From my entire teaching career, I’ve never met a student so… perfect. I teach at an elite private school next to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. And Noss, the new transfer student in my math class, passed the tests with straight A’s and a flawless school history. I flipped through his report cards. A+ in math, science, English, and Spanish. But his last school doesn’t teach Spanish; I know because my daughter went there. My head hurts; maybe I was hallucinating. But I needed to go to work and teach the students anyway.

I opened the classroom doors, finding all the students in their seats, ready for class. Noss was sitting in the front row, staring into space and not blinking. The air suddenly became uncomfortable, too warm and choking, and I knew the other students had felt it too. Coughing, I started attendance.

“Anne Silton?”

” Here.”

” Benji Sun?”

” Here.”

” Noss?”

Noss looked up, not moving his head.

He blinked.

“Okay…Noss is here!”

Noss wore an old red turtle neck and black dress pants, as if he were from the 1970s.

I kept that high, cheerful voice, trying to cover the weird atmosphere as I tried to introduce him to the class. He didn’t say anything.

In the afternoon, my class took a math diagnostic test. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Just the occasional pencil tapping on a desk. Noss was the first to submit the test, and 30 minutes early. He placed it on my desk and sat back down, and stared at me. All the questions were correct. I had a gut feeling that something bad was going to happen…