Educated

Each time I glanced at him, I felt that old instinct at work in me, tensing my
muscles, preparing me to take flight.
I left the hall the moment dessert was served. It was a relief to escape all
that refinement and beauty—to be allowed to be unlovely and not a point of
contrast. Dr. Kerry saw me leave and followed.
It was dark. The lawn was black, the sky blacker. Pillars of chalky light
reached up from the ground and illuminated the chapel, which glowed,
moonlike, against the night sky.
“You’ve made an impression on Professor Steinberg,” Dr. Kerry said,
falling into step beside me. “I only hope he has made some impression on
you.”
I didn’t understand.
“Come this way,” he said, turning toward the chapel. “I have something to
say to you.”
I walked behind him, noticing the silence of my own footfalls, aware that
my Keds didn’t click elegantly on stone the way the heels worn by other girls
did.
Dr. Kerry said he’d been watching me. “You act like someone who is
impersonating someone else. And it’s as if you think your life depends on it.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
“It has never occurred to you,” he said, “that you might have as much right
to be here as anyone.” He waited for an explanation.
“I would enjoy serving the dinner,” I said, “more than eating it.”
Dr. Kerry smiled. “You should trust Professor Steinberg. If he says you’re
a scholar—‘pure gold,’ I heard him say—then you are.”
“This is a magical place,” I said. “Everything shines here.”
“You must stop yourself from thinking like that,” Dr. Kerry said, his voice
raised. “You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light.
Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you
always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. You are gold.
And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you came from, will not
change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even change
how you see yourself—even gold appears dull in some lighting—but that is
the illusion. And it always was.”
I wanted to believe him, to take his words and remake myself, but I’d
never had that kind of faith. No matter how deeply I interred the memories,
how tightly I shut my eyes against them, when I thought of my self, the