Nick Fancher, Untitled
Infinite Sport of Nature
Kayann Short
“Do you remember me?” The graying woman at the reunion thrust our yearbook into my hands and pointed to the small square in the middle of the second row. Lauralee Kincaid. The quiet girl who had sat behind me in math, the one whose hair always covered her eyes as she doodled on the edge of her homework. If I had seen her on the street, I wouldn’t have recognized her. But that’s how it always had been.
“No. Sorry, I don’t. Did we have a class together?”
“Hmm. I don’t think so.”
Liars, both of us.
When I think of high school, which isn’t often anymore, I picture an empty locker following an expulsion, bleachers abandoned after a home game, the parking lot cleared half an hour after the last bell rang. Maybe you’d call that loneliness, but those were the times I liked high school the best, when no one was around to tell you where or who they thought you should be.
Our teachers’ valiant attempts to excite us about learning were rarely noticed or appreciated by a student body more interested in romance than grades. Like the time Mrs. Van Duren decided that Cindy Llewan needed to identify the genus and species of some plant we’d been studying rather than write another break-up note to her boyfriend, Jimmy Anderson. Determined to teach us a new way of looking at the world, Mrs. V pointed to the board and read, “The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists in having a true idea of the objects; objects are distinguished and known by classifying them methodically and giving them appropriate names. Therefore, classification and name-giving will be the foundation of our science.”
Another boring quote from another boring old guy. But you could tell Mrs. V thought it was all pretty important to our future success. Everyone tried to look like they were paying attention in the hope she wouldn’t call on them. Still, she had to call on someone, and that day, Cindy Llewan was the obvious choice.
“Cindy, look at this diagram and tell me where you think this plant belongs.”
“God, Mrs. V. I don’t know.” Cindy flipped back her hair, as if that were the end of it. But Mrs. V wasn’t going to take another “I don’t know” for an answer. She’d been teaching for years and had exchanged enthusiasm for persistence, especially in all things biological. We rarely fooled her into talking about her garden in the hope of wasting time on something we knew wouldn’t be on the test.
“Cindy, you’re going to figure this out and you’re not leaving the room until you do. You can do it. Think about what it looks like. The petals, the color. What does it remind you of?”
Cindy shook her head and summoned the tears for which Jimmy continually fell in their constant battle over going steady versus dating other people. “I don’t know. Don’t ask me,” she cried. The class, sure she was faking it, laughed at her sobs, punctuated with tears like short bursts of water sprayed through merciless jets. Cindy knew she’d won, not only in that moment, but for the rest of the class period, since no one would care about biology after watching a performance like that.
A few minutes later, the bell rang as Mrs. V tried to restore order with cautions about taxonomic inconsistency. Although it would be years before I realized it, I have Mrs. V to thank for teaching me that even Linnaeus made mistakes. We never did get back, that day, to the plant in question, Helianthus annuus, the common sunflower, a name I knew, if only she’d asked. I was paying attention. I always paid attention. Maybe that’s why the teachers never called on me.
Outside the classroom, guys and girls inhabited two different worlds, crossing only when curiosity or attraction drew them into the other’s territory. The boys competed over any little thing, pushing and shoving each other in the hallway as a way of making contact, of affirming that they belonged. They didn’t worry about whether other kids thought they were smart or nice or good looking; boys only wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves. Sure, the followers needed the leaders, but, in some evolutionary twist, even the strongest needed the weakest to survive.
The girls clustered in smaller bunches, two or three walking to their lockers or to class, giggling over the latest gossip. Girls were more adaptable than boys, fusing or splitting to include or exclude whomever they wanted to reward or punish. Girls noticed everything, from who was wearing new jeans to which girl said hello to which boy in which class. Every detail was relentlessly monitored, reported, and analyzed with scientific precision that would make Linnaeus proud.
I never chose sides. Guys or girls, it didn’t matter. I’d say hi to anyone in the hallway but show up at parties by myself. I knew I wouldn’t stick around much longer, so why get involved? I didn’t need friends, so why bother fitting in? I learned more by watching from the sidelines than from being in the center of it all. As for romance, it wasn’t for me. Despite all we learned in Mrs. V’s biology class, sex was something that happened in the back seats of cars. Gender wasn’t even a term we knew.
