A Leak In The Safe

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?"

Bethany: Part V

And what I wanted from Bethany was simple (no, ease your dirty mind, it wasn’t that, sorry to say, that part comes later) – I wanted to compose and recite the class ode at graduation. You see, of all the high school poets who took themselves oh so seriously, I took myself the oh so seriousest.

It’s not that I wasn’t pretty good, after all several of my teen efforts have made it into my collected works (which is saying a lot, thank you very much). Even though I now in retrospect believe sweet Virginia was the better poet, she wasn’t as inclined to toot her own muse-ical horn, and it was fairly obvious even to those who didn’t have a high opinion of me that I deserved to deliver the aforementioned ode, a poem written by the class’s preeminent poetaster commemorating our common Pitt Prep experience.

The only problem with the scenario was my well deserved reputation for rebellious obnoxiousness. I’d carefully cultivated the image of a contrary rebel who sneered loudly at authority and now I was paying for it. Why would anyone in a position of power take the risk of having someone like me stand up at graduation and bellow some scabrous "Howl"-like diatribe against our dear alma mater?

In fact, I’d already begun a heartfelt, conciliatory lyric about hating and loving the place (which I did), but hadn’t bothered to inform Bethany or anyone else of my intentions. No, all I knew, with the concrete certainty of youth, was that I deserved it, and that therefore I should get it, and Senior Class President Bethany should give it to me.

It all came to a head when Bethany came over to our table in the dining hall to consult with Vice President Smiler. I’d already heard from him that there had been an executive decision that Littleman Henry would deliver the ode, which enraged me even more. Littleman was a friend of mine, and one of the few people that I recognized in those ego inflated days as being smarter than me, but he was no poet, and in fact one of the outstanding characteristics that had brought him so much success in life was his complete lack of originality, poetic or otherwise.

Bethany had been avoiding me, but now she’d stepped in close range of my verbal guns. "Hey, Prez," I sneered as she and the Smiler consulted. "Is it really true Littleman is going to do the class ode?"

Unlike most politicians, she didn’t equivocate. "Yes," she said shortly.

I stood up and got right in her face, the most notable aspect of which was, unfortunately, her large, crooked and somewhat pointy nose. "Why, Prez, I mean, everybody knows I’m the best poet, Prez…"

"Yes, but…" Her cheeks flushed, but that nose stayed dead white, standing out even more like the frozen ridge of some icy precipice. "People were concerned that you wouldn’t be…appropriate."

"APPROPRIATE!" I bellowed. I was quite expert in using my verbal facility to intimidate, and there was fear in Bethany’s cool blue eyes but also great resolution. "And who the hell are there people, Prez?"