by Hughey, J.
I glanced over at Boone. He sat in his forearms-on-thighs posture.
“Refrigeration units,” another student called out. When we all turned to look at him, he explained, “My dad owns a trucking company. The cooling fins on the reefer units are getting clogged and shredded.”
“Hmm,” our prof mused. “Radiators on vehicles, anything with unfiltered forced air ventilation would also be at risk.”
“And we’re breathing this stuff?” the tree-hugger called. “We’re all gonna end up with lung cancer.”
“Doubtful. Past history doesn’t support any sort of black lung response. The respiratory threat is suffocation—simply being overcome by an unavoidable volume of ash. I would hope anyone who might have been in danger has already evacuated, though there are some foolish journalists and researchers who keep trying to get too close.”
After listening to all this, and getting another dose in my afternoon psychology class, where we talked about how people who were thirsty and starving in the middle part of the U.S. were already turning into barbarians, Tuesday morning’s school-wide email from Dr. Ellis, WCC president, didn’t surprise me.
Dear students, faculty, and staff,
It is with great regret I announce the unprecedented suspension of normal operation for this term due to the Yellowstone global disaster. The last on-campus classes will be held on Wednesday, October 9. Professors will continue instruction via the Internet with the hope students will successfully complete the requirements for their courses.
On-campus residents are required to vacate residence halls, remove all personal possessions, and return keys prior to departure. Details will be posted on the college website and at each dormitory. All library items should be returned immediately.
To the extent possible in this unusual circumstance, Western Case College will assist students in reaching regional public transportation. Shuttle schedules and sign-ups will be located in Snokes Hall.
We realize this unexpected suspension is inconvenient for many students and families, but we must put the continued safety of our population at the forefront. It is my fondest hope we will find a new normal in the near future so we can continue our academic endeavors together.
Regards,
Dr. Warren Ellis
President, Western Case College
I stared at my laptop screen. Denial. That was the word my psychology professor used to describe the mental state of people we assumed sat in their trailers in South Dakota and Kansas as ash slowly suffocated them.
I was in denial. I couldn’t go home. I would be buried and suffocated by parental attention. The thought of returning there for the duration of the Yellowstone global disaster (!) made me feel like puking.
Yellowstone global disaster. The words settled like jagged shards of glass in the fragile workings of my brain. Global. I tried to think past the interruption of this semester. Global implied a permanent effect. Disaster implied bad.
Bad permanent effect on not only me, but everybody.
Would I ever come back to college? Would anyone in North America ever finish college? What about my dad’s job? What about all that firewood? Would we end up barricaded in our house while crazy freezing people on the outside scratched at our windows, trying to get in?
Would I ever see Boone again after October 9?
I shut the lid of my computer hard enough to disturb Mia’s sleep. “What’s up?” she groaned.
“Time’s up,” I answered. “School is closing next week.”
She tugged her pillow over her head. “Camden during a volcano.” I barely understood the muffled words. “This is going to rock so hard.”
While the school population flew into a frenzy of unexpected exodus, I watched as if from the sidelines. At first, I assumed my parents would call me about President Ellis’s email. Days passed without contact. Perhaps they didn’t have Internet, or power. I worried, but also felt relieved because, if they asked when to pick me up, my knee-jerk answer would be, “Never.”
I thought about options to returning to Indiana, though it didn’t take long to realize I didn’t have any. I couldn’t exactly relocate and apply for a job in this Yellowblown global disaster market, which brought a whole new definition to the word recession. Unemployment rates climbed about as fast as the value of the dollar plummeted.
Mia went online to buy a bus ticket to Camden for the last day we were allowed in the dorm. We half-heartedly attended classes, clinging to normalcy as abandoned furniture on the sidewalks collected autumn leaves. Boone was scarce, consumed by his horde of panicked freshman who’d never been through a normal clean-out week, much less an unscheduled one. At least that’s what I told myself. I’d stopped by his room on Thursday. Unoccupied. I left a coded message on his dry erase board. I drew a bike and nothing else.
He didn’t respond. No texts, no nothing.
On Saturday afternoon at the library door, I struggled with an armload of reference materials for a paper I wouldn’t get to write—I hoped the school scrapped this whole online learning idea as a bad experiment—and, as I grappled to get hold of the door handle without dropping a stack of books that weighed as much as ten phone directories, none other than Boone Ramer held the adjacent door open for the empty handed Twyla Krappa Gamma.
“Boonie, don’t forget about tomorrow,” she cooed. A manicured fingernail raked his chin.
I averted my heated face as I struggled through the door. My payload thumped on the research desk, further irritating a harried librarian who fixed me with a long-suffering glare. I scurried away. A set of stairs and maze of musty stacks led me to a basement study carrel so ancient it didn’t have a power outlet for portable devices. The wood borders of the desk broadcasted decades’ worth of math formulas and lovers’ laments, barely decipherable without the light of the short fluorescent tube mounted under the head height bookshelf.
I sagged in the creaky chair, confronted by the crux of my own lament, the knife-edge of my own anguish. And it wasn’t all about a boy.
