Eighteen Septembers by Laura J. Oliver

The first day of school. 

You had 18 of them, but let’s just talk about the final four because you still carry the body memory of that excitement. The subliminal sense that September is an opportunity to start over. To begin again. To be a new you.

You return to the exhilarating chaos that is high school via anarchy on wheels. The bus. You sit alone next to the window, wondering who, if anyone, might sit with you. The excruciating tension as the bus doors swing open. A silent no to Tommy Nelker as he mounts the steps. A silent yes to Chris that could beam airplanes through fog.  

The high school boys board with their books slung against one hip—like guns in a holster. The texts balance there without falling, an impossible feat of physics and masculine appeal girls cannot comprehend. We clutch our books, as if they are babies, to our chests. 

From homeroom you’re dispensed to algebra and are delighted with the seating arrangement. Because of the alphabetizing of last names, you are exactly where you want to be without having to do a mind meld as you did on the bus.

 Happy accident. He’s sitting right behind you and to your right.

You are smart and hear a lot about your potential from teachers and guidance counselors—mostly about how you fail to live up to it. Their perennial optimism that you will one day step on the gas, however, puts you in the same algebra class with Eddie and Chris even though they are both upperclassmen. Eddie, who will most likely not remember this, and Chris, who is gone. For the rest of the year, you are going to sweat bullets in this class because you are not remotely as smart as your reputation. Keeping up the façade is a full-time job you don’t quit till you’re 36.

For now, you try out for cheerleading. 

Beth, who is already on the squad, tells you to lower your voice in tryouts because lower voices carry better in the cheers. You do this and find Beth laughing her head off. You make the squad anyway, which is a problem because you are bored senseless at every game. Five minutes of cartwheels and splits, dance moves and gymnastics, for two hours of furtively watching the clock. 

But you begin dating the quarterback, and his mother adores you more than he does. For Christmas she knits you a hat and a scarf. Your mother’s antennae go up.

Make no mistake. You are going to college. 

You love music, and your grandmother has paid for eight years of piano lessons, so you show up for band, but there is no need for a pianist. Still, the band teacher is not going to let eight years of sight-reading music go to waste, so she assigns you to the percussion section. That means the bells. This feels like a demotion; as if you’ve been given a toy. You might as well play the triangle. Or the blocks. Good God, those are also a part of your repertoire. Then you get it. 

Percussion means everything you play, you hit with a stick. 

The conductor assigns you the timpani. Kettle drums. It’s harder than it looks. You have to tune them and change the key during performances. Chris and Eddie are playing trumpet and trombone in the brass section. As cool as high school band gets. Percussion sits in the back so you can stare at them. 

After band practice, you need to use the restroom. It is packed. When the door opens, smoke billows out. You take a deep breath in the hall and forge a path to a stall. On your way to the sink, a very unpleasant girl demands your hairbrush. You have not yet learned to say no. Your mother knows this. Cue the alarm at the hat and scarf.

You report that you don’t have a hairbrush. You are a terrible liar. She blocks your way to the sink, then to the door. You fork over your brush and watch as she drags it through her hair. When she hands it back, you pretend you’re going to use it, but when the door closes behind her, you throw it away.

On the bus home, you and Sally trade stories—Who’d you get for homeroom? Who’s in your class? 

In the days to come you walk across a stage in a cap and gown, then down an aisle carrying flowers, wearing a veil. 

You change your name and your address, pack up a U-Haul. An obstetrician will sing out, “It’s a girl!” and you will hold sacred the musical lilt of those words the rest of your life.

Eddie probably won’t remember, and Chris is gone. And we have lived entire lifetimes since the years of first days.

Kids from the local high school are walking to the bus stop now. You watch them from your office window. New backpacks, short skirts, collared shirts. There is a familiar electricity in the autumn air. Memory blurs, the years contract, and in that mysterious way that time can stall, you are still on the threshold of something new.

They laugh as they pass beneath the ruby jewels on the apple tree. 

Unaware they could be me; they could be you.