BIG ISLAND: a middle school story
Here on my island I bring all the best people, but I usually don’t think “ah, the best people!” I see them as the most of what they are, whatever that is. The last person I brought on, I met in the cafeteria sitting at table number 3, sitting alone, drawing wolves, but not like the kind I draw or the ones in the badly printed bio text books.
The pen is an extension of her hand, her hair is so long and rich it must be fertilized with ideas but the thing that convinces me she should know about my island is the first thing she says when I sit down next to her and start to slurp my soup. “Shut your mouth. That noise is disgusting.”
I slide my thermos to the side and wait for a slip of silence in the buzz of the cafeteria. Eventually I apologize, and then I say what I’m really here to say.
“So I’m buying an island. I don’t know what we intend to do most of the time, but we always do it together. Because there are very few boys and they’re only allowed on the island on certain designated days and times.” She keeps the intrigue alive as she continues to draw, now expanding from one wolf to a pack, while still nodding along. My eyes zoom along the page with her hand.
“Wow, that’s really good! The anatomy looks really right, like not a lopsided haunch or misshapen paw in sight there.”
“Thanks,” she doesn’t look up and I wonder if she thinks my analysis is basic, my compliment reaching. This lone wolf draws packs, so perhaps she wants to be part of one.
“You know, the thing about my island is that it doesn’t have a flag and I would really like you to draw it.” She looks up at me and nods and keeps drawing. I’m not hungry any more, hunger in my stomach never fully returns as this hunger in my mind creeps in, never to be fully satiated as long as I can imagine asking for the contributions of others and knowing that, even if the chance seems slim, they might accept them.
I’m ravenous for information trying to figure out how I can be Richard Branson by graduation, all the sneaky googling in typing class gets me a permanently degraded keystroke patterns and a poor grade. It also doesn’t prepare me for her next question.
“What do you do there? On your island?”
Oh shit… what do we do?! I reel through the options in my mind. We definitely ride horses on the beach… back and forth from the fruit groves to our forts and we have lots of choirs and fires at night. On special occasions we dance? But isn’t very occasion a special occasion? Thankfully, she interjects.
“What you do determines what will go on the flag…”
“Yes, of course… well, we do a lot of things, but largely I would say… uh, we do whatever we want.”
“That’s cool.”
She keeps drawing. I try not to lean over her too much as I nod. She looks at me.
“It’s not a tropical island?”
“Uh, nope… it’s temperate, mostly red wood type trees, really big, like the kind of trees that it’s okay that they make you feel small…”
“You feel small a lot?”
“Yeah, but it’s not because I am small… I’m in the 90th percentile for my age in height and I have a wingspan of six feet which makes me an excellent tree climber.”
“I love to climb trees, “ she says, “I hate to feel small. School is made to make us feel small, like the drill seargants in army movies.”
“I’ve never seen an army movie.”
“Might be good research if the island gets attacked by the same people who run school, the same people who make us feel small.”
“No, that’s one thing we don’t do on the island. We aren’t small, it’s not small, even if no one cares.
“It’s better if no one cares… then they leave you alone.”
In the cafeteria, sound swells. As I look up and am reminded that this table, our table, is empty except for us. I take a swig of soup, no slurp.
“I care,” I say. “You have to care too.”
