Do I Dare To Eat a Peach?
Dedications: This is dedicated to all those who took AP Biology and recognize how futile the subject can be and make the rest of the world seem. Also, we'd like to take this time to recognize Abraham L., Star Manning, and Kelly C.
Abby: Thanks for the reviews! We absolutely love them! Sorry to have scared you with all the Boohbah references. We just adore them, and you'll feel comforted to know that Star Manning also fears Boohbahs. Uncle Jesse is our favorite artist, this amazing singer/actor/songwriter. You may recognize him from Full House. We once saw him out and about, and we loved it. Lowly Worm is from this hot book, which was made into a cartoons series, called the Adventures of Richard Scary or something of that nature. The Sanderson sisters are the superstars of a great movie, entitled Hocus Pocus.
Mike M: LOVES IT!
Note: Everything in italics belongs to our love, T.S. Eliot. Luke, too, is a huge fan, we're sure, so we figured it would only be proper for him to include Eliot in his thoughts.
LUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKELUKE
Luke Ward sat perched upon his wooden stool, arms folded on the lab table he shares with his lab partner, Abu, a small monkey in a fez. His teacher, Ms. Frizzle walked slowly through the door. With a morose expression on her face, she ambled through the door, while buttoning her black cloak over her orange dress with exploding yellow sunbursts. Ms. Frizzle felt far from her bright, energetic second grade class. Her usual vivid demeanor deeply contrasted the atmosphere of the dour AP Biology class, so for this class she changed her appearance to match. She walked up to her desk, throwing the class's huge pile of lab reports on the desk.
"Even more so than usual, these lab reports were abysmal. Ladies and gentlemen, we have only three months until the AP exam. Do you expect the AP readers to search through your report for your answers? Did you actually answer any of the questions I posed? I don't think so! When they give you a sheet of graph paper, you must use what they give you," Ms. Frizzle scolded the class, while passing their reports out.
Ms. Frizzle slapped Luke's on his desk. He grabbed the report, glancing at his lovely C. He grabbed his Care Bear folder and threw the report in, without even reading Ms. Frizzle's patronizing comments. He was in no mood to read about the faults of a lab report he stayed up until 4 a.m. completing.
Luke pondered this grade, noting that none of it had been worth it. Reading the whole 100-page-long unit, coming after school to meticulously complete the lab, and then spending two entire days writing the report gave him no satisfaction and left him only with a C.
That night, Luke went home, only to have to study for his AP Biology test for the next day. He vowed, after his most recent lab report grade, to not care. However, he couldn't bring himself to do that. He viewed this as a chore and as a punishment he couldn't escape. No matter how many times he read the book, read and reread his notes, he knew that when he would get the test, at least half of the material would be completely unfamiliar. Still, though, he couldn't allow himself to completely forego studying. It was an obligation he felt deep within his soul. He thought of the possibilities of what might happen if he neglected to study. So, he sat down at his desk and began the arduous task of reading and memorizing hundreds of pages on the subject of plants.
The next morning, after only 40 minutes of sleep, Luke rushed to school. In the halls, there was a familiar feeling of frenzy, as his fellow AP Biology classmates flung themselves around the hallway, shouting at one another:
"Explain to me Abscisic Acid again!"
"She wouldn't put alteration of generations in mosses and ferns on, would she!"
"What the hell is photoperiodic control of flowering!"
"Explain to me the signal-transduction pathways in a plant. What are auxin receptors? And what is a proton pump!"
Luke rolled his eyes at the weird antics of his classmates, who were all clearly sleep deprived, strewing their notes about the hallway and frantically caffeinating themselves with large Starbucks beverages.
Luke looked over at his class and said, "In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo." He couldn't stand the nonsense they were speaking. They all thought this test was so important. They thought the world would end if they did poorly on this test, even though they were all fully aware that many of them would be walking out with Ds. They thought their little lives meant so much in the grand scheme of things. They all came in the Biology room, talking of these topics they thought made them so smart and worldly. Luke knew it meant nothing.
After the test, the class walked out, still in a frenzy. They screamed about the test, Ms. Frizzle, and their sleep deprivation. Luke heard his good friend, Melanie B., shouting extra angrily about Ms. Frizzle:
"Who the hell does she think she is? How does she expect us to hypothesize about how a human might begin to produce chloroplast and turn green, surviving as an autotroph!"
Luke walked away from the classroom, feeling bored, drained, and shattered. For the rest of the day, he felt absolutely worthless and dead. Not even his M&M infused cookie could pick him up after the experience.
In his shower that evening, Luke began singing his favorite artist, Ernie's, song, "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon." He listened to the lyrics, as they played in his head. He wondered why, subconsciously, he was romanticizing this Earth. Today had not been a good day.
Two days later, Ms. Frizzle walked into the classroom and looked stern. She produced the tests from her black bag and began handing them out to the class. Luke was nervous when he got his test back, so he checked from back to front, avoiding seeing his fate. He noticed he received full credit on the last, big essay, regarding humans turning green. It was pure luck that one of his friends had recently undergone that very same experience. Luke thought, "Poor Mischa, I wonder how she's doing, and if she's still living in a coop with that Harbor High hot pink chicken."
Luke was shocked, upon seeing the front page of his test, that he earned an A-. Surprisingly, he felt nothing. Just like he always did, he stuffed the test into his folder with his other papers, without another thought. Though he did well, this subject brought him no satisfaction. Biology still sat heavily in the air, looming over his mind.
