Nicholson Baker: The Everlasting Story of Nory

Everyone streamed up the path toward the Cathedral and Nory looked at them walking. Each kid had their own particular personality, good or bad or mezzo mezzo, and each personality, no matter what it was, was interesting in some way. Sometimes a kid lost their personality for Nory when all they seemed to want to do was to be cruel to Pamela — then they just became a dull, boring idiot, shuffling through the day — but just lately some kids were getting more preoccupied in other things and losing interest in being cruel to Pamela, to a certain extent, though not totally. Maybe a little bit of the reason was because they saw that Nory was persistently going to be Pamela’s friend, and so they began to notice that it wasn’t necessarily the absolute end of the world to be Pamela’s friend as well or at least not be her vicious enemy.

Inside, since it was a very bright cold day, the green light blasted in through the Jasperium and onto quite a few kids, including Nory. She didn’t exactly think God’s thoughts, but she thought: ‘Frankly, I love school.’ ‘Love’ was one of the most important of all the words that seemed to be spelled wrong on purpose, just to confuse you. It should be spelled ‘lov’ because the rule is that an e makes things long, and there is no long l or long o or long v . For example, it’s not ‘I loave school,’ it’s ‘I lov school.’ But however it was spelled, it was true. The best thing about school was that there were so many teachers teaching different things, so that you learned about how to get stabbed in drama, or about the Aztecs, or the Virgin Mary, or how to type or how to not cry when your plane crashes six times in a row, or about Achilles being dipped into the water, or the friction in a brick, or any amount of things, and there were so many hundreds of kids, and each kid was given quite a bit of responsibility. They were treated as if they were hundreds and hundreds of adults pouring in to work at a factory, wearing a jacket and tie, with that level of independence. You walked to and from Cathedral and to and from lunch, and during break you could choose to go to the art room or the library or back to your classroom or stay outside, whatever you wanted, and you would run into all of the people you knew, and each time you saw someone you had a particular thought, like ‘Ah yes, Colin, who is always asking to borrow my eraser,’ or ‘Ah, Kira, how are you? Haven’t seen you in a while!’

A sad thing was that Kira and Nory had stopped being very, very good friends because of Pamela. But it wasn’t really Kira’s fault or Pamela’s fault. It was the fault of all the people who had decided not to like Pamela. If they hadn’t been at the Junior School, then there would have been no problem. Of course you could say that there wouldn’t have been much of a Junior School, either, since almost everyone was part of the meanness from time to time. But now that some of the kids had decided that they liked Pamela better, or weren’t going to bother to hate her, presto, Kira was liking Nory better again.

While Nory was by the South Door of the Cathedral waiting for her parents to pick her up, Pamela came by to give her a note. She didn’t want to leave but she had to because her parents said they had to go or they would miss their train. The note said, ‘Dear Nory, Thanks for being my best friend, Love Pamela.’ And it had her phone number on it, for once. So things were working out rather well. Not to mention that for the first time in a very long time Nory had a wonderful loose tooth. If she bent it past a certain position, she could feel the sharp edge of it that was usually hidden under the gums, and there was a distinct salty taste of blood in her mouth.

The End.