Every student in the entire room sat as silent as tombstones, with several jaws dropped and eyes popped. Not exactly for the prose itself - almost anything was manna from heaven compared to the stuffy Victorian-era literature they'd been tortured with for most of the semester. Even if it was obviously an original work of poetry, it wasn't exactly worthy of Elizabeth Bishop. Their amazement came from the speaker: a classmate with dark blonde hair as spiked as much as one could get past dress code and wearing his signature striped shirt. His recitation had been so heartfelt that a couple of the girls were discreetly batting at the corners of their eyes, while others couldn't help but feel a sense of empathetic loss. His unfocused gaze seemed to reach to the far wall of the classroom and off into somewhere else that only he could see. It was an amount of feeling that couldn't be faked anymore than the poetry it had accompanied. And to make the understatement of the century, he was the absolute LAST person that would have ever been suspected to put on such an epic performance.
Their teacher cleared her throat to finally break the silence. "Well, Calvin, I must say that was a remarkably unprecedented effort. Could you explain the symbolism of your piece?"
He couldn't. Not even close. The true meaning of it all was hopelessly lost on the clowns he had for classmates or his shrewish teacher who considered the English language to have peaked in the 1800's. Even if he had the hours it would take to begin to pour out his very soul to the class - would they understand? Could they possibly care enough to truly grasp the pain at having to leave his adventuring and his best friend behind forever?
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Another week later, seniors were becoming an endangered species at Calvin's school. As part of their desperate attempts to keep up graduation rates the school board had ceased withholding diplomas from chronic 'skippers' long ago. Those who remained were mostly happy to have a place to sit and chat and goof off for half the day. But a handful looked around constantly with thoughtful faces, trying to capture every last feeling. The way the halls smelled lemon-scented after the janitor had made a pass, the sounds of bustling crowds in passing period. Students whose names had made it onto the school's trophy cabinet often lingered around it. Teammates embraced and shook hands in a final solidarity, pointed and reminisced until a passing staff gently shooed them away.
One of them stood for a time with a single hand placed on the window, gazing past the reflection in the glass at the hand-painted playbill where he'd shone in a leading role exactly four times. It should have been five times - but the drama teacher had come down with a case of the flu so bad it put her in the hospital. He recalled her dry amusement at coming through the doors the next monday to every actor 'dead' in their chairs in full costume.
Most of all he remembered the thrill of the final curtain call after each performance. Arm-in-arm with all the others, making bows before a cheering audience. For just a minute it was a glimpse of the full glory of Broadway to many young minds. A fleeting moment where the house lights blazed like stars in the sky as a crowded auditorium celebrated the talent laid out before them. It was something neither the best video recording nor the carefully folded pamphlet in a box labeled 'Keep' would ever be able to truly recall.
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The day came. Hands were shook, tears were shed, a few phone numbers and emails exchanged. Many students whooped and ran out the doors. But some shuffled slowly from empty lockers to familiar places, then finally toward the exits with heavy hearts. The ones who appreciated what their peers were so hastily leaving behind. By some odd chance Calvin found himself making a final exit with one of the lunch ladies of all people.
"You last day, ha?" said the heavyset Latino. "Mine too. Shouldas goin bad." She patted her meaty biceps. "Doctor says no more heavy things. The district, they give me retirement early. This summah I work some other place. But I dunno what I gonna do next fall. School gonna start an' I gonna try comin' back just from habit after all these years."
"I wish I could get away with that," lamented Calvin. "Maybe I'll win the lottery and come back under another name for one more year."
"Ayyyy, don' I wish I was young and pretty I could get away wit' that." she half-laughed in resentment of her bygone youth. "You goin to college right away? Or work for a bit?"
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Calvin's head jerked a bit, as if something invisible had slapped him. "First I gotta move out. My dad said the day I ended high school I moved out and he really meant it. When I get off the bus at home he'll be waiting for me to load up all the boxes and go straight to my new apartment. Do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars."