Lauralee moved to town our senior year. She was quiet and funny looking and maybe even smart, though it was hard to tell since she never said a word in class. She didn’t try to fit in anywhere, but I could see her studying each of us in relation to the others. From the back of the room, with her hair down over her eyes, she was observing us like specimens in one of Mrs. V’s Linnaean classifications, figuring out where each one of us belonged.
The only class I had with Lauralee was math, but I often saw her in the library after lunch, when I liked to do what I thought of as my “rounds.” The school had a certain daily rhythm that kept me moving. I always went to class, but I liked to slip out from time to time to see what was going on. Teachers didn’t notice you if you didn’t call attention to what you were doing. I had a routine. Mornings I’d alternate first and second periods for my “breaks” (all I had to do was raise my hand, look nervous, and the teachers would nod their heads). Not much was going on in the halls then, but I liked the quiet hum as students tried to wake up and pay attention to Western Civ or English Lit.
Third period was P.E. but my parents had convinced the principal that physical education wouldn’t serve my academic interests. Instead, I was supposed to study in the office under the watchful eye of the secretary. Usually, she ignored me, so I wandered the halls and grounds looking for something new because third period was when the day finally got going. Some kids headed out to the parking lot for a smoke in their cars, while others gathered around their lockers to plan their after-school entertainment. I’d stop and listen, but usually it was the same old stuff–watch the team practice, hang out at the doughnut place, or bike over to the river to smoke a joint.
In high school, not much changed from one day to the next. The only thing I looked forward to each day was checking the bulletin board in the main hallway between the office and the music room. Every few days, a new note would appear somewhere on the board, a note in block letters in blue ink on regular old lined paper, the kind everybody used every day. The notes were always quotes but without the author’s name, like a little quiz for anyone who cared to take it. Mostly they were lines from popular songs or obvious poets from English Lit like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Sometimes they were quotes from good old Carl Linnaeus, quotes I recognized care of Mrs. Van Duren like, “All the species recognized by Botanists came forth from the Almighty Creator’s hand, and the number of these is now and always will be exactly the same, while every day new and different florists’ species arise. Accordingly to the former have been assigned by Nature fixed limits, beyond which they cannot go; while the latter display without end the infinite sport of Nature.”
I wasn’t sure why someone would post notes like this, but whoever it was, they were sneaky. I never saw anyone tacking them up, and I was watching.
Fourth period was lunch. The cafeteria was crowded and noisy. I’d bring a sandwich in my pocket and munch it as I walked around the tables, cracking jokes and noticing what everyone else had to eat. Most kids ate the school lunch or nothing, but one kid always brought a lunch box with at least two sandwiches, some carrots sticks, and a brownie or cookie and a little carton of milk. It looked good, but my mom had stopped packing that kind of thing years ago.
Fifth period and sixth period, ditto for the morning. Everyone’s more awake in the afternoon so teachers are busier managing classes and don’t even notice if you slip out for a while to roam the halls. That was when I really did the rounds, checking the auditorium, the biology lab, the music room, and at last the library to see who was skipping class or avoiding someone.
That’s when I would see Lauralee. She’d always have a book in front of her, although she didn’t turn the pages very often so I don’t think she was really reading. I liked to read, but not the books they gave us at school, cautionary tales about following the rules. I already knew the rules and what it would cost to break them. I’d read The Catcher in the Rye a few times and The Bell Jar, too, books with characters who dreaded becoming phony adults or following the roles someone else had invented for them and then paid a high price for their rebellion.
I never talked to Lauralee in the library, though she would often nod like she’d been waiting for me as I peered through the large window to the side of the door. In a ruffled red blouse or with a purple handkerchief tied around her hair, she reminded me of a rare flower, misplaced and unique, like a fragile orchidaceae clinging to the soil between two rocks where you’d least expect it to grow.
We never talked, not even in sixth period math, as she sat behind me decorating her homework instead of taking notes, but I felt reassured knowing she was there, watching everyone, keeping track of their comings and goings without judgment or opinion, like a scientist curious to see the results of her experiment without investment in the outcome. She fit my routine and I got used to her mute glances as we ambled through the school year, one day as predictable as the next. As our principal reminded us in the weeks before graduation, “The die was cast.” We were who we were and it was too late to do anything about it.
A couple weeks before graduation, Jimmy Anderson threw a party. His parents were away, naïve to the open invitation of their absence. On the second night that a three-night kegger was raging, the house was packed; I was surprised no one had called the cops. Kids were lining up in the backyard to get a beer and everyone was tanked by ten p.m. The Anderson’s house was large, with a basement family room and an upstairs, and it seemed like kids were everywhere, spilling their drinks and laughing, trying to have a good time before it all ended in a couple weeks.
