Encouragement

Sometimes I wonder if our teachers aren't encouraging us to procrastinate. I mean, all it takes is a simple question and someone with decent puppydog eyes, and there you go: two week extension on your paper. Voila! And those of us that thought we would have it done early two weeks ago decided that we could afford to put it off, until now, when we realized that we could no longer get it done early because we found we were very, very busy.

Green Tea, Part II

Note: if you have not read the beginning of this story, do not read part II. Read the previous post first. Additionally, if you didn't like the first part, don't bother reading this one.

CJ was listening to Jack Johnson on his iPod, and didn’t hear a word. He kept running, and running. Pretty soon he had gone three miles instead of his usual two, and then another. By the end of mile five he was running faster, and he was exhausted, and he felt marvelous. He practically leapt the college wall before slowing to a jog to cool down. Finally he went into his dorm and crashed onto a sofa in the common room.

“Will someone, for all love, bring me a glass of water?”

“Oh I’d love to,” said Richard Snofbury who was perpetually on hand.

CJ downed the entire bottle of water that Richard Snofbury brought him and walked down to his room where he laid down and took an unplanned little nap. When he woke up it was very dark. He blinked a few times rapidly; his contacts were dry. He squinted warily at his surroundings. He was not in his bedroom, and if he was not entirely mistaken, he was on the third floor of Henderson Library.

The lights were off, and the floor was silent, deathly so. Light came through a few high windows, but it was the cold, faint light of the moon and it illuminated little.

What am I doing here? he thought. Do I sleepwalk now? And why is it so cold? And—what is that?

What was it? It is hard to say. It was a chill feeling, a frightening feeling, but not a dangerous one. It was an object close to him, but not a thing, and not a person. It was not logical. Then it stepped forth from a darker shadow into a lighter one.

Wait. Stop. CJ’s breath came in double speed; he cocked his head to one side and he stared, stared long and hard, and he strained his ears to catch the sound of a footfall, and he heard none.

The apparition walked up the long hallway once, twice, and CJ still had no motivation to move or speak. He sat still in his chair, like a big pink stalk of celery. The ghost turned and made its third walk down the library. He stopped about twenty feet from the table where CJ sat and held out one hand. To CJ’s dazed mind, it looked like the hand of Virgil, offering to lead him down through the depths of Inferno and up through Purgatory. But he couldn’t accept the invitation; he couldn’t seem to move at all actually. And whatever it was that was going on, he knew he was too frightened to do anything about it anyway. It was above all very tiring, and all he could think of doing was sleeping. But before he relapsed into unconsciousness, CJ noticed that the ghost was wearing a tie pin the shape of a crescent moon, and it shone in the darkness. That’s interesting, he thought.

At roughly six-thirty the next morning, CJ woke up in his own bed with a headache like an angry water buffalo. This condition was not helped by the fact that he immediately began to try to think very hard. He was perplexed. How did he get back into his dorm? In his pajamas no less! Surely his roommate would know if he had been up in the middle of the night.

“Joe! Joe wake up!” CJ shook his friend’s shoulder hard. A groggy face appeared from beneath the covers. “Did you hear anything last night? Like did you hear me get up and leave or anything?”

“Huuh? Dude, you were here all night. I heard you snoring, and it kept me up, and as if that weren’t bad enough, now you’re waking me up again. Thank you so much.” Joe turned his face toward the wall and went back to sleep.

Here all night? How could that be? And CJ didn’t snore, or at least he didn’t think he did. No one had ever told him he did. Was it even possible that he had dreamed the whole nighttime episode? He wasn’t under any particular stress, wasn’t prone to hallucinations. What could it have been, though, if not that? Could it have been real? Why not? And then again, why?

CJ’s headache was not being improved by the incessant wrinkling of his forehead. Exhausted more than he felt he should have been, he swallowed four Ibuprofen and flopped back down on his bed and slept through his first two classes.

When he woke up once again his headache was better, but his mind was still puzzling over the questions. What really happened? CJ dressed slowly and walked out into the brilliant noonday sunshine. Things were much harder to hide in the light than in the eerie seven percent light of the moon; things were much clearer at noon than midnight. His mind entirely wrapped up in his perplexity, he did not see Maryanne approaching from behind. It startled him entirely to hear, in aged and sepulchral tones, words which he felt should not have been addressed to him.

“Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends.No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,Unless it be while some tormenting dreamAffrights thee with a hell of ugly devils.Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog.”

Maryanne finished with an increase in volume and a glare of fierce intensity directed at CJ’s bewildered face.

“What?” he asked.

“Am I very convincing?” asked Maryanne in her usual voice. “Someone silly decided to make me play Queen Margaret in this semester’s Shakespeare production, and I’m not sure I can do it. Please tell me if I was any good.”

“No, no. You’re very good. All too good, in fact.” CJ was still a bit shaken from the initial shock of being addressed with such a curse.

“Oh good. Hey, are you okay? You look a little funny.”

“No I’m fine. Just a little preoccupied, that’s all.” He smiled a bit and walked away towards Henderson Library. He climbed the two flights of stairs to get him to the third floor, and he paused as he looked over the room. There it was—the exact chair he had been sitting in the night before. It was as innocent-looking a chair as any other, but that had nothing to do with the dread CJ felt as he looked at it. His mind was still perturbed. What on earth had happened? In frustration he pulled a Calc textbook off the shelf and began working problems.

Joe walked by, “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m doing Calculus problems. I find it relaxing.”

“You’re insane.”

“Sure, whatever,” muttered CJ. Politeness is a lovely thing, but there are times when a person’s frame of mind will not allow it.

Joe left and quiet returned to CJ’s corner of the library. Quiet? Not really.

Someone around the corner was typing on an exceptionally loud keyboard. It sounded like a two-finger typist, who made frequent mistakes. Honestly, why couldn’t people just take the time to learn correctly? The student shelving books two rows down ought to have stayed home. Either that or the dust on the books was too much for him. Each sneeze seemed to increase in volume and intensity. As CJ tried to settle back into his chair, the air conditioner turned on with a low hum. He tried to block out the sound, but a woman in high heels walking across the polished wood floor effectively drowned it out for him. How far was she going to walk? Oh sure, just turn around and come all the way back. The elevator sounded a quick ding and another girl in heels stepped out. Two are better than one? Not likely. A boy dropped a book on his toes and cursed it soundly. A tallish man started to use the photocopier, while the secretary on the floor began systematically opening and closing every single drawer in her desk and file cabinets. An imaginary object brushing against CJ’s ankles made him start almost out of his seat, and just as he was about to reassume his pretense of contemplation, a group of twelve high school students entered the library, chattering like demons.

“Gaaagghh!” he uttered somewhat more loudly than he had intended. Sighing angrily, he slammed his books together and walked out of the door. As it shut behind him, there was a brief silence in the room, and then a boy laughed. Some people.

CJ chose to go outside to think things over. He was like Superman—he drew his power from the sun. Maybe it would infuse some sense into him and he could do something about his problem. One, he could figure out what happened, or Two, he could forget about the whole thing and stop worrying.

Perhaps it was wishful thinking to hope for an answer from the sun, for Nature teaches us very little beyond our own finitude. And that wasn’t very helpful for CJ. His brain seemed frozen and he only mechanically greeted his friends and acquaintances as they passed him. Jennie, Mark, Joe, Frederick, George, Lisa, Richard Snofbury—wait, was that Richard Snofbury? It looked like him, but at the same time, it really didn’t. He wasn’t wearing glasses; he wasn’t stuttering; he wasn’t blinking, or sniffing, or sweating, or looking bovine in the least. And his hair was done in a much more attractive fashion than before. What had happened to him? He even looked taller. And to top off the transformation, he was wearing a crisp white shirt and a red silk tie.

“How is your day going?” asked Richard Snofbury smoothly.

“Swell, thanks,” replied CJ dubiously. He narrowed his eyes at this new person, and thought that there was something he ought to have remembered. And then he saw a silver tie pin in the shape of a crescent moon fixing Richard Snofbury’s tie to his shirt, and it became clear. Not the details, but the big picture. “It was you—last night, that was you!”

