Everything Waits

CHAPTER I

I’ve been drowning for many, many years. Down and down I sink, reaching forever and ever upward only to find fistful after fistful of water.

That’s why I don’t feel at home in my own house. Or in my own bed, or my own skin. Those aren’t home. I eat here, sleep here, be here, but it isn’t my home.

 I have a distant memory of golden light and soft music, and some strange beautiful floating sensation.

I dream of an enormous stormcloud every night. It never breaks. The lightning never strikes, and no rain falls. It just hangs in the sky, waiting.

CHAPTER II

A bird calls. Cold scratches at my skin. The sun wakes. Now all at once, everything comes together. I am awake. I pull myself out of bed. Achy feet hit the floor. I pull on my ugly school uniform. I’ve gotten used to it by now.

I walk to the bathroom. As I look in the mirror, I am reminded of my appearance.

Facial hair that I don’t want but don’t know how to remove intrudes on my upper lip. A school-mandated haircut makes my head into the shape of a green bean.

God, I wish the public schools were any better.

I started going to Heart of Christ Catholic School in second grade. The public schools just weren’t cutting it for little, dyslexic me. Fortunately, the catholic schools are great about accommodations. They have better all-around academics.

They are also catholic, which for some reason means that I have to have the ugliest haircut anyone has ever seen. It also means that every once in a while, I have to listen to a priest go on and on about something or another. Last week it was about how non-binary people aren’t real.

I brush my teeth and walk downstairs. After eating the same bland breakfast that I do every day, I get a ride from my dad to school. He probably asks me about what I have going on today, and I probably answer him and tell him enthusiastically about chess club or something, but whatever the two of us say, I can’t hear it. Sometimes when people talk to me it’s like listening to a recording of them talking played backwards.

I arrive at school, recite The Lord’s Prayer and The Pledge of Allegiance, and start my day. I go through my classes. My best classes are religion (it's easy to pass) even though I am constantly at odds with my teacher, and English. I love English. My teacher is incredible.

I’d like music class a lot more if it weren’t for my classmates. They made the last teacher quit, and it's looking like they’ll do the same to the new one. He almost cried on Wednesday.

The lunch tables are separated into a boys’ and girls’ table. That was completely by the choice of the students. I guess they’re all afraid of cooties or something.

Up until now, Monty has sat next to me. Xander switched schools because private school was too expensive, and Raj’s dad got a new job in the next state over, so Monty is my only friend. The same can not be said for Monty.

I don’t know a single person who isn’t nice to Monty, and I don’t know a single person that Monty isn’t nice to.

But just because he’s nice to them doesn’t mean he likes them. He dislikes all the same people that I do. I’m not sure what that means. But I guess it’s good.

The thing is that most of Monty’s friends are girls. And the girls sit at an entirely different table than the one I’m at.

So that leaves me stranded.

There is a gentle ticking from the small clock at the head of the lunchroom, towering over us as we eat. I hate that clock. It feels so imposing.

 Lockers slam in the hallway. Lunch trays clatter. billions of recorded voices play backward in my head. The clock feels like it's ticking twice as fast now. A wind in my mind begins to blow, and it blows harder and harder and harder until the bell rings.

CHAPTER III

My dreams of the storm on the beach grow more intense. I am never in the dreams. I am looking in from a completely outside perspective.

I keep going to school the same way for the next couple of weeks. Show up, daydream through my classes, and go home.

Eventually, by some miracle, it changes. I think Carrie (one of Monty’s friends) must have seen me longingly gazing at their table and invited me to sit with them.

It takes me a couple of days of sitting with them, but once I get comfortable, I get comfortable. I can say whatever I want around Monty and Carrie. They laugh hysterically at my jokes.  Finally, finally, the people who seemed untouchable at the beginning of the year are starting to become less and less like frozen statues in museums and more like real people; more like me.

Slowly, the voices begin to play forewords again.

It is a weekend night. I sit at home in my pajamas. My parents have both gone upstairs to bed.

