I walk quietly out my back door and up the steep hill that is my backyard, towards the flat slab of granite jutting out from the ground. I'm out here, well, not every night, I guess, but most nights. I don't like being in the house. It's never quite calm, even when it's empty. It's got residual tension or something, like a stain that fades but is always visible. Even my poor cat seems stressed out lately. So I sit out here and watch the constellations change and the moon go through its cycle; meanwhile, the grass grows,the trees lose their leaves, the snow falls, but the rock stays the same, solid and cool to the touch. It's soothingly unchanging. I clear my head and I think my thoughts. Ananda calls it my "conversations with the moon."

On the surface, Ananda is one of those people who has it all figured out; she's really got it all together. Except, she doesn't. Not really. She's just completely freaking out like every minute of the day. I mean, she's the president of the student government, she plays basketball, she's a yearbook copy editor, her GPA is through the roof, and plus she works after school folding shirts at the Gap to save money for college. It takes up so much time and causes her so much stress...I don't know why she does it all, or maybe I do, but I don't know how she does it.

It's getting dusky when Ananda quietly sits down beside me. I should be startled but somehow I'm not.

"Hey."

"Hey." I pause. "Didn't even hear you."

She holds up her sandals, the ones with the wood soles and the criss-crossy straps. "I walked over barefoot. My shoes broke," she says, bending the sole to reveal a large crack in the wood that split the shoe, dividing it neatly beneath the ball of her foot.

"Wow. How'd you do that?"

"I don't even know. I was just walking along and suddenly I felt unstable." She looks at the shoes and sighs. "These were my favorite summer shoes. They were heavy, and they made a lot of noise when I walked. I liked how they were like, solid wood, and they felt sturdy, thick." She bends the sole and looks into her cracked shoes. "The sole's hollow. They're not even real wood, you know. They're plastic, painted to look like wood." She sets the shoes down on the grass by the rock and pulls her knees up close to her chest. "I mean, it's not like it matters anyway. They're just shoes."

By this time her voice is trailing off and she's sort of just talking to the descending sun while I just happen to be there, so I don't say anything. I know there's more on her mind than broken shoes, but I know better than to press her. She only talks, really talks, when she wants to. She doesn't really seem to want to say anything at all right now, and it's not like I have a whole lot to say, anyway. She sits there all folded up with her head on her knees and we wait for the stars to come out.

Some time later, I say, "Look, you can see Venus. It's not cloudy, so we'll be able to see the stars soon."

She doesn't respond and the silence settles around us again. I'm just getting used to it and getting back into staring at and into the now dark sky, but then she says, "Jordan, I'm tired."

I'm not sure if this is Ananda telling me what is wrong or just a random statement made to the moon just as much as me. I sit up and look at her, and she's staring at the mountains, or just past them, into the sky where the sun set a while ago. She does look tired, but I can't really remember her looking real alive and awake recently. I ask her, "Were you up late last night? Did you get sleep at all?"

She sighs. "Yes, I slept, I always sleep. But Jordan, I'm just…tired." She puts her head on my lap. "I'm just tired."

I figure that this is what she wanted to tell me. I don't know what to tell her though. You can see it in her eyes, the kind of fatigue you see in people twice her age; that worn down look. I can't really relate; I stay up all night running around town with my friends, racing our cars on the overpass and sitting at Dunkin' Donuts, trying to pick up the counter girl, but no matter how tired I get, a good nap at the expense of Shevchik's biology class and I am good to go again. So, once again, I don't have anything useful to say, so I just put my hand on her head and stroke her hair. After a couple of minutes, I tell her, "I don't know how you do it. And I don't know why you do it." She still doesn't say anything, and I didn't expect an answer anyway, so I continue stroking her hair.

She's quiet for at least a minute. Maybe more. She starts to talk but doesn't; cuts herself off. Then she says, "I do it...I do it because I have to. I mean, it's expected of me. And I expect of me. I don't know. It's kind of like a trap, because once you're known as the superachiever, it's not like you can suddenly become some bigtime slacker, you know?" I nod; this is true, I suppose. "I mean, it's not like I'm really trapped though, cause I like all the things I do. Besides, I don't even know what I'd do if I wasn't always studying, or running basketball drills, or writing copy for the yearbook, or student council, or, whatever." She trails off. "I don't know."

There's a lot I could say. I could tell her that if she would stop doing everything that was "expected" of her, she might find out what she really likes to do. I could tell her that she was going to die of a stress-induced heart attack before she was 23. I could tell her to slow down and enjoy life before too much of it was over. Instead, I smile, play with a chunk of hair. I tell her, "You could sit in your back yard and have clear your head. Think your thoughts. Have conversations with the moon." She laughs. "Oh Jordan, I wish. I really do. I wish I could just quit everything tomorrow. I wish I could never go to school again, and just follow Phish on tour or something. Go skydiving. I wish I didn't have to go to college." "Have you decided where you're going yet?" "I got in at Columbia." "I'll probably end up going to SUNY Alfred, I guess, if I even get in there. So, why don't you take a year off?"

Ananda laughs again. You know I can't do that."

"You can do whatever you want. You're a free woman."

"Free is the last thing I am. No one is free, anyway. It's all just a myth."

I don't have anything to say, not that I ever really had anything to say in the first place. We sit and watch the stars for a while. When she leaves, she forgets her shoes. I was going to give them back the next time she came over, but after that, Ananda doesn't stop over for the rest of the month. It's May, and she has year-end hassles to deal with: yearbook, student council, finals, graduation announcements and invitations, her valedictorian speech. So she doesn't have a whole lot of free time like I still seem to.

I go over to her house on graduation day. She's already wearing her white dress and has her make-up done, and her hair's up in rollers. I'm dressed and carrying my robe, on the way to the school. "I know you're busy and all, but I wanted to stop by before graduation. I just wanted to tell you, well, I got into Alfred. And I got you a card."

"Jordan! I didn't get you a card! I feel bad now."

I shrug. It's not a big deal, and now she's kinda embarrassing me. "Don't worry about it," I mumble. She carefully slides her finger under the flap so as not to rip the envelope. She's not the kind of person to rip open envelopes. I got her a funny card so she wouldn't cry, but she still did when she held up the Phish ticket. "I only got you one, cause you're coming with me. And I didn't want you to give away my ticket." She laughed. "Oh, I almost forgot. You forgot your shoes last month."

"I'm sorry I haven't talked to you in so long. It's just, you know, finals, and yearbook, and…"

"I know. It's okay."

"You could have just thrown the shoes away. They're broken anyway. It's not like I can still wear them."

"But you said they were your favorites, so I fixed them. I superglued them."

Ananda starting laughing and gave me a hug, still wiping away her tears.

home.
part II.
back to writings.