Story: Loop

Caleb. He is in class 4D. He took combined science. He doesn’t know whether he’s going to do well in it. He thinks that he’s going to do well enough overall to get into a good junior college. He really doesn’t know, though, whether that’s what he wants, but that’s something that his parents want for him, certainly. He really wants, what he really wants – he can’t continue. He has to leave.

Caleb – I don’t even know his last name – walks towards the left. I am after him in the line, so I have to walk towards the right. I don’t know what his last name is, but it must begin with the same letter as mine, and it might even share more letters. I receive my piece of paper, my grades, and sneak a look to my left to see if Caleb is around, if he’s still left, nearly beside me. He isn’t. He’s left. I bend over to sign my name, a genuflection to leave my final mark on this school, a mark that will go into a cupboard somewhere and be forgotten. Alone. Then it will disappear when it is no longer relevant. My signature flows across the space, filling it but already drying, already seeping into the relentless white. Then I see it, above my name. Caleb Cho.

I stand still for a moment. The teacher coughs, half-deliberately. I start; he looks at me with – pity? Understanding? I cannot tell. I know what he means though, he can’t say it, but I know nonetheless. I step aside. Next. He signs. Next. He signs. Next. The line still stretches on forever, people appearing around the bend, some vaguely familiar, others completely unforeseen. They come, and then they go, leaving the same temporary unique imprints. Fingerprints on glass. They look the same, and they all disappear. I have to move on, people are beckoning to me, people are waving me away. I move on.

I can’t find my friends. I have to look for them. They are somewhere in this vast hall of people. If I walk around, if I search, I will be able to find them. I know that. I wonder for a second – but only a second – whether they have left, but they haven’t. They are there; there is a flicker of a familiar bag. I start towards him – but it isn’t them. There they are; those are different bags; I didn’t think that they would have changed bags, but I can understand. It is a different sort of day. I start towards them. I’ve found my friends.

They have already started conversations, some with people I don’t recognize, some with people I know by sight, some with mutual friends. I stand, but I’m also fidgeting. I’m talking, but I’m also listening. Bits, pieces stop, start. Disjointed words float, sideways, at me, from me; intelligible sentences they don’t make. Then a string of remarks that make complete sense. Then, again, words. Time passes. The conversations wind down, exhausted.

We leave now, after four years. We walk across the quadrangle. We will return, we will come back together on holidays, we will maybe visit when our schedules don’t conflict, we must see if chance allows and purpose tends. Then we will return. But then we will be walking down school corridors that we don’t belong to anymore. We exit the main gates. We’ve left.

I stand in my new school. People are arriving. I walk to my classroom. There are people in it, mingling, waiting. I sit down. A piece of paper is weaving its way down the line to me. The guy next to me offers a pen. We have two years in junior college together. I return him his pen. This is our introduction to each other; this is the way I meet him. Calvin.