I’d been living the perfect semester. My GPA held strong in spite of challenging classes. I adored my quirky roommate, and Mia and I managed a fun social life without risking addiction or a felony record.
And then there was Boone, the freshman dream teetering on the edge of becoming a sophomore reality. I liked him in a way I hadn’t ever liked anyone. We were comfortable together, yet every minute carried underlying excitement and attraction. I wanted him, all to myself, in every sense of the word, in a visceral way I’d never felt for a guy before.
Even in an uninterrupted perfect semester, the sight of Twyla and him together would have thrown me. With the clock ticking, with something so much bigger than the end of school looming, the added penalty of our separation really bummed me out. Even so, if it wasn’t for Boonie, don’t forget about tomorrow, I might have been able to float along, continuing to fake it.
Bad permanent effects. Boone permanently absent.
Time was up, and if school never started again, I might never see him again. I might never see Mia. I faced an abrupt, unscheduled, painful, permanent close to this chapter of my life. The new chapter would be…what?
Whatever it was going to be, it wasn’t going to be perfect. The Perch, kale, firewood, ashfall. So, so imperfect.
No amount of denial could insulate me from that. I sat for a few more minutes, letting cold reality seep over me. I needed to cowboy up instead of sitting in a trailer waiting for the ash to make my decisions for me. At least I had a home to go to, after all.
I stopped by the desk to apologize to the librarian in the process of checking in my books. She waved me away. I wondered what would happen to her. I was getting kicked out of my dorm while she was probably getting kicked out of her job. How many reference librarians would be needed in post-Yellowblown America? Maybe she should embezzle books to burn this winter.
I paused in front of the library to drink in the collegiate view. Yellow-crowned maple trees encircled the quad’
s expanse of manicured grass. Buildings of brick and stone squatted at the perimeter, some filled with empty classrooms, some emptying of their student residents. I tipped my face up to capture sunlight dimmed by microscopic minerals high in the atmosphere.
Scientists discussed volcanic winter as a fact of our future.
No one mentioned global warming anymore.
Bad permanent effects.
My phone dinged with a bicycle bell sound. Boone’s text tone. I considered ignoring it for about 0.12 of a second. Then I dug the phone out. He’d sent the message twenty minutes ago, probably right after he left the library, while I hyperventilated in the basement with zero bars.
Text from Boone:
(I was sort of glad he’d been simmering for a while.)
This reply flew out of my fingers like fire out of the end of Hermione’s wand. I tried to play it cool, tried to remember I didn’t have any right to question what he did with whom. By this time next week he could be married to Twyla and I would never, ever know. Somehow the memory of his hands on my butt made me feel like I had the right to an explanation, though.
Text from Boone:
I sighed.
Mia and I grabbed dinner at Snokes. Meals were still pretty normal if you didn’t depend on the salad bar. I dribbled clam chowder off my spoon a few times then crushed the saltine crackers in their little packs of two, creating cellophane pillows stuffed with salty white crumbs.
“Calm down,” Mia advised. “Sir Hotness obviously knows you’re peeved. And he obviously cares you’re peeved. Twyla’s playing you.”
“I know.” I poked at one of the packets with my definitely unmanicured finger. “You think I don’t know that? He’s the one who brought it up. I wouldn’t have said a word.” I sighed. “I’m mostly pissed because I shouldn’t be. We’ve only been dating a few weeks.”
Mia put her chin in her hand and gazed up at the ceiling tiles. “Your first argument. Maybe you’ll have makeup sex.”
“Psshh. Not likely. I’m going to go back to Indiana to die a virgin. On a bed of ash.”
Mia laughed with a snort. “You still have four or five days before life ends as we know it.”
“Yeah, except he’s been ignoring me for longer than that.”
“I know, sister-friend,” she said sympathetically. “So, don’t put out but be cool tonight, okay? You two are so cute together. Don’t F it up over a bee-yotch like Twyla.”
We’d been in our room only moments when he appeared. His eyes were bloodshot, his shirt more rumpled than usual, and his cheeks as endearingly stubbly as they’d been this afternoon. His appearance reminded me he was worried about his family, had responsibility for a bunch of underclassmen, and faced a trip into the unknown like the rest of us, all of which made me feel about two inches tall.
“Hey,” I said. I walked to him and initiated a peck on the lips.
His relieved smile unfurled slowly. “Hey,” he answered, his voice a little gruff.
“Hotness,” Mia said from her desk. “I need a favor.”
“Which one of us is Hotness?” Boone asked me.
I turned toward her with a warning on my face, no idea what she would say.
She smirked. “Violet says you have a big ol’ truck. Any chance I can get a lift Thursday morning down to the bus station? The shuttle I need is already full.”
“Sure,” he said. “All my guys should be gone by then.”
“Awesome.” She unfolded out of her chair. “’kay, well, it’s an October Saturday night and the semester is randomly ending. Better go study. Ta ta!” She grabbed a notebook off her desk on her way out the door.
Boone and I sat on my bed.
