A Sense of the Infinite (4 page)

ONE OF THE HAPPYFUN ASPECTS OF
the first day of school this year was that the Senior Leaders spent the whole day pelting people with candy.

There was candy in the halls and candy in the bathroom sinks and candy in the cracks between the auditorium seats. Someone threw a Tootsie Roll at the motivational speaker, causing Mr. Beek to hand out the first suspension of the year.

By two p.m., the school was filled with weightless wrappers that floated around the halls like shiny ghosts.

“This is appalling,” Noe said as we walked through an entire hallway full of Reese’s Pieces that made rickety
crunching sounds underfoot.

Steven crouched and scooped up a handful. Noe slapped at his hand, but he got it to his mouth and crammed the candy in.

“Some would call it delicious,” he said.

WHEN I GOT HOME FROM SCHOOL,
Mom was sitting at the kitchen table sorting through a pile of mail. She was still in her uniform, her brown hair pulled into a ponytail, her feet still laced into the Converse sneakers that made her look even younger than she was.

“Hey, Annabean,” she called when I walked in. “Have a sandwich. I brought home a whole tray.”

Mom works the checkout at No Frills. One frill of working at No Frills is employees get to take home the premade deli sandwiches at the end of the day. They come wrapped in stretchy plastic with a capital letter slashed on in permanent marker.
T
for turkey,
H
for ham,
R
for roast beef,
V
for veggie.
I didn’t think the limp and mustardy sandwiches were much of a frill, but Mom loved them.

“They’re meat,” I said, ducking into the kitchen to inspect the shrink-wrapped array.

“Pick it out.”

My mother’s advice generally boils down to “Pick it out,” whether you are dealing with a slice of baloney or an arrow in the heart.

I took a sandwich marked
T
and started to dissect it, picking out the turkey and everything that had touched it and filling the newly empty space with leftover guacamole.

“Come take a look at this,” Mom said.

I wandered to the table with my modified sandwich, and she tossed me a glossy booklet from Northern University.

“Ooh,” I said, and sank down into a chair across from her.

Mom had gone to Northern for one year before dropping out to have me, and she talked about it like it was the best place on earth. Some people would hate the place where a terrible thing had happened, but to her, it was a paradise interrupted. She didn’t say it in so many words, but we both knew it would mean a lot to her for me to go there. That it would mean everything.

I flipped past the sections on academics and sports and went straight to the photos of the dorms. Back in June, the day before Noe left for Camp Qualla Hoo Hoo, we’d spent all
afternoon browsing the IKEA website and fantasizing about our future college dorm room. We were going to get a Winkl bead curtain and a Gulört rug and a set of Buffwak bowls and cups for when we felt like eating cereal for dinner instead of going to the cafeteria. I’d loaded the Northern University website Mom and I had been looking at the night before, and we’d pored over the list of campus clubs and decided which ones to join: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Northern University Sophisticated Tea Party Society, the gymnastics team for Noe, and the Campus Outdoors Club for me. We’d get a cactus plant named Hector and a goldfish named Boris, and in our second year, we’d move off campus so we could get a cat.

“There’s a bunch of stuff from E. O. James, too,” said Mom. “Did you want me to write a check for the senior camping trip?”

She slid the flyer across the table. I picked it up and skimmed it. Three nights in the Tuscarora wilderness, led by Ms. Hannigan and Mr. Von Ekelthorpe. My cousin Max had gone in his senior year. They’d hiked under the moonlight and gone swimming in freezing water. One night, a bear had wandered through their campsite and started rummaging through the food they’d forgotten to put away, and Ms. Hannigan scared it off by banging on a pot and singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”

“I have a gym meet that weekend,” I said.

“Can’t you skip it?” said Mom.

I shook my head, annoyed. “It’s important,” I said. “You can’t miss the first one.”

Noe had already enlisted me to help her take photos for the yearbook and videos for the team website she was setting up. We were going to work on it at her house after the meet.

“Too bad,” Mom said. “You’ve been looking forward to it ever since Max told you that story about the bear.”

It bugged Mom when I changed my plans because of Noe. And it bugged me that she made such a big deal out of it.

“Mom,”
I said. “You know we only have one class together this year. It’s really important to Noe for me to be there, and I’m not just going to ditch her. I don’t know anyone who’s going on the camping trip anyway.”

Her disappointment was a fine mist that clung to my clothes all the way upstairs. I took the new leotard out of my drawer and held it for a moment, its synthetic shimmer a promise of the newer, shinier person I might finally become.