Much to his dismay, Ms. Frizzle also took the time that day to pass back last week's quiz. Luke did get that D he had been expecting. He mutters to himself, "I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,And in short, I was afraid." Luke again shoves the paper away, trying to forget the work that went into preparing for that quiz.
Suddenly, all other 8 students broke out peaches and begin devouring them. Luke looks on, confused. Did he dare to join in? Did he dare to eat a peach?
No.
Eating a peach no longer felt authentic. Now, he knew that he didn't eat for pleasure or because something tasted good. He ate it for the vitamins and fiber. He knew that fruit was just created specifically to attract pollinators and animals. Eating was just another biological process that broke down a concept that once seemed splendid into steps of a procedure.
Luke felt the same way about his athleticism. He knew it was not fate, destiny, or his own hard work that gave him the skills he had in soccer and water polo. Rather, his abilities stem from genetics, a random process in which he easily could have ended up completely different, unlike his current self in every way. He knew it's also random and calculated, a game of genetics. He no longer believed in fate, but saw only hard reason. He didn't see people as genuine anymore. When he walks and runs these days, he's not fascinated by his body's abilities, but he knows now that his movements are only a series of hormones, junctions, and contractions working together.
Luke heard from his teacher that in the timeline of the world, humans barely make a dent. He could see the grand scheme of humans and their place in the world now, and he felt like he constituted nothing. He knew simple test grades earned by one single person in this world meant nothing. He realized that if people continued harming the world's environment, evolution will once again protect the Earth. Only this time, humans won't be a part of it.
Five months later, Luke came to his kitchen and rifled through the large pile of mail on the counter. He was horrified when he spied a letter from the College Board. He apathetically opened up his letter. Upon seeing that he has earned a 5 on the AP Biology exam, Luke shrugged. He knew he should feel excited or anything at all, but again, he felt nothing.
The next day, Luke gathered with Ms. Frizzle and the other 8 students from the class. Everyone was shocked to learn that Luke received a 5 on the exam. They kept looking at him, hassling him, wondering how he, Luke, could possibly earn the highest possible grade. Luke wondered that same thing. He felt like all eyes were on him, and he thought to himself:
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
Luke thought about this grade and wondered how he should presume, and how he should go about dealing with it. He realized that he didn't feel anything, because he never viewed this course as being worth it. Was it supposed to change his life in any way? Of course not. The only thing this course has done for him is force him to dissect every movement, every action. Nothing is whole anymore. It's all just little pieces. Life itself has no meaning. He's already learned reasons why life is just some coincidence, some chance possibility which ends only in a systemic breakdown of all that once felt so whole and mighty.
Ms. Frizzle addressed Luke, proudly. He was her only student to achieve a 5. She looked right at Luke and said, "I can't believe you're the same boy who used to sabotage my magic school bus, and now here you are, my brightest AP Biology student. I know if you just follow the yellow brick road, you'll have a superstar career in Biology in the future."
"Follow the what?" Luke asked, absolutely perplexed.
"Follow the yellow brick road," she told him.
He still looked at her, puzzled.
To clarify, Mr. Feeny popped his head out of a file cabinet and shouted, "Follow the yellow brick road!"
Then, Bill Nye popped his head in the door and shouted, "Follow the yellow brick road, Luke!"
The rest of his classmates, led by two students, Topanga and Melanie B., started singing, "Follow, follow, follow, follow. Follow the yellow brick road!"
Luke pondered this idea of taking Biology seriously and really making it have worth in his life. He wondered if taking it seriously to begin with would have been a good idea:
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" --
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."
He decides that taking Biology seriously is not what he meant nor means at all. It means nothing to him. It hurt him, abused him, and took the fun out of his life and his senior year in high school. It broke down what he used to believe was fascinating and destined into some mechanical, biological processes. He decided his future most definitely lie beyond the yellow brick road.
He grabbed the paper declaring he has earned a 5 from his pocket and throws it into the garbage. He stormed out, with his paper remaining in the classroom's garbage pail, amongst discarded peaches.
Disclaimers: All of the quotes in italics, along with the title, belong to T.S. Eliot in his excellent poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." All biological references, along with the intense hatred of all these references, do, we suppose, belong to us and our memories of some bad times. Sadly, Luke Ward does still belong to Josh Schwartz, though we have been trying to wrestle this amazing character from his grasp for months. Really, Schwartz, the abuse Luke Ward has suffered under your pen has been inexcusable. Talk about drastic character manipulations. We have no rights over Ernie or the song "I Don't Want to Live on The Moon," but we do have that song on our iPods, so we kind of own that in a way. We do not own Ms. Frizzle or her crazy school bus, but we are known to dress in dresses with exploding suns. We do not own Abu, that hot monkey, not the Care Bears, who belong to the late '80s, despite a recent random resurgence. We don't own chickens, Starbucks or peaches. We have no claims over the yellow brick road. We're still looking for it, somewhere over the rainbow. Mr. Feeny, Topanga, Melanie B., and Bill Nye are absolutely some of our favorite celebrities, but they, too, do not belong to us. We don't own that song, "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road," but we did enjoy a great time listening to it while writing this fic. And lastly, the concept of Mischa turning green due to chloroplast injections still does belong to us. Okay, we're out of here, got my bean and my coffee cup under the seat.