Standstill
I received the call from Ray. I rushed back, barely an hour and fifteen under my pockets with nothing more, as the commute to school began tick-tick-ticking away. It was apparently bad news for some of us, who had accrued seven units of failure solely upon the day’s consultations. Four more placed them in conditional status; five would have them debarred. The one subject where only four from our section would have passed under normal, harshly coined merciless, circumstances, carried five units, and we were all five days away from knowing that for sure.
I arrived half an hour past eleven, the campus, a barren and deserted field, belonging only to the dead leaves and the wind. James and R.V. were there when I took the only flight of stairs to the bulletin, sitting almost too somberly by the bench a few spaces away. It was only then, as I counted sixty names, a few of which were repeated, did the truth of it all begin to sink in.
I would always be the apathetic oaf who welcomed change. When news of next term’s reshuffling first broke out, I was its first and perhaps, only outright vocal proponent, barring the dean himself. It became important to reach out as I wanted to cross the boundaries that separated A from B from C, and meet the remaining one hundred people in the pre-quadri-centennial batch who shared the same majors as I did. Maybe three years of having to meet the same people day in and day out, taking the same crap, and shoving it back had taken its toll. I wanted to move on, but I wanted something else.
We talked thereafter well until three; and it was the end. As my heart flipped flopped the way theirs probably had before me, it was time to go. There was perhaps, a finality to their tones, a sense of defeat in their voices. We had to move on. I found out that spirits were their last escape the day before, as it has always been then. I disapproved, although I suppose they had but wanted to relish the moments they had just as we were finally dismissed one last time this term. I half guess they knew it would have been their last, thought silently they had yesterday that was all but frozen in amber.
