It’s 1971 and I’ve been called into the office for a lecture on my bad behavior of some sort. I’m speaking to the Vice Principal who is on the other side of a white counter with some secretaries and teachers. Behind me is a glass wall with a view of the tiled hallway, which is getting crowded with other West Junior High students on the break between classes, moving from classroom to classroom.
I see a friendly face, my sweetheart, Monica. She catches my eye with a big smile and then falls to the linoleum floor in the crowd of students. It’s instantaneous. One moment she’s smiling with big eyes and the next she’s on the floor.
Students crowd around her. I know what has happened.
“It’s her heart,” I call to the school staff. “Call an ambulance.”
They think I’m hysterical.
“Call an ambulance,” I demand. “She has a heart defect.”
Her mother had told me about it.
One of the secretaries goes into the hallway.
“Call an ambulance,” I shout again.
I move towards the door and the Vice Principal orders me to stay in the office. I protest. He tells me I’m the most self-centered kid he’s ever seen. A minute, maybe three, pass. Monica is on the floor, surrounded by students and adults. Someone calls the ambulance and soon they arrive. They put Monica on a stretcher. Her skin is pale, her eyes closed. All decorum in the office falls away and I leave with no comment.
“Where did they take her?” I ask a friend.
There’s only one hospital in Lawrence, Kansas. I leave the school building and ride my white Gitane bike down the big hill and north to the hospital. I throw it to the ground and go into the front entrance.
“I’m here to find out about Monica McNish,” I say.
They can’t tell me anything, so they say. I’m a minor. I’m not family. They don’t know.
I believe she is dead.
An hour or so later, someone — I remember it was an adult, I don’t remember who. Perhaps her parents. Perhaps a teacher. Tells me that yes, she passed.
Later, her mother invites me to the house to give her the details of what I saw. She is looking hard for a reason that I know she never will find. She takes me into Monica’s room and asks if there is anything I’d like to have. I leave with a James Taylor album — we had seen him perform together not long before.
I’ve had many other people die in my life. I’ve even watched several other people die. Yet Monica is the person I miss the most. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t have time to truly know each other. We were just 13, with explosions of emotions, protests, music and chaos happening all around us — though her quiet home with her mother and father was, for me, a peaceful refuge.
I feel her sneaking up on me at the end of every October, and by the 29th, I usually realize what is happening — Oh, it’s Monica’s anniversary. I’m still very close to two of our mutual friends, Jolynn and Omi, though I rarely see them. Today I read something Omi posted about Monica. And I got a few texts from Jolynn. These words made me feel warm.
And from Monica, I received a visit, as sometimes happens. She’s on my shoulder now, vaporous and warm.
When I reimagine 1971, I follow a thread from my digital present that takes me back 55 years to an analog past. Very different places. But the energy I feel at my desk right now in a garden in Manhattan is the same energy I felt when I was with her back then. A warm, swirling ball of particles, as real as any ball. At the moment, that warmth keeps me present and connected to Monica in both places at once. And I like it.
Wow…