"So, are you a master, or a candidate?" asked Caryn at breakfast, of June. Caryn is one of the new yearlings. She knows novices don't wear brown, but not much else.
"Neither," said June, and took a bite of a bagel.
We don't normally have bagels here, but one of the second-years has an off-campus job at a bagel place in town brought in a large quantity of day-olds. Caryn, the yearling, looked at my wife in confusion.
"What are you?"
"What do I look like?"
"If this is a trick question, I don't get it."
"I win."
"June, be nice," I said. She smiled at me, briefly.
"I'm an ally. I've graduated, and now I've come back to help, just not as a candidate."
Come back to help and to live with your husband, I thought, while I piled pieces of a spinach omelette on a bagel. She doesn't have to help, Coffee Joe doesn't, particularly, she could just live with me, but that's her. She's as involved as any candidate is.
"Why do you do that?" asked Cristin, another yearling. "Masters, too, you get such a kick out of not giving us straight answers."
"We do give straight answers," I said. "The problem is your questions are crooked."
"We're brain-washing you, is what we're doing," said June with a straight face.
"I can't tell if you're joking," Caryn said.
"If she's not smiling, she's joking," I said.
"Also, when I am smiling," added June.
"Here's a hint," offered Ollie, "I think you need to know is not whether she's joking, but whether she's lying."
Afterwards, on our way out of the Dining Hall, June took my arm and leaned against my shoulder for a moment as we walked. I looked down at her and saw that she was smiling.
"You like messing with yearlings, don't you?" I said.
"I like messing with everybody," she answered. "But yearlings, they all seem so muddled and so clueless."
"As I recall, I didn't just seem muddled and clueless, I was muddled and clueless."
"I wasn't entirely joking about the brain-washing," she admitted.
"I know."
"It's not brain-washing, but it is...brain adjustment?"
"It's transformation. They agree to it and they ask for it, for the crooked questions they ask to be straightened by straight answers."
"From other students."
"Sometimes, yes."
"You did it for me."
"Yes," I acknowledged.
"And you let others do it for me."
"Yes."
"And I gave you such a hard time for it."
"Yes."
"I love you, Daniel. Did you know that?"
"Yes."
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