In the Wild Light

by Jeff Zentner

  He puts his damp cheek, lined as a valley of rivers, to mine and whispers hoarsely in my ear, “Go make us proud. I will not leave without telling you goodbye in the flesh. God as my witness, I won’t. I love you, Mickey Mouse.”

  For the first hours of the journey, we’re glued to the window, ticking off every milestone.

  First time leaving Tennessee.

  First time in Virginia.

  First time seeing a bird in Virginia.

  First time eating in Virginia.

  First time pissing in Virginia.

  The bus has Wi-Fi, and outlets at our seats to charge our phones, so we read about Middleford Academy until our eyes burn. We put together possible class schedules, even though they told us counselors would need to help us with that. We google teachers. We google famous alums of the school (there are many). As dusk settles and the ride becomes less scenic, we watch movies on my phone using Papaw and Mamaw’s Netflix account, sharing a set of earbuds.

  Soon, there’s only blackness outside.

  A dense, coarse blanket of fatigue drapes itself over me, and without the excitement and elation of the early journey to fight it off, a fog of fear and melancholy begins to creep in, a deep sense of foreboding and regret.

  Delaney can feel it radiating off me. Or maybe I’m absorbing light, the way she told me black holes do. She starts talking about near-impossible journeys. What it would be like to send humans to Mars.

  “They’ve thought about sending whole families, to combat loneliness and incompatibility,” she tells me.

  “Sorta like us right now,” I say.

  “Sorta.”

  As it grows later, one by one, each reading light and glow from a tablet or phone disappears. The family across from us succumbs to sleep, huddled together.

  Our conversation becomes more yawns than words, and soon, more silence than words or even yawns.

  Delaney nestles herself into my side and asks me, “If you could know everyone who’s ever loved you, would you want to know?”

  I think about my answer for a few moments. Would I? Would it be better to know that someone you never thought loved you did love you? Or would it be worse to know that someone you always thought loved you didn’t?

  It’s not a question you can answer, like so many she poses, and I go to tell her so. By the time I do, though, she’s sound asleep—soon twitching and jerking as her slumber deepens. Careful not to rouse her, I pull a hoodie out of my backpack and drape it over her. I sit with my ghostly reflection in the finger-smudged window for company, as the new and sprawling American countryside blurs past us in the darkness.

  We exit the bus, glassy-eyed, the spiky mechanical stink of diesel exhaust singeing our noses. September here feels like October would in Tennessee—summer losing its grip. We’re almost to our final destination, but my adrenal glands went dry about twelve hours ago, so I can’t muster much excitement. My mouth is parched. I didn’t drink much because I didn’t like using the bus restroom. It reminded me of the bathroom in my mama’s and my trailer. I open a stick of Big Red and pop it in my mouth. I offer one to Delaney.

  She takes it, unwraps it, and starts chewing. “Officially that trip was twenty-four hours and five minutes.”

  “Felt like three days.”

  We collect our bags. Delaney slept better than I did—or at least longer—but she still has a dazed and shell-shocked energy. A hank of her hair bulges from the side of her head where she nestled against me.

  “Come here,” I say, smoothing her hair down. “Gotta look presentable.”

  Delaney’s phone starts buzzing. She answers. “Hello? Yeah, hi. This is her. Yep. Yep. He’s with me. Got them. Okay. White van? Okay. Got it. Thanks. Okay. Bye.”

  “Our ride?”

  “Yep. We’re meeting him on Station Place. Look for a white van with Middleford Academy on it.”

  We orient ourselves and walk out to the street. A white van pulls up. A squat, ruddy middle-aged man wearing a cabbie hat and a navy blazer with too-long sleeves hops out with a grunt. He exudes good cheer. I like him immediately.

  “You my two pickups?” He doesn’t give us a chance to answer before he’s at our side, grabbing our bags from us and tossing them in the back of the van.

  “Hope so,” Delaney says. “Because it looks like we’re coming with you.”

