I was there before everyone else arrived. Seated at the back table to the far left. To the left, if you are faced forward. To the right, if you were at the front, like the Vice Principal would be later. The Basket Case chose the table to my right. In Art Class, she sat on the other side of the room where, in the middle, a table is set up with painted-white jars, plastic vases, cardboard cubes, and arranged on top of folded fabric. The group of objects is changed regularly, and the students make different versions of the same thing.
I watched as they all came in and sat down at their chosen tables. No one acknowledged that I was there.
That Saturday morning, while the Vice Principal was laying down the law, I recalled where I knew them all. The Princess came into the library first. Her father and my father were colleagues from their early days when they were both new to town. There would be get-togethers where young families would gather, all with children near the same age. The Princess and I were part of that group. We would play together and with the other children during these gatherings. We were very young at the time, before school cliques were formed and you realized who your friends were and who you shared things in common.
The Brain and I — who sat behind the Princess and then also the Athlete, but was kicked out of his seat by the Criminal — were in Honor’s Calculus together. He always sat in the front row. I always sat in the back of the classroom, avoiding eye contact with the teacher so I would not be called on. It is not surprising he doesn’t know me. Him, facing forward, me face down. And since I played soccer, I would always be in the locker room after school, before practice, with my teammates getting ready, while the wrestlers were in another part of the locker room doing the same thing.
The Criminal ran with the same group as my older brothers. He was older than me but younger than them. They would all hang out at the houses where the parents were usually not around. They would hang out and smoke pot, listen to music, and drink beer. On the occasions when my parents were out of town, they all would be at my house. My brothers didn’t mind me being around. I never told my parents what was going on and so that put me on my brothers’ good side. No major offenses ever occurred, just a bunch of people blowing off some steam.
Like the rotary phone plugged into the wall next to the puffy, wing-backed chair in the den of our house; or the man in the black and white foreign film, floating, not unlike a kite, way above the shoreline, looking down at his leg which was tied to a rope and held by a man walking along the beach. I was tethered to these five classmates that Saturday morning in the library of our school.
There was to be no talking, no moving, and no sleeping. All of these rules, and others, would be broken that day. We also were told we had to write a thousand-word essay explaining who we thought we were. Does anyone really know who they are when they are in high school? Minds still forming, hormones still saturating everything, metabolism not yet slowed down to a trickle. The monotony of adulthood only glimpsed at when observing a parent blankly vacuuming the carpet or absently washing the same glass over and over.
I sat there quietly in the back and watched the boredom unfold. And then the discussions. In one, the Criminal tells the Princess that certain fat people have a thin person inside. I wondered to myself if that theory also applied to invisible people.
After lunch when the rest of them left the library to go to the Criminal’s locker, I watched them walk down the corridor from the library door and then returned back to my table, thinking about what I would have added to the conversation if I had the chance. I didn’t realize that I was gesturing and talking lowly to myself when I noticed the Janitor had entered the library. He was looking in my direction. I am not sure how long he was standing there, but when I looked at him, he left without a word.
The Criminal snuck back into the Library (he had been isolated from the rest of us for sneaking into the gym) and everyone started smoking his pot. During this time, I ended up sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall of the smoke-filled Foreign Language Room by myself as the rest of the group was enjoying their high. With the music loud, I remembered a dream I had that played out to me in song:
Strumming guitars in unison,
Sounding as if they were one
Two dead friends
played their songs for me
And with hands over my eyes,
I tried hard not to cry
I remained in the Foreign Language Room for a while. Overhearing the group chatting in the other room: Someone said that when they step outside of themselves and look back, they do not like what they see. I am not sure I would recognize myself if I did that. Like seeing a picture taken of you from the side or a slight glance in a mirror at an odd angle. The bizarre reality of an altogether different version of who you are. Another said your heart dies when you grow up. Thinking back on this now, it isn’t that your heart dies. It just becomes more fragile. In order to protect it, adults wrap it in layers and layers and then bury it deep down. The protection becomes worse than the pain.
The day is slowing down, and I am watching, first the Criminal returning to his isolation, then the others convincing the Brain to write the essay for them all, and finally breaking off in pairs. Everything turns black and white and then is played back in the 1950’s style news reel format. A familiar sounding narrator recapping the day’s events. My classmates become versions of Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jean, and their three husbands. Celebrities on The Big Screen.
Then it is the future. I am middle-aged with a family and a mortgage and a cat I didn’t want. One night, after everyone was asleep, I turned off all the lights downstairs and went up to bed. I noticed a light coming from underneath a door I hadn’t seen before. Inside the door were stairs leading up to an unknown part of the third floor. It was a big open space with tables and pencils and pens, and a wall lined with books. And there were stacks and stacks of pristine, blank white paper.
Awakened underneath the table with my backpack as a pillow, everyone was gone, and I was left alone in the library. I watched through the library window on the second level as my classmates departed. It reminded me of the final scene of The Graduate. After Dustin breaks Katherine out of her own wedding and they escape in the back of a departing bus. They smile as they look back at the church and then look at each other. Turning away and looking forward, their smiles change slightly as they contemplate what comes next.
