Blink three times.
“Tell me
Tell me why
Tell me why you’re so different from the others.”
I’ve already told you.
“You haven’t said anything yet.” Mrs. Harris flips through an entire binder full of laminated records and her acrylic nails go clickity-clack. “Your third school in a year. Impressive.”
“Ms. Dougard paid a visit to my office the other day.” She waits for a reaction but my mouth stays shut. “Coming to class with an unexplained bloody nose is one way to land here. And on the day of a test. Mind telling me what happened?”
Seasonal allergies.
Smacked into the sharp corner of a locker.
Fist fight in the bathrooms.
Mrs. Harris pinches my American History exam by a corner, the bloody rag. Section two, The Civil War, question thirteen. The answer is C, eleven states seceded. Question fourteen is B, 1862 and 22,717 are dead in Antietam. Fifteen is C again. Bad dad cab dab.
“Your grades are good,” Mrs. Harris says to me. She nods her head and leans in, trying to see what’s under the hood of my baggy sweatshirt. “So that’s good. It’s important.” All hopeful and sweet. She scans my records again, safely slipped inside of a plastic sheet, away from my nose and my brain blood.
“Your grades are better than good. They’re perfect. You’ll graduate with honors.” She looks over to the blood-soaked History exam. “But they’re not even gonna let you rehearse if you keep getting yourself into trouble like this.”
“If you need help
If you need help, or someone to talk to,
If you need help, or someone to talk to, therapy is
Listen, just try to keep your fists out of your fellow student’s faces.” Mrs. Harris says with guilt in her grin. “Just for another five months. Then you’re out of here. And you can go anywhere. You can go anywhere.”
Mrs. Harris sits back in her chair and lets out a long, frustrated breath. “If you could go back and do it all again,” she says. “What would you do different?”
I think on it for a minute. From under my hood I say, “I would have asked for one of those candies on the desk when I walked in. One of them blue mints.”
Mrs. Harris drops her head as I suck on a tart mint. “You did ask for one.”
You blink and it’s over.
“Look,” Mrs. Harris goes. “High school is tough. But there aren’t any do-overs. So make this count.”
Blink.
“High school”
Blink.
“High school is tough.”
Blink.
“High school is tough. But there aren’t—honey, your nose is bleeding.”
---
I wrote this story some time ago and I thought some of you might enjoy it. This one has gotten mixed reactions--people have either thought it was awesome or didn't understand it. I'm curious to hear what 'yall think!
I quite enjoyed this because I relate so much to this. In high school and even now I sometimes put on a great front and act pleasant and outgoing. But a lot of times I was seriously disconnected from everything. Sometimes I would feel like I was watching myself from above - looking down at that girl having conversations or interacting or simply walking to the bathroom. It didn't have to be a stress filled situation for me to pop out either. I would be bored, or my mood would shift and I would just be above myself as I watched myself go through the bullshit of being nice and asking questions and answering and being polite to the people around me and teachers. It was much more common in high school because I had no friends my age - most had already graduated or went to a different school than me - and I felt above the petty bullshit of high school drama. I felt indifferent to the teachers pounding our skulls - "your entire life is now and you must go to a 4-year university to have a life, and this next essay will decide your fate." I had a big group of friends that all worked in music or television and didn't go to university and just worked and partied and got drunk and played chess and made (what I considered) a lot of money. I played the game of high school though. I played my cards right and graduated with like 6 aps and a 4.0 even though I know I should've gotten a B in a few classes like pre-calc. But I played my cards and gave the teachers the respect they deserved - a mighty difference from most of the kids around me. And I would get a an 86 on my final and an 88 in the class but an A showed up on my report card weeks later. I looked the entire high school experience like a game. Play the game right - be nice to people and you won't be noticed. But outside of school I was happy. I had a great boyfriend who I still consider is the one who got away. I fucked that up because I didn't play the game with him. I wanted to be real and honest with him. We loved cocaine and started selling it and made (what I still consider) a complete fucking buttload of money. I loved cocaine and I loved when I was high - but I would pop up when I wasn't on it. I would pop out and watch myself fight with him. We'd have the most intense screaming matches - both of us wer hard-headed & would stubbornly escalte a fight over how much to cut this batch of blow or where to go to dinner to world war iii levels. And I would yell and scream and say horrible horrible things that tore him apart. I knew him and I knew how to get deep inside him and fuck him. And he would do the same to me. But I would be above, looking down on the tiny converted garage bedroom we had as we kicked and screamed and spilled leftover cans of bud light. And when the dust would settle I would come back down and feel absolutely fine. Like nothing had happened. I would barely remember the things I had said or the things he had said. And he pretended the same. But he remembered and eventually the love that we felt for each other and the amazing 99% of the times we had were drown out by the fights - the words that stuck inside him. As far as I know, no one could tell when I was up in the clouds but I have entire days and weeks and moments that are a blink in my memory. Thousands of minutes of classes, thousands of interactions with the other 1000 kids at my school that I know I talked to, but I don't, thousands of fights and spats and arrogant remarks that I would hurl at my boyfriend because I didn't feel like playing the overly social nice game with him. And because I thought I had to be nice to teachers to stay out of trouble, and I have to be nice to classmates to go unnoticed, but I don't have to be nice to him. There was no rule that applied to our relationship. But life doesn't really have rules like highschool. In high school you are forced to interact with these people. These people who you really only share an age with. And be nice to teachers because you are told to be nice to them. Not because they have done anything to earn your personal respect. And it's easier to blink and pop out and disconnect and go through the motions. It's not fulfilling - but not much in high school is. Once you really truly make your own decisions and choose the way you want to handle things - that's where fulfillment comes from. I still fight with my current boyfriend and pop up into the clouds but I try not to. I rarely go up there now. And I think it's because I am fully intrigued and entertained my the decisions I make, the things I create at work, the glory of where I live and what I do and who I interact with. I can royally fuck my life or make the best impact on the people and things around me and it is 100% me. So I try not to blink anymore. ps: I told you so :D
I've only done Salvia a few of times and it was post high school. I know many get really dissociated on it but I was quite... internalized? Like, sitting my a special part of my soul all warm and closed off. I'm not sure how to capture it. Also, My Salvia Story
that story is the sort of thing you get when you take salvia, which is why I stopped bothering with it. very maudlin, negative drug. also, I recall a youtube video a few years ago during which a guy tried to write a letter to his congressman while on salvia (the immediate bit) -- obviously didn't work at all, like you say
This is a nice piece of writing onehunna - and I don't say that randomly.
