First Draft: Chapter 19

“Mind if I sit here?”
“Always room for you Jonny,” David said, moving his tray over to make room.  “Hey, Icarus, move your cup.  Make room for Jon.”
“A pleasure to have you at our table as always,” said Icarus, lightly slapping me on the back.  “I’m going to have to leave in a few minutes though Jon.  You caught me right as I was getting ready to go for class.”
“It’s okay,” I said, sitting down at the table.  “I have class in a little while myself.”
“Are you going to have time to finish those mashed potatoes?” David said, eagerly reaching forward with his fork.
I fended his fork off with my spoon.  “Back off Dave, I’m a hungry boy.”
“I can’t believe the crap they serve here,” Icarus remarked, emotionlessly stabbing his slab of ham with a fork.  “It’s almost like they go out of their way to make everything taste bad.  Did you think the ham was pretty dry?”
The question was directed at David.  I hadn’t even touched my ham yet.  “It wasn’t the best ham I ever had,” Dave answered, remaining non-committal.
“I don’t think the food here is really that bad at all,” I remarked before hungrily stuffing potatoes into my mouth.
David smiled at me and patted my head as if I was a little child.  “Our boy Jonny will eat anything they dish out.  You’ve never been picky about your food Jon.  Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything you won’t eat.”
“I think it’s good not to be picky,” I remarked, only half joking.
David turned his hands so his palms faced upwards, indicating openness to my suggestion.  “Perhaps.”
Icarus made a short snorting sound at the remark.  “If you’re not picky, the bastards will ram everything they want right down your throat.”
“What bastards?” David asked.
“Hey, how’s Helen doing?” I said, changing the subject.
“Fine, I guess.”
“I haven’t seen her that much lately.”
“Yeah, neither have I,” Icarus chimed in.
“Well, you know how seriously she takes her school work.  She just gets stressed out easily some times and holes herself up in her room and just studies all the time.”
“I could never do that,” Icarus confidently asserted.
“I don’t know if I could either,” David said.  “She’s quite something though.  It’s amazing how good she can do in school when she puts her mind to it.”
“So when are you two getting married anyway,” Icarus remarked.  A mischievous smile lingered on his face after he said it, as if he was only too amused by his own cleverness.  I looked down at my potatoes to hide my expression.  Neither of them noticed.
“Knock it off Icarus.”  David’s eyes lit up as he suddenly thought of something.  “Hey, speaking of girls, who was that girl you were talking to the other day Jonny?”
Icarus’ ears perked up.  “What?”
“Yeah, get this.  I’m walking down South Hall and I see Jonny here talking to this girl right in the middle of the hallway, and then an hour later I walk back and I see him talking to the same girl.”
“Well Jon dear, who is this young girl then?” Icarus asked.
I’m sure I was blushing.  “Oh, she’s just some girl I met at the art show.”
“Her name please,” Icarus said, holding out his hand as if to receive the name in his palm.
“Clio.”
Icarus’ face became disgusted.  “Clio?”
“You know her?” David asked.
“Yeah, she’s in one of my classes.  She’s one of the most annoying girls I know.”
“Thank you Icarus,” David said, in a voice designed to let Icarus know he should keep quiet.  Icarus missed the hint.
“Are you that hard up for chicks Jon?  Couldn’t you find anyone a little bit more normal?”
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.  I wasn’t really that upset.  I knew Icarus well enough to know he always spoke his mind.  I spoke harshly mostly just because I knew people would expect me to after a comment like that.
David slammed his fist down on the table, making a loud thud.  David was perhaps more upset about it then I was.  “Icarus!  Can we have some tact here please!  Just shut up!”
Icarus drew his arms back, indicating surrender.  “Okay, okay, okay.  I’m sorry I said anything.”
There followed one of those awkward silences that usually follows an argument among friends.  I ate in silence for a couple minutes, and then asked Icarus in a quiet voice to, “please pass the ketchup.”  Not because I wanted the ketchup so much, just to break the silence.
