Chapter Text
Kitt Wyoming.
One highway, five gas stations, three seven-elevens, population 9,127- and shrinking.
It was thirty miles from Laramie up 30th North and the popular destination for truckers and lost tourists who needed to get to Colorado for drugs or Utah for God.
They said that no one came to Kitt to be there, but to stop being somewhere else, of course, Lapis herself never wanted to be anywhere so it was a good enough place to be nowhere at all.
Lapis worked at a New York City private school before. Upstate, basically in Manhattan.
She lived in a nice enough highrise with three other people and in the company of noise and more noise. Personal reasons, to say the least, pushed her feet thousands of miles away, to disappear into the dusty plains and herself.
The kids this time didn’t arrive in Lamborghini's, the kids didn’t ask who designed her shoes, the kids had nowhere etched into their lungs and fingernails.
Lapis walked that way.
“Do birds know that they could be dinosaurs?” Lapis heard the question, Lapis definitely heard the question. Her back was still turned as she held her chalk delicately in hand, she flinches, she hadn’t called on him.
Lapis turns around slowly, they were doing a unit on marine life, she sighs internally.
“Yes, Jeremy?”
Jeremy’s eyebrows were knit together, this was the Sophomore class, approximately 20 kids and shrinking. Jeremy set his jaw, “I’m just saying, do they know they could be dinosaurs again, or do they just choose not to like idiots?”
Lapis’s mouth hung open, she had a unit on fish anatomy to do. She had an aspirin lying on her desk waiting for her.
“Ohmygod,” the girl next to him elbowed him in the ribs, the one who took a bus an hour to get here and lived where mapmakers never drew, “Birds don’t choose to be anything, they can’t think dummy.”
Lapis put her finger in the air, “Many birds can and do think actually Kendra, African gray parrots are known to be able to have original language skills-” She says rotely.
“There you go,” Jeremy elbows her back, “No reason they shouldn’t be tryin’ harder. You said they were dinosaurs once right miss?” He asked innocently, batting his long lashes, the class was interested now.
Sean Tanner raised his hand high in the air, “But we can’t choose how we evolve.”
“Why not?” Someone else asked, “I mean, if they put themselves in the right place.” Bethany Brooks said as she played with the end of her scarf fastidiously.
“No, no, no, it just happens!” Kendra, farm girl and new defender of science it seemed, shot back.
Lapis put her hands up, she wasn’t going to have another water cycle debate involving wooly mammoths on her hands, “Kids, kids,” She clapped her hands together, “Evolution is a natural process over millions of years. And they don’t choose-”
“Why not?”
Lapis reminds herself about her aspirin, “Our unit on evolution will continue into next week.” They had started in the ocean, thank God the school board barely cared about ventilation systems, much less whether or not she taught evolution. “We can explore how it is a gradual process by birth and survival, the environment ‘chooses’ who is best fit.” She tries to explain it simply.
“Then why doesn’t-” Here they go, Lapis widens her stance prepared to turn around and draw a fish on the board so large it would at least quiet them for a little. However, she doesn’t have to draw mega-fish.
The door on the side of the room swings open, Lapis back straightens, hoping it wasn’t an observer for the class that day.
“Oh,” A short woman in a tweed suit and elbow patches stalked in, her blonde hair as erect as it ever was, like she wanted to be Einstein with a hangover, “Pay no attention to me.”
She walked in the front of the classroom, trying to pass relatively neatly in front of them as she made her way to the science teachers office that happened to be off of the side of the science room. Lapis blew air out of her nose.
“Ooooooooooooh,” The class oohed like they were on a television set, Lapis scrunched her nose up and she swears she sees Peridot give a crooked grin.
“Will you guys not do that?” She mumbled to herself so only the front row could hear. Melony Bracket grinned into her hand.
“Professor P!” One of the kids yelled, “Why do you think birds don’t try to be dinosaurs again?” Lapis pulled at her hair, now they were just trying to mess with her.
Peridot paused, her cool-teacher demeanor kicking in, Lapis grinds her teeth, “Professor ‘P’,” Lapis says slowly, “has some Bill Nye videos to get to and her subject is that of bottle rockets. Not biology.” She says steadily, Peridot was glancing at her slowly.
“Yes of course, no plant matter for me!” She sings as she straightens her jacket, “Remember kids, the phrase of the day is ‘entropy just isn’t what it used to be’.” She winks with a laugh.
The class laughed, most likely not because they knew what it meant, but because she said it in her silly voice.
Lapis clenched her hands, her irritation sprinkling under her skin, “Yes, yes, they completely know what that is. I have to return to a lesson.”
