This is an old AP English Language assignment I already had posted on my AO3. The assignment was to imitate the style of Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried, except with AP students. Now with melodrama!
Amelia Andrew Thompson carried a brochure from the college they hoped to apply to in the next year in the bottom of their backpack. It was creased now, with a small jam stain collecting crumbs on the front. They pulled it out occasionally, to look at or show to a friend or teacher. It was a simple community college, but they were proud of it. Thompson's ambitions were simple, and this pamphlet covered many of them. It weighed one half ounce. Sometimes they would bring it out at lunch and unfold it and calculate the days until they graduated.
The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were pencils, chewing gum, smartphones, calculators, loose leaf paper, spare change, and one to four binders. Together, these items weighed between four and fifteen pounds, depending on a student's classes or packing ability. Scott Kim habitually carried at least one Rubik's cube to fiddle with. Diana Hopkins carried a miniature first aid, complete with bandaids, gauze, disinfectant cream, and nail scissors. Joey Gross, to distract himself from a disintegrating home life, carried a secret stash of pills up until he dropped out. By necessity, and because many classes required it, they all carried Chromebooks that weighed 2.5 pounds with the clamshell cover. Angel Vargas carried small hotel bottles of lotion and shampoo. Until he dropped out, Joey Gross carried the occasional cannabis brownie, which for him was a necessity. Nina Hansen carried nail polish. Kurt Vivian carried a sketchbook. Matt Powell carried a lighter and matches. Ismael Garcia carried the cherry wood rosary he had received when he first took Communion. Necessity dictated. Because the course was difficult, there was always a pocket dictionary/thesaurus floating amongst the AP students, passed along by hand according to need, which weighed 6 ounces. Backpacks typically weighed approximately 1 pound empty, but the larger ones could weigh more than 20 pounds full. When Joey Gross dropped out in late December, his weighed only 3 pounds.
They were the AP students, the general cream of the academic crop of their year.
The 'AP' descriptor was adhered to the class name. It was not 'lit', it was AP Literature. By taking these classes, they willingly adhered this title to themselves as well. This bothered them sometimes, but they generally wore the honorific with a small pang of pride.
What they carried was partly a function of their classes.
Amelia Andrew Thompson carried a French textbook and photocopied charts from old forensics manuals, 1.2 pounds total.
Nina Hansen carried a flute, 3 pounds with its case.
Matt Powell carried a map of the stars and a sheet of formulas.
Scott Kim carried a duffel with a baseball bat, two baseballs, a left-handed glove, a dented granola bar, and spare socks. This ensemble weighed 11 pounds.
As AP students, most of them carried at least two binders at any time. These weighed between 2 and 7 pounds. They carried pencil bags, whatever book they were reading in AP Language, the AP U.S. History text. The last day he came to school, Joey Gross carried a single binder, which he left on his desk in his last class of the day. Ismael saw this, and called after him, but Gross simply walked away. The binder was eventually taken up by Thompson, who declared it in good condition and claimed it for a future class. Matt Powell took the old papers and burned them behind his house in the fire pit and Nina Hansen took Gross' notes to study. Thompson felt a little strange about claiming the binder, nervous, and sat rereading their pamphlet while Ismael Garcia repeated the story once again. Just gone, man, he said. Done.
In addition to the standard yellow pencils and red pens, they carried a variety of the basic school supplies. They carried glow-in-the-dark pens and pastel chalks and highlighters and construction paper and colored pencils. Sarah Meyer carried a selection of gel pens. Nina Hansen carried a pencil sharpener shaped like a crocodile. Ismael Garcia carried a pen with a radioactive stone embedded in it. Every third or fourth student carried a graphing calculator -10 ounces each. They carried an overabundance of supplies, in preparation for whatever academia could throw at them.
In the first week of October, before Gross dropped out, Amelia Andrew Thompson received a brochure from their future college. It was a standard mailer, sent to them only because they had checked a box by the name on the PSAT. This new brochure served to reassure Thompson of their plans. It also reopened doubts. Whether a community college would be good enough, if would they be ready for this future. They tucked this flyer into the bottom of their backpack, with the old pamphlet, and imagined themself at college.
What they carried varied week to week.
A days and B days meant extra binders, new books, sometimes even separate backpacks. Minimum days meant no lunches were packed, holidays meant dressing up. Ismael Garcia always took earplugs with him on assembly days. Diana Hopkins carried tampons, pads, and illicit painkillers for her friends. Sarah Meyer carried a selection of valentines she would never give out on February 14th. Matt Powell carried spare sunglasses. Until he dropped out, Joey Gross carried a selection of auxiliary cords and a small speaker set. Scott Kim carried condoms. They all carried the AP title.
In finals week, they all carried more specialized supplies. Coffee cups and chocolate bars and good luck charms and dog-eared notetakers. Sarah Meyer organized a study group. Ismael Garcia, Nina Hansen, Diana Hopkins, and the rest of the A5 AP class joined. Amelia Andrew Thompson spent the time thinking on their community college, ignoring the buzz of the students in favor of mentally planning the classes they'd take. Sarah Meyer collected her notes and bemoaned her lack of a decent binder. Matt Powell chimed in with a complaint on the bent rings of his. The conversation paused for a moment. Ismael Garcia told the others of Joey Gross' dropping out and of his abandoned binder. He pulled it out of his bag, presenting it to the near silent circle of students. Do you want it? he asked. Meyer shook her head. If she doesn't want it I do, said Amelia Andrew Thompson. There was still a hush over the group. He dropped out- he really left? said Matt Powell.
