Bethany: Part VI

It wasn’t really enlightenment in the traditional Buddhist sense of the word – remembering my past lives – but more like somehow remembering my future life, a timeless instant when I achieved a kind of perspective on my whole existence, as if I understood things the way I would at the end of my life rather than at the beginning. When you’re young you have no sense of scale, little things seem big and big things little, and you honestly think that it will all go on forever, an inexhaustible, endlessly fresh parade of possibilities and people, but at that moment, confronted by Bethany, I was able to see beyond my transitory anger and frustration to realize what I already knew but hadn’t been able to admit – that she was absolutely right about the class ode and had been quite courageous in standing up to me about it. I was also able to recognize that standing there in front of me was a rare, admirable girl, the kind who didn’t come around very often, and that if I didn’t get to know her any better I’d regret it the rest of my life.

I took a step back, trying to break the tension, to defuse the anticipation of the crowd around me for whatever scandalous rejoinder I was going to come up with next. "Sorry," I said, practically whispering. "Listen, you’re right, I’m out of line." I held up my hands, fingers spread, as if to show I had no weapon and meant no harm. "Would you mind – I wonder if we could go outside for a minute and talk in private…"

She was caught off-guard, ready for anything from me but this, and she just stared for a second, her thick eyebrows drawing together. "Outside?"

"Yeah, you know, not like step outside, or anything like that, it’s just I think it would be easier to talk, you know, without everybody…." I indicated the circle around us, her friends Bets and Pat, trailing after her wide-eyed, their books pressed to their breasts, ready to be once again outraged by me, and my friends, Doyle smiling evilly, eager no doubt to egg me on to further infamy, or the Smiler, half crouched at the table, preparing to spring up to separate us if things got out of hand.

Bethany tilted her head, studying me, far from certain as to my intentions, but then, never one to back down from anything, nodding slowly. "All right," she said. "Outside." We walked out, the crowd parting for us reluctantly, Bets and Pat exchanging panicked glances but resisting the urge to follow.

The dining hall was in the middle of campus, halfway between the classrooms and the gym, and I held the door open for her as we stepped into the bright March day, walking across the driveway and onto the grass at the edge of the quadrangle.

"I can understand UBU," Bethany began, having obviously marshaled her arguments on the way. "That you think you should do the ode, and while it’s true that you probably are the best poet, you have to understand that I’m responsible to the administration…"

"No, no, Bethany, I do understand," I said rasing my hands in surrender again.

"And the teachers and the other kids. You may not think graduation is important, but there are a lot of people who do and it’s unfair to…"

"Stop, Bethany, please!" I said. "I’m trying to tell you that I agree with you. You’re right and I’m wrong. I agree with you."

She paused, still half lost in preparing the details of her argument. "You do?"