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As Opuntia tossed and turned that night, the knot in her stomach seemed to twist into a nest of vipers, eating away at her mind and leaving behind only dread. The stiff cotton sheets and sounds outside her window definitely did not help either, with constant owl cooing or rustling from foxes in search of food. All of these things lined up and took turns berating her so that by the time the morning came, it felt like she had gotten no sleep at all.
But what exactly did she dread? She thought to herself. Was it the schoolwork? Partly, because she knew her academic ability would be stretched even thinner this year. But it was more the knowledge that soon she would witness herself slip away again into that bleak state, a constant fog of days passing by as if they were nothing, with barely even an interesting thought or memory.
Poetry and her friends were her only saviour in this, since every time she wrote words on those pages, it was like a spark of light in the middle of the fog, reminding her that something was still there. Her friends, of course, were important as well, but that was different. She could never admit to them that they were her “flames in the fog,” because they’d find that stupid. She wondered if any of them even thought like she did. She wondered how they kept through the fog. For Teddy and Sampson, they always seemed so uncaring, like they rode above it with ease. Wilfred seemed to be in it, but he didn’t really mind, while Cas just seemed to embrace that he was lost in it, and let it live in him. But she didn’t ever really ask these things because, well, would they even understand?
By the time morning came, Opuntia could barely tell, since the day was so cloudy, and the sun was covered in the sky. But the jittering voices of Arison students assured her that the day was here. She got up and headed to her adjacent bathroom, which she was forever thankful for. She couldn’t imagine having to share a communal bathroom with tens of teenage boys. It did often puzzle her that, although no executive or staff seemed to really care for her, they did put a lot of time and effort behind the scenes to at least make her stay at the academy a little less horrible. She wondered if there was someone who did care about her after all. It could’ve been her father, yet, for many reasons she doubted it. As she stepped out of the chipped porcelain shower, her wet bangs sticking to her face, she drew a number one in the fog of the mirror. ‘One year left’ she thought. Anything to give her hope.
The voices of Arison students chatting and heading down the rickety stairs grew louder and louder as the morning advanced, occasionally broken by the ring of a loud thud, indicating that some unknowing first year had slipped down the stairs. Opuntia smiled to herself since this was an annual occurrence. As she straightened her tie, she studied her schedule for the umpteenth time.
Period 1: BI530 Rm 44D (Advanced Biology: Genetics and Anatomical Systems)
Period 2: CH579 Rm 40D (Study of Organic and Inorganic Chemistry)
Period 3: CD598 Rm 23B (Intro to differential and integral calculus)
Lunch hour: Lunch Room
Period 4: EL594 Rm 14A (Classical Literature Studies)
Period 5: FL532 Rm 17A (Advanced study of the French Language)
Period 6: N/A
The empty 6th period was due to the fact that she wasn’t allowed to take PE classes like the rest of the students, so instead of the school letting her enroll in another class, they had just left it as an empty period her entire time at Arison. Again, she didn’t know if it was a blessing in disguise.
Since she was too late to get breakfast down in time, she headed straight to class, besides, she was too queasy to have eaten anything anyways. Having been at the school for five years, she easily found her biology class and greeted the first person she saw as she walked through the door: Teddy.
“O.P., sit here, we got good seats,” he called her over in a hushed voice. Their teacher, Mr. Drownreef, was shuffling his papers feverishly at his desk, his greased hair slicked back to reveal his receding hairline, and his turtleneck so tight, it looked asphyxiating. As she walked over to Teddy, she glanced around at the new classroom she would be in this year. It was stained with Drownreef’s essence, with anatomic medical drawings covering every wall, framed insect dissections, and of course, various animal and human skeleton pieces sitting pristinely on shelves.
Teddy was not alone in his seat under a human ribcage display, but Wilfred and Engelbart sat next to him on either side. She greeted both of them politely.
“Not surprised to see Sampson’s not here,” she murmured to Teddy, who shook his head with a smile.
“Well, maybe it was smart to drop biology, at least he doesn’t have to put up with him anymore.”
“Don’t say that, he’s not that horrible, he’s clearly qualified,” Wilfred joined in. “He teaches everything in the textbook.”
“It’s not his knowledge that’s the problem…” said Opuntia darkly, “it’s his inability to talk in a voice that doesn’t sound like he’s giving a eulogy.”