I BROUGHT THE NORTHERN UNIVERSITY
booklet to school. In English, Noe scrutinized the Food Services page.

“The freshman cafeteria doesn’t sound that great for vegetarians,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the list of food options.

“It says they have a salad bar,” I said helpfully.

“That can mean anything,” said Noe. “Bacon bits. Tuna. Chicken.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Maybe we can get a mini-fridge in our room.”

“Oh, here we go,” said Noe. “Smoothie machine.”

I breathed an inward sigh of relief. Noe had said yes to Northern as a first choice back in June, but she could be fickle
at the best of times, and I knew that our college roommates plan could be thrown off by an errant bacon bit just as easily as by something important like academics.

“Ladies,” called Mrs. Fessendorf. “Are we discussing
The Waste Land
and identifying three instances of allusion?”

“Yes, Mrs. Fessendorf,” sang Noe.

“Good.”

She moved the booklet to her lap and we continued to browse it.

“Student-run coffee shop,” Noe read. “We could get jobs there. I’ve always wanted to be a barista.”

“Ladies!”

Noe smiled at her.

“Just planning our future, ma’am,” she said.

THE NUTRITIONIST WAS A PLUMP,
pale, sad-looking thirtysomething who seemed uncomfortable in the tiny phys-ed-office-slash-storage-room, crammed behind Ms. Bomtrauer’s desk with the basketballs and the kettlebells. When I showed up for my appointment, he had an audiobook playing on the beat-up CD player, a narrator with a plodding nasal voice reading a fantasy novel.
“Nay,” said the serving wench, “I’ll not wed thee.” “I think ye shall,” said Prince Everstall, drawing his blade.
The nutritionist startled and smacked the CD player’s stop button just as Prince Everstall was about to nick the laces on the serving wench’s bodice. He blushed and brushed at the desk, sweeping a box of Cheez-Its into the trash.

“You must be Annabeth,” he said, extending a clammy hand for me to shake.

“The one and only,” I said.

He was wearing a tweed jacket that was much too warm for the weather. It looked like he’d gotten lost on his way to Harvard and wandered into E. O. James by mistake.

“I’m Bob,” he said. “Please, have a seat.” He gestured at a cracked plastic chair wedged between a box of rugby cleats and a pile of soccer jerseys. When I sat down, it made a sound of protest and collapsed underneath me.

“Oh dear,” said Bob. “Are you okay?”

I picked myself and the chair up from the floor and sat down again gingerly. My knee was throbbing where it had banged the desk.

“They’re supposed to put in a better one,” said Bob apologetically.

“Really?” I said. “I thought it was a test. If you break the chair, grapefruit diet. If you don’t break the chair, weight-gain pellets.”

Bob smiled. “That would be quite the system. There’s a beautiful sort of Procrustean logic to that.”

“Indeed,” I said.

He looked like an academic type, I thought again. The hair, the voice, the tweed jacket. I wondered what he was doing in a basketball storage closet at E. O. James.

I braced myself in the chair. It was threatening to buckle again. “Can we get down to business?” I said. “This is kind of uncomfortable.”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “Let’s start with a simple questionnaire.”

He fumbled under his desk and took out a textbook.
Applied Nutrition.

“What’s that for?” I said.

“I’m still finishing my master’s degree,” he said. “This is my practicum.” He flipped around inside the textbook for a few seconds, checked the table of contents, and finally arrived, sweaty-fingered, at the right page.

“Am I your first subject?” I said.

He looked up. Another one of those shy, apologetic smiles flitted across his face. “Actually, yes.”

Aha
, I thought.
A discount nutritionist
. Good thing the nurse hadn’t sent Noe to see Bob. She would have eaten him alive.

He cleared his throat. “Just so you know,” he said, “everything you say here will be taken in complete confidence. Please be honest with your answers. Are you ready?”

I nodded, trying not to laugh.

Bob the Nutritionist read from the textbook, his eyes never leaving the page. “Do you obsess about your weight?” he said.

“No.”

“Count your calories?”

“No.”

“Binge and purge?”

“No.”

“Abuse laxatives?”

I grimaced. “
No.
”

He ran through a dozen more questions, ticked a few boxes, and then added the columns up.

“You’re not anorexic or bulimic,” he said glumly, as if this was a great disappointment. I realized he must be looking forward to his first real anorexic the way new firefighters look forward to their first blaze. Seeing his face, I found myself feeling almost disappointed too. He seemed like a nice man, and I was sorry to let him down.

“I know,” I said apologetically. “The only reason I’m here is because the nurse has a thing about vegetarians.”

“Ah,” said Bob. “I see.”

