Free Zig Zag by José Carlos Somoza Page A

in that unique position, in the kind of class she'd only
dreamed about.
    By
the time that first session was over, however, she'd changed her mind
considerably.

    SHE was
one of the first to leave. Without even stopping to stuff her notes
into her backpack, she slammed her books and notebook shut and sped
out of the room.
    As
she was walking down the steep road toward the bus stop, she heard a
voice.
    "Hey
... Excuse me ... Can I give you a ride somewhere?"
    She
was so pissed off she hadn't even realized there was a car beside
her. Victor "Lennon" Lopera was poking his head out from
within it, like an awkward turtle.
    "Thanks
anyway, but I've got a long ways to go," Elisa said
disinterestedly.
    "Where
to?"
    "Claudio
Coello."
    "Well...
I could take you if you want. I... I'm going back to Madrid, anyway."
    She
didn't feel like talking to him, but she thought he might distract
her.
    She
climbed into his messy car, which smelled like mildewed upholstery
and was littered with loose papers and books. Lopera drove the way he
spoke, slowly and cautiously. But he seemed pleased to have Elisa as
a passenger and gradually began to warm up. As with all great
introverts, his chatter would at one point suddenly get out of
control.
    "What
did you think of what he said right at the start, about reality?
'Equations are reality' ... Well, if he says so ... I don't know, I
thought it was pretty reductive, a real positivist
oversimplification... I mean, that right there is rejecting the
possibility of revealed truths and intuitive truths, the foundations
of religious belief and common sense, for example ... And that's not
right... I mean, I suppose he says it because he's an atheist... But
in all honesty, I don't think religious faith has to be incompatible
with scientific proof... It's just on another level, like Einstein
said. You can't just..." He stopped at an intersection and
paused, waiting for the road to clear before he drove or spoke again.
"You can't just convert metaphysical experiences into chemical
reactions. That would be absurd ... Heisenberg said..."
    Elisa
tuned him out and stared at the road, grunting from time to time. But
then later, he murmured, "I noticed it, too, you know. How he
treated you, I mean."
    She
felt her cheeks burn, and thinking about it made her want to cry all
over again.
    Blanes
had asked a few questions in class, but he called on someone sitting
two seats to her right to answer them every time. Someone who raised
his hand as soon as she did.
    Ric
Valente Sharpe.
    Then,
at one point, something happened. Blanes asked a question and she was
the only one to raise her hand. Yet instead of calling on her, he
prodded the rest of the class to answer. "Come on, what's wrong?
Afraid they'll take away your degrees if you're wrong?" A few
tense seconds went by, and then Blanes pointed to the same seat once
more. And Elisa heard that smooth, soft voice, the almost amused
tone, the slight foreign accent. "There's no geometry that's
valid on that scale because of the quantum foam phenomenon."
    "Very
good, Mr. Sharpe."
    Five
years in a row at the top of her class had turned Elisa into a
fiercely competitive woman. There was no way to be number one in the
world of science if you didn't possess a predator's instincts, the
desire to pick off you rivals, one by one. And that made Blanes's
bizarre disdain for her totally insufferable. She didn't want to
expose her injured pride, but she couldn't hold it in anymore.
    "It
was like he couldn't even see me,"
she muttered, holding back her tears.
    "Well,
the way I see it, he couldn't stop seeing
you," Lopera replied.
    She
looked at him.
    "I
mean, it seems like ... I think he saw you and thought, you can't
have a girl who looks so ... well... you can't be both ... Well, I
mean, no matter how you look at it, it's sexist. Maybe he doesn't
realize you're the one who came in first on the exam. He doesn't know
your name. He thinks Elisa Robledo is ... well, that she couldn't be
like