The Big F

by Maggie Ann Martin

  “I actually have a few minutes before they get here and wanted to talk to you about something,” she said. My heart dropped.

  “I was talking to Nancy over at the Ohio State admission board and told her about your making up the literature class. She said that if you show evidence from your professor that you will pass halfway through the semester, you could send in an early application to go through an express approval process since you were already accepted once. Do you think that’s something you could work out with your professor?” she asked.

  “I can try,” I said. “We’re definitely not chummy yet, but I can try.”

  “You need to try like this is the defining choice of your future. If you don’t pass this class, you’ll be a full year behind everyone your age. Employers will look at those small details and ask you why you’re a year behind. It’s best for you to come out ahead now,” she said.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. I suddenly felt like I was going to vomit, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the alcohol or the idea of figuring out my future.

  * * *

  With my mom’s advice in the back of my mind, I went into my lit class the next week with every intention of becoming more of a teacher’s pet to Professor Harrisburg. I was running a little late this morning, so I rolled in right as he stood up from his desk. On the board Mr. Harrisburg had a quote written from Henry David Thoreau—a nineteenth-century writer I could actually understand.

  “‘I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours,’” Mr. Harrisburg quoted. “Each of the big nineteenth-century American authors, Thoreau, Whitman, and Emerson, had different ideas on what it meant to live life. Today I’m giving you the assignment for the semester. As we read through these nineteenth-century American authors, I want you to find someone who resonates with you on a personal level. Use one of their quotes as a springboard for a thesis on what life means to you as an American in the twenty-first century. It will surprise you how much these pieces are still applicable after so many years.”

  Everyone did a small groan, myself included. Maybe he hoped that the poetry and literature he forced upon us were going to move us in some way that we’d be compelled to write about it. Shouldn’t finding a deeper connection to literature come in a more organic way? Forcing it upon us all seemed a little ineffective.

  “Danielle, you seem to be mulling this over quite a bit,” he said.

  I was a little taken aback that he remembered my name. “Just thinking about which writer I could compare my life to,” I said.

  “You have the whole semester to think on it,” he said. “Don’t get locked in on anything until we’ve had a chance to talk about each of the pieces we’re studying.”

  The class went on with a bigger discussion about Hawthorne, following up on what we’d talked about last week. No matter how hard I tried to pay attention, my mind was preoccupied with ideas of what I felt the meaning of life could be. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do with my life, let alone be able to choose a writer whose perspective I identified most with. When the clock reached the final second of class, I started to pack up my things to bolt out the door before I tailspinned into a nervous wreck. I was about to leave when Professor Harrisburg called my name.

  “Danielle,” he said. I tensed up in the doorframe before turning back to his desk. “I don’t want you to get too preoccupied with the final assignment. I cross my heart, the ideas will come as you read this semester. You seem like a smart kid, but I can tell when the wheels of doubt are turning. Don’t psych yourself out just yet.”

  “I’ll try not to,” I said. “Thanks, really.”

  “No problem,” he said. As if he felt awkward in giving sincere advice, he quickly turned to pack up his things, and I took that as my cue to leave.

  Visions of failing this class clouded my thoughts. I couldn’t repeat what happened last year. Even with Professor Harrisburg’s encouragement, the feeling of dread still floated through my body. On the way to my calculus class, I passed an overflowing bulletin board with competing colorful posters screaming out at me. I looked over the cluttered announcements for concerts coming to Cleveland or student music recitals and saw a small ad for an internship with Green Transitions. They were looking for a student interested in environmental policy looking for some experience. My mind immediately went back to my job shadow with the conservationist and how passionate I had felt about the work she was doing. I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the flyer so I could set up an interview later.

  A little fire formed in my gut in a way one never had before. I set a reminder on my phone to call in the morning before heading off to work. After a quick Google search of Green Transitions, I learned that it was an environmental planning and policy office that contracted itself out for different, big government projects in the Midwest. Ameera Chopra, the woman looking for an intern, was an environmental policy analyst who worked primarily on improving local laws. She was involved recently in community development and was really pushing for Cincinnati to use green rooftops. This prompted another search that explained how Chicago was the largest city with the most living rooftops, which helped cut down heating costs for buildings while saving the environment. How neat is that?

  Comparatively, work seemed like a drag, and I could barely sit still as I manned the register. Misty and I commandeered the customer service until she left for the night, which only meant one thing: Porter would be coming in. Now, I wasn’t sure how to gauge my relationship with Porter since the party night. Was he banking on me forgetting our little conversation at Paige Masterson’s? Or were we friends now? We sat in an uncomfortable limbo that I felt entirely awkward in. My stomach felt like it dropped into my butt as the door chimed and Porter walked in, clad in a ridiculously unseasonal leather jacket. Someone must have boosted his ego while he wore it once, and now he wore it even when it was hot out.

  “Did we get a new shipment in?” he asked.

  Not the conversation I had expected, but fair enough. Maybe he liked to push things under the rug too? “Uh, no. Not today.”

