Natalie Waite, the MC who is seventeen and a freshman at college, has gone to see her English professor, one Arthur Langdon, for a purpose as yet unspecified. She’s sitting in his office thinking her usual odd thoughts while he’s finishing up some paperwork, when he suddenly turns to her and asks:
‘What were you thinking about?’
‘I was thinking about when I would be dead,’ Natalie said.
‘Dead?’ he said, surprised. ‘Are we going to die, you and I?’
‘I only worry about how,’ Natalie said soberly; unlike most of the things she found herself saying to Arthur Langdon, this was true. ‘I keep thinking that of course it’s got to happen, and even to me, but then I always think that somehow and someday this interesting person of mine will…’ She searched for a word. ‘Subside,’ she said finally. ‘I mean, I will be very suddenly aware of an ending, and that there is not going to be any more for me, and that I am not going to be with myself any longer. And that’s all right,’ she said, going on quickly as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘I’m only afraid of being caught unaware, of that terrible fast panic that comes when you’re very very frightened, and of being afraid when it happens. So then, of course, I always think I’ll kill myself before it can happen.’
She stopped, and Arthur Langdon said, ‘You have a very original mind, Natalie.'
Not only does this endear me to Shirley Jackson and her writing, it also provides me with a conjoined twin with whom to spend my evenings.
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