“Very clever of you to have noticed,” said Richard Snofbury, with a bit of sarcastic inflection. The look on his face was at that moment not a terribly attractive one, as it contained a good deal of condescension and pride. But it was the fellow’s one moment of glory, so I suppose we must not grudge him his bit of unholy triumph.

CJ was still piecing the bits together. “The water you gave me…that was part of it,” he paused, “but how did you keep Joe from realizing I was gone? He said he heard me snoring all night!”

“George slept in your bed for most of the time, actually,” he smirked.

CJ shuddered. He would be washing his sheets that night. “Wow. And that’s it, I guess.” He was still a bit dazed from this interesting series of revelations that he didn’t know quite what to think. And then all of a sudden he did. He knew exactly what to think, and without any warning, he exploded into howls of laughter. He laughed and chuckled and giggled like a schoolgirl and wheezed until the tears leaked out of his eyes and he had to lean on a rail for support. Richard Snofbury, while no longer wearing his glasses or cow-like expression, was yet perplexed. This was not the reaction he had anticipated, and he was slightly disappointed. It is very difficult to gloat over a hysterical enemy who cannot speak for laughing.

Finally CJ recovered himself, and gasped out between chuckles, “That’s the best joke anyone’s ever played on me.” He patted Richard on the shoulder. “Congratulations!” And as he continued laughing, a smile started creeping over Richard’s face. It was pretty funny after all. And it proved that CJ was the best kind of prankster, because he could take it as well as give it out. Through their laughter that afternoon a fast friendship was formed, and a fearsome duo that would terrorize St. Osmund’s unsuspecting for the next two years.

Green Tea

As promised, here is my story, Part I. Don't ask me about the title--Kevin named it.

St. Osmund’s College was most attractive entered from the West. A broad walk lined with oak trees led up to the imposing front of gray stone. This building housed the offices of the professors, and the sundry managerial people that keep universities running. On passing through this building one entered a large paved courtyard. In the center, engraved in the gray stone, was the name of the college and the symbol of the moon with these words: “Ex luna, scientia et sapientia.” Dormitories were to the left, and the buildings of the separate colleges stretched out to the right and center. The whole, including some spreading lawns, was surrounded by a wall of noble height and breadth which joined the building most prominent on the west side. What the purpose was of such a fortification no one was sure. Nobody but old women and new students ever bothered to walk along it to find an actual gate, but rather climbed it like any sensible, athletic person should. Some popular crossing spots had begun to take on the appearance of ladders set into the stone, so often were they used. Chester Oliver named the northwest corner spot the Pranksters’ Passage, conveniently situated as it was between the students’ quarters and the teachers’ offices.

The College was generally upon the top of a wide, flat hill, with the town of Lenton surrounding it on three sides and a wide-ish forest on the fourth. A solitary spot, almost like to its own city, was the College; but whether an oasis of sanity or madness I cannot say.

Chester Oliver was a sophomore, and he went by CJ. “J” wasn’t in his name anywhere, but he hated the name Chester, and CO just sounded dumb, or worse, like he was named after carbon monoxide. As a wise older student, CJ felt it was his duty to explain to all new students the workings of the school. And since he was popular and good-looking, most people tolerated him, and some liked him, and some hated him.

There had always been a rumor that a ghost walked the halls of Henderson Library. CJ believed it. He went out of his way to insure that everyone else did too. On the first Tuesday of term he sidled up to Richard Snofbury, a freshman with an unattractive comb-over.

“So did you hear about the library?”

Richard Snofbury shoved his thick-rimmed glasses up on his nose and stared at the arm CJ had draped over his shoulders. “I suppose it will have books in it,” he said.

What a dull fellow, thought CJ. He smiled chummily, “There are rumors about that library.”

“What sort of rumors?”

“The very best sort,” said CJ. He leaned closer to Richard Snofbury and whispered in his ear, “They say that when it gets late, they turn off all the lights on the third floor. It gets real quiet—so quiet that you can hear the floorboards creaking if so much as a mouse walks on them. But even so, you never hear Him coming.” A dramatic roll of the eyes and a mock shudder served to turn Richard Snofbury’s look of dumb suspense into a look of even dumber horror. A cloud passing in front of the sun at that moment completed the effect.

“H-him?”

