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"Amelia, you have powdered sugar on your… (scrub, scrub) Your nose, dear.”

Oh it’s a good thing Mrs. Esparse doesn’t have a sweet tooth, or right now she would have a numb tooth. Daniel looks at the two of them curiously.

“Ah, sorry Mom, thanks, those little donuts, you know—” A massive goddamn shit-eating grin across her clenched jaw. “Hey Dad, do you have any gum by chance?” Daniel eyes her more suspiciously, then turns to look at the podium, then his watch. Leans behind Amelia—“Honey, it’s 1:30; sorry Amelia, I don’t.”

“Right, well, I’m just glad you’re staying fed. You’d better get back over there.” Becky combs Amelia’s hair with fingernails in her usual nervous manner.

Amelia is bobbing her head happily to something playing internally at 126 BPM as she taps down the Fieldhouse stadium stairs, back out onto the path leading north to Collins. She’s maintaining an unnecessary light jog, index finger rubbing molars 31 and 32, when—

“Kiss me baby, I’m a something something, in a dum dum, waiting for you, hum da dum—Professor Lindon!!”

Pivoting from a brisk walk, Dr. Lindon turns to face Amelia, all 6 feet and 135lbs of her swallowed up by doctoral robes, velvet, some really slick red-soled pumps¹—

“Hello, Amelia. Congratulations on today. Are you heading for Karlen for the procession?”

“Thaaat’s right!”, hopping up next to her in a more minimalist baccalaureate robe. “Do you have to attend this thing too?” Coked to the gills, this girl is.

“Ah, it’s a great honor for the faculty to see the students we’ve worked so hard with going off into the world.” A polite smile. “Have you decided on which programs you’ll be applying to?”

“CU Boulder and UT Austin. If I don’t get in this year I’ll just find a job in the city, um, or maybe at UW with my dad, if I can swing that.”

“Flexible–that’s a good idea. There’s nothing wrong with taking a gap year or two. And this field is, aah, progressing so rapidly now; it’s so different from when I was getting my degree…

“Oh–and I will—I will have that letter for you within a week or two, ok?”

Amelia nods like a boat bobbing in negative storm surge. “Yes ma’am. No rush. Hey… um… If you need any help in the lab this summer though, I’ll be in town.”

Apryl’s smile has now turned distant and weary. “Thank you, Amelia, but I’m—I won’t be doing any work on campus this summer.

“Now—”, the two polyester-robed ladies facing each other in front of Todd Field, “You had better get over there and join your classmates. Yea?” Slapping her legs awkwardly; the polite smile has returned. Apryl was never very comfortable speaking with students outside of class.

“Right… Thanks!!”, Amelia calls out after her, Lindon already strides ahead on her way, presumably, to her office in Thompson, something to do before the ceremony I suppose. The physics grad turns to face the field, the pines at the edge, the baseball diamond beyond, the city, her city, beyond that. She sighs–Was that too much?–feeling a part of this environment one more time–God, I’m really done, huh?–for a minute or so, letting Dr. Lindon walk far enough ahead that it doesn’t feel like Amelia is following her.

~

Shit, shit, shit. Why does it have to be today?

Apryl Marie Lindon, PhD, is extending lanky arms this way and that to retrieve her remaining papers from where they lay about Thompson 191, her office of the past eight years. No telling if they’ll let her leave again, especially because this time, Apryl is taking it to the top, to Chrétien himself if she can manage.

Maybe they’ll just kill me. Hah. Almost at the point of tears, but the absurd terror of the situation keeps her smiling blackly.

She glances up at that clock–1:53. Ok just gotta jog on over; I would really like to meet Amelia’s parents and tell them what a stellar job she’s done, yea, stellar, I’ll say—

BANG. BANG. BANG.

She can see him through the frosted glass. “I thought we had agreed to 6:30?!” Cops only know one way to knock on a door, I swear.

He lets himself in. “I’m not really a fan of the night staff at the border office. Let’s get going.”

She’s about to argue, but it’s really not worth it with this guy, on a personality level or when considering the amount of power he has over her.

“Give me five more minutes. Please.”

“Yeah.”

She waits until he’s been gone for a full minute before sighing and taking a final glance around the office, disdainful. Is this what my career amounts to? Just… strung out and trampled by the powers that be?

Apryl turns to the ornate banker’s lamp on the right side of her desk, cocks back, and slaps it with full force. The green glass shatters as her fingers hook the brass fixture, send it flying; the cord catches in mid-air and the remnants of the poor thing clatter, upside down, against the front side of the desk.