He groped around his desk and drew out a slender file folder. From the folder, he located a sheet of paper, which he studied closely, going
Hmmm, hmmmm
and nodding as he read. “This note from the nurse says you
are
a few pounds underweight. Do you ever have trouble eating?”

He blinked at me from behind his goggle glasses. His face, I noticed, was broad and open, anxious to please. He looked like a plump elf. A sad elf. I wanted to open the door of the cramped
office and shoo him back into the woods where he belonged.

I hesitated. “Not really,” I said.

Bob looked lugubrious. I felt bad for him, in spite of myself. “When I was a kid, I went through this phase where I gnawed on sticks and stones,” I volunteered.

He seemed to perk up. “Oh?”

It was true. Sometimes, when I was mad at Mom for walking too fast when we went on hikes, I’d suck on a stone so that when my father or my fairy godmother or Minnie Mouse or my fantasy-creature-of-the-moment finally showed up, they would see how mean she was—poor Annabeth, dragged all over the woods with nothing to eat but stones!—and take me away.

“But I don’t do that anymore.”

Bob slumped again.

“Don’t look too disappointed,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll find plenty of anorexics if you hang out around this place long enough.”

“I’m not here only for the anorexics,” said Bob. “Maybe there’s something else I can help you with. For this month, how about you keep a journal of everything you eat, and we’ll take a look at it together and see if there’s anything that could use some tweaking.”

“You mean you want me to come back?”

Bob closed his textbook and slipped my nurse’s record back into its file. “Yes, sure. Why don’t you come back and we’ll, um,
we’ll look at the food journal and figure out how to proceed.”

“How to
proceed
?”

“Make a plan, set some goals.”

He wasn’t meeting my eyes. I raised my eyebrows at him. “This doesn’t have anything to do with your funding, does it?” I said.

He blushed a deep tomato red. “How does late October sound to you?” he tapped a box on his calendar.

“Do I have to?”

“I can’t sign off on this until I’ve reviewed a food journal. So yes, you do.”

I got up from the broken chair and started to collect my backpack. The nutritionist pulled open the squeaky desk drawer. “I have pizza coupons,” he said, brandishing a sheath of them held together by an elastic band. “If it makes it any better.”

“Pizza coupons.”

“One for each session.”

I hesitated. Bob looked up at me imploringly, coupons in hand. I thought of what my nan always said, about never passing up an opportunity to help a person in need. The nutritionist seemed like a nice person, and he definitely had a need. I shrugged. “I guess so,” I said.

I GOT TO ART A FEW
minutes late and took the empty seat next to Steven. On the whiteboard at the front of the room, Mr. Lim had written
WORK PERIOD: STILL LIFE
. Beneath the whiteboard was a table with an apple and two pears. The classroom was overbright and morguelike. I took out my sketch pad and pencil case and arranged them on my part of the table. Steven turned to me.

“How was the nutritionist?” he said.

It surprised me that he remembered. “Fine,” I said.

I fussed with my pencil sharpener, pretending to have exacting requirements for the pointiness of my lead. I didn’t normally interact much with Noe’s boyfriends. They seemed
to exist on a different plane—too clean, too conspicuously
smart
. Sometimes the whole situation reminded me of a Venn diagram: there was the place where Noe and I overlapped absolutely, and two moon-shaped zones where there was no overlap at all. Noe’s boys lived in the no-overlap zone, and my obsession with being outdoors—things we happily tolerated in each other, but to which we didn’t pay much attention. I touched my newly sharpened pencil to the page and started in on the first pear.

Steven leaned his chin on his knuckles and watched me lazily. “Which nurse sent you?” he said.

“I don’t know her name.”

“Curly hair? Earrings?” He made curly hair and earrings gestures with his hands, bobbing them around his head and ears.

“Yes.”

“I got her for my meningitis shot last year. She thinks everyone’s either anorexic or depressed. It’s, like, her thing.”

“Which one are you?”

“Depressed, obviously. I’m a boy. It’s like a neonatal ward in there: girls get pink, boys get blue.”

“Did she make you see a counselor?” I said.

“Oh yes. I’m quite unstable. Ask me to show you my mood journal sometime.”

“I’m supposed to keep a food journal.”

“Can I see it?”

“I haven’t eaten anything yet.”

“Aha! Anorexic.”

“It’s only been five minutes since the appointment.”

Steven reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of Life Savers.

“Here,” he said.

“They’re all linty.” I put one of the Life Savers in my mouth, then spat it out. “Yeck. This tastes like pocket.”

“Write it down,” said Steven.