Peridot gave a short bow, “I won’t keep you.” Lapis narrowed her eyes, the class snickers to itself and Lapis doesn’t like the looks the kids are giving them.
Lapis turned toward the board and continued to right the saline concentration of fish and about their freshwater versus ocean acidity levels, another kid called out, “Maybe you and professor P could discuss dinosaurs over dinner?”
Lapis flinches.
Who knew country kids were more gossipy and less hetero-centric than expected.
-----------
Lapis wasn’t sure she liked being ‘shipped,’ she wasn’t sure if she liked getting out of bed in the morning in all honesty.
She shared a small four by five yellow closet of a teacher’s office with Peridot 'P,' real last name Penalli, they tried to dance around each other liked cramped solar systems passing in the night, but it was harder than it looked. They shared the room, the classroom, and the title of ‘those two science teachers.’
There were two cramped desks that nearly touched as they sat across from each other, both were varying degrees of messy with papers stacked against walls, pencils and pens scattered and two opposing laptops. The floor was a cracked beige under two black office chairs (Lapis had stolen the good one from the counseling office), and the walls were yellow.
Walls as yellow as a yield light on a traffic signal, yellow as a harvest moon or the inside of sea cucumbers (senior thesis dissection), as yellow as the end of the world.
As a child, Lapis had a near-death experience and swore she saw the sun exploding like a bursting gumdrop and she held her breath as she waited the eight minutes it took to reach her. The sky was a brilliant saturated yellow all across the fiery atmosphere.
Peridot looked at her as Lapis downed her aspirin, a treat for herself, Peridot leaned forward, she tapped her pen on the desk and then looked up again, “How’re the kids on your marine unit?”
Lapis slumped over, “I wish I could do microbes for the whole semester,” She grumbles, she was great at microbes, “And they would all just fall asleep.”
Peridot tutts at her, “You know the point of being a teacher is to keep your students awake right?” She said mildly.
Lapis yawns, “Maybe for you. I would teach nap time if I had the choice.”
Peridot sighs and leans forward, “I can tell.” She says flatly.
They descend into an awkward pause, it was an awkward space. Lapis balls up one of the useless memos they sent out every two months or so, reminding them that the air conditioning would be fixed eventually.
She leans back in her chair and lightly tosses the scrap with a flick of her wrist and watches it arch delicately through the air. It sails like the hopes and dreams of LA actors down, Lapis watches it bounces off the lip of the trashcan.
“Oooh,” Lapis grimaces, “So close.”
Peridot looks down at the crinkled trash at her feet, “Another one for the disappointment board.” She responds dryly and points at their scratched chalk board that held an ironic number of tallies on it.
Lapis shakes her head and her knees feel like snapping rubber bands as she stands up and walks to the corner, she places a tally with their last piece of good chalk.
Peridot taps on her desk, “What was the last one for?”
Lapis looked over her shoulder weakly, “Waking up at 7.”
“Don’t you do that everyday?”
Lapis snorts and doesn’t respond, just kneels down slowly and paws at the white sheet of paper she had thrown. Peridot was watching with a look on her face of a confused cocker spaniel.
Lapis sighs and eases herself onto the floor, sitting down as she places the thing in the trash. She lets her eyes drifts up and she stares at the ceiling languidly.
Peridot placed her head on her desk in her periphery, “Lapis Lazuli.” Lapis doesn’t twitch at her name, “There’s a sad cat in my neighborhood.”
Lapis makes a face and rests the back of her head on the wall, “Okay?”
Peridot snorts, “I’m going to name it after you.”
Lapis furrows her brow and Peridot laughs to herself lightly, Lapis rocks forward, “I’m naming the blender in my house after you .”
Peridot got up and they both glanced at the clock, teachers had to stay a half hour after school to do office hours, no one usually came. Peridot put her papers in order and then turned to her slowly, “Why?”
“Transparent and always yelling. Lot’s of buttons to push.” She says as she crosses her legs and makes a small pointed smile.
Peridot opens her mouth and then closes it, before she can say anything the school bell rings like the coming revelation. Metallic and weeping a soft sound of relief.
Peridot reached for her briefcase (she really brought a briefcase) and Lapis rolled herself off the faded floor.
They part quickly with the yellow walls to their backs and pass the flat dark desks of their classroom. They emerge the partially filled hallways and part ways. Some students had ‘extra-hours’ after school and the bell dismissed them as well.
Lapis climbs the stairs in ones and twos to make it to her Oldsmobile she bought off the first person she met in New Jersey. It somehow was still going.
She sighs and wobbles to the dented door, she pauses as she yanks at the handle, looking up thoughtfully at the pale blue sky.
Peridot was going to name the sad stray cat after her.