A streetlight looks down at the sad pavement outside the big sunroom window The last cicadas of the season whir through the night air. Inside, I sit on the same uncomfortable couch watching the same sludgy garbage on my phone that I always do. Usually, that’s enough. Usually, as long as I keep the phone on the storm on the beach calms down.

Not tonight. I feel restless. The backward recordings pile on top of each other in the millions until I am swimming through a sea of voices. Words, like hail, hammer down on me.

I grab a fist full of my pajama-pants and squeeze as hard as I can but it doesn’t help.

I get up and walk to my dining room. On the table sits my computer. I open it and begin a fresh Word document.    

When I’m ready, I select one of the eerie reversed tracks and latch onto it mentally. I single it out until I can understand the words. Then I begin to hammer at my keyboard.

 For about fifteen minutes every thought that I have gets put on that document.

After my hands get tired, I lean back in my chair, close my eyes for a second, and then skim over what I’ve just written. It is absolute garbage. That’s okay. I’m warmed up now. I take a minute to breathe. The mess of word vomit on the blank page before me stares me dead in the face. I close the window on my computer.

I reopen Word. I start a new document. I put on my headphones and play recordings of waves. Now I don’t have to listen to any voice. Finally, I am really, truly alone.

For I don’t know how long, I just let myself be somewhere else. When I come back, that place is waiting for me on the page in front of me.

CHAPTER IV

As I lie in bed that same night, dark water swims around me. For only a few precious seconds everything is completely dark.

I can feel a great orchestra tuning eternally below me.

The void slowly shifts and changes into a black canvas. Dark sand and bright sky fill my view. Far out in front of me, I am shown the biggest storm cloud I have ever seen in my life. It churns and rumbles gently as it passes directly over me and I am completely overcome by its great shadow.

There is no rain. There is no lightning. The thunder stops completely.

SLAM. I am rocketed back into the real, grey world. The reality of my dark, familiar room sinks back into my skin and weighs me down.

Dreaming. I was dreaming. What was it? What did I see?

My mind latches back onto it for a couple more seconds. I reach for the closest thing I can type on and write the following:

         everything waits.

I know it is familiar, But I can’t remember where or when I heard it.

CHAPTER V

I sit slumped against a wall between periods. I am deathly hungry despite having just gotten out of lunch. My newfound teenage metabolism is a black hole.

On the wall above me is a bulletin board. It’s that time of year when the only thing covering the board are club sign-up sheets.

I stare at that massive cloud of lined pieces of paper every single day.

At the center of the board is the drama club sign-up sheet. Monty is in the drama club. I’ve seen that club perform. I go to their shows every year.

Month after month I show up and watch those people my age, who go to my school do some of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen, and know from the bottom of my heart that I could never, ever do that.

The bulletin board keeps on staring down at me. I hear a clarinet tuning in some far-off hallway.

Later that day, the hazy, bright world slowly unfurls around me as if a giant watercolor sheet were being unfolded behind my closed eyelids. My friends laugh and move vibrantly. Somewhere far away a gull calls. The sunsets and rises rapidly over bright foggy water, and–

–I wake up in math class. I loosely hold a pencil in a hand that aches from writing

“Can I use a poem I’ve already written?” We’re doing a poetry unit in English. Finally, we get to learn something other than subjects and predicates and superlatives and whatever.

“Sure, as long as it fits the assignment.” Good. It’s not that I would have any problem writing something new for this assignment, but someone needs to see this.

I open that second Word document from last night again, separating the big jumbled paragraphs into neat, orderly lines. I give it a title. The night beach.

There is one line at the end of the poem that doesn’t belong. There it is again. From my dream. I don’t even really remember putting it there.

everything waits.

I delete it and send the document to Mrs. Crim so that she can grade it. I put my head back down on my table and let the backward voices of my classmates wash over me like rain.

CHAPTER VI

Carrie:

We r going to rollerama.

u wanna come?

You:

Idk, kinda wanna stay home

Monty:

noo itll be fun just come on

Monty:

You always stay home.

I look over at my dad.

“Hey Dad, can you drive me to rollerama?”

It’s a dim Sunday evening. I’ve got that feeling again. Those dreams about the storm. The cloud follows me around wherever I go. The storm still does not break.