I hung around the kitchen, a plastic cup of beer in my hand, listening to the latest prank. Someone had stolen the key to the trophy case out of the principal’s office and some other kids had switched the baseball trophies for the swim team’s. So far, they hadn’t been caught; one high school trophy looked pretty much like another. I smiled at their dumb joke, but I pondered the idea that years from now, no one would know where they belonged.
Thinking about the future and how confusing it seemed, I ran my fingers through my hair, which was getting long, and caught a guy I’d known since kindergarten looking at me funny. Maybe he didn’t recognize me with longer hair, but I didn’t like his looking. I decided it was time to make my rounds.
I went upstairs and strolled down the long hallway. The floral wallpaper was outdated and tacky, but no worse than at anyone else’s house. Kids were in all the bedrooms, watching TV or just sitting on the floor drinking. A few were passed out. Nothing out of the ordinary in those rooms. The last door, though, was closed, so I walked to the end of the hall and listened.
I heard something behind the door that sounded like laughter. I figured some kids were getting stoned and thought I’d check it out. But when I opened the door, there was Lauralee, crying, with Jimmy leaning over her on the edge of the bed. She had her clothes on, but her hair was a mess and the bed was unmade. I noticed Jimmy’s shirt was unbuttoned as he got up and brushed by me.
“Hey. What’s going on?” I asked as he pushed me out of his way.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. And don’t even think about saying something to Cindy.” He turned back to look at Lauralee. “And you. You better know better.” And he left the room, buttoning his shirt as he hurried down the hallway to the party below.
“Lauralee,” I said her name for the first time. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at me, as if she were surprised I knew it.
“What happened? Can I do something? Call someone?” I’d never been in this kind of situation before. I avoided boy/girl problems. I never wanted to get caught in the middle.
“Just go. Leave me alone.” She looked angry about my seeing her like that. It changed things, somehow, as if she were like any other girl who’d been lured upstairs at a party.
“Yeah, but you don’t look so good. Can I help?”
“Oh, sure.” She laughed like I didn’t even understand the question. “Help me? That’s a joke. You’re nobody. You’re nothing. You don’t belong anywhere.” She picked up a pillow and sobbed into it for a minute before raising her head in a glare to ask a question I was never sure I could answer. “Who are you, anyway?”
I waited, fearing what might come next, but before I could stop her, she snarled, “And what are you?”
Our eyes met for a second before she hurled the pillow toward the door. “Now get out of here. Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”
I stared at her, not knowing what to do. She was cruel, but she was right. I couldn’t change what had happened and didn’t know how to make amends for all I couldn’t be. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. And I left.
The next week, I didn’t see Lauralee in math class or in the library. I looked for her every day but she never appeared. Graduation came and went. In my cap and gown, I waited at the end of the processional line for her, but she didn’t show up, even though her name was listed in the program and her picture was in the yearbook, second row, middle square, right where it belonged.
She’d graduated, but something was wrong and I was a part of that something. He. She. We. They. Back then, everyone thought those words could name us as easily as Linnaeus had categorized the world. I had yet to learn that the worst lies aren’t the ones we tell ourselves. The worst lies are the ones we let others tell about us. In my attempt to fit nowhere and everywhere, I didn’t know where I belonged. Looking back, nobody knew, although like you, dear reader, no doubt they thought they did.
Now here she was, yearbook in hand, requesting kinship in an order we had both been denied. But while I had thrived on leaving order behind, she waited, as always, for someone else to let her in.
I glanced down at the small square of her face and that’s when I noticed the quote beneath her picture. We’d all chosen our own. Mine was from Linnaeus, in tribute to Mrs. V’s futile attempts to instill our young minds with inquiry: “In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.” And truth, I now knew, could bring change.
But Lauralee had been listening, too, with an ear turned toward her dreams: “Minerals grow. Plants grow and live. Animals grow, live, and feel.” So like Laurelee. As if someone might notice her heart.
With my eyes on her photo, I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t remember.” But what I wanted to say was, “I hope you find someone who does.” Then I handed back her book and walked away for a second time, regretful, again, for the loss. Outcasts alike, we might have been friends, might still be friends now, but I’d chosen the infinite sport of beyond and she was still posting notes.