“The Ghost. He paces the length of the library three times, and if he sees anyone near, well, I wouldn’t want to be there.” CJ stood up straight and removed his arm from Richard Snofbury’s shoulders. “It’s okay though, because he only walks during the full moon. Any other time you’ll be fine.”

“Full m-moon is tomorrow.” And CJ walked away jauntily leaving pale, cow-like Richard Snofbury with a head full of the hauntings of Henderson Library.

There was more to the library myth, of course, than what CJ knew. Myths don’t grow from nothing. They start somewhere, and rarely end up in the same place. In this case, it started with a group of twelve people that swore to having seen an apparition twelve successive full moons. None of them knew the others well until their stories came to light. But that was so long ago that no one remembered their names anymore, or anything else they said. St. Osmund’s was a very old college.

The forest on the college’s east side hadn’t been there long enough for any myths to be born about it, but that didn’t really matter to CJ. Fact and fiction were essentially the same to him, and he would believe one as soon as the other. People that knew him well knew this, and if they liked him, like Maryanne did, they ignored the trifling reality that fact and fiction are quite different animals.

On the first Wednesday of term, CJ and Maryanne were walking from the dorms to their separate classes—CJ to English Lit. and Maryanne to her third semester of Calculus.

“I heard that they’re cutting down part of the forest this year to build a new dorm. I don’t know why, but I’m kind of sad. I like the forest just the way it is.”

“You do know what they say about that forest, right?” CJ raised his eyebrows.

“No, not really,” said Maryanne. “Is it about haunting by any chance?” Maryanne was one of the only people who consistently laughed at CJ’s stories and all of his seriousness. Well, she laughed at just about everything, but the point is that they got on together fabulously.

“It actually isn’t, so there. It happens to be a funny story, if you don’t mind a little death. But if you don’t want to hear it—” CJ trailed off in a mock pout.

“Of course I want to hear it. I’m always ready for a funny story about people dying,” she said, eyes attentive and mouth blankly straight.
CJ narrowed his eyes, but decided to go on anyway. “There’s a story that there used to be a bear that lived in that forest. And he was a pretty nice bear if you stayed away from him. Not really of the teddy variety, but decent enough for a bear. But once, a student decided to go find him. The bear was so angry at being bothered that he attacked the kid. And they say that the bear was so old that he didn’t have any teeth left, and so he gummed him to death.”

“He was drowned in bear saliva, you might say,” joked Maryanne.

“Or turned into a squeaky toy for the grandkids.”

“Now that’s awful,” she laughed. “Where do you come up with these things?”

“Oh, here and there,” said CJ airily.

“Whatever, I’ve got better things to do.” She took off running across the courtyard and threw a smiling “See you later!” over her shoulder at him before she disappeared.

CJ continued walking down toward his classroom. He didn’t exactly want to go to English Lit. He’d rather be going to Calculus, but he’d already taken it. Reading was a fine thing to him; he enjoyed it, loved it even. But he couldn’t stand being lectured to about it. Give him Chesterton or Dickens and a quiet room and he would be satisfied for hours, but ask him to analyze what he had read and you might as well ask him to run a marathon. Even people that don’t sweat over a couple of miles dread the very idea of a marathon. But there was nothing for it. CJ stepped out of the sunshine into the cool gray stone building that said “English” next to the symbol of the moon.

Later that afternoon, CJ, Maryanne and Jennie were in the library.

“I can’t believe that they gave us homework on the second day of class. It’s exceedingly lame, especially when the weather is so nice, to have to sit here and integrate ridiculously complicated functions. And they said the first week was all review, huh,” muttered Maryanne.

A few minutes later, it was Jennie that exploded, “I can’t figure it out!! How on earth do they expect you to integrate that?”

CJ glanced up from Hemmingway for a moment and said, “Try trig substitution; it’s probably an inverse function.”

“You didn’t even look at the problem.”

“But am I right?” He paused as she looked up the inverse trig integrals.

“Well, yes, but—that’s really not fair,” she said, and glared for a moment before completing the problem. It is a frustrating situation when a friend, no matter how dear, displays his intellectual superiority with no effort at all.