The older woman stopped in her tracks, pudgy jaw dropped to the middle of her neck. "Saints an' angels, he makin' you go today?!"
"We had...well...we had a big fight. Actually a bunch of fights since I was a junior. Some of them were my fault or his but some...just happened. He almost threw me out the day I turned 18 even though I had three months of school left. Mom had to threaten him to let me stay this long. I don't know if I'll ever be back. We - I had everything packed up that I'm not wearing weeks ago."
Sincere condolences were given; not from staff to student but from one human being to another. Then the two parted ways with a surprisingly rib-crackingly tight hug.
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To say that Calvin's parents had different reactions to his final trip on the schoolbus was a massive understatement. His mother was wringing the life out of the dish towel she'd been using a minute ago, but working at a legal firm for thirty years had taught his father the art of the stone face. The man's countenance was as stoic as Mount Rushmore while he watched his only son go inside without a word from where he stood on the front step, like some military sentry.
Only a few quiet tears were shed in the stillness of the place that had been his refuge. A place to read a favorite comic unhindered and hide after a personal failure or stern discipline or an unpleasant encounter with the world. But as if it wasn't enough that he was too big for the swingsets, too tall for his bike or too heavy for the sled, everything familiar was being coldly ushered out the door like a bad actor dragged off by the hook. Of all the old furnishings that had once made a room into his room, only a barren mattress and a paper-thin curtain over one bedroom window remained. When the latter fluttered in the afternoon breeze for an instant he quietly mused that it might be his spirit flying away.
The small pile of brown boxes took only a couple trips to load up, after which Calvin deliberately left every window and door wide open on the way out in a final small act of defiance toward authority. Teetering on an emotional breakdown his mother could only whisper apologies in his ear as she held her baby. For the first time in her life it now would be her last hug for an unknown and presumably long period of time.
"It's not your fault. You can only threaten the D-word so many times." At that she held him once more before her son got in the rented U-Haul pickup to vanish down the street in a trail of slightly blue smoke along with all his worldly possessions.
Some hours later her husband would receive a surprisingly violent reaction for insensitively asking her why she was 'sitting around staring at that ugly old drawing'. For the art in question had been done back when Calvin was still in grade school; a crudely done but heartfelt attempt at depicting a pouncing tiger mid-leap.
Memory jolted into sudden remembrance, she scoured the house high and low for his favorite old stuffed animal. But Hobbes was nowhere to be found.
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Lying about his new address had been only slightly harder than getting a PO box set up. To his credit the grumpy gentleman whose basement he was actually renting promised to put the paid-in-cash rent to good use.
"I gots to get the medications and doctor visits the damn VA won't pay for. But after I patch up my ass I'll start patching up the place. Lord knows it needs some. Only thing I ask is you keep your mouth shut so some vulture from the government doesn't double my property tax for putting in a new countertop." A silent thumbs-up was Calvin's reply as he descended down a somewhat questionable set of wooden stairs to the dim and slightly damp place that he now called 'home'. The principal's office would have been a more welcome destination.
For two days he barely ate and couldn't sleep on his first weekend alone as his budget and his spirit competed for first place in being lower. Going outside was made into a misery thanks to a surprise turn of the weather that sent the thermometer plunging into the single digits with wind gusts strong enough to prompt public safety alerts from the weatherman.
Then on Monday at 8:30 sharp, the old drudgery of schoolwork was replaced by something much worse, with no staff holidays or snow days to ever break the spell.
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At the top of a place once given a name by two friends, a small plywood sign finally fell over as the ground underneath it became too saturated with melting sleet to hold the pole that had been buried too shallowly. A single pair of eyes watched from beneath the plastic tarp tent tucked all around the wagon as "DEADMANS HILL" slumped over, its letters crudely written in black marker almost faded away entirely. Taking it as a final cue, he waved briefly at it....
Then closed his eyes.