Icarus passed it over.  He also interpreted my olive branch as a sign that he had full license to speak again.  “Hey Jon, you ought to come to the youth group with David and I some time.”
“Yeah, I heard you were in on that too.”
“You really should come Jon,” David said, looking at me very earnestly.
“I’ll see,” I said.
David could tell from my voice that this was just a way for me to avoid the topic.  I really had no intention of coming.  “No, I mean it Jon.  You really should come.”
“I’ll think about it Dave.  It doesn’t really interest me that much.”
“Once you get there I think it will interest you,” David pressed.
I drained my glass, then set it back down on the table.  “Well, look boys, I’m happy you both found a youth group you’re excited about, but to tell you the truth the idea of spending my spare time going to a church youth group just repulses me.”
“Oh come on Jon,” Icarus blurted out, “it’s not really a youth group.”
“Icarus shut up!” David spoke forcefully, but quietly.
“Well do we have to spell it out for the kid?  Jon, why in the world would David and I be going to a church youth group?  We hate that nonsense as much as you do.”
“How many times to I have to tell you to shut up!”  David lost control of himself that time, and his voice carried over the racket of the cafeteria.  Several people turned and looked at us.  I stood up and picked up my tray.  “Where are you going Jon?”
“I’m going to find a more quiet table.”

I strolled down the hall at a brisk pace.  The afternoon had so many promising prospects, and I wanted to be sure I took advantage of every single one of them, or as many as I could.
I was in the Science hall.  It was an old building, already one hundred years old.  It was one of the more majestic buildings on campus.  The outside had a castle like look to it, with Ivory climbing up stone towers, and windows that looked like they belonged in some ancient church.  Just the way you expect a University building to look like I guess.  Grand, beautiful majestic, kind of made you feel guilty for even going inside it, as if the whole thing ought to be off limits as an historical site and used only by historians, or turned into a museum piece or something.  Certainly it should not be trod on by every young kid in the University with mud still clinging to their shoes from the soccer game that afternoon.
Inside it was not quiet so majestic.  The old wooden floors had not aged quite so well and were somewhat in need of repair.  They made a rhythmic creaking sound beneath my feet as I walked down the hall.  There was kind of a musty smell to the whole place.  The place was well cleaned and dusted, but the musty smell lingered anyway.
The walls were lined with all sorts of goodies.  Various awards the department had received were all put proudly on display.  Test tubes and microscopes were proudly shown from glass cases, with labels underneath detailing which famous scientist had used it when.  Between the display cases were doors leading to classrooms.  A couple of the classrooms were still in session, and I would peer in as I walked by to see if there was anyone I recognized inside.
A door opened and a student came out from one of these rooms.  Out of the corner of my eye, I recognized him as Christopher.  Christopher was someone I had known well.  We had gone to school together as children.  We had also spent two years in the FJC together.
He turned and looked at me as soon as he stepped into the hall.  Upon realizing who I was, he turned his head quickly back to the hallway and kept on walking as if I didn’t exist.  I was determined not to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his presence.  I pretended to be completely oblivious to the fact that there was someone walking beside me, and suddenly took an interest in the wall away from Christopher.  All of the exhibits on the wall immediately became fascinating to me, and my eyes scanned them thoroughly even as I walked quickly by them.  I could tell by Christopher’s steps that he was still keeping even with me.
Finally I got sick of keeping pace with him.  One of the exhibits suddenly was so interesting I had to stop and examine it.  I listened to Christopher’s steps as he disappeared down the hallway, while I looked at a chart of the insect family.  The chart remained of infinite interest until his steps were no longer audible.  Then, I started up again.  Once again I had the whole hall to myself.
I had not really been that upset at lunch the other day.  David at least knew me well enough that I’m sure he knew I was joking when the table rather abruptly.  Icarus would figure it out, or he would forget about it, one of the two.  Icarus didn’t usually hold grudges.
I turned the corner.  I kept my pace deliberately slow.  I didn’t want to catch up to Christopher again if I could avoid it.  The afternoon could wait.  I walked past a window, and looked out at the beautiful fall day.  The leaves were coming off of the trees.  It would not stay beautiful for much longer, but right now it was beautiful.
