Rules and Exceptions
by tzikeh

"Luke, come on, why not?"

"Because Kev and I don't want to go, you know, girl shopping."

Joan ran to catch up, flinging her long scarf over her shoulder. "It's not girl shopping or guy shopping--it's Christmas shopping! Besides," she said, "if you guys don't follow Mom around in the mall, you'll never know what to get for her."

"We can ask Dad."

"But--"

"Joan--" Luke stopped walking and adjusted his backpack straps. "I want stuff to be a surprise this year. You know--following Mom around and the whole 'Well, that's a terrific little cheese grater--'" He stopped talking as a group of large, barking dogs turned the corner, dragging a young woman in a bright orange windbreaker behind them.

"Cheese grater?" Joan asked.

"You know what I mean. And Kevin is really big on the 'driving the little brother places' thing right now, and I'm gonna take complete advantage of that while it lasts."

"You just want to talk to Kevin about Grace Polk, and you don't want Mom to hear," Joan teased. Luke's head snapped up, and then his ears turned pink and he looked away. "Oh my God! You totally do want to talk to Kevin about Grace!"

"No! I'm..."

"You're going to get Grace Polk a Christmas present!" Joan laughed. "You know she's Jewish, right?"

"Joan, please don't say anything to her. Please? Joan, seriously--" He was interrupted by the dog-walker and her dogs coming up alongside them. Two dogs jumped up on Joan and licked her face while the three others wound their leashes around her legs, barking happily.

"I'm so sorry-- DOWN! They're really very friendly," she said, smiling apologetically. Joan tried to disentangle her legs from the leashes as Luke took off down the street towards the high school.

"Luke! C'mon, wait up!"

"Let him go, Joan," God said, pulling a dog biscuit from her jacket pocket. "You're not going to the mall today anyway--your Mom has a staff meeting after school."

Joan sighed heavily and stood up, abandoning her attempt to free herself. "Let me guess. You don't like how commercial and shallow Christmas has become."

God raised her eyebrows. "Well, that's neither here nor there at the moment--"

"Wait, wait." Joan's face worked for a moment as she thought. "Is it really, you know... Is it true? Christmas, I mean? The, the wise men and the gifts and--"

"You should know better than to ask questions like that by now." God tugged on the leash of a dog that was showing interest in a passing squirrel. "I'd like for you to consider that which isn't there."

Joan crossed her arms. "Okay. Can I just point out the irony of you refusing to answer questions like that and then telling me I should think about stuff that doesn't exist?"

"I didn't say you should think about stuff that doesn't exist. I said you should consider that which isn't there." God shook her head as she was dragged a few feet down the sidewalk by her collection of dogs. "Try not to paraphrase what I ask you to do, Joan. That's where people invariably run into trouble."

"But--"

"Absence and presence, Joan!" God called over her shoulder as the dogs took off. "Give it some thought! And look up 'irony!'"

Joan stood open-mouthed and alone on the street. "Great."
 

"... so ice is a perfect example of an exception to which precept of states of matter...Mr. Friedman!"

Friedman jumped in his seat as Ms. Lischak brought her pointer down across the lab table. "Uh--uh--That generally, any matter in its solid form is denser than in its liquid form."

"Very good! And why doesn't ice conform to this rule, Ms. Girardi?"

Joan looked up from her notes. "What? I'm sorry. Because... I don't know the answer, but--" her face brightened "--I think it has something to do with absence. And presence." Ms. Lischak tilted her head, puzzled. There was silence in the classroom. "Like--you know," Joan pressed on, "we have to look for what isn't there?" Getting no response, she glanced over at Grace, who was giving Joan her standard which-planet-are-you-from-today face. She looked back at Ms. Lischak, who seemed...patient, but increasingly confused. "Um. Well, you know, wild guess," Joan mumbled. "It was worth a shot."

Ms. Lischak blinked, and then continued. "Can anyone--"

Grace gave an exasperated sigh. "Water molecules are irregularly shaped, like most liquids' molecules. But ice molecules are hexagonal, and forced into a lattice by their hydrogen bonds, which leaves big spaces in the molecular structure of ice. Most solids' molecules are much more tightly packed, which is why solid matter is denser than when it's in liquid form. Ice is less dense than water, and so it's an exception."

"Go Gra-ace, go Gra-ace--" Ms. Lischak began, and the rest of the class joined in. Grace put her head in her hands and muttered, "Ah jeez," while Joan grinned as the Mantle of AP Chem Embarrassment passed to her seatmate.