  “Just a second,” he said, heading to the back room.

  I honestly scratched my head in confusion. So we weren’t on good terms after I’d drunkenly outed him as unpleasant? Did this have to do with Luke? Had he come to his senses? Porter came out with a box that Misty put in the back room before she left. I went to tell him that, but he reopened it before I could say anything.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  “I thought I ordered these,” he said under his breath. He pulled out more of his favorite tiny notebooks that I hadn’t seen one person purchase the whole time I worked at the store. No wonder Misty put them in the back—they weren’t supposed to be delivered in the first place.

  “Why do you like those so much?” I asked.

  He held up one of the tiny books to me and shook it. “I have them everywhere. Imagine, I come up with an idea while I’m showering. I have one in the bathroom. I happen to be wearing my tight pair of jeans—there is a notebook in each pair.”

  “That seems highly inefficient,” I said. “How are you supposed to compile your ideas if they’re scattered all over the place?”

  “That’s the point,” he said. “I won’t compile them until the year is out. It’ll be my decision from there in which order I record them, which parts I include, and which parts I throw into a bonfire.”

  “But wouldn’t you want to keep it all? That’s a lot of work,” I said.

  “Some stuff you want to be able to throw away once it’s happened,” he said. He grabbed a few more of the little black notebooks and stuck them in his back pocket. Resealing the box, Porter placed it in the back room without saying anything else. Was our interaction at the party a portion that he’d want to throw away? Maybe he already had. That’s why our conversat
ion stayed in the normal routine. He threw out his observations and previous trust because he realized what a bad idea it was.

  He came to the front of the store, already writing in his notebook. Another little fire grew in me and the words burst out of my mouth before my brain had the time to stop it from moving. “Are you throwing out everything from that party? Because I thought we were on good terms now but you won’t acknowledge it, and I’m pretty sure you’re writing about me now. Don’t bother if you’re just going to throw it all out. God, I’m so naïve for being nice to you. I don’t know why I even tried. Well, I do because of Luke but whatever. I don’t need to explain myself to you of all people.”

  He laughed, looking up from the book. “Are you finished?”

  I gripped my hands into fists. “I could go on if you’d like.”

  “Dan, I’m not trying to upset you,” he said.

  “Don’t call me Dan,” I huffed.

  “Fine, Danielle,” he said. “I’m not ignoring what happened; actually I’m trying to do the opposite. Luke says I’m the worst when it comes to having friends. I talk to you like I do to him because I don’t have to impress him with being fake. I can be honest without coming out and asking you to be my new best friend, can’t I?”

  “I guess so,” I said, feeling increasingly embarrassed. “Sorry I freaked out.”

  “No, don’t apologize,” he said. “It was quite entertaining.”

  “Hey, just because we’re being friendly doesn’t mean you can make fun of me for overreacting,” I said. I rested my chin in my hands and watched out the window. There were no cars in sight. The bookstore really did make its money in the first week of school. I wondered why Misty even had two of us working at a time when it was so dead.

  “Did you have a good day of classes?” I asked.

  “Define good,” he said.

  “Did most people avoid public mental breakdowns?” I asked.

  “Then I would say good,” he said. He looked back at the notebook and started jotting something down.

  “What made you start writing in those?” I asked. I thought that maybe he wouldn’t answer, thinking that he was probably too good to answer my silly question.

  “It actually started while I was taking this class in high school. We were reading Shakespeare, and my teacher talked about something that people during his era used to do. It was called commonplacing. They would write down lines from literature for inspiration later. But for me, instead of commonplacing from books, I commonplace from life,” he said.

  As much as I wanted to write him off as a pretentious douche, this fascinated me more than anything. What had he written down just then? What had I sparked for him to commonplace? Sensing my confusion, he smiled and flipped the page toward me. It read “good = avoiding a mental breakdown.”

  “I narrowly avoided one today in my lit class trying to come up with a final paper idea,” I said. “My professor gave us the most open-ended assignment to find a nineteenth-century American author whose quotes resonate with you on a modern level and use it as a springboard for a mini manifesto.”

  His eyes lit up. “That sounds like a dream.”

  “Not for those of us who need a really structured system for writing papers,” I said.

  Porter pulled out one of his notebooks from the back pocket of his jeans. “It’s just a matter of finding out who your nineteenth-century author alter ego is. I could put it in quiz form for you if you’d like.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. Only he would find joy out of creating a quiz out of my main reason for stress—the one thing standing between me and getting into Ohio State. He wrote furiously in his notebook, his eyebrows furrowing as he thought. It was the most focused I’d ever seen him. Just imagine what he could get done if he focused on everything with that much intensity.

  “Okay. So you’ll need to answer the following questions very seriously. I’m expecting a full level of dedication on this,” he said.

  “Fully dedicated over here,” I said.

  “Great. So, you’re stranded on an island and can bring one thing. Is it A: your favorite book, B: matches, C: an ax, or D: nothing, you are nature’s master,” he asked.

