The Honest Student

The most honest person you’d ever meet has only one thing in common with a poseur: they can both be writers.

The student wrote those words in the small black notebook while he sat on a Lincoln Park bench. There was a light snow and he watched closely as it fell lazily into the light shining from the lamppost; it fell just as lazily, yet more rapidly, out of the light and to the ground. It was well past midnight. The last time he checked his watch it was twenty minutes to 1:00 a.m., but that was some time ago.

This was the student’s time of day to write. He could never maintain a steady sleep schedule. Sleep would come when he could no longer write. He also admired the big city more-so when it was a ghost town. His town. A city he ran to, just over a year ago, to escape his hometown; the place he had called a ‘trap’ in the small black notebook. He came from a place where he could not write. It was all there in the notebook; how he had no desire to accept what he was told; what was within reach—as some finite reality. He believed that we cannot possibly know everything. Everybody, he wrote, just wants you to give them a conclusive explanation for your being there. But the student ran away from this trap.

The student wrote on, and on and on. He wrote about the old homeless man he watched cross the street wearing a nice blue beanie he thought would look nice on himself. The old homeless man was named Sanders in the small black notebook. Sanders was immortalized by the student—the truth about Sanders according to the student could not be wrong because he had just invented it. The old homeless man disappeared around the corner and the student watched the snow once more.

When Sanders was gone and the snow ceased to fall, the student’s pencil rested motionless between his thumb and index finger. He stared at the powdery white ground at his feet. A line was scribbled into the notebook:

Oh, to write something worth reading.

He knew how empty this statement was, and so his mind grabbed hold of the wall, out of fear; he could suddenly feel the bags under his eyes weighing his entire face down. It was painful. He thought about how he was going to pay rent the next day. Yesterday had been the first of the month and he was a day late already. He knew he would have to pick up a shift at the plant the next morning. I’m not made to think practically, he thought, and even wrote this in his notebook. He felt bitter towards the notebook, and on an impulse he wrote feverishly about himself. He was normally slow and methodical with his choice of words; he traded that natural instinct for a misplaced frustration. His pencil danced without direction on the clean pages of the notebook.

The student confessed all of his grievances and lamented his inability to make it in the city any longer. He did not have rent money for the following day. He wrote about a cold vegetable sitting lonely on a park bench; the snow swirling every which way, but inevitably joining the powder on the ground. He wrote about Sanders, the homeless man, who walked care-free and aimlessly through the city. Although, as he wrote about Sanders now, the student thought he must care about some things. In a cold place like this there is warmth to be sought after; a hunger that could be eating at him for the next several hours. He stopped writing and thought for a moment about Sanders. He must have a real name. But then what is that name, to anyone? The student wrote all of it in the notebook. A name is just another thing we are told, and accept as is. He wrote aggressively once again. The pencil had become too dull.

Finally the student gave in and admitted, in writing, what he truly wanted—money. Money would make all of this feel more comfortable, he thought. The wind from the lake wouldn't feel so cold, and the snow wouldn’t be so wet. His words could mean something, with money. He had to think of a specific dollar amount, in order to make it real. Any truth could be true here because he would have invented it. He wrote it down, humbled with every stroke of his pencil:

The student on the bench had $20,000 cash in a rubber band, stuffed into his coat pocket.

He picked the pencil up off the notebook and let out all of the air he was holding in his chest. A slow, defeated smile formed on his face as he stared through the pages he had just written on. The writing had brought him a source of elation; a place to crawl up into and close the door behind him as he would escape the world he’d been told about. But he was done.

He stood up from the snowy bench and stretched his legs. He opened his coat pocket to put his notebook and pencil away, but felt something was already there. It was the coldest his hand had felt all night. His fingers traced the edges of a thin rubber band squeezing onto something so thick. He set the notebook and his pencil on the snowy bench, and pulled the item from his pocket. The roll of $100 bills was heavier than anything he could remember holding. His eyes were fixed on the money for several seconds, and he hoped his empty stare would burn right through it; when it didn’t, he unwound the rubber band and began counting. The bills were endless.

The student counted, and re-counted, reaching the same amount each time: $20,000. He looked around at the empty park and the empty city, then down at the motionless white powder at the ground all around him. There was no explanation in sight. He put the money back in his coat pocket and was careful to seal it tightly. When he glanced back at the bench the small black notebook had vanished. The student could not help but believe it to be true. The notebook, with all his words, was gone. He stepped forward through the park and back to his apartment where he would get ready for work.

This had to be true because he had invented it.