Wilfred and Teddy had to stifle their laughter at this.
“But come on, let’s attempt to be nice, we’re scaring Engelbart.” retorted Teddy. They all turned to look at him, who got caught off guard by this comment.
“…I’m not scared,” he said awkwardly.
“Good, you shouldn’t be, you’ll be fine,” Wilfred smiled at him. At this moment, Drownreef got to his feet and strode to the centre of the room. Everyone fell silent at once. Without a word, he picked up a fresh piece of chalk and wrote on the blackboard in long, spindly letters, “REVIEW TEST: WEDNESDAY, CHAPTER 1 TEST: NEXT MONDAY”
“Perhaps you spoke too soon,” Opuntia winced.
The biology class continued on with Drownreef diving straight into chapter one concepts and had left half of the class asleep by the time it was over. Opuntia walked over to her next class, Chemistry, along with Wilfred and Eng, who also shared the class with her. She was lucky she had two of her hardest classes with Wilfred since it ensured she would always have someone to get help from.
The chemistry teacher was almost the complete opposite of Mr. Drownreef. He was a wide-set man, with buzzed grey hair and a permanent snarl on his upper lip. What set him apart was not his grizzled appearance, but his background. He was a World War 2 polish war veteran and specialized in chemical warfare. Some students even swore he worked on the Manhattan project that led to the first atomic bomb. His name was Dr. Wozniak, and he could at least make a class interesting.
That class was spent going over lab procedures and safety like always required at the start of every year. Wozniak always reminded his class of the time in 1958 a student created mustard gas by accident, and almost killed the entire school. Opuntia and Wilfred chuckled at this, but Eng seemed to grow paler than usual.
Next was calculus, taught by one of the Maystine twins: identical twins no one could ever tell apart. It was lucky that one taught PE and the other math, or else everyone would be confused. Well, it’s not like Opuntia wasn’t already confused in his class. Her only friend in calculus was Cas since everyone else had opted for trigonometry, yet Cas, in his overachiever fashion, had taken both. She sighed at the announcement of yet another review test, this time on Friday. This was also the time that Mr. Maystine went into his serious spiel on university applications.
“If you’re taking this class, I know you’re not likely to settle for anything less than the greatest. I’m sure each and every one of you here will want to apply to ivy Leagues, maybe Harvard, perhaps MIT, or Yale. And if you can successfully pass this course, then I can guarantee that all of you, ehm… most of you, will be accepted.” At these last words, he looked over at where Opuntia and Cas were sitting, making her shift uncomfortably in her seat. What, did he think that she wouldn’t pass? She had never done stellar in math before but she had been able to stay afloat. She was definitely glad when the bell finally rang for lunch. Leaving as fast as she could for the lunch room, she didn’t realize that Cas was not behind her as she previously expected, but must have stayed back. ‘He’s probably asking a million questions about the test already’ she thought, and continued on her way, the halls packed to the brim with boys chatting and cackling loudly, all the way up the spiralling 8 flights of stairs. The interior of her school seemed to shrink smaller and smaller every year, with its number of students unapologetically growing, and the lunch room was no exception to this. Long wooden tables were practically pushed up against each other, barely leaving room for a chair. It was pandemonium trying to find her friends, especially with lingering eyes on her from almost every first-year student, practically dumbfounded at the thought of a girl at their school.
Her saviour in this was an arm that reached out of the crowd and pulled her down to a seat by the end of the far-left table. It was Sampson, whom she had not seen all day.
“This school is turning into a chicken coop,” she huffed.
“Tell me about it, it’s great,” Sampson grinned.
“I’m surprised Redwood hasn’t screamed our ears off yet,” piped up Teddy through a mouthful of food. Opuntia looked down at her own plate to see their lunch for the day: snap peas, mashed potatoes, ham slices as thin as string, and broccoli, just finishing its harvest season in Massachusetts.
“You know, for the money we pay to be here, you’d think they’d give us better food.” sighed Sampson, examining a snap pea under the dim fluorescent light. “My mom always says I look malnourished when I come back for the summer.”
“Well, I can eat your vegetables if you don’t want them,” Wilfred replied innocently.
“Hey, you keep your fork to your own plate, fins.” he scowled. “It’s not good, but it’s all we’ve got.”