I saw the room I was looking for, and walked into it.  The professor had left the assignment instructions on a table in the middle of the room.  I had only come to pick up a piece of paper and then I would be done.  However as I walked into the room, Christopher was already there.  He wasn’t even in my class, but he must have been there for some other reason.  He was rummaging around in one of the desks, looking for something.
He looked up as soon as he heard someone walk into the room.  We made eye contact briefly before he quickly looked back down and continued rummaging, and I abruptly looked away and went to the table.  I picked up a sheet of paper and looked up once more to glare at Christopher.  He seemed to have found whatever he was looking for in the desk, and shut the drawer.  I tried to make it to the door before he did.  He didn’t even notice I was leaving as well, or perhaps he would have found some excuse to look around in the desk for a minute or two longer.  We both arrived at the doorway at the same time, and stopped, waiting to see who would go out first.
“What are you?  Following me?” I snarled.
“Me?  I was here first Jon.  Are you following me?”
Such a lame comeback was not worthy of my wit, I decided.  “Forget it Chris.  Just get out of here.”
It was, I thought, a reasonable suggestion.  Given the fact that Christopher and I were supposed to hate each other, it was as close as I could get to, “Please sir, won’t you do me the honor of going first?”  However, Christopher didn’t see things that way.  He resented me telling him what to do.  “You know you better watch it Jon.  You’re in a lot of trouble right now.”
I knew Christopher.  I knew how his mind worked.  He ate up anything he was told.  He did whatever they told him to do, and he thought what they wanted him to think.  I had quit FJC, so I was the enemy.  I had betrayed the cadets.  Yet Christopher had known me since childhood, and he must have had a little bit of trouble imagining me as the slime ball they wanted him to imagine me as.  I could almost see the inner conflict played out on his face.  He knew he was supposed to hate me, but he also knew me.
I stepped forward aggressively.  “Oh yeah?  What kind of trouble?”
“You wouldn’t believe how mad Zeus gets when he says your name at role call.”
I smiled in spite of myself.  It was ruining my attempt to look tough but I couldn’t help it.  “He still calls my name?”
“Every morning.  He says all sorts of nasty words afterwards.”
A small laugh was rising inside me.  It tried to get out, but I squelched it and only a little cry escaped.  “Doesn’t he realize I’m not coming by now?”
“Hey, it’s not funny Jon,” Christopher protested.  “Cut that out, you’re in big trouble.”
And that was the final straw.  Christopher’s frustration caused my laughter to escape.  Here was this brave, young, strong cadet who looked like his face was about to explode because he couldn’t get me to stop laughing.  Pretty soon, I was no longer fighting the laughter, but allowing it to tumble out of my mouth from some reservoir deep with in me.  The laughter was boiling inside me, and just kept rising and rising until it hit my mouth and then it came gushing out.
“Stop that Jon!” he said red faced.  It only fueled my fire.  He looked around to see if anyone else was there to witness this mockery.  He did not like being laughed at where other people could see it.  “Hey, I’m serious.  Stop it Jon.”  I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but his crimson face just became a shade darker.  “I mean it!”  He shoved me backwards.
I leapt back with the shove, and landed steadily on my feet.  Almost automatically my right hand flew behind my head, ready to come down and strike.  My left hand was raised in front of me, ready to block any blows Christopher might have.  He immediately lifted his fists as well.
When I looked at him though, I realized he was not looking for a fight.  He had shoved me out of frustration, the way a child shoves a bully who won’t leave him alone.  I lowered my raised arms.  He lowered his in response.
“I don’t get you Jon.  What’s up with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I meat.  Why do you do this stuff?”
“What stuff?”
“Cut it out Jon!”  His voice quickly rose in frustration, but I was genuinely confused.
“You mean like quitting FJC?”
“Yeah.  Why did you do that?  You went for two years and then you just quit.”
“I didn’t enjoy it.”
