Nonfiction

Groundhog Day 2020

Spring 2020

It was the last day of school before spring break, and everyone was excited to finally rest after a long finals week. I got out of my math class at 3:30 as usual, and started walking down the long upstairs hallway with the girl who I liked. We walked together almost every day after school. I never told her I liked her, but I contemplated it that day, not realizing that I wouldn’t see her for over a year and a half. My dad picked me up from school, and we drove home. He told me I couldn’t go to Portland with my friend that weekend, because he was too worried about the Coronavirus thing. I thought he was being paranoid. A week later, my brother and I were told we couldn’t go anywhere, because the risk of getting the virus was too high. I was excited about getting time off of school. This was going to be the best couple weeks of no school ever.

Summer 2020

I woke up at 4:00 PM, opened my eyes, and sat up. My room was dark except for the dim light peeking through the blinds. I turned my lamp on to illuminate the room and got up out of my bed. As I walked over to my computer, I noticed I was wearing the same sweatpants I had been wearing for 3 days. My hair was a mess, my face unshaven, my lips chapped. It looked like I’d just crawled out of the woods after being stranded for a month. In a way, you could say I was stranded. I hadn’t seen any of my friends in half a year. I only saw my dad every week or so, when we would happen to meet in the kitchen. Most of the time, the only way I knew he was even there was the faint banjo plucking coming from his room. When we talked, it was like we were old friends bumping into each other on the street.

“Oh, hey Papa”

“Oh, hey bud.”

“How have you been?”

“Oh you know, same as always. Banjo’s been going pretty good.”

“Yeah I’ve heard. What’s going on in the news?”

“You’ll never guess what Trump did this week...”

Our conversations weren’t very meaningful.

I will say that one upside of having infinite free time as a teenager trapped in their home, is that I had a lot of time to practice guitar. Guitar became almost a coping mechanism for me. I was frustrated at my current situation, so I took it out on my poor fingers. I played and played until the skin began to peel. I didn’t care though. It’s just pain. Every day felt like Groundhog Day. Each day was repeating itself. Like playing the same riff over and over again, not even noticing improvement, just playing as something to do. My dad had bought me an expensive marimba back in november 2019, but I never used it anymore. My marimba now served as a place to drape my clothes, a table and sometimes a seat for my cat.

My cat. George. A beast. I talked to him more in 2020 than anyone else in real life, I would guess. As the summer pushed on, I began to feel like I was going more and more insane. George was more real a person to me than my own father. Not that my dad was neglecting me or anything, but he was just doing his own thing, and I was doing mine. George would listen to me when I would vent to him about how it was too cold inside, but too hot outside. Sometimes he would even talk to me.

“Hey stringbean! Why don’t you tell Mikey to get more cat food huh? Also tell him to get more soy milk too.” He would say.

“I’ll do it later. I’m too tired to get out of bed right now.” I wasn’t really too tired, I was just too lazy.

“Well if you don’t muster up some energy, I might just be ‘too tired’ to go pee outside, ya hear?”

He always had me in the palm of his paw, and he knew it. Of course, he never really did say anything, but at least he was there for me. I never really knew if the only reason he spent so much time with me was because he actually loved me, or if it was only because I was his source of food and water. Just another thing to keep in a constant state of overthinking. Of course I didn’t tell him any of this. I didn’t want to risk him getting offended and leaving. If he decided to go outside, then I would be alone. All alone.

Fall 2020

Eventually the summer came to an end and school began. School is a generous term to apply to what I and all of the kids at South Eugene High School experienced. It was more like 4 hours of watching a teacher talk to a wall of silent names. My grades plummeted. I was failing every class. My groundhog day of self indulgence had become an infinite looping nightmare of Zoom meetings. I contemplated dropping out of school. For someone with poor self control and a declining mental state, this hollow shell of an experience called “school” was almost enough to make me smash my computer. My computer. The thing that I had relied on for all these months, the thing that had provided an escape from the dull repetitive lifestyle I had been living, had now become a prison as well.

Spring 2021

It was the middle of my third trimester. The school had opened up to 50% student capacity for 2 days at a time. 2 days every week, it almost felt like everything was returning to normal. But it wasn’t really, it was only just an illusion of normal. 5 people sitting silently in a classroom spaced 6 feet apart in squares is not normal. My quarantine lifestyle was not a sustainable one, and I was still mentally stuck in the summer. I was failing all my classes once again. Then, something inside my brain shifted. If I didn’t pass all of my classes at this point, then I would have an extremely hard time graduating my senior year. I went into school mode. I stopped talking to anyone except my family and every day when I got home I would immediately get to work finishing every missing assignment. After finishing out as strong as I could, I ended up with some of the best grades I had ever had.

After school had gotten out for the summer, I finally felt that my dark mental state from the previous year had lifted, and it was time for a new age of positivity. I ended up shaving my head at the beginning of the summer 2021 as a way of resetting mentally. I did it as a way to shed all the bad memories of the previous year. 2020 was one of the most struggling years of my life, and now after overcoming that difficult year, I feel as though I can move on to the next chapter of my life. Now that I have defeated a pandemic, I can do anything.