Three minutes and fifty-seven seconds later, she slams the passenger door of Macfield’s Crown Vic, locking her wrists in the straps of her sable leather messenger bag, winding the cord around and around, until it evolves into handcuffs.

~

“May fourteenf, nineteen ninety four”–grunted out from between teeth holding a little plastic cigar–“a day which will lil in intany. Because that wa bor-ring.”

Susan Tankard-Exegesis is playing with one of those plastic floating blow pipe toys they handed out today, moving her whole frame to catch the ball in its frail plastic net, and succeding more often than you’d think.

“At least you got to hand her the balloon.” Amelia is chewing the inside of her cheek, trying to distract herself from vague and growing worries about Dr. Lindon, which have begun to blossom in the hours since their parting.

“Ya, fuch”–spits out the blow pipe–“you, other Susan”, this Susan spinning around with birds held high, to reach the university’s President, wherever she may be.

For several years now, PSU’s physical and occupational therapy majors have staged a minor act of rebellion, come graduation time, in response to their building being sidelined yet again for upgrades. These poor health sciences students have been stuck in a series of temporary hospital buildings acquired two years after the end of the Second Great War, those nice long white units in which J. Robert cooked up his plans down in Los Alamos. University archivist and professor emeritus John Finney tells us that at some point, they decided to paint the fuckers pink (narrator’s words) in a quarter-hearted attempt to match the brick construction of the rest of campus.

This was unsuccessful. For 64 years–again, thank you Professor Finney–these theoretically temporary buildings stood–yes, if you’re a mental math wiz, that’s 2011–to the great chagrin of Susan, her contemporaries, and their successors. Susan would never know how long her neglected discipline would pine after what would eventually be called Weyerhaeuser Hall.

And so, in 1994, the battle raged on. Physical and occupational therapy graduates, of which Susan belonged to the prior, would arrive at Karlen Quad, prepared for guerilla warfare. Pink balloons were unfolded, distributed to comrades, inflated–one squad member being responsible for carrying the mission-critical helium tank–tied to metallic light pink balloon strings, marched into the Fieldhouse² with brave defiance, and finally presented to the President, at which point she would presumably have to decide between letting them fly, or handing them to an underling.

“She tried to smile at me, so I just gave her this dead-eyed look, like, I AM THE SUSAN (robot voice). This shit’s personal; you know how much mold has to be in those walls?”

“I don’t envy you.” Families surround robed grads throughout the lawn; someone is playing with a pop gun. “Thompson’s pretty old–”

“But it’s not decaying. Hey where did your parents go?”

“I have no clue; they’re around here somewhere. What about yours?”

“Eh, my dad already left and I didn’t have time to find Mom before Commencement started. I think I’m going to dinner with her and Grandma Tankard later.”

“Did you smoke today?”

“No! Are you kidding me? I mean any time my dad is going to show up, forget it. It’s, like, so much fucking work to get away with pot, I swear. I’ve got to take a whole shower before my mom comes home. Not like you, you little cokehead!” She runs fingers over Amelia’s scalp, through the crest of wavy hair that rises above the top of her head, in a cute, yet possessive way.

Amelia has taken off her graduation cap and is bent down, fiddling with a glass jar–which was hidden within the cap–and her brass house key. She scoops another 30mg of shiny, flaky, petrol-tinged powder and looks up innocently.

“What?”

(Tense whisper) “Bold! Doing it out here?” Amelia rises, replaces her cap. Susan flicks a finger off her left nostril. “You’ve got a little–”

“Yea, yea yea. This is my day–schniff–I’m going to do this whole teenth. You want a bump?”

“No way man, that shit puts me on edge. Hey, what are you doing this weekend?”

“Nothing at all. Let’s hang out at your brother’s.”

“Just what I was going to say!”

The girls smile and hug. They’re spinning around in a childish hug-jig when the Esparses catch sight of them amongst the crowd.

Becky raises a hand at Roman angle, to meet Susan’s shoulder, which is taller than the top of Becky’s head.

BECKY

Come here darling, ohh–

(tiptoes up to hug the young woman with usual tight ferocity)

You girls are all grown-up now, aren’t you?

(shakes her by both deltoids)

Where’s your mother? Has your father left already?

Amelia taps her foot impatiently. Her father hands her a little styrofoam tray laden with bite-sized, powdered donuts.

“Ohh! I didn’t know those were even here today! I love those things; thanks Dad.”

Daniel pulls out and lights another Winston.

¹Which hardly anyone outside the fashion world would recognize until Ms. Kidman decided to wear a pair to the aggrieved–sorry, begrieved–Princess’ funeral, three years later.

²Which itself was upgraded the following year–another blow to the rebels.