The Night of the Comet by George Bishop Read Free Book Online Page A

person.
    Our other teachers gradually picked up on my father’s Year of the Comet idea, some more enthusiastically than the rest. In fine arts, we spent a couple of lessons making posters that went up in the hallways. “Comet Kohoutek, Superstar!” they said, and “Depictions of Comets Through History,” and “Interpretation of When the Comet Hits the Planet and Everything Is Destroyed, the Dinosaurs Return.” In math, we used algebra to try to calculate rate, time, and distance for the comet. And in English class, our teacher set aside a day for us to compose poems about the comet.
    Miss Benoit was a nervous young black woman with large round glasses that made her look frightened and sad, like she was always on the verge of crying. She was a great lover of literature, as she often told us herself, and although her lessons were generally dull and confusing, from time to time she would read stories aloud to us in class with a hushed, dramatic voice that made even the most apathetic students lift their heads up from their desks. For her comet lesson, she showed us pictures of stars and planets, and then she pulled down the shades, put on a record of classical music, and told us to close our eyes and “write what you feel,” and “don’t worry about sense. Sense is for scientists.” We spent the better part of an hour working on our poems, and at the end she loved everybody’s. But she was especially taken by mine. She asked me to read it aloud for the class. I didn’t want to.
    “Please?” she pouted. Miss Benoit had already singled me out as one of her favorites because she’d seen me checking out a stack of nonrequired reading in the library. “A like soul,” she called me. “A lover of literature. A son of Shakespeare.”
    “June-yurrr!”
my classmates jeered when I came to the front of the room.
    I lifted my arms from my sides and tugged my shirt from my chest. I could feel the sweat dampening my underarms. Miss Benoit stood toone side with her hands pressed together in front of her, as if she were praying for me. My voice sounded shaky and weak to my ears; I didn’t dare look up for fear of exposing myself. “ ‘I Am the Comet,’ ” I began.
    I Am the Comet
    Far, far away
    Sailing pale and quiet past the stars
    I am the comet
    You are the Sun
    Beautiful Sun
    Unfreeze my heart
    And see me shine
    Miss Benoit made a small gasp when I finished reading, like someone had poked her in the side. “I cherish your poem,” she said. “I wonder who the Sun is? Oh, that lucky Sun!”
    I didn’t say who the Sun was; I was careful not to even look in her direction. But I thought that it must’ve been obvious to anyone with eyes to see: there she was in the front row, blazing.
    “I wonder who the Sun is?” Peter whispered as I returned to my seat. He slid his hands under his shirt and rubbed his chest obscenely. “Ooh, that lucky, lucky Sun!”
    For Coach DuPleiss, who couldn’t see any link between comets and phys ed, my father volunteered to write the lessons himself. He planned a module called Space Age Fitness and made ditto copies of handouts on which students were to record their daily caloric intake and expenditure while practicing the same exercises the astronauts in
Skylab
did. He visited my P.E. class on the day we were to begin Space Age Fitness, and while my father spoke about the importance of fitness not only for astronauts but for teenagers as well, Coach DuPleiss, a short, tough man with hairy arms and a mustache, made faces behind his back.
    “Thank you, Professor,” said the coach, winking and grinning. “I’m sure we can all appreciate that.” As soon as my father had gone, thecoach stuffed his handouts behind an equipment locker and made us run laps instead.
    “You’re comets!” he shouted, snapping a towel at us. “Pick it up. Hey Junior, let’s go! Run!”
    Nothing discouraged my father, though, not mocking coaches, or skeptical students, or a disinterested family. When