“Speaking of summer, how was everyone’s?” Opuntia asked, swiftly changing the subject. “I think we were so busy talking about school yesterday that we didn’t have time to talk about the summer.”
Everyone at the table shrugged halfheartedly.
“Hamptons was good, same old, same old,” Sampson said yawning. “Would’ve been funner with you guys there but, I’m not complaining.”
Sampson was definitely the richest among the group, with vacation homes in the Hamptons and even an apartment in Mont. Tremblant. It was true that Sampson always offered the group an invitation to his house in the Hamptons, but none of them could ever go, mostly due to their parents.
“I told you, my dad says no every year,” Teddy reminded him. “Besides, didn’t you say you got a boat? That’s way more exciting than hanging out with us, isn’t it?”
“Oh, the boat. Yeah, it was cool, I can even drive it now. Hey, tell you what, another offer your parents cannot refuse: I’m gonna take everyone out on the boat sometime this year.”
“Well, as I said, I’m usually in Finland all summer,” Wilfred started, but Sampson cut in,
“Not in summer, through the year! It’s parked on the pier right now! As long as it’s warm enough, we should be golden for a boat ride.”
“We’ll see,” said Opuntia, patting him on the arm. “Teddy, tell us about myrtle beach”
Teddy once again shrugged and ate more potatoes to avoid the question.
“Ahh, Myrtle beach,” Sampson said with a smirk. “I’ve heard they’ve got the best girls there. Dodgerson, care to confirm?”
Teddy, who was usually very talkative, just shook his head, making the group even more interested.
“What, you prefer them here?” Sampson asked, bemused. Again, nothing.
Wilfred looked at him thoughtfully. “Either he has nothing to say, or he experienced something too secret to share,”
“Let’s not—” Teddy finally spoke, but was saved from saying more by the arrival of Cas, who flung his bag down and sat on the chair with unnecessary force.
“Cas, what took you so long?” Opuntia asked him, but he shot her a look sharp enough to slice her. She wasn’t entirely phased by this but thought it safe to avoid the subject.
“Uh, anyways, we’re talking about our summers, so, how was yours?”
“Fine,” he said as he began eating.
“His summers are never fun, there’s no point in trying to get a conversation out of that,” Sampson said to her.
“I worked,” Cas continued. “I got a job in archives at the New Versine library.”
Everyone murmured their replies of “interesting,” or “cool,” since it was kind of a touchy subject. On the other end of the spectrum, Cas was not nearly as rich as any of them. He was accepted into Arison based on academics alone, which was impressive, but meant that he had to work hard every summer and holiday to financially support himself.
“Ok, ok, and how about you, Engelbart?” Teddy asked, now recovering from his momentary vow of silence. Everyone once again turned to look at him, almost forgetting he was there. Opuntia was not used to someone being so silent, well, maybe besides her father.
“Oh, it was alright,” he said simply.
“Let me guess, you worked on your tan?” Sampson asked slyly. Opuntia nudged him to say he was being rude.
“So, where did you go before Arison?” she asked Engelbart. “Did you move from somewhere else or…?”
“Well, I used to live in Maine, so I moved here this summer.” He said, looking down. “I went to another school, called St. Eustace.”
“YOU went to St. Eustace?” Sampson asked, nonplused. Even Cas raised his eyebrows at this.
“What is St. Eustace?” Wilfred asked.
“It’s one of the most competitive private schools in the country, probably even more than Arison. I have a cousin who goes there, and he says it’s torturous. He said they punish you by making you swim laps off of Bangor harbour.”
“No way it’s more competitive than Arison,” Teddy rebutted.
“Let’s see then. Opuntia, what does your father say?” Sampson asked, turning to her.
“How should I know?” She shot back. “He doesn’t talk about that stuff with me,”
“Opuntia’s father owns the school, that’s why she’s allowed to go here,” Wilfred was explaining to Engelbart to try and involve him in the conversation.
“He does not own the school, and that’s not why I’m allowed to go,” said Opuntia, hating every second of this topic.
Her friends usually tried not to press her on her father, but it was hard not to when he was always looming over them, striding through the halls and interrupting classes to talk to teachers in hushed tones. Of course, a lot of their parents were not perfect either, Teddy’s especially, but at least they were shut out of their minds by distance. She looked around the room for any sign of her father, but all she could see were the unfortunate teachers on lunch duty, who were demanding students to sit down and shut up, a familiar phrase heard at Arison.