  He laughs wheezily. “You looked lost. I’ve picked up enough Middleford kids to know.” He extends his hand to her. “Chris DiSalvo.”

  They shake. “Delaney Doyle.”

  He extends his hand to me. “Chris DiSalvo.”

  “Cash Pruitt.”

  “Pleasure to meet you.” He opens the side door for us to get in.

  I help Delaney into the van and follow behind. It smells like cherry inside. “You’re the first person from Connecticut I’ve ever met,” I say.

  Chris laughs as he opens his door. “Aw now, that’s a lotta pressure. Meg Ryan. She’s from Connecticut. There’s a good ambassador.”

  “Katharine Hepburn too.” Delaney buckles her seat belt and continues. “Ethan Allen. Noah Webster. Annie Leibovitz. Charles Goodyear. J. P. Morgan. Suzanne Collins. P. T. Barnum. Samuel Colt. Henry Ward Beecher. Dean Acheson. Christopher Lloyd. Karen Carpenter. Glenn Close. Paul Giamatti.”

  “All from Connecticut?” Chris puts the van in gear and pulls away from the curb.

  “So I read.”

  “See? They all represent Connecticut better than me. And I don’t even know half of them.”

  “Michael Bolton.”

  “Okay, maybe not him.” He glances back. “You rattling these off from memory?”

  “Yep.”

  He whistles. “Jeez Louise. Been driving Middleford kids around for fifteen years now, and they sure don’t let dummies into this school.”

  Not unless they’re friends with a genius.

  I like how he talks. He says sure like suah and sharp like shop. I’ve only ever heard a New England accent on TV before.

  We drive in silence for a while. I stare out. I’ve watched so much landscape sweeping past a window over the last twenty-four hours, it’s hard to make myself look, but curiosity compels me. Green foliage hugs tight the sides of the four-lane road in a familiar way. It’s not as hilly as Tennessee, but otherwise it looks similar. That’s something. I haven’t yet started to feel the pangs of homesickness, but I know I will.

  It’s like Chris read my mind. “Now, to listen to you talk, you guys aren’t from around here.” He gestures back first at me and then at Delaney. “You more than you. But both of you, it’s pretty obvious.”

  “We’re from Sawyer, Tennessee,” Delaney says. She’s also fixed to the window.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Near the Smoky Mountains.”

  Realization dawns on Chris’s face. He snaps his fingers. “Hey. They told me about you guys. Said you invented a new medicine?”

  “Sorta,” Delaney says. “We discovered an antibiotic fungus.”

  “She did,” I interject.

  “We did.” Delaney glowers at me.

  We’ll need to figure out the choreography of this discussion, because it’s one I imagine we’ll be having a lot in the days to come.

  Chris laughs wheezily and raises a hand, cutting us off. “Look, it’s more antibiotic than I’ve ever discovered, okay? Anyhow. Now that you’re here, we’re gonna have to get you some lobster rolls. Some clam pizza. Make Pats fans outta you.”

  “My papaw would skin me alive if I ever had a favorite football team that wasn’t the University of Tennessee,” I say.

  “Just the lobster rolls and clam pizza, then.”

  We fall quiet again.

  “Long trip?” Chris asks.

  “Twenty-four hours,” Delaney says.

  “Go through New York?”


  “We had a stopover there to switch buses,” I say.

  “Early as you guys got in,” Chris says, “you weren’t even my first stop of the day. Picked up this young lady from Dubai. Flew in on a private jet. Considered asking her, ‘Don’t you have a limo for this kinda thing?’ But she told me—get this—she preferred to pull up to the school like a normal kid.”

  Delaney and I glance at each other. We’re going to be meeting a whole new type of person. The sort who actually belongs at a school like this. A sort not like us. The slow creep of anxiety starts passing through me.

  Chris reads our silence and sounds apologetic. “Private jets, Greyhounds. We’re just glad you get here safe. You guys are gonna love Middleford. We’re only a couple minutes out.”