I go to the roller rink. The dim neon lights and cheesy music are all that fill my head for a while, and I can just live. Those reversed voices don’t matter, and I can almost trick myself into not missing the Island as much. I gossip with my friends, and by the end of the night, my mouth hurts from laughing.

At the end of the night, I go to the bathroom. I look in the mirror, and for once I can do something other than scrutinize every detail of my face. What’s more, for a split second I can almost see someone I recognize In that mirror.

         I’m going to live forever. I think. I’m going to feel like this forever.

 CHAPTER VII

 Monty and Carrie will never like me as much as they like each other. I’m always just the other one. I think that even in my own life I’ll always be a second priority. That’s something I’ve come to realize in the past few weeks.

That’s a terrible feeling, isn’t it? And It’s one I’ve felt before. I wish it were something I could blame on someone. But who? It isn’t Monty or Carrie’s fault. If they don’t like me, they don’t like me.

No, there’s no one else to blame. I was always meant to feel like this. It’s just some cruel part of nature.

My phone gently buzzes in my pocket. It’s Monty.                    

Monty:

Rollerama?

This is the sixth time since I went there the first time a couple of weeks ago. I’ve started to become disillusioned with that place. The sweaty teenage hormones that I once confused with happiness have worn off. But at least it's familiar now.

You:

sure.

I borrow some cash from my dad and ask him to drive me. I don’t tell him about how I haven’t slept well in days, but I think he’s begun to notice it. Still, he gives me the ride.

I find Monty. It is painfully quiet. I begin to struggle to put on my skates when a group of older kids walk through the door. Monty begins to stare at them.

         “Hey so… um… thanks for inviting me.”

         “Uh… Yeah, man. I’m gonna… um…”

By the time I look up, he’s already over with those older kids chattering away and skating around.

I skate around awkwardly in circles for song after song until I lose track of time. Carrie is here, but she’s off with her girlfriend.

I skate and skate, and skate, and listen to the music until it all blends into a great ever-rumbling clap of eternal thunder. The feeling of the storm has never been more clear.

I feel like the few seconds between the orchestra tuning and the beginning of the piece.

Eventually, a priest comes out and asks everyone in the rink to sit down. I forgot that tonight was some kind of school-sponsored event.

“Does anyone know what you have to do to become a saint?”

“Die, for one thing.”

***

The night wears on. Why do I feel like this?

No.

This is not something I question. I have a good life. People with good lives aren’t supposed to feel like this. My brain hurts. I feel foggy. I go to the bathroom.

 The grubby bathroom tiles seem to bore into my skin. I sit down, slumped against the corner. I close my eyes and try to imagine that I’m on the island, but all I can see is my dark room in Iowa, completely alone. I can feel grading, scraping reversed voices crawling across my skin.

I sit for about an hour and a half in that bathroom. The electric buzz lights above me slowly crescendo into one deafening rumble.

Carrie and Monty flit in and out of my mind and every time they do I clench my fists a little harder.

         Why do they get to know who they are?

         Why don’t I?

I silently pray and pray to a god I don’t believe in that he might let me cry; that he might let the storm break over that beach.

         I close my eyes and tilt my head upward.

         Just a little bit.

         Just for a while.

I open my eyes again.

No one is up there.

Just the same dirty ceiling tiles.

Everything waits. Everything keeps on waiting and waiting and waiting, all for me, all for me to do something. I don’t know what to do. I wish the world would just keep moving on without me. But it doesn’t 

Everything waits.

All for me.

I feel my heart begin to race.

         My breathing becomes short and choppy 

oh god-  

FINALE

Two years later, cool, bright water floods me. I am floating naked, face up in a crisp, sharp ocean.

Gently, I turn over and begin to rise. Nothing is in my mind. Nothing clouds my vision, and for the first time, I am not weighed down with events past but lifted with hope and possibility.

My head breaks through the water.

Everything around me is an impossibly vibrant shade of grey.

Rain shoots down from the heavens, and thunder sings.

Nothing waits for anything; it all simply is.

I take the deepest breath of my life.