Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [8]
It was the longest and shortest two years of my life. I emerged from my thesis defense bleary, relieved, and clueless. All but three of the writers from my class left town after graduation. The rest fled to bigger, brighter lights. I wished them well, saw them off to Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh. Where did they get the energy? I was too physically exhausted to move and too emotionally spent to consider another career change. Two months before defending my thesis, I accepted a teaching position at the university. As a part-time teacher I was paid by the class, which meant no summer salary and no health benefits. It was not a terrible job, but sometimes in class, halfway through a lesson, I’d wake up from what felt like a suspended dream and become suddenly very aware of the twenty young faces staring back at me, waiting. During one such spell of wakefulness, I laughed so hard at the absurdity of the situation I couldn’t collect myself and had to dismiss class twenty minutes early.
I’d left a stable career to pursue my dream. One master’s degree and $10,000 later, I was back pushing paper. Only at a much smaller desk.
Zoë was my saving grace. We met while working the Thanksgiving food pantry at a small local church. It was my first semester of teaching. I’d been a more or less faithful member of Copenhagen Baptist since arriving in town, drawn to the little church by its charismatic leader, Pastor Maddock, a minister whose dual degrees in theology and literature colored his sermons with a writer’s love of metaphor and subtlety.
Zoë had lived in Copenhagen longer than I had, but had been systematically trying out every church within a fifty-mile radius since arriving. With her petite figure and colorful wardrobe, she could have passed for a high school student; I was shocked to find out that she had just graduated from the university. The church secretary used our shared love of writing to introduce us. Within ten minutes we were fighting about C. S. Lewis.
“Overrated,” she claimed.
“You’re kidding,” I said. “He takes spiritual concepts hackneyed out of all originality and makes them new again. You have to at least give him credit as a storyteller—what about the Narnia books?”
“Overrated,” she repeated. “You ask any Christian writer who their favorite author is, and I’ll bet they’ll say C. S. Lewis. He’ll at least be in the top five.”
“He’s popular because he’s good,” I countered.
“He’s got bandwagon appeal. He’s Christian trendy—like girls with nose rings.” When she crossed her arms, her plastic glitter bracelets jingled.
She made a point, she explained, of remaining indifferent to anything praised by the popular vote. This philosophy applied to movies. She hadn’t seen five of the recent blockbuster films because they were blockbusters.
I reverted back to C. S. Lewis. “So what if no one you knew liked him. What if everyone thought he was a joke. Then would you list him as one of your top five?”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t matter because I don’t think he’s good.”
“Everyone’s entitled to their opinion,” I said. I made no effort to conceal my annoyance.
A week later, while driving home from work, I saw Zoë winding around town perilously on an old-school banana-seat bike. It was below zero, the wind bullying the snow into huge drifts that covered the roads and clogged the sidewalks. She had three canvas bags full of groceries hanging from her handlebars. They caught like sails in the wind. She swayed dangerously in one direction, then the other.
Hearing my car approach, she maneuvered shakily to the curb. I pulled up beside her, lowering my window.
“You want a ride?” I asked.
She was wrapped in scarves and wore a beanie cap with earflaps. Her freckled cheeks were bright red from the cold.
“Where will I put my bike?”
“That’s my place.” I gestured up the block. “If you leave it there, I’ll take you the rest of the way home.”
She studied the road ahead, glanced back over her shoulder. “All right,” she said. “It is kind of freezing.