Jennifer Murgia: Leminscate

My fingers effortlessly spun the combination, the numbers flying past with experience. Right. Left. Past the zero twice. Right and slowly … stop on 32.

The lock popped and I slid the metal lever to the right. I pulled the door toward me. A large black suede-looking feather floated out at me. The feather from the puddle. It fell to my feet, zig-zagging in slow motion, as the words from my dream came back to me.

“I’m here … forgive me.”

My locker tilted sideways and everything was sliding. I heard buzzing in my ears as the voices of the kids around me began to fade away. They were pointing at the feather … wondering, laughing … they didn’t know what it meant.

But I did.

One voice came to me. The voice from my dream. The voice that belonged to the arms and wings that held me all night, comforting me.

It didn’t belong to Garreth. I was right about him not coming to my room.

An unbidden name came to my lips and I felt my mouth shaping it, making it real, rushing it out of my lungs with the breath I had been holding tightly inside my chest.

I heard the whisper with my own ears.

“Hadrian.”

Amid the laughter ringing in my eardrums, I was caught by a strong pair of arms, which appeared out of nowhere before my head hit the locker. I looked up, dazed, into Ryan’s concerned face.

“Are you okay, Tea?” he asked quietly, ignoring the little circle behind us that had stopped to watch the theatrics.

I nodded quickly, eager to regain my composure.

Behind us a shrill, familiar voice rang out above the muffled audience. Day two of misery had officially begun. Her footsteps clicked closer as she forced her way through the crowd and drew in an exaggerated breath of shock.

“Oh, Teagan, are you okay?” she cooed sarcastically.

“Leave her alone, Brynn,” Ryan answered on my behalf. “This isn’t the time or place.”

“Oh, but it is. Can’t you see? You’re such a hero, Ryan, saving Teagan like you did. Why, did you know she’s practically my step-sister?” She nodded her head as if declaring an utterly juicy tidbit to us all. I cringed at the mere idea of what the future held … perhaps someday being “related” to her.

“Break it up, everyone. There’s nothing to see.” Mr. Herman had stepped out of his classroom to break up the nosy little group that was growing in the hallway. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the cool locker to steady myself.

“Like I said, there’s nothing to see,” Mr. Herman repeated for our benefit. “Be on your way, Miss Hanson.”

Being dismissed was something Brynn loathed. She was supposed to be the “queen” of the senior class. As I turned to face her, she gave me a steely glare and uttered one last comment.

“Another girl falling at your feet, huh Ryan?” She did a little wave with her fingertips and added a mocking smile toward Mr. Herman as he turned his attention back to me and Ryan.

Assuming this was another student ploy to get out of class, he eyed us with suspicion. When he saw my pale, sweaty complexion his expression softened.

“Do you need to go to the nurse, Teagan?”

I shook my head, “I think I’m okay. I … I didn’t eat any breakfast this morning.”

“Mr. Jameson, why don’t you escort Miss McNeel to the vending machine in the cafeteria and make sure she fills up on something decent. I’ll inform your homerooms that you’re present and accounted for.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ryan spoke for both of us.

With a nod and a concerned smile for me, Mr. Herman turned around and walked back to his own homeroom class, which by the sound of it was getting a little too comfortable without his supervision. His voice boomed, restoring order to the chaos I felt responsible for and he shut the door behind himself.

“Are you dizzy?” Ryan was still holding my elbow, afraid to let me stand on my own.

I shook my head to answer “no” and began searching the floor for the black feather. It was nowhere to be found. Who knows how many feet trampled it? But still, I looked for it, unable to take my eyes off the floor. I was so sure it still had to be here, somewhere.

“What are you looking for? Did you lose something?” We were walking toward the cafeteria for my “breakfast.”

“Yeah, my mind.”

I felt foolish wasting time staring at the floor, knowing we would only be excused from the short ten minutes it took to take attendance. Asking Mr.

Herman to give me a hall pass to look for a lost feather from yesterday’s rainstorm was not only pushing it, it was insane.

We entered the empty cafeteria, or “food court” as we sometimes liked to call it. The five vending machines standing side by side on the one wall were all we had to give variety to the masterpieces like creamed corn and Hamburger Helper. The student body liked to consider it a secret addition to the food pyramid.

Ryan deposited a dollar bill and punched the buttons A5 and E9, dispensing a chocolate chip granola bar and a yellow mini package of Lorna Doone cookies into the metal bin below. He reached in and handed them both to me.

“Here,” I began fumbling with the zipper on my purse to pay him back.

“It’s on me,” he smiled.

“Thanks.”

We walked over to one of the white laminated benches and parked ourselves as I gently tore open the package of cookies, offering one to Ryan. He shook his head no.

“So, do you want to tell me what happened back there? What did you mean by you ‘lost your mind’?”

I chewed slowly, not eager to tell him anything. In fact, if I remembered correctly, I had just given myself a pep talk about keeping my problems to myself. That was before that stupid feather had to fall out of my locker and ruin everything. I looked at him closely, trying to read him, anticipating how he was going to react.

“You’re going to think this is crazy,” I warned him.

Ryan sighed and cocked his head to the side like I was stating the impossible.

“Don’t you think you and I have seen enough to know nothing’s crazy?” he asked.

I bit my bottom lip, wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and delved into the story I swore to myself I wouldn’t tell. Before I knew it, Ryan had been given a short-but-sweet account of the dream feather coming back to haunt me, the spilling-my-guts email to his ex-now-deceased girlfriend, the too-real dream I had last night, Garreth’s no-show this morning and unfortunately the whole escapade that happened yesterday; including the disgusting cologne worn by Derek Arnold, which I made Ryan swear under oath to never wear. I also spilled the beans about Garreth’s strange behavior, his drinking, his suspension and my hiding out in the library for the rest of the day.

By the time I had finished, we still had three minutes left to high-tail our butts to first period and Ryan was staring at me with his jaw hanging open.

“Gee, is that all?”

I waited for the shock to wear off.

“I mean, crap, Teagan! It all makes sense now. Wait, never mind. I don’t want to go there. I can’t go there right now.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not getting you into this,” which was the absolute truth. I didn’t want Ryan involved. “This is my problem.” But with those words a strange trembling came over me and I felt like I had been punched in the heart. Those were Garreth’s words yesterday when I asked him who was going to sign his suspension slip. It was surprisingly easy to recount every detail for Ryan. How, by talking about it, I had become strangely detached from it. But hearing those words again was like reliving it and I could hear Garreth’s voice echoing in my head.

We began walking quickly back to our first period hallway when something occurred to me.