"So, I was right, anyway," Joan said to Grace as the class continued.

"What?"

"Because there's all that space in the--the lattice. It's the stuff that isn't there that makes ice an exception to the rule."

"Whatever, I guess."

When the bell rang, Ms. Lischak shouted over the chatter that they had a quiz tomorrow on the week's work. Joan looked over at Adam's empty seat and grabbed Grace's arm to stop her leaving. "Hey, can you drop by Adam's house after school and remind him about the quiz and maybe, you know, share your notes with him?"

Grace snorted as she slung her backpack over her shoulder. "No way am I running interference for the two of you. If you want him to show up and pass the quiz, go see him yourself."

"Whoa, Grace, this isn't about me and Adam. If he doesn't pass, all three of us lose points. This class is hard enough without--"

"It's not my problem if the school system wants to create a false sense of interdependence in the student body. The whole program fails on every level; they think this set-up fosters some kind of team spirit but we just end up resentful of--"

"Okay, okay, fine, I'll go."
 

"Hey. Adam."

Adam turned off the welding torch and lifted his mask. "Hey."

Joan shifted her weight. "Um, we have that quiz in Chem tomorrow, you know, on this week's stuff. And I thought I'd come by and remind you, and you know, if you want to study together, or something..."

"Thanks. I'm good." Adam returned his attention to his project, which appeared to Joan to be a large heap of metal scraps and wire loops fighting one another for dominance. But then, most of Adam's work looked like that to her.

"Okay. Well. The points are for me and Grace too, so, I just wanted--"

"I'll be in class tomorrow. Don't worry." He pulled his mask down.

Joan quickly grabbed a fistful of papers out of her knapsack and thrust them toward Adam. "I have notes, if you want to borrow them." Adam pushed his mask back up, but shook his head. Undeterred, Joan walked toward the workbench. "It's all about the bonds which hold molecules together in different states of matter, and relative densities, and... you know, not the stuff you're good at memorizing, so I thought maybe I could help." She stopped short; there was only the one stool, and Adam was sitting on it. "Um. Anyway." She put the notes down in front of him and smoothed them out a little. "I'll need them back, to study later, so... maybe you could drop them off at my house tonight? Or, if you want, I could go study now, and bring them over after dinner."

He handed back the notes. "Yeah, okay. I'll see you later, then." He got up to rummage in his toolbox. When he turned around, Joan was still standing there, notes in her hand. "Uh, thanks."

"You're welcome." They looked at one another in awkward silence, then Joan looked at the pile of metal on the workbench. "What's this going to be?"

Adam sighed resignedly. "It's a Christmas tree, and it's done." Adam sat back down and took a large pair of pliers to a metal tube at the bottom of the heap. "Mostly."

Joan stared at the sculpture. She squinted at it. She tilted her head. She did not see a Christmas tree. "A Christmas tree! Um--it's good!" she said, with what she hoped was a genuine smile. Adam just shook his head, and she sighed. "I know, I really don't get it. I'm sorry, Adam. I like it, but it doesn't look like a Christmas tree to me. It doesn't even look like it wants to be a Christmas tree." She looked up at him. "I think your art is great--I do!--I know, it's weird, me talking to you about this, after what I did. But I do think your art is wonderful, Adam." He shrugged. She took a deep breath and said, "But I don't understand how this," she gestured at it, "is a Christmas tree."

Adam rolled his eyes. "Cha--because you're looking for a Christmas tree, Joan."

Joan frowned. She looked at it again. It still looked nothing like a Christmas tree. She watched Adam working. She looked at the notes in her hand, and then looked back at Adam. "So, I should...consider that which isn't there," she murmured.

Adam looked up. "What?"

She smiled a little. "I should consider that which isn't there."

Adam looked startled, and then thoughtful. "Kinda. Like, you have to get what's missing to get what isn't. Because that can show you a lot. Just because something isn't there, that doesn't mean something isn't there. You know?" He looked up at her.

Joan just looked into Adam's eyes and smiled. "I know." She looked at the sculpture, which still didn't look anything like a Christmas tree, but she was beginning to realize that that was the least important thing about it. She looked back at Adam, still smiling. "It's your Christmas tree, Adam."

Adam eventually had to look elsewhere.

She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. "I'll come back after dinner."

Adam couldn't get his voice working until Joan was almost out the door. "Whuh-what was that for?"

Joan turned and pointed up over Adam's head. "Mistletoe."

Adam looked up. "Where?"

Joan grinned, turned, and kept walking.

END

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