Kayann Short
“Do you remember me?” The graying woman at the reunion thrust our yearbook into my hands and pointed to the small square in the middle of the second row. Lauralee Kincaid. The quiet girl who had sat behind me in math, the one whose hair always covered her eyes as she doodled on the edge of her homework. If I had seen her on the street, I wouldn’t have recognized her. But that’s how it always had been.
“No. Sorry, I don’t. Did we have a class together?”
“Hmm. I don’t think so.”
Liars, both of us.
When I think of high school, which isn’t often anymore, I picture an empty locker following an expulsion, bleachers abandoned after a home game, the parking lot cleared half an hour after the last bell rang. Maybe you’d call that loneliness, but those were the times I liked high school the best, when no one was around to tell you where or who they thought you should be.
Our teachers’ valiant attempts to excite us about learning were rarely noticed or appreciated by a student body more interested in romance than grades. Like the time Mrs. Van Duren decided that Cindy Llewan needed to identify the genus and species of some plant we’d been studying rather than write another break-up note to her boyfriend, Jimmy Anderson. Determined to teach us a new way of looking at the world, Mrs. V pointed to the board and read, “The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists in having a true idea of the objects; objects are distinguished and known by classifying them methodically and giving them appropriate names. Therefore, classification and name-giving will be the foundation of our science.”
Another boring quote from another boring old guy. But you could tell Mrs. V thought it was all pretty important to our future success. Everyone tried to look like they were paying attention in the hope she wouldn’t call on them. Still, she had to call on someone, and that day, Cindy Llewan was the obvious choice.
“Cindy, look at this diagram and tell me where you think this plant belongs.”
“God, Mrs. V. I don’t know.” Cindy flipped back her hair, as if that were the end of it. But Mrs. V wasn’t going to take another “I don’t know” for an answer. She’d been teaching for years and had exchanged enthusiasm for persistence, especially in all things biological. We rarely fooled her into talking about her garden in the hope of wasting time on something we knew wouldn’t be on the test.
“Cindy, you’re going to figure this out and you’re not leaving the room until you do. You can do it. Think about what it looks like. The petals, the color. What does it remind you of?”
Cindy shook her head and summoned the tears for which Jimmy continually fell in their constant battle over going steady versus dating other people. “I don’t know. Don’t ask me,” she cried. The class, sure she was faking it, laughed at her sobs, punctuated with tears like short bursts of water sprayed through merciless jets. Cindy knew she’d won, not only in that moment, but for the rest of the class period, since no one would care about biology after watching a performance like that.
A few minutes later, the bell rang as Mrs. V tried to restore order with cautions about taxonomic inconsistency. Although it would be years before I realized it, I have Mrs. V to thank for teaching me that even Linnaeus made mistakes. We never did get back, that day, to the plant in question, Helianthus annuus, the common sunflower, a name I knew, if only she’d asked. I was paying attention. I always paid attention. Maybe that’s why the teachers never called on me.
Outside the classroom, guys and girls inhabited two different worlds, crossing only when curiosity or attraction drew them into the other’s territory. The boys competed over any little thing, pushing and shoving each other in the hallway as a way of making contact, of affirming that they belonged. They didn’t worry about whether other kids thought they were smart or nice or good looking; boys only wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves. Sure, the followers needed the leaders, but, in some evolutionary twist, even the strongest needed the weakest to survive.
The girls clustered in smaller bunches, two or three walking to their lockers or to class, giggling over the latest gossip. Girls were more adaptable than boys, fusing or splitting to include or exclude whomever they wanted to reward or punish. Girls noticed everything, from who was wearing new jeans to which girl said hello to which boy in which class. Every detail was relentlessly monitored, reported, and analyzed with scientific precision that would make Linnaeus proud.
I never chose sides. Guys or girls, it didn’t matter. I’d say hi to anyone in the hallway but show up at parties by myself. I knew I wouldn’t stick around much longer, so why get involved? I didn’t need friends, so why bother fitting in? I learned more by watching from the sidelines than from being in the center of it all. As for romance, it wasn’t for me. Despite all we learned in Mrs. V’s biology class, sex was something that happened in the back seats of cars. Gender wasn’t even a term we knew.
