Page 26 of Blown

Jake clapped his hands together and bounded over to where the observing students stood. His energy volume was still turned up to high after and his desperate need for validation was in overdrive after his confrontation with Early, and he could feel a thousand disasters pulsing just under his skin.

“Good, good,” Rafe said, turning his attention back to the kids. “Who wants to give it a try.”

All the kids were eager, but Jake shot his hand into the air and made a fool of himself by shouting, “Me! I do! I do! Please me give it a try, Mr. Hawthorne!” like he was a teenager with no clue how bad life could get again.

The other kids laughed. They’d always laughed when he’d acted up in class. His antics might have landed him in the principal’s office every time, but at least he’d made his classmates like him.

“Alright, Jake,” Rafe said, a puzzled look on his face, like he’d just opened a bag of snakes and wasn’t sure if they were safe or dangerous. “Amy, do you want to try with him?”

“Yes, please!” the solid redhead who looked about seventeen said, jumping forward when Jake did.

Jake wasn’t sure about working with someone who didn’t know what they were doing, but it didn’t really matter. His aim was to impress, not to teach.

“I’ll get the glass from the furnace,” he told Amy, striding to the far end of the room.

“There’s colored glass and clear glass in there,” Rafe called after him, “but we’re just working with clear glass today.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Jake called back as he reached for a blowpipe. He glanced at the class as he slid the pipe into the furnace to gather a bit of colored glass and asked, “You guys want to see something really cool?”

“Yes!”

“Yeah!”

The kids responded with enthusiasm.

Rafe wasn’t as convinced. As Jake took his bit of glass over to the marvering table to cool it a little, he said, “We have to walk before we run. We’re only just starting with the basics today.”

“Then this will be a great demonstration of what they’ll be able to do once they’re running,” Jake said, sending the studentsa cheeky wink. “Now that I’ve got this colored glass cool, I’m going to gather clear glass on top of it. Watch.”

He spent the next few minutes gathering clear glass onto his pipe and rolling it over the marvering table to create the malleable cylinder of glass he would need for cane. The kids were riveted.

“This is nice,” Rafe said, his tone hinting that he thought it wasn’t, “but Mr. Mathers should have put on safety equipment first. That glass is over a thousand degrees Celsius.”

Jake ignored him. So did the rest of the class. It was harder to ignore the urge to get everyone’s attention and to sell them on the lie that he was something special.

“Okay, Amy,” Jake said. “Grab that other pipe and hold it up for me.”

Amy giggled excitedly, then rushed to do as he asked. She held the pipe horizontally, and Jake daubed the blob of glass from his pipe onto hers, connecting them.

“Now we pull,” Jake said excitedly, “and we twist the cane as fast as we can as we move apart. Go, go, go, go, go!”

The class loved it. Amy squealed as the two of them backed away from each other, drawing the glass into a long rod with a twist of color stretching along the inside. Jake played up the whole thing, shouting like the elongating cane would break and making faces that had the class in stitches.

The kids ate it up, but Rafe stood by the side, arms crossed, fuming. “Alright, alright, that’s enough of that,” he said as soon as the cane was stretched the length of the hot shop and set down to cool. “That’s all well and good, but can any of you tell me the half dozen health and safety violations Mr. Mathers made as he pulled that cane?”

Rafe was ignored. Or more accurately, Rafe was eclipsed.

“That was really awesome,” Amy said, laughing. “I loved the twisting part.”

“You’re a fab teacher, Mr. Mathers,” one of the other students said, her eyes bright with engagement. “Why aren’t you teaching this class instead of Mr. Hawthorne?”

Jake laughed and brushed the question away, but he peeked at Rafe, who stood off to one side, barely concealing his look of incredulity. It was awful, but also too late to fix.

“Can we do the twisty cane again?” one of the boys asked.

“Sure, we can do it again,” Jake said, his heart beating furiously in his chest. “Come on and I’ll let you gather the glass.”

The students all followed Jake to the furnace, eager and engaged. That was how things should be in a classroom. Rafe should thank him for making his class exciting. He was only trying to help.

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