The day slowly egged on like twigs making their way through a stream. She had English with Sampson and Teddy, French with Wilfred, and finally, a quiet period tucked away in the library, as she observed the gym class outside. She watched all her friends in the hazy light of the late afternoon, amber rays of sun giving them a halo around their hair as they faced the stone wall of the school. But when noticing the crow-like librarian eyeing her, she quickly focused her attention on the mountain of schoolwork she already had to do.
Life at Arison Academy seemed to operate to different temporal laws than the rest of the universe. Every day seemed to stretch outwards like it was never-ending, but before she knew it the week was practically done. Or, if she were to explain it in calculus terms, “the limit as x goes to the end of the day is infinity, but the limit as x goes to the end of the week is merely 1.” She would much rather observe the world around her in delicate metaphors and wandering imagery, her environment nurtured only words of fact and straightforwardness. Even in English, the class rarely came up with anything of their own but spent their time analyzing Shakespeare and ancient literature in the form of long and dull essays.
“A good essay is not frilled.” Opuntia’s English professor explained to the class. “It is not your job to add more elaborate literary devices or creativity, that is the author’s job. Your duty is to provide valuable facts or arguments and support those arguments with evidence from the said text. In “The Tempest”, Shakespeare did not intend…” Mr. Martin, her teacher, was a plain and to-the-point Englishman and expected everyone else to be so, so Opuntia found herself rewriting essays over and over again, tossing away inked-up paper and crossing out sections until she found it just about unassuming enough to be acceptable for him, and this was precisely what she found herself doing on Thursday night.
“Not only does Dickens demonstrate this with the following quote, but amplifies the theme of redemption in ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ A tale stricken deep in the hearts of the readers, particularly to…” Opuntia shook her head and struck out the whole sentence. She was bent over her rickety writing desk, surrounded by textbooks from all her classes, and her summer reading book, that she was expected to have a two-page long essay done by tomorrow. There was a knock at her door.
“Come in,” she said, not looking up. Teddy entered her room, also carrying all of his books in his arms.
“O.P., Wilfred got us a study room in 16A until 10, you wanna study for biology?”
She sighed, raking her bangs back with her hands.
“We got that essay due tomorrow, and I have a calculus test tomorrow too, so I don’t know if biology is the thing I want to study for.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll compare essays, we’ll touch on all subjects, popcorn style,” Teddy reassured her. She reluctantly agreed and followed her friend down to the study room, where all of her friends, plus a few others, were gathered.
There was Dorian Dalloway, who was the type of person to complain about getting a 98 instead of a 100. He had his skinny hands thrown up against his ears and reciting the entire map of the brain. There were also George Kennedy and Luther Pollock, 2 people Opuntia was surprised to see still even in the school, considering that they didn’t know what Africa was a continent. Roger Vorhees, who was so religious it was impossible to see him without a crucifix on, and finally, Michael DeAngelo, who she still thought was groady.
“Not the crowd I wanna be with right now,” Opuntia murmured to Teddy, annoyed.
“Odds are better in numbers,” Teddy replied. Of course he would think that Opuntia thought with disgust; everyone in that room actually liked Teddy, I mean, who wouldn’t? He radiated the energy of a golden retriever. The only thing that held him back was…his friends. However, wanting to at least try and get help, she reluctantly walked over towards where Dorian sat, knowing he was probably already done with his essay.
“Hi Dalloway,” she started awkwardly, talking loud enough for him to hear her over his plugged ears. “For the English essay, how did you structure your arguments? Because I wanted to talk about how the theme of redemption was used—”
“Redemption?” Dorian scoffed at her, whipping out his own essay from next to him. “The most present theme in a “Tale of Two Cities” is obviously revolution, Arison. Professor Martin practically made it obvious for us.”
“…right,” said Opuntia, gritting her teeth. “Not what I was asking exactly but ok—”
“And I don’t really know if you would understand my structure since it takes inspiration from Charles Dickens's own analysis of the story from his memoir, so it’s very difficult to emulate.”
Opuntia was already walking away before he finished his sentence. She thought she could at least ask Cas to study for calculus, but he was nowhere to be found in the study room.
