The Mailbox Game

Reality Shock

Reality Shock

Circumstances, those hated taskmasters, somehow managed to keep me from having a good, quality conversation with Piper McIntosh until the first Wednesday after orientation.

It was 3:47, and I was leaning against the harsh grate of my locker, trying to will the freezing tiles of junior hall into warming up beneath my almost-numb bottom. In my left hand was my third-hand copy of Beowulf, the beast out of AP Language that threatened to keep me up until three tonight if I didn’t do everything short of swallow it, and in my right hand was my treasured iPod, which kept all possible distractions safely outside a ten foot wall of Blur and Filter.

Suddenly, the sound of bass solos and imagined story dialogue filling the space between my ears was interrupted by the sound of a familiar voice dropping a, “Hey, Lucy!” at my feet. My head whipped up and I saw that the greeting had come from none other than my favorite sophomore.

Piper McIntosh was a quick little devil; she tended to stride through the halls as if she were about to accept a Pulitzer upon reaching her destination, so by the time I pulled myself together and paused my music to call out to her, she was already clear on the other side of the hallway. “Hey, Piper, how’s the sophomoric life treating you?”

She turned her head, and came hurtling back towards me as I stood up to greet her. She was only a bit shorter than me, maybe 5’3’’, but there was still something spritely about her, her thin face, the way the electrical hop entered into her step when she was excited, the way her features lit up sometimes when she was telling me about a book she thought I’d like. Other than that, her appearance could be described as normal; green eyes that sometimes looked blue or grey in the wrong lighting, straight brown hair that cut off just below her shoulders, but she was also that kind of kid that when she started talking, you just knew that she was not your run-of-the-mill fifteen-year-old, and suddenly you couldn’t stop wishing you’d been more like her at that age. You wished you could read more. You wished you could eat more organic things.

“It’s pretty good, I must say, even though the workload’s already a bitch,” she smiled. “Any advice for Haverford’s pre-calc?”

I grimaced. “Oh God, memories…” I thought a moment, biting my tongue. “The most important thing, I think, when the test comes around, is to just sit there and tell yourself you’re the biggest damn math genius in the world over and over again. It’s not going to get you an A, by any means, but if you stop, you’ll start panicking, and that will be worse. So much worse.”

“Thanks, then,” she said. “So, how’s it being a junior?”

I laughed a bit. “It’s not terrible, but Salt Wednesday did come a bit early this year.”

“Salt Wednesday?”

“Salt as in tears,” I said, more gently than I should have. “And early as in tomorrow.”

Her eyebrows scrunched together. “Tomorrow’s a Thursday.”

I shrugged. “When it started happening last year, the first two fell on a Wednesday, and it stuck.” She nodded as if to display her comprehension. “It’s basically any day where you have four or more tests in one day, and you can usually tell when it’s a Salt Wednesday because kids will just burst into tears in the halls. It’s nuts; you don’t even know. And sometimes we have Salt Weeks, where we still have five to seven tests, but they’re spread out so you have one or two every day and pretty much no time to study for any of them because you’re still getting homework from all of the other classes. Anarchy, I tell you, anarchy!”

She stepped back a half inch. “And you said this starts happening sophomore year?” She ended the inquisition with a near whimper.

I reached out to pat her shoulder, my best travesty of a reassuring hug. “Trust me, Piper, you’re not going to have a problem. After watching one episode of Jeopardy! with you, I’d say you don’t even have to study.” I whipped my arm back playfully, “Not that I would ever tell you that, as promoting poor study habits in the youth is illegal, and I love Big Brother.” I pretended to toss my head up towards a corner on the ceiling where I liked to imagine the Telescreen was hidden.