To: yikes!izzy
Date: Wednesday, February 29—7:55 PM
Subject: college
Dear Isabel,
Guess what! Jeremy has finally decided he wants to go to Reed! Of course he hasn’t officially been accepted because it’s not April yet, but it would pretty much be impossible for him to not get in. And in case you were wondering, I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to go to Evergreen State, but I tried not to say too much because I didn’t want you to think I was following you, but now that doesn’t seem like such a big deal. They accept pretty much anyone, so it looks like we’ll all be neighbors next year! I’m excited for you to meet Jeremy. I know you’ll really like him. In fact, you’ll probably like him more than you like me. The two of you will become best friends and become Big and Important in the cool Portland scene, and you’ll forget about little old me up in the forest by Olympia. It’s okay. I’ll have the squirrels to keep me company. And the slugs. Always the slugs.
Jeremy’s already started doing all this research on the biology professors at Reed and planning what classes he’s going to take for the next four years. He wants to be the world’s most renowned ichthyologist. Do you know what that is? I didn’t either. It’s a person who studies sharks and other cartilaginous fish. What’s a “cartilaginous fish?” you may ask. It’s fish like sharks and rays that have cartilage instead of bone. “What’s cartilage?” you may ask. It’s that hard, fleshy stuff inside your ears and nose. Now don’t you feel smarter? Jeremy has already informed me that during Shark Week on the Discovery Channel this summer, I am not allowed to bother him because he’ll be glued to the television the whole time. Maybe something about growing up on an island has skewed his brain toward this interest in sea life. But then again, I’ve grown up here too and the only thing I find interesting about fish is how delicious they are when they’re battered and deep-fried and slathered in Ivar’s tartar sauce.
Jeremy found a dead four-feet-long six-gill shark on the beach when he was ten. Apparently this is a big deal because most sharks have five gills and not much is known about this particular species because they usually live in really deep water. So there was little ten-year-old Jeremy hauling this big-ass shark home with him, up the hill to his house and into the garage, and it weighed as much as he did, and it was all slimy and fishy from the early stages of decomposition. Then he got a big knife from the kitchen so he could dissect it, and for the next three hours, until his mom found him and freaked out and hosed him off with the garden hose, Jeremy studiously dissected that shark, carefully peeled back its skin, removed its organs, and lovingly laid them out on newspaper.
He tried to explain his excitement to me, and his eyes got all big and he was waving his hands all over the place and he kept saying, “Don’t you get it? I got to look inside? I got to see how it worked.” And I tried to pretend I was as excited as he was, but he could tell I had no idea what the big deal was. And it made me feel bad for a while, until a couple days later when I was trying to explain to him why I was so proud of this sculpture I was working on in art class, and he gave me what must have been the same blank look as I had given him. We laughed about that for a little while, how it’s impossible to really communicate about an obsession with someone who’s obsessed about something completely different. But what you can talk about is the feeling of obsession, so at least we have that in common. He’s obsessed with knowing stuff and I’m obsessed with making stuff, and it’s kind of better that way because there’s no chance of us getting competitive.
Which makes me wonder: Have you ever felt competitive with me? About art and stuff? I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way about you, mostly because I’ve always been too busy thinking about how brilliant you are. I guess it’s hard to be competitive when you’ve already accepted that someone’s more talented than you. It’s like, why bother?
What does it feel like to be so talented? You know you are, right? It’d be impossible for you not to know it. What does it feel like to be called brilliant? I doubt I’m the first one to call you that.
Sometimes I wonder why you and Jeremy are even friends with me. I really am serious about being paranoid that the two of you are going to become best friends next year and forget all about me. You’re you and Jeremy’s Jeremy and you’re both so fucking special all the time. At ten years old, Jeremy knew he was going to be a scientist, and that he was gay, and he announced both things to his parents around the same time. And ever since, he’s been pushing through life with a confidence that’s just not natural for a teenager. Isn’t this when you’re supposed to be miserable and in the throes of a constant identity crisis? It’s not fair that he gets to just skip that part. But then again, if anyone deserves to be happy, it’s him. And god, imagine if he was growing up anywhere else on earth. A teenage Gay Scientist in some backward town that refuses to teach evolution in school and thinks homosexuality can be prayed away? He’d be a goner. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live here, that outside of here, people die every day for just being themselves.
Do you ever think about that? Like, what if we were born in some redneck town in the Bible Belt, or in Palestine, or Sudan, or Afghanistan? We complain about our lives and how no one understands us, but then I think about places like that and I just feel like an asshole.
Love,
Connor