Lauralee moved to town our senior year. She was quiet and funny looking and maybe even smart, though it was hard to tell since she never said a word in class. She didn’t try to fit in anywhere, but I could see her studying each of us in relation to the others. From the back of the room, with her hair down over her eyes, she was observing us like specimens in one of Mrs. V’s Linnaean classifications, figuring out where each one of us belonged.
The only class I had with Lauralee was math, but I often saw her in the library after lunch, when I liked to do what I thought of as my “rounds.” The school had a certain daily rhythm that kept me moving. I always went to class, but I liked to slip out from time to time to see what was going on. Teachers didn’t notice you if you didn’t call attention to what you were doing. I had a routine. Mornings I’d alternate first and second periods for my “breaks” (all I had to do was raise my hand, look nervous, and the teachers would nod their heads). Not much was going on in the halls then, but I liked the quiet hum as students tried to wake up and pay attention to Western Civ or English Lit.
Third period was P.E. but my parents had convinced the principal that physical education wouldn’t serve my academic interests. Instead, I was supposed to study in the office under the watchful eye of the secretary. Usually, she ignored me, so I wandered the halls and grounds looking for something new because third period was when the day finally got going. Some kids headed out to the parking lot for a smoke in their cars, while others gathered around their lockers to plan their after-school entertainment. I’d stop and listen, but usually it was the same old stuff–watch the team practice, hang out at the doughnut place, or bike over to the river to smoke a joint.
In high school, not much changed from one day to the next. The only thing I looked forward to each day was checking the bulletin board in the main hallway between the office and the music room. Every few days, a new note would appear somewhere on the board, a note in block letters in blue ink on regular old lined paper, the kind everybody used every day. The notes were always quotes but without the author’s name, like a little quiz for anyone who cared to take it. Mostly they were lines from popular songs or obvious poets from English Lit like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Sometimes they were quotes from good old Carl Linnaeus, quotes I recognized care of Mrs. Van Duren like, “All the species recognized by Botanists came forth from the Almighty Creator’s hand, and the number of these is now and always will be exactly the same, while every day new and different florists’ species arise. Accordingly to the former have been assigned by Nature fixed limits, beyond which they cannot go; while the latter display without end the infinite sport of Nature.”
I wasn’t sure why someone would post notes like this, but whoever it was, they were sneaky. I never saw anyone tacking them up, and I was watching.
Fourth period was lunch. The cafeteria was crowded and noisy. I’d bring a sandwich in my pocket and munch it as I walked around the tables, cracking jokes and noticing what everyone else had to eat. Most kids ate the school lunch or nothing, but one kid always brought a lunch box with at least two sandwiches, some carrots sticks, and a brownie or cookie and a little carton of milk. It looked good, but my mom had stopped packing that kind of thing years ago.
Fifth period and sixth period, ditto for the morning. Everyone’s more awake in the afternoon so teachers are busier managing classes and don’t even notice if you slip out for a while to roam the halls. That was when I really did the rounds, checking the auditorium, the biology lab, the music room, and at last the library to see who was skipping class or avoiding someone.
That’s when I would see Lauralee. She’d always have a book in front of her, although she didn’t turn the pages very often so I don’t think she was really reading. I liked to read, but not the books they gave us at school, cautionary tales about following the rules. I already knew the rules and what it would cost to break them. I’d read The Catcher in the Rye a few times and The Bell Jar, too, books with characters who dreaded becoming phony adults or following the roles someone else had invented for them and then paid a high price for their rebellion.
I never talked to Lauralee in the library, though she would often nod like she’d been waiting for me as I peered through the large window to the side of the door. In a ruffled red blouse or with a purple handkerchief tied around her hair, she reminded me of a rare flower, misplaced and unique, like a fragile orchidaceae clinging to the soil between two rocks where you’d least expect it to grow.
We never talked, not even in sixth period math, as she sat behind me decorating her homework instead of taking notes, but I felt reassured knowing she was there, watching everyone, keeping track of their comings and goings without judgment or opinion, like a scientist curious to see the results of her experiment without investment in the outcome. She fit my routine and I got used to her mute glances as we ambled through the school year, one day as predictable as the next. As our principal reminded us in the weeks before graduation, “The die was cast.” We were who we were and it was too late to do anything about it.
A couple weeks before graduation, Jimmy Anderson threw a party. His parents were away, naïve to the open invitation of their absence. On the second night that a three-night kegger was raging, the house was packed; I was surprised no one had called the cops. Kids were lining up in the backyard to get a beer and everyone was tanked by ten p.m. The Anderson’s house was large, with a basement family room and an upstairs, and it seemed like kids were everywhere, spilling their drinks and laughing, trying to have a good time before it all ended in a couple weeks.
