Katie's Spring Break

On the first day of her spring break
Katie went to campus

She knew it was going to happen eventually
So she figured she might as well
Get it over with

Every year on break
Katie had stayed home
Never having the nerve
To spend large amounts of money
On a frivolous vacation

Months of debt
For one week of bliss

It just never added up to her

Still, there were better ways
To spend a break
Then how Katie did

Her breaks were always
The exact opposite
Of what a break should be

For one thing
Somehow
She always wound up
On campus

Her freshman year it was because
She had asked to stay in the dorms
Not wanting to go home
Since home was only eighteen minutes away
And it meant having to put up
With two teenage boys
And her mother
Who would force her to veer from her diet
Gain at least five pounds
And get her hair cut

If she felt homesick
In spite of all that
She remembered that it was only eighteen minutes
And funnily enough
The homesickness went away

She remembered how hallowed the halls of the dorm felt
That week three years ago

Most of the time was spent holed up in her room
Watching entire seasons of television shows
And every DVD she owned

She could have gotten a lot of reading done
But you have to be a reader to read
And Katie just isn't

By the time break was over Sunday night
And people were driving back onto campus
Katie felt like she'd been in some sort of
Cinematic prison for the last seven days

Sentenced to watch 'A Clockwork Orange'
And then try to sleep

The only thing she learned that week
Was that watching a movie
And experiencing it properly
Was, as most things are in life,
All about the timing

Her sophomore year she had an on-campus job
Working for her Anthropology professor

Dr. Mantz had asked her
Since Katie wasn't going away for break
If she wouldn't mind
House-sitting for her

Katie imagined a giant mansion
Somewhere on the west side of town
Where she could play heiress for the week

But instead she found herself in a cabin
Somewhere on the outskirts of the state

No running water
No heat
No heiress-ing

She took every chance she could
To leave the cabin
But the only reasonable excuses
She could come up with
Were the work Dr. Mantz had left her to do
Which meant trekking back to campus
And holing up in the Anthro department

Ironically, she found herself
Feeling more at home in Dr. Mantz's office
With its mahogany desk, full bookshelves
And new laptop
The only modern device
In the place

Some nights
Rather than drive back to Deliverance country
She would just crash on Dr. Mantz's couch
Pretending that she herself was a professor
Working late into the night
On some new publication

Then in the morning she would be reminded of her humble conditions
When she spied the unfinished game of Solitaire
Still blinking on the laptop screen

Last year, she was determined to have fun
Maybe she couldn't go away anywhere
But she could certainly have fun

Fun, fun, fun

Luckily, her friend Nadette
Wasn't going anywhere for spring break either
So the two of them decided
They go out every night
And party with the kids home from break

Certainly somebody actually went HOME for break, didn't they?

One night they went to Free Parking
A club that wasn't nearly as clever as its name

(Not to mention a misnomer, since there was no free parking anywhere near it)

Not five minutes after they arrived at the club
Katie ran into a group of girls
She had gone to high school with

They shrieked when they saw her
And once Katie realized she couldn't run
She took as long as possible during the hugging
And introducing Nadette
To come up with some lie
About why she was still living in Flatte Falls
When everybody else had gone away to some fancy school
Three years ago

'So, like, where do you go to school now?'
'Um, not too far.'
'Do you like being home on break?'
'Um, I would have rather gone away somewhere, but, you know...'
'Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Who can afford to now, right?'
'Exactly. So, how's everything at--?'

Disaster avoided

--Almost

Nadette met some guy
And wanted to go home with him

When Katie expressed that she felt this was a bad idea
Nadette told her to leave
So she did

She went to the pizza parlor
Across the street
And waited

After half an hour
She went back
And sure enough
There was Nadette
Outside the club
On the curb
Crying and drunk
Right in front of the girls from high school

Katie smiled at the girls
As she lifted up her friend
And helped her back to the car

Nadette had parked on-campus
And Katie had driven
So they had to sit for an hour
And have drunk talk
While Nadette sobered up

'I just, boys suck, you know?'
'Yeah, they do.'
'They fucking suck!'
'Yeah, they do.'
'Why don't they like me?'
'Not a clue.'
'I fucking hate them all.'
'Yup.'
'I'm pretty! Why don't they like me?'
'Yeah...'

Nadette dropped out of school that semester

She met a guy with two kids
An astronomer, a professor
Not at their school, at the community college
And she moved in with him
And they're getting married next spring

Katie has no idea if she's invited
All her mail goes to her Mom's house
And she never picks up her mail

Either way
She wouldn't go to the wedding

She doesn't talk to Nadette anymore

I mean, an astronomer?

This year she was going on-campus
To just get it over with

Being on a college campus
During break
Is the most depressing feeling
In the world

And Katie wanted to just feel it
And be done with it

So she drove onto campus
Parked her car at the track
And started to walk

She did the outer circle first
Working her way in

She wasn't walking fast
She was in no hurry
But she still made it to the middle
Before an hour was up

She had parked in front of the bus stop
At the corner where the English building perched
Waiting to swallow the commuters

There was a bus there
Sitting, with nobody at the stop itself

Katie walked up to the bus
The door was open
And the driver had his hand on the--

What was it called? --The pull?

For no reason, she asked--

'Where does this bus go?'

He was a man in his forties
Little grey mustache
Small eyes, not slits, just small
And skinny
Very skinny

Everything about him
Was less that it could be

'Bus goes downtown to the depot'
'Right, yeah, that makes sense.'
'Wanna go?'
'Downtown? No thanks. I have a car.'
'Could go downtown and come back.'
'I guess I could, but--'
'Could go somewhere else from there. There's a bus every day that goes to New York.'
'I'm sure this is.'
'So why not go?'

Katie felt like she was being pitched
As if the bus driver got commission
For convincing people
To take long trips

All that aside
She said--

'Sure, why not?'

She got on the bus
Paid the fare
And walked to the back

As campus rolled past her
It looked smaller

Perhaps because she was up higher
Than she would have been in her car

It almost looked as if she was flying from it
Rather than just riding away from it

Would she go to New York?

Maybe she would
Or maybe she would just spend all day
Shopping at the mall
Buying new outfits
Driving herself into debt for months
For a day's worth of fun

But today that felt
Like it would be okay

It felt as if
She had earned it