I wrote it in my notebook:
linty Life Saver, 2 p.m.
Then I put my notebook aside and started in on the pear again, because surely the conversation wasn’t going to last for the entire class. Steven watched me draw.

“Do I make you uncomfortable?” he said.

I looked up. “What?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t be offended. I’m just curious.”

I reddened, not wanting to explain about the Venn diagram. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess we don’t really know each other outside of Noe.”

“Is that what it is?” said Steven. “In that case, we must introduce ourselves. I’m Steven.”

He held out his hand. I shook it. “Annabeth,” I said.

“Pleased to make your official acquaintance, Annabeth. Let’s be friends.”

“Okay,” I said. Then, because I felt guilty, I burst, “I didn’t mean that we weren’t already
sort
of friends. By association.”

“I don’t like knowing people through people,” he said evenly. “It feels too much like regurgitation.”

“Ah,” I said. “Hmm.”

I sketched in the apple and added some wavy lines to indicate brightness. Steven picked up his pencil and used it to render a photographically perfect set of fruit on his page.

At the front of the room, Mr. Lim glanced at his digital watch.

“Anybody who has not handed in their self-portrait, please do so before the end of class,” he announced into the middle distance.

“Shit,” I murmured.

“Did you say
shit
?” Steven said. “I was wondering whether you were a swearer.”

I flipped my sketchbook page and started drawing frantically. “I forgot my self-portrait,” I said. “Can you just—I need to concentrate.”

I drew an oval for a face, but without a mirror I realized I had no idea what I looked like. I knew I had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and hair, but without an image to copy from I was suddenly unsure of the dimensions.
Whatever
, I thought to myself,
I’ll take the redo
. Mr. Lim was famous for his pass/redo system, which meant you could barf up a self-portrait in the last ten
minutes of class with full confidence that you could do it over. Around the classroom, I noticed a few other kids whose drawing had picked up a rather mysterious speed and urgency. At least I wouldn’t be the only smudgy ten-minute portraiteer.

“Are you sure you don’t have body dysmorphia?” Steven said, openly inspecting the page I was trying to hide with my free hand. “This portrait strikes me as rather sumoesque.”

“It’s fine,” I hissed. “I don’t have time to start again.”

“Oh, come on,” said Steven. “You can do better than that. Have some standards.”

I was about to tell Steven I didn’t have artistic standards, but instead I grabbed my eraser and scrubbed at the page. The clock now showed four minutes remaining in class. I drew a new oval.

“Too wide,” said Steven. “Your face is skinnier than that.”

I flipped to a new page and drew a skinny oval.

“Skinnier,” said Steven.

“Aaaargh, it doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does. Do you want the nutritionist to think you see yourself as enlarged by two hundred percent?”

“He’s not going to see it.”

“Are you kidding me? I tailor all my art pieces for maximal psychoanalytic potential. It keeps Ricardo busy.”

“I just need to—” I waved him off irritably.

“Okay,” said Steven. “Here we go. Eyes go in the middle
of the face. Middle of the face. Nope, that’s the crown of your skull. Are your eyes on top of your head?”

I ripped the page out of my sketchbook and crumpled it up.

“Wha—why’d you do that?” said Steven. “You were doing great.”

“I can’t draw under pressure,” I said, flipping to a fresh sheet.

The bell started to ring.

“Shit.”

Steven opened his backpack, rummaged around, and pulled out a bundle of sticks tied up with a piece of string. “Here,” he said.

“What the heck is that?”

I didn’t mean to bark at him, but I really wanted to get good grades that year and it pained me to lose marks on a throwaway assignment.

“Your self-portrait,” said Steven.

“It has to be a drawing.”

“Negatory. The assignment said ‘Any Medium.’”

“Why do you have sticks in your backpack?”

“Prop from a scene we did in Drama this morning. Elsinore Forest to Dunsinane.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Hand it in.”

“Hey, Mr. Lim, here are some sticks.”

“It’s a sculpture.”

The bell stopped ringing. Kids were filtering into the room for the next class.

“Trust me,” said Steven. “I’ve been getting straight A’s in art for years.”

I ripped a piece of paper from my sketchbook and wrote,
RAW MATERIALS: Portrait of the Artist as a Bundle of Dry Sticks
.

“That’s more like it,” Steven said, nodding his approval. “Barren. Dead. Fleshless. Starving. Your nutritionist is going to trip balls.”

Steven McNeil. I thought to myself, as I hurried to Mr. Lim’s desk with my sticks, that he was one of the most irritating people I had ever met, and also the most confoundingly entertaining.