Page 2 of The Black Table
Because gym means moving, and moving means sweating, and sweating means a change of clothes.
And my clothes don’t change.
BENORMALBENORMALBENORMAL—
“It is,” she says simply. Eyes me up and down, like she’s doing a body scan. “The swimming portion is what’s most vital. I’m sure you’ll pass.”
Au contraire, I think. I’ve never been a good swimmer. I sink like my bones are made of iron. But I really, really don’t want this to get worse, so I nod.
“Your dormitory assignment,” she says, handing me another paper, “along with our residential code of conduct, and here’s the social schedule?—”
Knock, knock.The student worker from reception, a slight blonde girl with giant brown eyes, pokes her head in.
“ID card?”
The registrar waves her in, and the girl tiptoes to my side and hands me a plastic rectangle, still warm from the printer and emblazoned with the Caliburn red and black. Staring back at me is…me. Or the me of twenty minutes ago who had her picture unceremoniously snapped by what might be the only digital camera on campus, anyway: dark eyes, dark circles, dark hair thick and newly cropped to just below my chin.
Hardly a flattering portrait. But not extraordinarily so.
Normal. Almost.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Sure.” She disappears.
“Keys,” the registrar says suddenly, and rummages around in a low drawer before producing two of them, bound together on a red cord. “Usually you’d get these on registration day, but?—”
“Thank you,” I mumble, taking them from her and vaguely listening as she points out which is for the main dorm door and which is for my individual room. The mist outside has turned to a drizzle, and with the sense that we’re close to done, a sudden desperation tobedone, to check the box and get started and move in and move on, has me in a near chokehold.
I grip the teeth of the keys into the flesh of my fingers and try to listen to what she’s saying about social events.
“…complete listing of events, but I’m sure you’ll hear soon enough which ones arede rigeurfrom your friends.” She smiles, a real, innocent smile, like she sees me as someone who can and will make friends here, and soon.
How I wish.
Or, no. Not.
What I wish is to study. To read, to write. To start classes,passclasses, pass semesters, draft papers, flip through dictionaries, absorb every single detail I can about twelfth-century French poetry and medieval Latin orthography and live in the library until it’s time to graduate. To brew endless cups of tea behind a stack of books taller than I am and three times as old, to be left alone with my thoughts and my pages and my research until the late hours of the night in a cramped cubby by a snow-drifted windowpane, to spend the rest of my lifereading, not because it is productive or capitalistically useful but because it is luxurious, it is good, it is what I am designed for.
And then, at last, to pass the remaining decades of my life contributing to some small niche of scholarship. Something esoteric and mine, something that nearly no one else would choose but thatsomeonemust preserve. To spend my mortal existence putting my own small filigrees on truths written over thousands of years by thousands of hands.
God, listen to me.
BE NORMAL, GWENNA.
Except…maybe this is the Gwenna version of normal.
Maybe?
I suppose we’ll find out.
With thanks given and a polite goodbye said, I stand out in the reception hallway, balancing my many new papers, and set down my suitcase to pull out my phone.
My first placement exam isn’t until 1 p.m., and it’s just now 10:20. Not a ton of time, but enough—maybe the perfect amount, in fact, to get the necessary chores done without dragging anything out.
With a deep breath, I tap open a new message.
To: Mom
