The Trunk Rider

Chapter 7

            My hands seemed to spin effortlessly across the lock, sliding over the numbers almost without looking.  Like feeding the Elephants back home, this had become a habit of routine, a repetitive part of every day.

            What was it now, I asked myself as my locker swung open, six weeks?  Seven?  The days were beginning to blur together.  If it weren’t for the calendar and ever-increasing chill in the air, I might have lost track of time completely.

            Every day, more or less, was the same.  On the Farm, guests would pop in unexpectedly, or a sale might come up.  It was all interestingly unpredictable, nicely chaotic.  Here, meanwhile, I could map out a day with ease. 

First in the morning was either Creative Writing or Science.  In the case of the former, I had finished the “Defining Moment” assignment early, and proudly handed in the printed copy.  Mrs. Burchfield handed it back to me a few days later with a short assessment.

“Miss Duvelle,” she told me sternly, “There is a time for creative license, but it is not in the assignment I gave you.  I’m looking for a nonfiction account.  The writing is all right, but the content isn’t what I’m looking for.  Follow along next time.”

Despite my protests that yes, that really did happen, it seemed my old life was still too far removed from Clairedon normalities.

Science was never too hard, but it became dull soon.  The concepts were interesting enough, but sitting in the same chair for an hour-and-a-half reproducing that into notes, and it seemed to become definitely less so.

At lunch break, I continued to meet with Jessie in the hallways, sometimes sticking to a corner and sometimes roaming the school.  Having exhausted all we cared to on the social analysis of the school, we turned to lighter topics: films, books, and increasingly ridiculous hypothetical situations that often included us pulling some stunt right out of the cheesiest imaginable action novel, or the ensuing of the occasional apocalypse.  I think we both enjoyed giving our minds a rest from the overly serious.

We ran into Delilah and her entourage from time to time, though I got the feeling Jessie was somehow calculating how best to avoid them.  These encounters varied little from the first, but I soon found out that Jessie seemed to be fighting a campaign back.  Nothing was outright, and nothing was really harmful, but after a lunch break of being pushed around, she might drop by Delilah’s locker and strategically spill the slipperiest thing in her lunch bag.

The whole thing reminded me very much of those dull books the lady at the Chiang ban bookstore told me that the American girls were all reading.

The thing was, I almost enjoyed this petty warfare.  In a world in which professional life seemed to be one trivial – yet oh so important to be considered a success – assignment, it seemed something real to hold onto, even if I knew the whole thing was as fabricated as our student careers seemed to be.  The difference, perhaps, was that we were fighting against the fabricator.

Lunch would end, and be followed by alternations of gym and social studies.  I soon found out that though I met if not exceeded most of the girls and some of the boys in matters of strength and agility – necessary traits of my old life – I was hopeless at basketball.  Thankfully Jessie was in the class alongside me, so we managed to laugh it off as we were pummeled to the score of three against seventeen.  Basketball ended, and I was just as rubbish at volleyball.  Every few days, we would begin a class with a run or some sort of obscure aerobic exercise, and it was only here that I was likely keeping myself from failing.  Living a half-mile from the nearest town, without a car or bicycle, had apparently made me a reckonable runner.

Social Studies, as it turned out, was not entirely Canadian history, as I had assumed.  Rather, we delved into more worldly matters of globalization, classism, and immigration.  It was as if the curriculum had been designed for me.

I would return to the apartment alone for several hours, until my parents finished working.  More often than not, Dad took an extra shift for the sake of a little desperately needed bonus pay.  In terms of wealth, we were likely better off than we had ever been on the farm, but it seemed the opposite.  On the rare occasion I came shopping, I found prices extravagant compared to what we had at home.  Typically, the cupboards in the kitchen would be almost bare, and more than once I headed off to school without a lunch, or even breakfast.  On these occasions, Jessie would part with some portion of her lunch, to my attempt at a polite half-hearted refusal.

As the weeks poured on, I began to take advantage of noticed patterns in the cold-waged war on Delilah and Co.  Tuesdays and Thursdays at lunch, for instance, she was more aggressive and impulsive than other days, because, as Jessie reported, “We’ve got math together, period before.  She hates math.”

One of the things I noticed most was that whenever accompanied by Derek, she was tamer, almost easygoing, though never genuinely friendly to us.  I relayed this to Jessie, who came up with two possible theories.

“Derek Williams? Well, either she likes him, and she tries to not be an absolute bitch around him because of that,” she pondered, “or he might have said something about it.  He’s basically the only one he listens to.”  She looked thoughtful for a moment, “You think he likes you?”

“More than Delilah, I suppose,” I replied half-comprehensibly from around the straw of a juice box, “if he doesn’t want me being beat on every day.”

A look of exasperation passed her face, “No, you know.  Like, like likes you.  I mean, he could like Delilah too.  Solstice Dance coming up in a few weeks, we’ll see if he asks her.”

“Do we care?” I inquired.

“No,” she replied honestly, “not really.”

Irrelevancy notwithstanding, the next time I saw Derek in passing, I gave him an experimental smile.  He looked more confused than anything else at the subsequent moment, and I didn’t wait to see what progressed.

I felt more and more as if my life was turning into a dull, overdramatic teenage novel.  I would probably do little more than make fun of it if I were to read it.   For the first time in a while, I could feel niran's bracelet weighing on my wrist.