29

A new day. A new life continues.

“Bananas!  Go bananas!”  Xena yelled in the pre-dawn light.  She was inches away from me, looking smilingly in my sleepy eyes.  She’d come out of the van and shook me up with the morning greeting.

“Come Mister Tally Man tally me bananas,” she got up and danced around the camp.  Rosie circled with her and barked off and on somewhat in tune with Xena’s high notes.  “I want to go home tally tally tally man.”  She made up songs on the spur of the moment.  Bananas was easy though, since we’d gone to the gorilla’s football game Friday.  They won and the Pittsburgh student body went bananas. 

We’d more or less had accidentally pulled into Pittsburgh, Kansas in the middle of last week and Xena had instantly adopted the gorillas as her own.  She’d been in every building and had even attended classes on campus.  Somewhere she’d obtained ID cards for both of us and we now had access to events like football games and activity buses that went to the games.  We’d gone back to Missouri for the first game of the new season.  Bananas!

“Take me to the movies this afternoon,” she said.  “We need to see the monkey movie.”

“Monkey movie?” I said.

“Yeah, those monkeys who take over the world.”

I was still trying to wake up.  Monkeys?

Xena and Rosie left, walking off towards the camp center.  She had grabbed a towel and her bath kit, as she called it, and she and Rosie were off to take a morning shower.

I sat up.  Monkeys?  Apes?  The new planet of the apes movie, surely.  Xena was getting into the campus coed life and since Pittsburgh was the gorillas, she would be the best gorilla. 

We’ve had the Labor Day weekend to enjoy the small town’s flavor and Xena reveled in it.  We had attended a pep rally at the school and eaten at the student center.  Xena was even reading the required books for freshman English over the weekend.  She’d given me a historical novel about a guy who was shot down during World War II that I was supposed to finish before classes tomorrow.  The man was tortured everywhere he went.  Pretty good.  She was reading a smaller book of short stories.  I wasn’t informed why I had the long book and she had the short stories.

“Two years,” she told me when she returned from the showers.  “We have two years before we go to college full time.  We have to decided where we want to go.”  She walked past me and went back into the van.

Two years?  Full time college?  We’ve never even been to high school.  As far as I could tell Xena went to a few years, off and on, to elementary school and then was pulled out by the people she lived with and not allowed to go back to school.  And no one cared.  Good school system up in the mountains north of where we met on the highway.  My experience wasn’t any better.  The only schooling I had was when I went with the kids down the hill and registered myself.  I certainly didn’t have any family who cared if I existed or not.  College full time?

Xena came back out and sat down, looking for an actual discussion.

“That OK with you?”

“College,” I said.

“Sure, why not, you saw that we’re as smart as everyone else.  Or mostly everyone else over the weekend.”

“So,” I started, “ we’ll be 16 in two years, or at least I’ll be,” I looked at her and smiled.  “The you do your magic and we get into a college somewhere and be real students.”

“Sure,” she said again.

“What do we do in the meantime?”

“We see the country, we read everything we can get our hands on, we listen to the news, read the news, see the news, get to know the news and get ready to be students.  We live for the next two years like we’re students already.  Rosie will help.”  Rosie barked.

“We live, live, live!”  Xena looked out across the fields next to the campground.  “Everyday we get better and better.  We exercise our bodies, our minds, our five senses, our experiences.  We read, read, read.  We are the renaissance duo.  We will play music everyday.  We will run everyday.  We’ll do tai chi, yoga, aikido everyday.”

Where did she get this aikido?

She continued.

“We visit as many classes and campuses as we can in the next two years and we’ll decide where we want to go.  It’s gotta be perfect.  We need a second and third language. Kemo! We need to get a little education so we’ll fit in enough not to draw the wrong attention to ourselves and we need to be smart enough to fit into the classes and campus life and take real classes and do real work and get a real diploma with our real names on them.  Xena! Degree!”

“Real names?” I asked.

“Sure, we’re real people and we’ll have real names by then.  We’ll have to make sure we’re real.  Nothing fake.  Real people and real dogs.”  Rosie wagged her tail in agreement.  “I’ll get us some real birth certificates and drivers licenses and whatever we need.  Maybe some baptism records, I know some states think that religious things are as important as real things.  We’ll be real people.  I can confirm you!  What religion do you like?”

I poured us both a cup of coffee.  Xena added two packets of sugar to hers.  She sighed.

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, “I’ll make it real.”

“As long as I’m real,” I smiled seeing if she would smile back.  But she didn’t.

“We’ll both be real.  Maybe we should get some real scholarships, can’t be too hard.  I’ll find us some by the time we find a good school.”

“Don’t we have to have a particular subject to study,” I asked.

“Sure,” she said, “we’ll find some real subjects by then.”

“Really,” I smiled.  She didn’t get it and continued thinking out loud.

“Maybe we could get some coed dorms.  I wouldn’t want to be by myself anymore.”  She looked at me and patted Rosie.

“No,” I answered. “We wouldn’t.”