“Has anyone seen Cas?” she asked the room at large.
“Yeah, he said he was gonna come down, but that was half an hour ago,” Sampson explained. “He’s been on the rag all week though, so I’m not surprised.”
Wilfred, who was sitting on the desk next to them, clattered to his feet at this, seeming distressed.
“I will go talk to him,” he stated before traipsing out of the room. Opuntia looked back at Sampson, who shrugged.
“Hey, let me see your essay, I wanna compare points.”
“I wouldn’t bother,” Opuntia sighed, staring down at her unfinished work. “It’s the pits.”
“C’mon, it can’t be worse than mine, I only read half the book.” he comforted.
“At least it’s a step up from last year,” she grinned back at him. It was moments like these where she remembered just how lucky she was to have found her friends, or else she would have been stuck with boys like Dorian Dalloway and Michael DeAngelo for 5 years of her life.
She spent the rest of the time in the study room working in a corner on her essay, finally perfecting her structure to the best of her ability, then attempting some practice problems for calculus, all while the guys around her became rowdier and rowdier, ending up playing a trivia game where the winner of every question got to throw chalk at someone else in the room.
“We’re building a dream alliance,” Teddy called to her from his group of desks. “You have English, I can do chemistry, Roger can do calculus, Eng… what’s your best subject?” he asked him. Engelbart, who was also quietly working, shot up, like usual, at the mention of his name.
“Uhhh…biology?”
“They probably had a better teacher at St. Eustace than Drownreef, that’s why.” Sampson joked, making the whole room burst into laughter. The fun did not last much longer, though, as principal Redwood burst through the door, wearing a nightcap and slippers, his wire-rimmed spectacles thrown on hastily.
“Having fun, are we?” He asked, in a voice of controlled rage. Everyone’s face, once showing wide grins a moment ago, immediately switched to ones of fear. “I am ending this ‘study session’ early since none of you seem to be working appropriately.”
“But sir, we are—” Sampson started, but Redwood cut him off. “Everyone OUT. The person who I agreed could use this room isn’t even here. Disgraceful.”
The principal stood by the door and watched as everyone solemnly climbed down from desks and chairs and sulked into the hall, sometimes picking up chalk they saw on the floor. It was true, Wilfred had not returned since he said he would talk to Cas, making all of them in even more trouble. As soon as Redwood was out of sight, the students felt it safe to begin whispering their insults.
“I hate this place,” Sampson snarled, the loudest out of all of them. “We were studying, why does he piss himself when anything slightly fun is going on?”
“Maybe we were being kind of loud…” Teddy appealed but recoiled at the look on Sampson’s face.
“It was only 9:30,” Opuntia added to Sampson’s case. “What kind of principal goes to bed at 9:30 while the students are always up late studying?”
“I need to get out of this hellhole.” said Sampson, not listening. “and where the HELL was Wilfred?”
They knocked on his and Cas’ door to find them deep in discussion about something, Cas already changed into his pyjamas.
“I’m really sorry,” he explained. “We didn’t realize how long we were taking.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Teddy responded with a pained smile. The rest of the group continued walking back to their rooms, while Sampson was still ranting.
“And now I have to deal with Jeremy Mccain, like, can I ever get a break?”
Everyone else just looked at each other, not wanting to say anything that would make him more upset. Sampson was usually so carefree, it was unlike him to be this worked up. He was acting more like Cas.
Opuntia bid Teddy, Sampson and Engelbart goodnight before closing the door to her room again, thinking it was a mistake to ever go in that room in the first place. Although jarring, Sampson’s words seemed to echo her constant inner thoughts. There was nothing around here to keep her interested, to keep her hopeful, except for the thought of escaping, but that almost wasn’t enough. As she lay in bed, she couldn’t even think of a poem to write, because she was so drained of any motivation. The only words floating in her head as she drifted to sleep were lines from her textbooks repeating over and over again: The lullaby of academia.
Yet something the next morning would pull her back, reeling her mind so far out of its deep dark cave and into the light of day. As she climbed down the stairs and into a stationary crowd of whispers and gasps, she came face to face with its deafening opening act.
“And so, there it was:
A wildfire in the fog.
The question calls out.”
-OMA
ns 15.158.61.6da2
