Alex traversed the silent campus to where he was supposed to be picked up, when he heard a girl's voice coming from the canopy outside the main office.
"...diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the-" the girl jumped once realizing she wasn't alone.
"Sorry," Alex replied, almost as a reflex, "I wasn't being a creep or anything. I just didn't want to interrupt you."
"No, you're fine," her face flushed red, "I just thought you were someone else is all. No worries, just, you don't make too much noise when you walk, do you?"
"I guess not," he chuckled by the observation, "I'm Alex by the way, and that poem you were just reciting... I recognize it. Wasn't it 'The Road Less Taken'?"
"Close enough, it's 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost."
"That's the one. I remember it from class way back when. Like, forever ago."
"Yeah, I have to memorize it along with a bunch of other poems," she sighed as if the assignment wasn't enough, "Say, Alex, right? I'm Liz, if you couldn't tell by the enormous fucking stitching on my bag. My grandma made it and wouldn't let me go to school without it."
"No way," Alex's hand could hardly cover the grin stretching across his face, "I wish my grandma did shit like that for me."
"Oh whatever," Liz tightly crossed her arms and gave a glare, "I bet your book bag's so fucking cool. Yeah, it's just a plain black book bag alright. So. Fucking. Cool. Yup, we got cool-guy-Alex over here."
Her words turned into more of a mumble as her face tightened. Of course, she wasn't actually upset, but instead of being embarrassed like any other new kid, she shot back with humor. It was a smart move on her part, a move probably learned after having to meet new people throughout her life.
"Sorry Liz," Alex whipped his face, "It's just, you don't see that every day. I actually didn't notice it until you pointed it out. But anyway, what class is that assignment for?"
"English Four"
"A senior like me. Nice," Alex nodded.
"Yeah, moving mid-year sucks, but what can you do? As for the assignment, I wish we were doing something a bit deeper. Like actually explaining what these poems mean."
"That'd be too easy though. Well for one, 'The Road Not Taken' is about a road... that wasn't taken."
"No shit Sherlock," now Liz was the one who was laughing back, "Most people think it's a simple poem about choosing your own path and splitting away from what everyone else is doing. But it's actually not."
"You're fucking with me right?"
"Just listen," she tried to put it as simply as possible, "The poems talks about two paths and how they're all different and shit, but actually they're the same. See, the entire time this guy's walking down the path he chose, he's thinking about the other path and where that might've led. The paths only seem different because it's all in his head, since the poem's told in first person. So when you think about it, the poem's actually about regret, or rather, wanting to change the things we've done. So yeah, the path you pick hardly matters, but what actually matters is how well you're able to live with that path you've chosen."
"Wow," Alex was having a miniature existential crisis, "My eighth grade teacher really fucked that lesson up."