  We pass a sign for the school. A couple of minutes later, true to his word, Middleford Academy looms into view. Forested hills surround the school. I breathe faster, whirring with anxious energy. Please don’t be the place where I disappoint Papaw and Mamaw and Delaney.

  Delaney has a sickly pall to her face. She starts to lift her thumb to her mouth. I intercept her gently. She puts her hands under her thighs and starts bouncing her legs like she has to pee.

  We slow and turn onto a long drive. At the end is an imposing mechanized gate with a guard shack. Chris turns back to us. “Welcome to your new home.”

  Queasiness spreads through my lower belly as I look out the window at the ivy-covered buildings. It’s exactly as I imagined: a place I could never imagine myself being.

  As he drives, Chris points out stuff. “You got your Elm residence hall. Javits residence hall right next door. Name ’em all after trees or big donors. Dining hall over there. Those are classroom buildings. That’s the athletic center. You a lifter?”

  I’m so busy ogling I miss the question. “Do what?”

  “The athletic center’s got weights and such. You a lifter? Look like you are.”

  “Oh…no. Just work. Landscaping. Chopping wood.”

  “Chopping wood? Regular Paul Bunyan here.” Chris points off to the left. “Hey, Miss Memory, there’s the library. You gotta couple days before school starts to memorize all the books.”

  Delaney smiles shyly. “Duly noted.”

  Chris nods right. “There’s your auditorium. Three times a week they have an assembly there before class. Back behind it is the lake. Nice little path goes around it.”

  It’s not quite eight a.m. yet and it’s the Friday before school starts, but there’s still a fair amount of activity. Two girls and two guys stroll toward the athletic center in workout gear. Two girls in hijabs sit on a bench, showing each other things on their phones. There’s a mishmash of small U-Hauls and luxury SUVs parked around the residence halls, with parents helping kids lug in boxes.

  I feel a sudden, sharp pang of missing Mamaw and Papaw. I snap a few pictures to send them.

  “What do you think?” I murmur to Delaney, who looks simultaneously petrified and ecstatic.

  “Looks like a school.”

  “Guess this is really happening.” My voice is uncertain, like it’s walking on ice.

  “Guess so.”

  We pull up in front of a stately stone building with an Administration sign on the lawn out front. “Ladies and gentlemen…we have arrived,” Chris says grandly.

  We hop out. Chris helps us to the curb with our bags. “They’ll get you checked in. This is only farewell for the moment. I’m gonna see you guys plenty over the next year.” He extends a hand to Delaney and tips his cap. “Miss Memory, it’s been a pleasure. I’d tell you good luck, but I don’t think you’ll need it.” He turns to me. “Paul Bunyan, good luck to you too. Head through those doors. Office is on the right. They’ll take good care of you.” Chris walks back to the van, gets in, and drives away.

  Delaney and I stand there for a second, our bags surrounding us. I sling on my backpack and heft my two suitcases. “Might as well do this, I guess.” I start to walk up to the front door.

  “Wait,” Delaney says, her voice abruptly thorny.

  I turn to her.

  “Let’s get something straight right now, because I don’t want this to become a thing. This aw-shucks-I-don’t-deserve-to-be-here horseshit. Knock it off.”

  “They’re waiting for us.” I head toward the building.

  “They can wait. We’re talking about this now.”

  “Jeez. It’s how I feel.”

  “Stick how you feel right up your ass,” she says loudly.

  I stride back to Delaney. “Calm down. This how you wanna arrive? Acting like a couple hillbillies arguing on the front lawn first damn day? Shit. Should I take off my shirt? Get some deputies down here to stand between us?”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down.”

  “Talk quieter.” I touch her elbow.

  She slaps my hand away. “Don’t tell me to talk quieter.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  Delaney gets in my face. “My problem is, your little act makes us both look stupid. It makes me look like some nepotistic hillbilly mayor who makes her brother-in-law chief of police.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Don’t interrupt me. It makes you look like someone who’s willing to ride my coattails and take something you didn’t earn. That what you want?”