I hung around the kitchen, a plastic cup of beer in my hand, listening to the latest prank. Someone had stolen the key to the trophy case out of the principal’s office and some other kids had switched the baseball trophies for the swim team’s. So far, they hadn’t been caught; one high school trophy looked pretty much like another. I smiled at their dumb joke, but I pondered the idea that years from now, no one would know where they belonged.
Thinking about the future and how confusing it seemed, I ran my fingers through my hair, which was getting long, and caught a guy I’d known since kindergarten looking at me funny. Maybe he didn’t recognize me with longer hair, but I didn’t like his looking. I decided it was time to make my rounds.
I went upstairs and strolled down the long hallway. The floral wallpaper was outdated and tacky, but no worse than at anyone else’s house. Kids were in all the bedrooms, watching TV or just sitting on the floor drinking. A few were passed out. Nothing out of the ordinary in those rooms. The last door, though, was closed, so I walked to the end of the hall and listened.
I heard something behind the door that sounded like laughter. I figured some kids were getting stoned and thought I’d check it out. But when I opened the door, there was Lauralee, crying, with Jimmy leaning over her on the edge of the bed. She had her clothes on, but her hair was a mess and the bed was unmade. I noticed Jimmy’s shirt was unbuttoned as he got up and brushed by me.
“Hey. What’s going on?” I asked as he pushed me out of his way.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. And don’t even think about saying something to Cindy.” He turned back to look at Lauralee. “And you. You better know better.” And he left the room, buttoning his shirt as he hurried down the hallway to the party below.
“Lauralee,” I said her name for the first time. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at me, as if she were surprised I knew it.
“What happened? Can I do something? Call someone?” I’d never been in this kind of situation before. I avoided boy/girl problems. I never wanted to get caught in the middle.
“Just go. Leave me alone.” She looked angry about my seeing her like that. It changed things, somehow, as if she were like any other girl who’d been lured upstairs at a party.
“Yeah, but you don’t look so good. Can I help?”
“Oh, sure.” She laughed like I didn’t even understand the question. “Help me? That’s a joke. You’re nobody. You’re nothing. You don’t belong anywhere.” She picked up a pillow and sobbed into it for a minute before raising her head in a glare to ask a question I was never sure I could answer. “Who are you, anyway?”
I waited, fearing what might come next, but before I could stop her, she snarled, “And what are you?”
Our eyes met for a second before she hurled the pillow toward the door. “Now get out of here. Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”
I stared at her, not knowing what to do. She was cruel, but she was right. I couldn’t change what had happened and didn’t know how to make amends for all I couldn’t be. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. And I left.
The next week, I didn’t see Lauralee in math class or in the library. I looked for her every day but she never appeared. Graduation came and went. In my cap and gown, I waited at the end of the processional line for her, but she didn’t show up, even though her name was listed in the program and her picture was in the yearbook, second row, middle square, right where it belonged.
She’d graduated, but something was wrong and I was a part of that something. He. She. We. They. Back then, everyone thought those words could name us as easily as Linnaeus had categorized the world. I had yet to learn that the worst lies aren’t the ones we tell ourselves. The worst lies are the ones we let others tell about us. In my attempt to fit nowhere and everywhere, I didn’t know where I belonged. Looking back, nobody knew, although like you, dear reader, no doubt they thought they did.
Now here she was, yearbook in hand, requesting kinship in an order we had both been denied. But while I had thrived on leaving order behind, she waited, as always, for someone else to let her in.
I glanced down at the small square of her face and that’s when I noticed the quote beneath her picture. We’d all chosen our own. Mine was from Linnaeus, in tribute to Mrs. V’s futile attempts to instill our young minds with inquiry: “In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.” And truth, I now knew, could bring change.
But Lauralee had been listening, too, with an ear turned toward her dreams: “Minerals grow. Plants grow and live. Animals grow, live, and feel.” So like Laurelee. As if someone might notice her heart.
With my eyes on her photo, I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t remember.” But what I wanted to say was, “I hope you find someone who does.” Then I handed back her book and walked away for a second time, regretful, again, for the loss. Outcasts alike, we might have been friends, might still be friends now, but I’d chosen the infinite sport of beyond and she was still posting notes.