A Toad in The Window Well
(or Benjamin Holiday takes a road trip)
Benjamin Holiday didn’t have a clue that tonight he would be at home in his bed falling asleep with a girl he didn’t know. After all, he was away at university in London, and home was two hours away by car in Toronto. And right now he was struggling to pay attention to a lecture on comparative politics.
The old lecture hall had a slightly musty smell, that today pinched at his focus. But the grand old building, like so many others on the beautiful and leafy campus, made him happy, because it confirmed his imagination.
He shifted his entire body in the old wooden chair-desk combo, the sharp creak of the wood echoing loudly in the high-ceilinged room against the cracked and peeling walls that were yellowing like old newspapers forgotten in the sun. Against the professor’s monotone, he felt he had made himself conspicuous; his fellow students took no notice, maintaining stony faces and reclining postures amidst the heat and ennui stifling concentration.
He enjoyed being away from home, a truth that surprised his family more than he had expected. Gazing out the narrow and tall windows on the far side of the room, the beveled glass caught the sunlight of late morning at strange angles offering the next distraction for Benjamin Holiday, and he found himself in the memory of his inaugural visit to the campus.
Crimson and yellow leaves were falling now, but that first trip to university had been in a blizzard of snow. Standing there, snow up to his shins and a cold wind biting at his face, he shivered, his eyes tearing from the wind, he saw himself in the future of fall walking about the very campus he could hardly make out.
His next decision surprised him, because he had never done it before. Benjamin Holiday closed his spiral notebook, placed the cap back on his father’s alumni pen, slid them quietly into the dark mouth of his backpack, closed its zippered teeth, slipped his canvas jacket on and stood to leave. The chair-desk offered up an alarm. Benjamin Holiday continued his escape, eyes focused on the floor that was streaked with a maze of dirty footprints, until he made his way past the two students in his row, past the narrowing eyes of the professor and out through the heavy wooden doors. The tandem swung shut without sound behind him, a plume of heated air at his back dissolving in the bracing coolness of the hallway where he pulled the straps of his backpack in place over his shoulders.
Walking away, the hallway extra-large in its emptiness, a buoyantly creepy feeling that ditching class had given him capsized under the idea that he had gotten away with something. A smile of boyish satisfaction spread across his face, despite the heaviness he felt in the area he now, thanks to biology class, understood as the solar plexus.
The morning was climbing towards noon. Crossing the sun-soaked campus, Benjamin Holiday quickly applied to his face the final element of the school “uniform” of jeans and sunglasses, he was willing to adopt; he just couldn’t bring himself to don the cowboy boots many chose to wear.
The campus was beginning to come to life. The low grey octagon of the student community center came into view and he walked towards it. He could see other students through the building’s huge walls of glass talking, hanging out, just waiting. Through the doors and draft of conversation, and then down to the lower level, shades still covering his eyes, he took a seat in the Elbow Room, a dimly lit lunch space that became a popular campus pub at night. Sinking into the rough cushioning beneath him, his head fell back, his hair brushing lightly against the wall. He stretched his legs out, folding his hands atop the chunky brass buckle of his belt. The scent of greasy and quick food mingled with last night’s beer in the stale air.
