The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.39 Saṁdhi

January – August, 2003

Justin Kimball was still four months away from his high school graduation when Richard met him that winter.

Justin was a brilliant kid with a flair for languages and a 4.0 GPA, who could go to any college he wanted. Despite that, he had decided to stay close to home, but only if the University's Linguistics department was up to snuff. He made an appointment to talk to some professors in the department prior to deciding, and was on a campus tour when he met Professor Richard Pratt.

Justin was still seventeen. Richard was thirty-three.

Richard was taken with the boy immediately. Justin was a handsome kid, with dark brown hair and a muscular build that was actually a little harder than Richard usually liked. But he had piercing green eyes—a trait that Richard found desperately sexy in a young man. He also had a bit of a swagger about him that Richard thought was both arrogant and charming, and he was wearing a battered Levi jacket with the NSYNC logo embroidered on the back. It was as if the boy's whole look was calculated to appeal to all of Richard's high school fantasies. It was clear this boy knew what he wanted, and Richard hoped, right from the first, that it would be him.

Richard was seven years into his role as a linguistics professor at the University, and his career was on a definite upward trajectory. The graduate student who was showing Justin around left him in Richard's office to chat about the program that the University offered. And in that conversation, Richard discovered this boy was not just some handsome jock. He also had a brilliant mind.

"I've had a knack for languages," Justin said, "ever since I was a kid. Our neighbor growing up was an old Russian lady, and when I was five, I used to go over to her apartment most afternoons, so she could give me tea and teach me Russian words. I loved it."

"How much did you pick up?" Richard asked, watching the boy toy with his little Ganesh statue on the corner of the desk.

"Quite a bit. They didn't offer Russian in high school, so after she died, I had to learn that all on my own. But I took Spanish my sophomore and junior years, and I've been working on French for the past nine months. I think I have a pretty good grasp on all three languages."

Richard was surprised. A high school senior that had a good grasp on four languages was something he hardly ever saw. But the boy wasn't done.

"I got a little bored with the romance languages, so I've been studying Latin and Sanskrit on my own too."

Richard tried not to let the shock show on his face. Sanskrit was his specialty, and it was rare in Utah to find anybody interested in it, let alone a high school senior who might be coming to the University.

"How are you learning Sanskrit," he asked. "I can't believe they offer that in your high school."

Justin laughed. "Not hardly. I ordered copies of Monier-Williams Grammar and Lanman's Sanskrit Reader online. They feel a little beyond me, but they're interesting."

Those were both texts that Richard used in his Sanskrit seminar. And he knew they weren't cheap, or easily available. This boy was a bit of a wonder.

"But why Sanskrit and Latin? Do you just have an interest in dead languages? Or do you plan to become a monk?"

The boy laughed. "No, definitely not. But maybe it's because they're not spoken much anymore. I find that interesting. It's like unearthing a fossil and dusting it off. It's fascinating to think what the world was like when people actually spoke those languages, and see the remnants of them in the words we still use today."