I know the student is not having petit mal seizures -- but I have known people who have 100 little seizures over an hour and miss parts of what people say. That's what the blinking reminds me of. I don't think the student is stoned -- maybe in another kind of altered - alienated state. You get called down to the principal's office and regardless of what kind of principal she is, you are completely disconnected. Disconnected from both others and your own experience of asking for a candy. A great short chapter in a young adult novel in which I would hope to see the character emerge from dissociation and begin to connect with someone. What do you think? Tell us more.
It's funny that you brought up petit mal seizures lil. It reminds me of this story, which is kind of long but interesting nonetheless. Last year I had a friend come into the city to visit, a friend from high school. She was traveling with a roommate of hers. Before they arrived, this friend of mine called me informing me that her roommate was an epileptic and suffered from frequent petit mal seizures and in the past had two grand mal seizures. She said it was nothing super serious and that she could handle herself but wanted to let me know up front. I had very little experience with epileptics in the past--I knew of only one boy my age who graduated in my class. He was an epileptic and an outcast in highschool, a loner. He had a splotchy red birthmark across his face. I always felt bad for him, and once or twice he had a seizure in class. It was pretty frightening to see. So my friend and her roommate finally arrive in the city, and before meeting up with the two girls I felt increasingly apprehensive about the whole epilepsy business. I didn't know why. It was no big deal, right? But I couldn't shake the images of that boy with the birthmark in my highschool graduating class, twitching on the ground next to his desk with his eyes rolled in the back of his head. We end up meeting outside of their hotel on the street and her roommate seems completely normal, as far as I could tell. Of course! What was I expecting... She's an epileptic, not some fragile alien life form. My nerves settled. We grab coffee, walk around the city for a bit, hit the market. The girl was extremely funny and made light of her disorder like it was no big deal. Every two minutes or so her eyes would flutter and she would zone out--a petit mal. Each one only lasted a split second though and then she was back to reality. That night the three of us were at my place and I couldn't help but grill her about it. She answered my questions very politely and even seemed enthused to be educating someone on her disorder. The next day, my friend had planned to spend alone with her sister, who also lived in the area. Her roommate had nothing to do, really, all alone in the hotel. So I offered to take her out for the day, show her around the city. She agrees and we meet outside the hotel once again. We walk for a few hours aimlessly around the city until the girl stops dead in her tracks. Her head was tilted up and her arms hung by her sides. But it wasn't a seizure she was having, she was instead entranced by the building in front of her--a dance studio. She ran inside and disappeared behind the glass doors without saying a word and I chased after. Inside of the studio there were long, expansive mirrors that stretched way way down, and a bannister that ran alongside. The floors were lightly dusted hardwood and there were a few couples practicing ballet out on the floor. The epileptic roommate already had her shoes off and was about ready to run out onto the floor when she grabs my hand. This girl could move. Her body was long and slender but she had power and balance to boot. After a while I just stopped dancing (if you could call it that) and watched her go. It was like seeing an entirely different person. She moved without stutter and her arms and legs just flowed there in front of me. Seriously, I had never seen anybody dance like that before in my life. After she wore herself out she sat on the dusty floor with this huge grin on her face. She told me that dancing was the only way she could think right, moving was clarity. And the best part about it all? No seizures when she danced. Not one. How strange and wonderful, I thought. I always wondered what it would be like to suffer from this terrible disorder but have this one escape, this one thing you could always turn to and be free. I was amazed. As far as this story goes, the feeling of disconnect between our protagonist and the world is very real, and I'm glad you picked up on it. He's 'different', all right... If I were to expand this, I would most definitely try and find a character he could connect with, as you said. Maybe someone just as 'different' as him...
I think it is awesome because I don't fully understand it.