They were definitely a weird few months. I think the best way to get a sense of how we all felt is to imagine a mysterious, booming voice echoing from the heavens, evilly laughing, "Nyeh heh heh," without pause, ceasing only when Thomas was taken away.

I didn’t know Thomas all that well. Nobody did. He was very shy and kept to himself. But he was lonely, I guess, because he would often tag along with a group of people hanging out. We weren’t particularly nice to him. We weren’t mean either. We basically ignored him. He was just there. He rarely spoke and when he did, what he said was always a little off. He was awkward, I mean, but seemed perfectly ordinary and unremarkable.

Thomas kept failing his science classes. He was pretty good in History and English, but couldn’t pass Chemistry or Biology. I guess he realized senior year that he had to apply himself or he wouldn’t get his diploma. He studied a lot that year and really got it together. I was in his Biology class (I had failed it also) and I remember the teacher was so proud of herself. She acted like she had taken this failing student and inspired him. She was so arrogant and self-important. You should have seen all the posturing she did for the TV cameras later. I can’t stand people like that. But then again, I’m biased against her for failing me.

Anyway, Thomas started really learning his science and somehow he came up with the idea of making eye magnets. I don’t understand the details myself, but apparently he invented a substance that could attract something in the lenses of people’s eyes. It worked like a magnet, but was probably something completely different since eyes aren’t made of metal or anything.

Thomas knew that the stuff was dangerous. It could really hurt people if it was too powerful, so he diluted it a lot. Then he took a bit and attached it as a pendant to a chain he always wore around his neck. The magnet was weak enough so that you weren’t forced to stare directly at Thomas’s chest, where it hung under his shirt, but strong enough so that it was easier to look at Thomas than not to. Your eyes would get tired if you turned away from him for too long. Your eyeballs felt strained, like when you’re reading something in too-small type. The result was that people started noticing him. The effect was very subtle. It really was brilliant, I think.

Of course, at the time, none of us knew about the eye magnets or anything. All we knew was that suddenly, for no apparent reason, Thomas was becoming very popular. He was always the center of attention, even to the point that teachers would sometimes throw him out of class. They knew that we and they themselves were distracted by him and concluded that he must have been doing something wrong, even if they couldn’t put their fingers on it. Like I said, it was eerie, like there was a voice in our ears shouting, "Nyeh heh heh," but we had no idea what evil the laugher was perpetrating.

If that had been the end of it, it would have been fine. Thomas would have gone through life being charismatic and successful. Maybe he would have become president. Who knows? Charisma is a powerful thing. But that wasn’t how it happened.

What did happen was that a group of extremely nerdy boys noticed that Thomas had suddenly become popular and they approached him to ask his advice. Now, these kids were super-dorks. I mean, they fit every stereotype of nerds--how they looked, how they dressed, what they did, what they said--so much so, in fact, that they were almost caricatures of themselves. Thomas had a good heart and felt sorry for them, and it didn’t hurt that he had a good, American entrepreneurial spirit. He sold them bits of eye magnet, which he labeled "Cynosure Charms," at a hundred dollars a pop.

Well, these dorky kids wore the charms and started getting a lot of attention, but it didn’t work out how they had hoped. Thomas had been borderline to begin with. He would hang out with the popular kids, even though he wasn’t popular himself. We didn’t know him very well, but nobody really minded having him around. He was all right. He was just shy and kind of weird. So when he started being noticed, it was easy to accept him. These kids, on the other hand, had been much better off being wallflowers. The eye magnets made people notice them, but they didn’t make us like them. The kids changed from being barely acknowledged to being constantly teased and tormented.

In desperation or anger or confusion--nobody is sure which--the dorky kids decided to pool their eye magnets and have one of their group wear all the pieces at once. The one they chose was named Frank. He was a year older, having been left back in kindergarten or something, and was kind of their leader. They looked up to him. Anyway, one day Frank came to school wearing six Cynosure Charms.

Immediately, everyone’s eyes were drawn to him and they couldn’t turn away. And it hurt. I’ll never forget. There was a powerful tension somewhere inside your head. It felt like someone was constantly pulling on your eyeballs. Closing your eyes helped a little, but not much. And it was terrifying, too, like the "Nyeh heh heh" voice had gotten closer and its owner was hiding just around the corner, about to announce his evil plan.

Even without the mysterious sense of foreboding, it was evident from our physical affliction that something was very wrong. Frank was taken to the principal’s office. The principal threatened to expel him or call his parents or something and Frank turned Thomas in. I can’t blame him, really, since, regardless of Thomas’s intentions, the eye magnets had messed up Frank’s life even beyond his initial dissatisfaction.

I don’t know exactly what happened next, but pretty soon the cops came, school was closed, and everyone was sent home.

Some of us were curious enough to hang around outside the school building for a few hours to see what would become of Thomas. Eventually we saw him being led to a black car by two gray-suited men who, we found out later, were Federal agents! That was the last time I saw Thomas. Word is that the government hired him to work on top secret Defense Department projects, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true.

So that’s about it, except that, as a result of all this, Frank and the other dorks became popular for real. Their proximity to Thomas and their involvement in the whole business made everyone want to talk to them. So really it worked out for everybody in the end. As for me, I guess I just breathed a sigh of relief that the creepy "Nyeh heh heh" feeling was finally gone.