  “Do I have to take into consideration my actual skill level with these tools?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re really on this island by yourself. What do you bring?”

  “I guess B, matches,” I said.

  “Okay. One person of your choosing arrives on the island by some miracle of teleportation. Are they A: your mom, B: your best friend, C: your significant other, or D: no one, you don’t want to bring someone else into this misery with you,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t want to bring anyone into that misery with me,” I said. “Plus, I’d probably get sick of whoever shows up anyway.”

  “Something to tell Luke later,” he said, the Smirk creeping onto his face. I kicked him in the shin.

  “You can choose to live anywhere in the world. Is it A: on the beach, B: near the woods, C: in the city, or D: Denton.”

  “Most definitely not D,” I said. “Probably B. I’d feel really at peace with the world and whatnot.”

  He nodded. “You can only watch one genre of movie for the rest of your life. What do you choose? A: drama, B: action/thriller, C: rom com, or D: documentary.”

  “C,” I said. He raised his eyebrows. “What? I have a sappy side that only a good rom com can satisfy. Next question. Stop giving me that look.”

  “You order your dream pizza. What is the key ingredient that you love? A: pepperoni, B: mushrooms, C: pineapple, or D: sausage.”

  “What does this have to do with a nineteenth-century American author?” I asked.

  “It’s crucial. Most of their great fights were over the perfect pizza topping,” he said.

  I scowled at him. “Fine. A. A classic choice.”

  “You can go on an all-expenses-paid trip to one of these four places. Which do you choose? A: Italy, B: Australia, C: Japan, D: France?” he asked.

  “I love Paris. My grandparents lived there for a hot second, and it was absolutely incredible. I dream about going back there all the time,” I said. “Again, this seems a little irrelevant considering I’m finding an American author.”

  “I’m almost done,” he said, waving his hand at me. “If you had to choose one animal to be your pet, which would it be? A: a hamster, B: a fish, C: a cat, or D: a dog.”

  “For right now I would probably barely keep a fish alive, let alone a dog or cat. But eventually I want to have a dog. Can I answer B and a contingent D?” I asked.

  “Noted,” he said. “Let me calculate your results. This might take a second.”

  “No problem,” I said, giggling. His concentrating face was back in full force, and I wondered how much of it was just for show. There was no way that these questions could relate directly to an author, but he was treating it all like a life-or-death situation. Which made me laugh even more.

  “The results are in,” he said, holding his notebook dramatically like a talk show host. “My foolproof, Oprah-approved, Find Your Nineteenth-Century Author Alter Ego quiz has placed you with … Henry David Thoreau. Mostly just for your answer about living out in the woods and the matches. He was more of an observer of nature than one who felt like he needed to conquer it. Also, your loner answer was very Thoreau. The other questions I was just curious about.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “Porter!”

  “I really do think you’ll like him—he’s my favorite out of the group,” he said. “Don’t get too stressed out about it. You have all semester, right?”

  “I’m not the best at staying stress-free,” I said.

  Porter looked around the store and then at the time on his phone. “I have something that you might need in the back. Follow me.”

  Weary, I followed his energy to the back of the store. He was actually skipping. He motioned for me to join him at the fridge and I peeked in.

  “It’s call
ed Essprestout. It’s the glorious combination of coffee taste and alcohol. I know you’re not a big alcohol person. I bought this yesterday and thought you might want to try it,” he said.

  “Coffee beer? That doesn’t sound that great,” I said.

  “It’s actually life changing. If you don’t want to try it, I guess I will have to drink it all by myself…,” he said.

  Wrestling with my curiosity (and, let’s be honest, boredom), I grabbed one from him with a small smirk. “I won’t like it.”

  “To each their own,” he said. He watched with bated breath as I took my first sip of the Essprestout. To my delighted surprise, the taste didn’t make me want to instinctively spit it out. What sort of magic was this? An alcoholic beverage that I actually liked?

  I smiled bigger at him. “I’m impressed. But I’m also driving home, so one sip might have to do it for tonight.”

  “I respect that,” he said, grabbing it from my hands and taking a big sip. “See, sometimes trying new things pays off.”

  “You got lucky.” I smiled. “Coffee happens to be my weakness.”

  He pulled out his notebooks and flipped to one of the first pages. There was a page with tally marks that read “Times this week Danielle brings a coffee to work” and there were five tally marks.

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve noticed.”

  * * *

  That weekend was the first DCC football game against our rivals at Columbus Tech. Zoe and I had purchased DCC T-shirts with my discount from the bookstore, and she crafted cute color-coordinated headbands for us to wear. My parents were still so in shock that I was going to watch a football game that they agreed to let me go. Again, Luke was turning out to be the best angry-parent deterrent.

  We found seats in the bleachers, which were surprisingly full. I didn’t even know people came to these games, and I’d lived here most of my life. Zoe laid out a blanket for both of us to sit on, and I frowned at her.

  “What? I’m not burning my ass on the hot bleachers. You pick: sweat a little from the blanket or have red marks on your butt for the rest of the day.”