Richard Snofbury sat down at the table with the three friends. CJ had absolutely no use for him. He was exactly like his older brother, a boy who CJ had tricked the last year into putting cockroaches into Professor Harding’s office while Professor Harding was still in the building. George Snofbury had been caught climbing over the Pranksters’ Passage with an empty jar, and had been rather severely punished. CJ had been a bit sorry after he saw how badly poor George was punished, but a prank was a prank and of course it would have consequences. It wasn’t as if George were lastingly hurt or anything, and it had been awfully funny to see him holding his jar of cockroaches at arms’ length because he was so frightened of them himself. And Richard Snofbury was so like George that it didn’t seem worth his while to CJ to even bother playing a practical joke on him. Maybe something small, like short-sheeting his bed, but nothing interesting, because CJ knew exactly how Richard Snofbury would react. A perplexed look would slowly creep into his dumb, cow-like eyes, and after a few half-hearted attempts to find out the perpetrator of the crime, he would give it up, and go back to studying biology. It just wasn’t worth the trouble.

“So what’re you guys doing?” sniffed Richard Snofbury, blinking awkwardly.

When CJ made no reply, no acknowledgement really, Maryanne replied, “Calculus problems for me and Jennie, and they’re going awfully. What about you?”

“Umm, not much. I wish I could help you, but I’ve never been very good at math myself, and even though I took some Calculus in high school I don’t think I could help anyway, because you’re probably way ahead of what we did then. I really prefer biology to math because all you have to do is memorize things and there’s not so much work to do to figure out answers and stuff. I had a really good biology teacher in high school and I think he did a lot of good for me, but my math teacher was boring.”

As boring as you are, perhaps, though CJ. I wonder if he ever says anything interesting, even by accident. He stood up abruptly. “Well, it’s been fun, guys, but I’ve got to run, literally.” He snapped his book shut and jogged to his dorm where he changed clothes and started off running into town. A couple of miles a day kept him in pretty good shape, and he did it because he hated the thought that some day he could become a couch potato whose only physical activity was flipping channels on the TV.

Old Mrs. Lewis was sitting at the corner café with Mrs. Roberts, and they saw CJ running by, like he did every day.

“That boy sure does look nice when he runs,” said Mrs. Lewis in her old motherly voice. “Somehow, watching him run makes me think of being young and healthy and strong again, and I’m almost ready to jump up and join him.”

“It’s all well and good, but I hear some mighty queer stories about him coming from the college, so I do,” said Mrs. Roberts.

“Oh, he may be a little odd, and I don’t deny it. But all the same, he’s a nice kid,” smiled Mrs. Lewis.

Update

Today, I can walk. It's an old kind of stale saying, but it's true: you never realize how valuable something is until it's taken away. And my goodness, walking is so NICE!! We'll see about volleyball. Right now I'm in cautious mode, because while playing would be wonderful (I'm jealous every time I see the people out on the sand courts), I value walking too much to risk it on a short pleasure.

I also have a short story due on Monday. It's going to be awful. And I know that because at this moment I have a grand total of about 4 pages out of 20 done. Incidentally, I also have no plot. Because it's going to be so awful, I thought I would subject my few but faithful readers to its awfulness a couple of pages at a time over the next week. Stay tuned...

Of all the idiotic things to do...

This semester has largely been spent by me in great rejoicing that I get to play volleyball a couple of times every week. I joined an intramural 4v4 team, play with them on Mondays, and then goof off with a bunch of other friends on Fridays and Saturdays. It's fabulous. Or should I say, it was fabulous. Yesterday I managed to have enough talent to injure myself. A jump landed wrong on another fellow's foot, a rolled ankle, a wrenched knee that's so swollen now that I can't bend or straighten my leg. And that's it. No walking for me. The guys I was playing with wouldn't even let me drive myself home. Now I have to sit, and be taken care of, which is simply irksome. I've got some lovely crutches, so at least I'm semi-mobile, but I can't carry anything, like a cup of coffee, or a book. And the worst part? No volleyball... for a period of time as yet undetermined.

A visit to Student Health Services tomorrow will hopefully result in a doctor's note for a temporary disability parking permit. Somehow crutching for a half mile to get to class isn't a very appealing proposition.