Stability

[rinue]

Daylight savings always feel strange to me, doubly so as Halloween's vanguard. Two days ago, I saw a hawk with a six foot wingspan. Yesterday, the skipping star. Today, a tree with a dozen knots, and squirrel heads sticking from every one. Ten thousand grackle screamed from the canopy.

I looked beside me, and there was Edward, tall as ever and bearded now. Very white teeth in a very dark face, voice low as a kettledrum. Four years since we'd spoken, but we instantly fell to the old rapport.

I remember the old days of health class, making plaques that declared me the Empress of the Universe, a parody of hall passes. Vying for practice rooms, inventing fake students and signing things "Ventington." Climbing the roof of the school to take yearbook pictures.

I asked if he still played -- this is, after all, UNT, and he was an Arts Magnet violin.

Music education, he said.

You're going to teach then? I asked him. He shrugged.

It's financially secure, but I'm not sure it's what I want.

Yeah, I said, I know what you mean. I'm an economist, but, well, you know I just want to be a gypsy bohemian, wandering the world and crashing on people's sofas.

He laughed at this, smiling. Relieved. "You really haven't changed since high school, have you?"

Not substantively.

Then I went through a door I'd never taken and got lost in the language building.