“And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Eli continued, “you must not imagine Mr. Jackson hoisting the flag in front of awe-struck onlookers after victory at New Orleans. You must picture a man who split Native American families apart and sent them on a death mission to Oklahoma wasteland; whose vice-president turned against him to become his archenemy; whose petty rivalries got him into a brawl with his former aide-de-camp in a Nashville hotel…”

We were mock-trialing Andrew Jackson in U.S. History. Madoka, her mouth slightly ajar, sat on the side of the defense, her accusing eyes staring me down with a message I understood perfectly: Ad hominem attacks. This did not bother me, or Eli, or any others on the prosecution. It was business as usual, and yes, we were prepared to do anything to win. In the center of the room, Jeff, standing trial as President Jackson, sat with arms folded and facial expression full of couldn’t-give-less-of-a-shit.

Madoka and I went to high school together, and I think it’s safe to say she hated my guts. We shared lofty ambitions, and life dealt each of us a generous hand with which to pursue them. But that was the full extent of our similarities.

She was a superb jazz pianist; I, a classical trumpeter. She studied for calculus exams; I spent my time in calculus drawing caricatures of my physics teacher on the whiteboard near the back of the room, temporarily pausing to plow through the midterm, then turning back to finish my drawing. And when the time came, she flew to Boston; I drove to Berkeley. I never cared for her because she was a tryhard. She never respected me because I let my talent go to waste.

We both loved to write. She would write essays, opinions; all excellent works, except that in the process of studying for the SAT she internalized words like “chameleonic,” and these awkwardisms inevitably wound up in her writing. I, on the other hand, I wrote only stories. When I wrote historiographic papers or character analyses or even mathematical proofs, in my mind, I was still writing stories: flowing and free, naïve and overly dramatic. And seeing as I (ironically) never read any books — not for English class, not for leisure — this style became quintessentially me. Before long, it was the only way I knew how to commit to paper at all.

On June 10, I was supposed to meet with my girlfriend after the commencement ceremony. But to my surprise, Madoka pulled me aside and we ended up spending about an hour that evening walking along the old train tracks that line the Alameda-Oakland city border.

She wanted to show me something. She produced a neatly folded square of pages, which I dismantled to uncover a short story, handwritten. October, the title read. I shot her a puzzled look.
“Like the piece by Eric Whitacre,” she clarified.

I dove in, and I must admit, I struggled to understand it. But I could tell it was good, in the same way you can tell that a 20th-century classical piece is good even though you lack the context and training to appreciate it to full depth. And so for a few brief moments, I felt the refreshing rush of a world beyond my grasp — someone else’s intellectual palace. It had very rough patches, but promising ideas; I was actually a little jealous. Returning the sheets to her, I offered:
“It’s reasonably okay.” I have never been good at compliments.

She laughed — the kind of cryptic laugh that spells a weird mixture of amusement, and joy, and anguish, so that you’re not sure whether the correct response is to laugh along with her or apologize profusely, and so you just stand there in embarrassment and wait to see what happens.

“Fuck you, Jimmy,” she spat out in frustrated disgust. Shit. I opened my mouth to apologize, but my mind assembled the words so slowly, and Madoka whirled around so quickly, that by the time I was prepared, there was only the back of her crimson coat whisking down the empty tracks.