Hello, Readers! Here is another excerpt from my novella, The Ovidians. This is the story of the friendshiip of two women over a period of 40 years. The passage below describes the beginning of their unlikely friendship, which springs out of their reading of Ovid and their rivalry in Latin class.

The Ovidians, Chapter 2

Laurel was late for Latin on her first day at the new school. She glided into the classroom wearing as little as possible, disheveled from making out with a boy in the parking lot whose name, she thought, was Brad.  Later, she learned it was Timothy. 

She had excelled in Latin at many, many private schools, and was confident that she would, as usual, be the best in class, or “best in show,” as her mother Emma put it.  Emma regarded Laurel as a second Mr.Toodles, their famous prize-winning poodle.  The poodle had a tiny t-shirt:  MR. TOODLES RULES.

Laurel thanked God that Emma had not read John Stuart Mill’s autobiography – the dullest book assigned in an English class in the history of eastern boarding schools – because then she would have forced Laurel to begin studying classical languages at age 3. It would have turned her into an emotional dwarf like poor John Stuart Mill. who was depressed and unable to relate to anyone.

 Laurel may have been a well-bred poodle, who won the Latin Prize every year, but she was also a troublesome poodle: she had just been kicked out of her prestigious boarding school for being caught naked in a boy’s room with, obviously, a boy.

“And we weren’t even having sex!  It was just hot so we took our clothes off,” Laurel said indignantly.

“You’ve got to keep your clothes on now,” Emma snapped.

Laurel didn’t know about that.  She would wear whatever scanty outfit she felt like at this private day school in Illinois.  But now she sat down and flipped open her Latin book.  Mrs. B., the kind, elderly teacher, called on them one by one to translate lines from Ovid’s version of the Apollo and Daphne myth in Metamorphoses. 

At first Laurel was annoyed by a smart, fierce girl named Daphne who, instead of stumbling as she read the Latin aloud, actually read the lines in dactylic hexameters. It was just possible that the fierce girl would be her first new friend.

Then they pointed out all the jokes. Or were they jokes?  When Apollo pursues the nymph Daphne, he huffs and puffs, out of shape, while she runs much faster..

Daphne said, “I like the the silly repetition of Apollo’s use of the vocative and imperative: ‘Daughter of Peneus,  I pray,  Wait!’ and then a few lines later he varies the phrase with, ‘  Nymph, wait!”

Laurel added,”And it’s very funny when he goes on to say,  ‘I beg you, run more slowly and curb your flight, then I myself will chase you more slowly.”

“You both make good points,” said Mrs. B.  “And your interpretation of the text is splendid. Ovid is flexible, the most flexible and accomplished of poets. But his version of Apollo and Daphne is problematic.  Is it sunny and comical?  Or is it a tense, dramatic commentary on a woman’s resistance to sexual violence?”

“Daphne said, “Well, Cupid does shoot Apollo with an arrow of love and Daphne with an arrow of repulsion. But she is a mess, and I’ll bet she stinks, too, from all that running. And the wreath holds her rumpled hair ‘without law.’  That sounds unattractive. As for Apollo, he’s sweating and out-of-shape, struggling to keep up with her, so it is funny. “

“Hey, one thing I noticed,” Laurel said, “is that Daphne is turned into a laurel tree, so Daphne over there (she nodded at her competitor) is like the nymph, and I’m Laurel, the tree, so we’re doppelgängers.”

Daphne grudgingly laughed.  She’d hoped they’d be pitiless rivals, but now she, too, realized they’d be friends.  She said, “Poor Daphne!  What did it feel like to be turned into a tree?”

The bell rang, and the two best students left together.

There was, however, a setback in their friendship a few weeks later. One day, Daphne came out of the restroom into the dark hall and almost collided with Laurel, who was leaning against a locker making out with someone Laurel thought might be Kevin. 

“Jesus, it’s not like the whole school can’t see you,” said Daphne.

“Who cares?” Laurel asked.

“Your shirt is unbuttoned.”

Laurel silently took off her shirt and stood there in her camisole. 

“Do you want to be a sex object?” Daphne was appalled, though her own mother was a radical hipster feminist who encouraged her to bring home  boyfriends and would have considered Laurel’s behavior healthy. 

Laurel snorted.  “I am a sex object.”

Then the boy unbuttoned his shirt. Daphne dropped some books in her locker and stormed off to class,.

And then the principal came out of his office and told Laurel to put her shirt on.

Later Laurel apologized to Daphne for making her uncomfortable.  “My mother told me to keep my clothes on.  It’s kind of a thing.”

“Like a trope?  Like a pagan custom?”

“Mainly it’s a way to get kicked out of school.” 

“In that case, we should all take our clothes off.”

“Never mind,” said Laurel.  “This is one of those schools that expels no one.”

And then a boy walked past, leering at Laurel.  She gave him the finger.

“I’m many things,” she told Daphne. “But I refuse to be the school slut.”