub Scouts. The man and woman standing on the stage are Gordy’s parents,