Limitless

Prolouge

The girl I knew was out of ordinary. She came to class late almost every day, and when she did come on time, she never paid attention to what I was teaching to the rest of the class. She was like this to the rest of her classes, but to mine, it was the worst!

Remarkably, she always did well on her exams, projects, and essays. I made sure, and I've checked numerous times, that she wasn't cheating. After the first exam I conducted with my class, I was skeptical of how she would do. The exam was difficult, where it involved heavy language and complex writing structures that I prepared my classes on. She was the only one to get a perfect score that day. I went home astonished and baffled at the paper in front of me. Her writing was swift as if she knew every answer right then and there. I even took a larger step and checked for eraser marks. There was none to be seen. Every definition she had to explain was highly articulate, every example she had to write was perfect, and I couldn't believe it. I went to work the following day and brought her aside, ready to accuse her of cheating off of something she must've prepared beforehand! She blatantly replied that she hadn't.

I didn't believe it, so for the next few exams and essays, I made her sit next to me while the rest of the class sat in their seats, visibly confused about the move. I watched her carefully, ready to snatch the piece of paper that she would secretly pull out from her sleeve, or take a peek at the notes she had written on her ankle. I was ready to catch her cheating right then and there, but as the minutes passed by in the classroom, I just found myself watching nothing out of the ordinary. She did know the answers. She never cheated. She took one look at the question in front of her and wrote.

That day, it was a creative essay, asking what the students would think of what the meaning of life is. A full forty-five minutes, she had only written the paper in half of that time. Without a word, she handed the paper to me, picked up her bag, and left the room quietly. I looked down and started to read, thinking of the possibility that she had bullshitted the entire thing. That's what most of my students did to this essay since most never thought of it that deeply.

Yet, I underestimated her once again.

She wrote in a level that was possibly matched with Hemingway or Fitzgerald. It was like watching a pianist improvising a song, knowing which note to join the next. She wrote a snippet of her childhood, the times where she sat on her window sill and think of the outside world, the times where she had watched her neighbors argue and laugh together, the times where she observed human life evolved slowly in front of her, seeing people grow and change and the world around us morphing as well. She remarked that there is no answer to the prompt. Everyone would say something different, that is the universal truth. Ironically, she mentioned, the relative answer was simple: we find our own purpose and answer. The question is limitless and so is the result.

Her name was Athena Vids; she was only 17 years old when she died in my arms on June 15th.

She was a writer, just pure, raw talent sitting lazily in the back of the class, staring outside the window, possibly wishing she was somewhere else. She was more than just a lazy student. Athena was someone larger than a simple human. Her mind was greater than our own. Athena was complex. A puzzle no one could ever solve nor see the end to. Athena was more than any of us could ever be, sitting here today.

Athena was limitless.