He looked at me with what Mia would call a quizzical brow. “I’m just a dumb guy, so can you tell me if you were mad at me about Twyla?”
“No.” I picked at a thread on the bedspread. And not just any bedspread, but the special matching one, now destined for a room in Indiana where it matched nothing. “I mean, no, I’m not exactly mad about Twyla. It’s…I’m not the person who’s gonna pick that fight. Twyla doesn’t like me. She obviously really likes you. I’m not going to stand in a doorway holding fifty pounds of books to try to save face with her, especially when I don’t know what’s going on with us.” I snapped the thread. “You sort of disappeared this week.”
I regretted the word “us,” and how petulant my last sentence sounded, and I wished I could sink into the floor. “I know you’ve been busy,” I added lamely.
He waved my excuse for his absence away. “Okay,” he said. “That makes sense.”
“It does?”
“Yeah. I haven’t been around much and it’s partly what you said. The not knowing what the future will be.” He searched my face where I’m sure he saw pure misery. “I wish we had more time.”
I nodded. My throat clogged with a lump way too big for a guy I’d been seeing for a month, except he’d expressed my most heartfelt wish, put it right out there in words. He slipped an arm around my shoulders, and I snuggled in to his side.
“If you’d waited three seconds I would have grabbed the door and carried your books for you, ya know?”
“You sure you had time? Seems like you’re throwing favors at all the girls.”
His chuckle rumbled from my ear to my heart.
“How’re you getting home?” he asked.
“Um, I don’t know yet,” I confessed. “I…I couldn’t bring myself to make the call home.”
“Good, because I have an idea. Indiana is practically on my way to Nebraska, and I have plenty of room in the truck. How ’bout I give you a ride?”
I bent my neck at a nearly impossible angle to look up at him without pulling away. “Are you serious?” My spirits lifted at the prospect of spending even seven more hours together.
“Sure,” he said, grinning. “If I can take Twyla to storage and Mia to the bus stop, the least I can do is drive you home.”
A half hour later, after a make-out session perhaps worth a seven-day hiatus, I reluctantly let Boone return to his duties.
I called the landline at home.
Mom sounded flustered after we exchanged greetings. “I’m glad you called. We’ve been talking about the email we got from the school but haven’t figured out what to do.” I could tell she was walking through the house. “Matt,” she said to my dad, who seemed to be home all the time now. “It’s Violet. Oh, sweetie, you’ve probably wondered when we’re coming to get you.”
A click and a fumbling sound came through the receiver. “Hiya, pumpkin,” Dad said. “So, you finally managed to get kicked out of school?”
“Funny,” I said.
Mom remained all business. “Do you think you can get the bus to Indiana?”
Dad spoke before I could take a breath. “Your mom and I are a little worried about her making the drive. She has two root canals on Tuesday so she might be on some pretty good drugs. Plus, east is the worst direction to try to drive. I, of course, have my only appointment all month in the middle of next week, though if you can leave early—and why couldn’t you?—we can come on Sunday.”
“Wait. I called to tell you I’ve got it figured out,” I interjected. “A friend offered to give me a ride.”
Static buzzed in my ear. Mom finally piped up. “It’s over four hundred miles.”
“Well, he has to go to Nebraska so it’s sort of on his way.”
Mom said “Nebraska!” while Dad said, “He?”
“Hey, is this the bike ride guy?” Dad continued.
“What bike ride guy?” Mom asked sharply.
“I told you about that, Candy. Some guy took her to a rail-trail last week.”
“Oh.” The meekness in her reply suggested he’d told her and she’d forgotten. The idea of her forgetting news about a boy, and the fact she hadn’t texted for more details the second Dad mentioned it, worried me. No interrogation. Plus, she hadn’t made arrangements to come fetch me at my lame closing school. These lapses show
ed a disconcerting level of distraction. I should be thrilled but my brow wrinkled with concern. This was not the Candy Perch I knew.
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this, Violet,” Dad said gruffly. “Can’t you take the bus?”
“No,” I insisted. “I have to clear out all my stuff, like it’s the end of the year. There’s no way I can get my bike on the bus much less all my other crap.”
“Are you sure he’s safe?” Mom asked. “Things are crazy out on the highways right now.”
“He’s the RA you met on the first day last year. He’s super-responsible, and a good driver, and he has a reliable SUV. He grew up on a ranch in Nebraska so he…I don’t know…he knows how to handle himself.”
“Wow,” Mom said. “All that, and good lookin’ too, if I’m remembering the right guy.”
I smiled a little. Mom was finally getting in gear. “You are.”
Dad cleared his throat. “Our house isn’t exactly on the way to Nebraska. Can we trust this boy?”
I pulled the phone away from my ear to stare at the screen for a second before putting it back to talk. “Dad, he’s fine.” I hadn’t called for permission. I’d called to tell them my plans.
Mom chimed in. “Matt, she’s always been a good judge of people, and if he’s an RA, he’s been checked out by the school.”
“And it’s better than Mom being on the road alone. On narcotics,” I added.