The simplicity of my answer took him off guard.  “Oh.  That’s too bad,” he said meekly.  He was quiet as he thought about my answer, then replied, “That’s not really the point though.”
I had no desire to debate this.  “Just forget it,” I said, walking towards the door and deliberately brushing against him as I went past.  He allowed himself to be pushed aside by my body, and then followed me out the door.  I didn’t slow down as I heard him yapping behind me.
“Jon, you made a commitment to the FJC.  You made a commitment to your government but you also made a commitment to us.  We were a team.  We trusted each other.  We relied on each other.  None of us enjoyed it but we all stuck with it.  You have a responsibility to the team Jon, you can’t just walk out on us.”
I turned on him sharply.  “Shove it Chris.  Go find someone else to listen to your nonsense.”
I glared at him for a second and then I kept walking.  Seconds later I could hear his steps following quickly behind me.  “You know I don’t like it either Jon,” he said in a much calmer voice.
“Then why don’t you quit?”
“Because I made a commitment.”
“Oh knock it off.”
“No, I didn’t mean that …  I’m sorry Jon.  I wasn’t trying to cut on you.  I’m just curious.”
“About what?”
“About why you don’t care about it.”
I didn’t know how to answer that.  “I just don’t.”
“But you signed a contract.”
“So?”
“So you’re breaking your word.”
I didn’t know how to answer that either, so I just angrily barked, “I don’t care.”
My answers didn’t seem to satisfy Christopher, so he started talking about but I just cut him off.  “Look, I don’t want to talk about it.”
He continued walking besides me, and his silence was very brief before he ventured something else.  “You know there not going to let you go easily.”
It was a subject I had tried to avoid thinking about.  “I didn’t think they would.”
“The Cadets are planning all sorts of stuff.  Zeus is even encouraging them.  They want to make you pay.”
“What about your commitment?  Shouldn’t you be keeping their secrets?” I asked icily.
He looked confused, and then just shrugged his shoulders.  I suddenly realized what he was doing for me, and was overcome by a felling of tenderness, of friendship towards him.  It was accompanied by nostalgia as I remembered our years growing up together.  Everything rushed into me, and then Christopher suddenly said something like, “I’ve got to go.”
“Chris, no, wait.”  He stopped, but I didn’t have anything to say to him.  “What are they planning?” I ended up blurting out.
“They want to make you hurt,” he answered, almost embarrassed to say it.  “They want to beat you into a pulp.”  I stood there shocked for a minute.  “I’m sorry Jon,” he added.
“And these are the kind of people you want me to commit to?”
“If you kept your commitment, we wouldn’t have to do this.”
There was no use arguing against Christopher’s screwed up logic, but the sudden change from “they” to “we” worried me.  “What do you mean ‘we’?  Are you going to attack me too Chris?”  He was silent.  “Are we going to be enemies the next time we see each other?”
He looked me straight in the eye and said in a somber voice.  “I think we will be.”  Neither of us knew what to say, so Christopher just said, “I’ve got to go.  I’ll see you later Jon.”  There was a possible sinister interpretation to the last part that he realized only after he said it.  He smiled awkwardly, and then just turned to go.

“Listen, I had a really good time tonight.”  The lines poured out of my mouth automatically, like I was reciting a formula.
Clio just stared up at me with big, serious, brown eyes.  “Yeah, I did too.”  The eyes blinked a couple of times.  She was absolutely beautiful.
She leaned in towards me.  Almost instinctively I leaned backwards.  Her face looked a little disappointed, but I didn’t allow the moment to linger.  I started walking again, and she followed me.
A small river ran through the campus.  I could hear it trickling off in the not too far distance, but it was too dark for me to see much of anything.  Off in the distance I could see lights, which told me I was getting closer to her dorm.  My footsteps had a peculiar thudding to them, which told me I was still on the path.  Her face was illuminated by the distant lights, which my eyes had grown sharp enough to grab.
The air had a wet, misty quality to it.  A “before the rain” type feeling I suppose, although it never rained that night.  As I walked my face was constantly brushed by the cool moist air.  It made me happy to be alive.  It made me feel like I wanted to spend every night outside, just enjoying the night air.
