One of Those Days: Ghosts and the Autumnal Equinox

In the writing center Monday morning, Rebel Girl reviewed a student's essay on a significant moment, a typical developmental writing assignment. This student had chosen to write about the moment his good friend had died, an event which, as he wrote in his wobbly thesis statement, "impacted my life greatly."

The essay told the story of a group of high school friends who partied perhaps too much and took too many risks. And then at the bottom of page two, when the student began to describe the sad predictable details of the particular death (alcohol; poor judgment; etc.), Rebel Girl recognized his friend, who had been her student two years ago, in the fall semester of 2006 and who had died that November. He had sat in the third seat in the second row in a narrow classroom and she was worried about him from the beginning. A handsome young Californian, but not ready to focus, to settle down, not ready to work. Willing to show up, but not willing to write. After a few weeks, he dropped the course. There was nothing she could do. She saw him on campus, said what she usually does: "Next semester. We'll try it again." Then she read about him in the newspapers.

Two years later, here he is again, described by his young friend who still tears up about that night, what it was like to see him die.

Later the same day, Rebel Girl was holding forth in front of the fancy whiteboard in one of the airy, expansive classrooms in the new Beefsteak building. The board was already full of her scribbles: a cartoon of Joan Didion, a sketch of California, and in between stretched the plot line of a chapter from The Kite Runner. The class was tracking down moments of death, moral challenges and rebirth.

There was a bustle in the hallway. Suits. Men looking pleased with themselves, moving with appraising eyes. She recognized the college president, a handful of trustees. They walked by, glancing in the classroom through the window in the door, moved on.

The class returned to the discussion.

Rebel Girl noticed a movement at the door.

Tom Fuentes had returned and stood there, watching her. Glaring, no. He had a smile on his face. Seemed genial in a paternal manner that she found a bit spooky, a bit too reminiscent of church actually, a kind of superior demeanor, the dim gracious smile, the watchful gaze that has seen it all.

She didn't even know if he recognized her as the high profile union thug she was. Perhaps he imagined she was just a typical overpaid faculty personette, doing her damnedest to promote her socially liberal agenda. Who knows?

He stood there, smiling, bobbing slightly.

Rebel Girl remembered the time when she was twelve or so and devoured trashy novels about Henry VIII and his six unhappy wives that she bought at corner liquor stores with change stolen from her mother's tips. There was something faintly Cardinal Wolsey-like about Fuentes, she thought. Fuentes would be a perfect fit for Henry's court, full as it was of intrigue and betrayal, power plays and puffed collars, men in tights and velvet cloaks.

Eventually, he moved on and she returned her full attention to the class. She looked down. She had been wearing, as she had all day, a handmade ribbon over a foot long that she had cut from the newspaper. It read: Bailout tab: $700,000,000,000

It rustled when she walked. It floated in the breeze. It was extravagant. The font size was large and eye-catching. Maybe that was what he was looking at.

Maybe.