Found || Dead Poets Society

four

They had all left. Well, everyone but Neil. He was having quite a pleasant conversation with Ms. Keating about her book preferences. She had the camera in her hands resting atop Old Yeller, but she had yet to look at the photo that was taken.

"Well," she said, "I'll read anything with plenty of words on a page."

"Even the really old books? I can't really understand half of Jane Austen's words!"

She jumped up from the tree, walking back inside. "Which is why you must learn to love the big words, Neil! I'll see you sometime or another."

He waved, and she went to her dorm. She shut the door and sighed contently. She grabbed a random book from off the nearest piece of furniture, and ironically she was greeted with the cover of Pride and Prejudice, and she laughed. It wasn't her favorable Virgil and Homer or the challenge Neil took upon himself known as Shakespeare, but the words were nonetheless grand.

She tossed the book back where it was and decided to continue her studies in trigonometry and physics. She had no teacher but herself. It was nice to know that she was trusted enough to manage her own time.

She pulled a record out for her turntable. Ricky Nelson. She smiled. He might have been her favorite artist, and especially at such a young age.

---

She slammed her physics book closed just as the line of A Teenager's Romance ended. Exhausted, she dropped her head onto the book's cover.

Someone knocked on the door. "Come in," she yelled, her voice muffled by old leather.

Her father walked in, as usual, in a sort of comfortable hesitance. "Hi, dear," he said.

She popped her head up. "What is it?"

"Well, we don't want you to be late to lunch again, do we?"

"I suppose so." She stood up and straightened out her hair, running a hand through it several times before following her father out the door. Then she remembered something. "Go on, Dad. I'll catch up in a bit."

"Alright." He closed the door softly and Amanda went to her typewriter.

It seems that this morning, instead of doing the teaching, I've done the learning. In the past hour or so I've studied trigonometry and physics. I've also taken a photograph of myself sitting outside reading. Well, I didn't take it myself, but my father's senior students did. And looking back at it, I don't believe I could find any other moment so pleasantly pretty.

After that she replaced the needle and put the record back inside its cover, slipping it in the drawer along with the rest.

---

At lunch she brought her copy of Old Yeller, just for the sake of it. The photograph had developed a long time ago, and she was slowly flipping through the thin newsprint pages under the table. It turned into a mannerism at this point, a comfort, though she didn't really need it; she already felt quite at home at Welton. She hadn't looked at the photo just yet.

"I have an idea," said her father next to her. "You could go into town!"

"Yes!" exclaimed Ms. Glynis from her other side. "And it's not like you need a chaperone. They should be able to allow you to, you're pretty much a teacher here."