Age 14 - Part 6

Months crawled along. Doc porter worked with Izzy’s teacher, hoping to encourage her as a future doctor, but Izzy’s mind wasn’t the scientific sort. She did show promise as a surgical assistant, though, even closing a wound on her own with minimal supervision.

Other girls made efforts to befriend Izzy with varying degrees of sincerity, at the insistence of some of the town’s mothers. Izzy tried too, but she never felt like she had anything in common with them. She grew her hair out, so the curls were long enough to tickle her collar, and she wore clothes suitable for a young lady, but despite looking like one of them, she was an outsider.

Dante remained her only friend, but his time was divided between her and her former friends. Activities like hunting and racing weren’t much fun with just the two of them, but it made them both happy when she played music for him. When a theater troupe came to town, Dante took Izzy to see the play four times so she could try to learn its music. On the last day before they travelled on, she questioned their violinist for nearly an hour to try to perfect the new songs. One of Dante’s circuit girl guests even recognized one of the play’s songs, which Izzy found affirming.

In spring, Dante died. The farm at which he worked relied heavily on a tractor pieced together from countless scavenged before-bunker machines. It broke frequently, always requiring a combination of ingenuity and force to fix. This time, Dante’s arm got caught, and his artery severed.

After that, Izzy only ever played her violin for her grandmother, when nobody else was around.