  “You’re tired.”

  “Condescend to me again.”

  “We’re both tired. We were on a bus for twenty-four hours.”

  “I stuck my neck out for you.”

  “I know.”

  “So stop acting like you shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’m sorry. Okay? I didn’t think of it like that. I screwed up.”

  “You’re done saying you don’t belong here. I can’t stop you from thinking it, even though it’s dumb and not true. But if you do, keep it to yourself.”

  “Fine. I promise. Happy?”

  Delaney picks up her bags.

  “Red?”

  She takes a deep breath.

  “We good?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “We have to be a team,” I say. “We can’t afford to be at each other’s throats.”

  “Being at your throat is usually the only thing I can afford,” Delaney says.

  “I’m serious, Red. I know you’re gonna be you, but you gotta cut me some slack every now and again.”

  “Fine. But don’t do dumb stuff.” This was generally as close as Delaney got to an apology.

  “I try not to. Hug it out?”

  She nods.

  I embrace her. “We’re here. In Connecticut. Standing at our new school.”

  “I know,” she says, breaking the hug and pushing me away. “We better stop standing and start walking.” She heads toward the administration building, lugging her suitcases. She tries not to let me see, but a smile sneaks onto her face.

  They buzz us into the administration office, and a youngish, stylishly dressed woman greets us. She moves with crisp but warm efficiency.

  “Hello, hello! Welcome to Middleford! Delaney and Cash?”

  We nod.

  “I’m Yolanda Clark, one of the associate directors of admissions here. I’ll be getting you settled in. How was the trip? How did you guys come?”

  “Greyhound,” I say.

  Yolanda’s face briefly registers surprise. “From…Tennessee?”

  “Correct,” I say.

  “Wow, you two must be tired.”

  “Yeah,” Delaney says. “We slept some, but I don’t think I ever entered REM sleep.”

  Yolanda seems unfazed by Delaney’s scientific precision. “Well, let’s do this: Are you hungry?”

  Delaney and I nod.

  “We’ll swing by the dining hall, get you some breakfast, take you to your residence ha
lls, get you squared away, let you sleep for a few hours before you meet with your counselors to put your schedules together. Good?”

  “Yes,” we say.

  Yolanda makes a call on a walkie-talkie, and soon after, a golf cart pulls up. We load our bags on the luggage carrier and climb in. I’ve never ridden in a golf cart before. I sure don’t know when Delaney would have.

  On the short ride, Yolanda rattles off facts about Middleford. “This school year we have eight hundred twenty-one students enrolled, representing twenty-one countries, from every continent but Antarctica, and twenty-nine states. This makes for a student-to-faculty ratio of six to one. Classes, which have between twelve and fifteen students, are taught using the Harkness method, in which students and teachers sit in a circle around a table and have a discussion—it’s not a teacher standing in front of a room full of kids, lecturing at them while they text and fall asleep.”

  The driver drops us off at the dining hall. Yolanda instructs him to go on and leave our luggage at the front desks of our respective dorms.

  “I understand you two are already pretty close?”

  “Best friends,” Delaney says.

  Yolanda smiles. “That’s great. I’m an alum of Middleford. I came from Oakland, California, and I would have loved to have come here with a friend. Anyway, Delaney, you’re going to be in the Maple dorm, and Cash, you’re going to be in the Koch dorm.”

  “Like the drink?”

  “Like the brothers. David Koch’s son went here.” Yolanda says this as we walk through the doors to the dining hall.

  It smells like a real restaurant inside. It triggers memories of going to breakfast at Cracker Barrel with Mamaw and Papaw. The rogue wave of homesickness unbalances me for a second.

  It’s as though Yolanda can see it. “Now, have you called your parents to let them know you got here safely?”

  “Yeah,” Delaney says. She’s lying. I would know—she hasn’t been out of my sight, even to use the restroom, since we arrived.