Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.
    I pressed Stop on the boom box, because the interview was over. The girls were crying, and the boys were making funny barfing noises.
    “Well,” Mr. Keegan said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief as he stood up from his chair, “Oskar has certainly given us a lot to think about.” I said, “I'm not done.” He said, “That seemed pretty complete to me.” I explained, “Because the radiant heat traveled in straight lines from the explosion, scientists were able to determine the direction toward the hypocenter from a number of different points, by observing the shadows cast by intervening objects. The shadows gave an indication of the height of the burst of the bomb, and the diameter of the ball of fire at the instant it was exerting the maximum charring effect. Isn't that fascinating?”
    Jimmy Snyder raised his hand. I called on him. He asked, “Why are you so weird?” I asked if his question was rhetorical. Mr. Keegan told him to go to Principal Bundy's office. Some of the kids cracked up. I knew they were cracking up in the bad way, which is at me, but I tried to maintain my confidence.
    “Another interesting feature that has to do with the explosion was the relationship between the degree of burning and color, because dark colors absorb light, obviously. For example, a famous chess match between two grand masters was going on that morning on a life-size board in one of the big city parks. The bomb destroyed everything: the spectators in the seats, the people who were filming the match, their black cameras, the timing clocks, even the grand masters. All that was left were white pieces on white square islands.”
    As he walked out of the room, Jimmy said, “Hey, Oskar, who's Buckminster?” I told him, “Richard Buckminster Fuller was a scientist, philosopher, and inventor who is most famous for designing the geodesic dome, whose most famous version is the Buckyball. He died in 1983, I think.” Jimmy said, “I mean your Buckminster.”
    I didn't know why he was asking, because I'd brought Buckminster to school for a demonstration only a couple of weeks before, and dropped him from the roof to show how cats reach terminal velocity by making themselves into little parachutes, and that cats actually have a better chance of surviving a fall from the twentieth floor than the eighth floor, because it takes them about eight floors to realize what's going on, and relax and correct themselves. I said, “Buckminster is my pussy.”
    Jimmy pointed at me and said, “Ha ha!” The kids cracked up in the bad way. I didn't get what was so hilarious. Mr. Keegan got angry and said, “Jimmy!” Jimmy said, “What? What did I do?” I could tell that inside, Mr. Keegan was cracking up, too.
    “What I was saying was, they found a piece of paper, about half a kilometer from the hypocenter, and the letters, which they call characters, were neatly burned out. I became extremely curious about what that would look like, so first I tried to cut out letters on my own, but my hands weren't good enough to do it, so I did some research, and I found a printer on Spring Street who specializes in die-cutting, and he said he could do it for two hundred fifty dollars. I asked him if that included tax. He said no, but I still thought it was worth the money, so I took my mom's credit card, and anyway, here it is.” I held up the sheet of paper, with the first page of A Brief History of Time in Japanese, which I got the translation of from Amazon.co.jp. I looked at the class through the story of the turtles.
    That was Wednesday.
    I spent Thursday's recess in the library, reading the new issue of
    American Drummer, which Librarian Higgins orders especially for me. It was boring. I went to the science lab, to see if Mr. Powers would do some experiments with me. He said he actually had plans to eat lunch with some other teachers, and he couldn't let me be in the lab alone. So I made some jewelry in the art studio, which you are allowed to be in alone.
    Friday, Jimmy Snyder called me from across the playground, and then he came up to me with a bunch of his friends. He said, “Hey, Oskar, would you rather have a handjob or a blowjob from Emma Watson?” I told him I didn't know who Emma Watson was. Matt Colber said, “Hermione, retard.” I said, “Who's Hermione? And I'm not mentally