Translucent Read Online Free PDF Page B

plan for them and would separate them into an irritating boy-girl alternating pattern . The teacher stood at the front of the room, smiling at everyone warmly. But in the corner there was another person who looked to be in their early twenties, far younger than the teacher. The best way she could describe the look on his face was a look of utter fatigue. It wasn’t that he looked tired or sleepy, it was more like a crushing weariness that made his features sag and his s mile seem half-hearted and weak, despite his youth.
    Everyone sat down, and the teacher began telling them about how they were going to have a great year together and starting introducing herself and going through all the usual procedures that happen at the beginning of a school year. And then she introduced the man who’d been sitting in the background.
    “This is Mr. Ryker,” she said. “He’s a teacher in training who’s going to be your secondary teacher this year.”
    Politely, all the students said in a sort of semi-unison, “Hi, Mr. Ryker.” Mr. Ryker gave a half-hearted smile and a half-hearted wave, which seem to satisfy the kids who turned their attention back to the teacher.
    Karena suspected at first that the man was simply just a person who wasn’t very happy with their job, or with their life, or with something in general. There were always those pe ople who seemed extremely sad for no legitimate reason, simply because they had a small thing in their life that needed filling, or at least that they thought need filling, though they could easily ignore it if they tried. K arena had heard of such a thing; it was called the missing tile syndrome. But Mr. Ryker was not like this at all, and Karena soon began to suspect something about him that nobody else did.
    For one thing, a person who just didn’t have the right job wouldn’t act like this. This man act ed like he was actually depressed, not just disappointed with his occupation. The fact that he trie d to smile but could only do so half-heartedly proved this. A person who was just disappointed wouldn’t even try to smile, but a person who was depressed would be so used to being depressed that he’d see no reason not to.
    But there was something else about him that was perhaps even more important. She could see it in his eyes. His eyes, though he was young, were full of wisdom and knowledge, as if he were really much older than twenty but still looked young on the outside. Karena couldn’t explain how she saw this, especially since no one else seemed to notice it. There was something about him that was simply…different.
    And as the days passed and Mr. Ryker continued to sit there in the class, helping out the teacher and being a substitute if she wasn’t there, Karena became more and more certain that Mr. Ryker was not what he seemed. He was not twenty years old, in fact, he was much older, and she knew, though she couldn’t explain why, that he’d been through the exact same thing that she’d been through. Maybe it was something in her blood that allowed her to know this for sure, or maybe it was just a strong suspicion she had which happened to be correct, but it was as certain to her as…well…she couldn’t really think of a good analogy for that since she wasn’t really certain of much these days, but she was certain about this, and that’s what mattered.
    Karena knew that she had to speak with him privately, and she began formulating a plan for how she could do this in secret. She had no fear that she would approach him and find out that her suspicion was false, and so she decided that she’d be very bold and simply find a time when there was no one around to talk. She noticed that every day, after everyone left class, he was always the last one to leave, even after the teacher. So she decided one day that she would just walk up and start talking. She didn’t tell her parents about Mr. Ryker. She saw no need to, at least for the time being.
    On Wednesday, Karena was