The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition. Thompson carried their brochures. Diana Hopkins carried a rabbit's foot. Kurt Vivian, otherwise a straight-arrow, carried the burnt matches from the joint he had shared with Nina Hansen. The two had sat in the dugout of the softball field until twilight, sharing the marijuana cigarette and confiding in each other their worries about the future and their current classes and the mistakes of their past.
You want my opinion, Nina Hansen said, there's a definite moral here.
She took a drag of the joint. She was quiet for a time, almost as if waiting for a reply, then she exhaled in a long breath.
Kurt Vivian asked what the moral was.
Moral?
Like, do you mean just us being here, or life itself, or school?
Hansen shrugged. Handed the blunt to Vivian. I'm not sure any of this matters. It's like that Queen song, or Nietzsche.
Kurt Vivian thought about it.
Yeah, well, he finally said. I don't see a moral.
I just told you.
Fuck off.
They carried novelty keychains and pictures of their friends and sticky notes. They carried snacks, water bottles, old assignments, chargers, Gameboys, bandannas, and much more. In the hotter months, they carried quarters to buy ice cream from the student store. Nina Hansen carried eyelash curlers. Scott Kim carried a starched baseball jersey. Diana Hopkins carried a miniature pepper spray canister. Sarah Meyer carried welding gloves. The AP students took turns carrying the pocket dictionary/thesaurus. They shared the weight of the expectations the AP honorific put on them. Often, they carried each other, lending notes and explaining. They carried decks of cards, academic letters, pins shaped like the Lamp of Knowledge. They carried the school itself, in their jerseys and club shirts and the planners emblazoned with the mascot. They arrived every day for the sake of learning. They toiled on in preparation for the exams that really counted. It was almost automatic. Their motives were in their hands. Their plans were natural after years of this. They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous. After school, they would delay their study in favor of talking to friends, which was risky but which helped ease the strain. They would discard things throughout the year. Purely to cope, they would throw out old notes, blow hours procrastinating. No matter, there was at least the abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.
After Gross dropped out, Amelia Andrew Thompson and the study group picked through the binder. They pulled out all the crumpled papers and they bent the sticky rings open. Nina Hansen picked out all of Joey Gross' AP U.S. History notes, claiming them for herself. Matt Powell claimed the rest, telling the others he wanted to use them for a project. Through this time, Ismael Garcia repeated himself almost in a daze. Thompson almost wanted to cry. They placed the now empty binder into their backpack. All they could do was think on what this meant. They almost grieved, a little for Joey Gross, but mostly for their college, because the vision in their head was not real, and because life after high school would never be the way they imagined it, and because they feared that they may follow Joey Gross.
For the most part, they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they realized they were unprepared for a test or had failed an essay, when they realized how close they were to graduation. Afterward, when the moment had passed, they would blink and inhale with a stutter. Awkwardly, they'd reassemble themselves, brush off the sudden stress with a laugh. The others would join in, because it was bad, but no irreparably bad.
There were numerous such ways. Jokes about inevitable failure and ominous futures helped cover up this underlying tension.
There's a moral here, said Nina Hansen.
The study group had broken up, its last stragglers sitting in the parking lot of the Lutheran church that bordered the high school to the north, waiting for a ride.
The moral's pretty obvious, Hansen said, and winked. Stay away from drugs. No joke, they'll ruin your life.
Cute, said Scott Kim.
They're a mind blower, get it?
They made themselves laugh.
They carried all the emotional baggage of teenagers with bright futures. Fear, hope, anger, grief- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and gravity. They carried the common secret of fear of what the future may bring. They carried their reputations as AP students. Some carried invisible closets. They carried the student's greatest fear, which was the fear of failure. They continued on so as not to show this fear. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to give up and go. So easy, really. Just leave and not come back and never crack a book again.
By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks of composure.
And they daydreamed of what it would be like to leave. To just not show up at school one day, nor the next, nor the next after that. A sort-of freedom given by failure. Even if they knew they could never do it, they still gave themselves over to it every once in a while.
The day after Joey Gross dropped out, Amelia Andrew Thompson threw out the community college brochures. They realized it was only a gesture. Stupid, they thought. Sentimental, too, but mostly just stupid. Gross had left already. Besides, the pamphlets were in their head. Even without the glossy pictures, Thompson could see the diagrams of the campus.
They dressed themself and ate breakfast. The flyers didn't matter. They still had the knowledge in their mind and they could not afford to dwell on could-have-beens.
They were an AP student, after all.
Amelia Andrew Thompson took out their homework folders, laying the pages in an array by their cereal. They made a plan for the completion, mentally placing dates on all their tasks.
They were realistic about it. There was a new layer when they thought about the college. They looked forward to it but they feared it.
No more fantasies, they told themself.
They went back to their homework. There was no other option. They would saddle up and continue into that future, wherever it was.
(For those who are unclear on the topic, Amelia Andrew is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. The narrative uses themself for Amelia Andrew alone, and themselves for referring to a group.)