I sit huddled up against a fence. I don’t know how many of us there are left. I don’t know how many of us have already been killed by it, but I doubt anyone is in a hurry to start calling out to others. It’s pitch black. The darkness feels like a cold blanket enveloping me, but unlike a blanket, I don’t feel comfortable or safe. I have to be as quiet as possible. The cold is starting to seep into my skin. I start shivering and my teeth start to chatter. I try to force my jaw shut, so as not to make even the slightest amount of noise. It would be the end if I were discovered. Suddenly I hear a loud high pitched shriek coming from my right. It sounded like it was about 50 feet away. It had to be one of the young ones. Sad that they were discovered, but it was inevitable. Against that thing, no child can escape. My body is slowly becoming a block of ice. I can’t feel my fingers or toes, and I figure that I need to get moving now. I get up onto the fence to try to call out to other survivors. I know this is a risky move, but I need to find others. I begin to whistle as loud as I can, hoping for someone to signal that they are still alive. Silence. I sit down dejected, when I suddenly hear a rustle. It was right in front of me. My body springs into action, my joints melting the internalized frost that was accumulating, my eyes wide open, my brain sharp. I leap the fence and take off into a sprint. I can hear its awful screams coming from right behind me. I feel like an antelope, just barely outrunning the deadly cheetah. I make out in the darkness, a large quonset hut. I duck in, pushing past the tarp over the entrance. As I burst through the entrance, my foot catches on an old storage bin. I fly over the bin and crash into an old refrigerator, losing my sense of direction. As I regain my composure, I can see it’s too late. I look up from the ground to see a tall looming figure. I close my eyes tightly and brace for the end.

“Good game, man. You almost got away this time.”

The Princess and the Killer

I may write a lot about my cat, George, but it’s because he is a very important figure in my life. He helped me get through the whole pandemic, and is always there for me. Of course I have to accept the inevitability that he will die someday, but for now I try to enjoy his company as much as I can. He is getting on in years, and has bad hips. He’s always been a bit overweight, and even now he is on diet cat food. He’s not even a particularly good cat in the first place. He’s grumpy all the time, and he pees on my bed sometimes. But despite all of his flaws, he is still my closest pet. Even though he’s a grumpy old man, everyone adores him. People tell me they miss George almost every day. He’s the kind of cat who sticks in your heart, and lives in your mind until you see him again. He’s like a silent God, who uses his powers to attract everyone he meets. He is Mr. steal your girl. I like writing about him, because someday when he’s gone, he will be immortalized in my writings. Even when I have moved on to other cats, better cats, more well behaved cats, cuter cats, fluffier cats, more loyal cats, he will still be living in my mind.

He has many interesting relationships with various people and animals. His relationship with his female counterpart, Ms. Kitty is quite a strange one. They have been in a state of almost being lovers, and enemies at the same time. Sometimes, they snuggle and George will clean her fur lovingly, but sometimes she will decide to swat and hiss at him out of nowhere. Ms. Kitty is deceptive. She is a perfect saint around people. She likes being pet and she never claws or hisses at anyone. But the truth is that she is a murderer. She’s a mouser for sure, but she’s killed bigger prey than mice. Prey with much brighter futures. She's indirectly killed 3 innocent kittens. She scared them out of the house, and would guard the cat door to make sure they couldn’t get back inside, and slowly they started to go missing, until all of them had been eaten by cougars. Her eyes are unnaturally large, and it looks like she is trying to hypnotise you at all times. And maybe she is. Her cute face is hiding her bloodlust behind her massive empty black pupils.

Between the murderous serial killer and lazy princess, my two cats make the perfect duo. They each have their own unique personalities and differences, but at the end of the day they will both tolerate each other enough to both lay on my bed together. I think a lot of people could learn from my two cats. If you look past your differences, there is enough room on the bed for everyone.

Every time I hear a glass break, it takes me back to that night. If I see a pile of shattered glass in an alleyway, it reminds me of how close I came to death. Every time, I see the broken window. Every time, I see the blood on the floor and glass on the ground. The outside door is flung wide open, with the cold December air seeping into the house. In the kitchen; metal pots lie dented from the sudden impact of being dropped to the ground. The cats, hiding in the grass in the backyard cautiously observing the house from which such a commotion had just occurred not 5 minutes ago. A trail of blood leading to an empty parking space, where a car had just sped off. My brother is at the neighbours house watching cartoons, not quite aware of what had just happened.

Every time I hear a glass break, I see the inside of the car. Lights rushing past, horns honking. “I’d never been in a car going so fast” I remember thinking to myself. I remember bursting through the door to the emergency room, being held in my mothers arms. Being rushed to a table, so they could take my blood pressure. I remember the doctor asking me questions, but I don’t remember what they were. The shots and the stitching are starting to fade from my memory, but I still remember. 33 stitches they gave me. 33 stupid stitches because of some stupid glass. The scar I have is a reminder of that night. Most days I forget it’s even there. Most people think my scar is cool. But every time I hear a glass break, I remember how I got my scar, and I remember that night like it was yesterday.