I speeded up my walk slightly.  My hands hung uselessly by my side but my face was forward to catch all the mist the air had to offer.  I breathed in deeply, closed my eyes, and just stood there as I felt my face get wet.
I became aware that there were no longer any footsteps behind me.  I turned around and she was just standing there, staring at me.  I started walking back towards her.  “What’s the matter?  What’s wrong?”
She stared up at me with a rather blank look on her face.  “Nothing.”  She seemed on edge.  I smiled just to make her feel relaxed.  My smile slowly vanished when I saw it wasn’t going to get returned.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again.
“Nothing.”  She fidgeted a little.  “Only…”  Yes, what is it?  “Only, do you think we could sit down by the river?”
I looked past her in the direction of the trickling.  It seemed to be only blackness beyond her.  “It’s awfully dark,” I said.
“I know.”
I gave a short little laugh.  “You know it will be hard to find the river?”
“Yeah.”  She seemed worried that I would at any moment dismiss her idea completely, but I only wanted to make her happy.
“Okay, if you want to, we can try.”  She nodded gratefully.
I moved cautiously forward in the direction of the river.  I moved slowly because in the dark I was never sure what was in front of me.  I also moved slowly so that she could keep up with me.
After a few hesitant, perhaps overly hesitant, steps I no longer heard the thudding sound beneath my feet.  It was replaced by a soft swishing sound as my feet brushed aside blades of grass with every step.  I could hear her footsteps behind me.  In fact I could feel her breath on my back she was so close to me.
After a few steps I also began to notice that my feet were getting wet as the dew soaked into my shoes.  The grass was short enough that the rest of my leg was spared, but all the same it was not a pleasant feeling to have wet, cold feet.
Most of the campus was very well maintained and orderly, with every plant kept strictly in its place.  As we moved off the path, we encountered nothing but short, neat, blades of grass.  However, on the bank of the river, nature was allowed slightly more freedom.  Trees, bushes, vines were all allowed to go their own way and become tangled up with each other, and compete for water and sunlight and generally be chaotic.  It was a thin little strip, but this strip of unrestrained nature was more beautiful then all the well maintained rose gardens in the whole campus.
By the time I got to the riverbank, my eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness.  I saw a dark outline of a long, tall, thin object that could only have been a tree.  I reached out with desperate hands and grabbed onto it to use as a reference point.  Clio’s breath was still hot behind me.
I took a few steps towards the next tree I saw, and stumbled over some bushes I didn’t see.  Clio was able to step over them and avoid the same mistake.  “Maybe we should trade places,” I said as a joke.  Off course it was dark enough out that she couldn’t see my smile.  I couldn’t see her face either.  I didn’t know if she was smiling back at me or just looking confused.
“We could if you want to.”
“No, that’s all right.  We’re almost there.”
I stumbled towards another tree.  I took a few steps forward and noticed how sharply the declined was downhill, so I decided I was as close to the river as I was going to get without taking the risk of stepping off the bank and plunging into a frigid bath.  I got down on my hands and knees and felt the ground.  Finding the edge of the bank, I sat down with my feet dangling over.  Clio did likewise, guided by my verbal instructions.  “Reach out slowly now.  Do you feel the edge?  That’s where I am.  Careful now.”
At last we were situated.  It was a nice spot, much more beautiful in the day time, but the river managed to some how catch and reflect and some of that far away light.  The soft trickling of the water was much louder now, and I felt like I had to raise my voice in order to be heard over it.  I didn’t know exactly where the bank ended and the river began, but based on the sounds I guessed that my dangling feet might only have been a few inches away from getting soaked.
“This was not a bad idea,” I said, trying to put her at ease.  “Do you go to this place a lot?”
“No, not really.”   She stopped talking, and I was so content to listen to the river that I never even noticed the silence; my mind was elsewhere.  She spoke up again though.  “The reason I wanted to come here was that I had a dream about this place last night.”
My ears perked up.  “Really, what?”
“Well, it was kind of weird actually.”
“I want to hear it.”
“Okay, well it started out in my brother’s room.  I was talking to him and his roommate Dagon, and his girlfriend Eurydice and all of them looked kinda funny.  You know, the way people usually look in dreams, all funny and blurry and flat and stuff.  I nodded even though I had no idea what she was talking about.  “Anyway, we were all there talking,” her voice was shy and shaky, and she hesitated often.  “And I said something and Dagon got upset and left and I’m not even sure what it was.”  She seemed to grow even more embarrassed, perhaps from telling a story that seemed to have no point.  “But for some reason we followed him outside, and we were all talking and then for some reason we just jumped in a river.  This river.”  She stopped to swallow.  “Only it didn’t really look like this at all.  It was surrounded by all these big machines and even the ground was like this big metal sheet, and there were all these machines in the river.  Everything everywhere was made of metal except for the four of us and the water.”  She hesitated at this point, as if her mind was busy trying to rebuild the metal riverbank, and she was waiting for it to finish before she continued.  “It was so dark and smoky outside right before we jumped in, although for some reason that didn’t really bug me at the time.  Anyway, the four of us were in the water, and we were all swimming in the same direction, but I went down deeper then everyone else, and for some reason I didn’t even need to go up and get air.
“You know how nothing in a dream is ever quiet like real life?  Well it was like that with swimming.  I was deep under water but I didn’t feel pressure or anything.  I didn’t have to go up for air.  After being down there for a while, I didn’t even feel wet anymore.  And I had my eyes wide open but that didn’t hurt a bit.  It was almost like I was flying, but I was underwater.”  Slowly, so slowly I didn’t even notice it at first, her voice had become less hesitant and less shaky and was no clear and confident and excited.  “At first, I was swimming past all these underwater machines in this dark green colored water, but then everything changed and I was swimming through crystal clear water.  I would look up and I would see the other three swimming above me, and above them the sun was shining down on all of us.  I kept swimming and there was a big green grassy hill ahead of me, and a bunch of geese on the hill, and everything was underwater, but it didn’t seem strange to me at all for some reason.  So I swam forward and went towards them to try and touch the geese or pet them or I don’t know what I was thinking.  But once I get close to them they all fly away, and I’m sort of disappointed, but I look up and I see these geese flying in all directions, and all of this is happening under water.  So I see all the geese flying about everywhere with their majestic bodies, and above them are Dagon and Orpheus and Eurydice, still swimming along and only just beginning to encounter the geese, and above them is the surface of the water, and then high up above that is the sun still shinning down.  So I swim up to be with the geese and for a while all I can see is feathers and wings everywhere.  I just keep swimming along and then in the middle of all the feathers I see a human arm, and I swim towards that, and I see a man sinking in the river.  He’s going down pretty fast too, like he just fell out of the sky or something, and there are feathers all around him, like they were stuck to his arm and melted off and are now just sinking with him.  And it’s weird because somehow I realize at that moment that my whole purpose in being in that river at all is so I could be there to catch this man as he’s sinking, so I start swimming after him.  I wake up just as I’m about to grab him.”
The story stopped rather abruptly.  I waited to see if there was more, and she eventually started up again, but her voice was nervous and shaky again now, like it had been at the beginning.  “The thing I wanted to tell you was --  I mean the reason I wanted to go down here was that, that, well the man was…”  She stopped again.  Somehow I knew what was coming, and looked down in embarrassment.  “You,” she finished at last
I looked up again, and instead of seeing darkness like I expected to, I saw two beautiful brown eyes, capturing what little light was there, but capturing all of it.  The eyes just stared ahead, wide and sincere and with a look of innocence.  The eye lids blinked a few times, temporarily breaking the spell, but then the bright, large eyes were staring at me again.  The eyes seemed to be searching me.  They were asking me: “So.  What happens next?”  There were pleading with me to be gentle.  And then, the eyes moved slowly even closer to me.  There was not a lot of time to decide what to do, so I just reacted automatically.  I closed my eyes and moved in forward and met her lips.