7/29/2022

Jemma is different now.

She used to be the worldly one among her friends. They never had to think about what to do with their Friday nights; they knew if they left school with her, they’d end up somewhere crazy and special. She took them to weird restaurants and planned amazing getaways for every break. She was the ideal combination of responsible and fun, putting together the perfect itinerary every time. A lot of the trips were organized around causes, so they were “transformative,” and they even earned everyone a few college credits. Jemma was the most known and liked person in the grade. She was voted class president, and most likely to change the world.

A lot of those old expectations seem cruel now, looking back.

She doesn’t think about those days as much anymore, or at least she had finally managed to accept her new life in lockdown with a baby, but then she saw the announcement that there’s a reunion coming up. She’s not sure what to say to the class of 2010. At first, she considered not even going, but that would look even worse. It’s already embarrassing enough that she wasn’t the one to organize it. No, the most known and liked person in the grade has to attend, and she has to make it look like she’s lived up to everything they said she’d do, or at least something, even though her life went off course pretty much immediately out of high school.

Her freshman year of college had been so lonely. No one seemed to recognize how important she was. She kept wishing there was a way to alert people to her status in high school, some sort of reputation signal to make it clear that she mattered. In high school, people were all too happy to follow her lead. All she had to do was entertain them. And pay for everything. In college, she didn’t know how anything worked, so when she came in swinging and tried to run the show, she made some embarrassing mistakes early on and had to fade into the background for the rest of the year to recover her reputation in the worst way imaginable: by waiting for people to forget about her.

That was how far she had fallen, and this failure set the tone for the rest of the decade. She dropped out of college after her miserable first year and waited tables at the country club while she lived with her parents for a few years, until she couldn’t take it anymore, their not-so-subtle remarks about her wasted potential. She then went on a lonely trip to Mexico that she cut short, returned to the hometown where none of her friends lived anymore, and married the first man at the country club to find her impressive.

Chuck was her customer, five years older than her, and when he asked her what she was doing there, somehow it didn’t sound judgmental like when her parents said it, but rather like a compliment, like she could go anywhere, like he saw her the way people in high school used to see her, the way she was meant to be seen; she was potential. He was easy-going, and he always asked to be served specifically by her and gave tips that were bigger than his bill. He didn’t seem to mind that she was an overprivileged college dropout who didn’t know how to live frugally. He was a lawyer, and he seemed to want a traditional wife.

When they started their life together, he gladly paid for whatever project caught her interest, but nothing caught her interest for long, because nothing felt like it used to, like she was sparkling and people could see that. People didn’t seem to be looking anymore, and she didn’t know what to do with herself. She ended up taking on a part-time role at a travel agency, which is fine for now, with funny coworkers and discounted flights and decent maternity leave. She hadn’t even thought about motherhood until she found herself pregnant, and that basically brings us to today.

The reunion. Why now? Why couldn’t they have waited for some special anniversary, given everyone more of a heads up? Jemma guesses people are just looking for an excuse to leave the house now that masks are no longer required at gatherings.

But none of her stylish dresses fits her anymore, and she needs something she can change out of quickly anyway, in case Carson spits up on her. She loves her baby, who has unexpectedly brought her a sense of calmness she hadn’t experienced before motherhood, but somehow she can’t shake the feeling of shame as she gets ready, which makes her guilty to boot. Carson watches her admiringly from the floor, where he has recently learned to sit up by himself. She leans down to stroke his soft skull and then turns to the mirror in anticipation, but as she takes in her reflection wearing her favorite nursing blouse and imagines seeing and being seen by her old friends, she feels sick to her stomach.

There was this guy on the swim team who everyone said had a thing for her, and these two girls from choir who were always the first to RSVP for her trips, and another girl from her honors classes who Jemma would call “VP” because she served on the student council with her, although there were no ranked positions at their school aside from president, which of course was Jemma’s. The thought of any of them seeing her with her stroller and her Chuck and her messy braid, imagining their faces lighting up in anticipation and falling at the reveal of her current self, it’s too much to bear. Maybe she should use her college strategy of trying to be forgotten and hoping no one will notice her absence enough to ask about it. But if that works, she’ll be devastated. She’s trying not to hyperventilate when Chuck exits the bathroom wearing the same brown suit he wears to work.

“You ready, hon? I’m curious to meet some people from your wild days!”

Jemma puts on a smile and buckles Carson into the stroller. It’s strange to think that it’s such a short walk to her old school, yet tonight is her first time back. She’s trying and failing to steady her breathing as the building comes into view. Chuck seems to take notice, because his grip tightens around her arm as she pushes the stroller up to the familiar entrance.

“This is just for fun,” he says as they go inside.

Her heartbeat quickens and nostalgia hits her like nausea as they follow the signs to the gymnasium, which is decorated with balloons and fairy lights like it was for every event she helped put on here when she was a teenager. She scans the room and notices an old teacher. She’s debating whether or not she should go up and say hi when she feels a tap on her shoulder. She whirls around.

“Jemma?” An overjoyed woman she doesn’t recognize starts squealing and pulling her into a hug, so she does the same.

“Oh my God, how are you? I heard you actually live nearby! Why don’t I ever see you online? I was surprised to hear our president wasn’t behind this little reunion!”

Jemma can feel her eyes lighting up with recognition and she hopes her delayed reaction isn’t too obvious. This is VP, without her signature ponytail and in a blazer instead of a sweatshirt, looking simultaneously more tired and less stressed from what Jemma can tell in the second she has to take her in. She braces herself for the questions about what she’s been up to, but VP seems more interested in Carson.

“Oh, he’s so precious! My youngest is three now. I wish I could spend more time with them. It goes by too fast!”

As the night unfolds, Jemma gets some genuinely helpful parenting advice from VP along with her phone number, an across-the-room fist pump from the swim team guy as he passes by in a beard and flip-flops, and a heartfelt comment from one of the choir girls about how those trips Jemma used to put together sent her on a path to get involved, not for credit, but for real. Jemma used to imagine how this night might play out in her head, how she’d be surrounded by a crowd of admirers, in awe yet not at all surprised at the extent of her success, but no one has even asked; she told a few people she’s a travel agent, and they said that was perfect for her. She also used to imagine an alternative outcome to this night, which she’d have frequent dreams about, nightmares in which she was “found out,” discovered to be average. But she is average, and those old expectations, which were maybe in her head all along, feel unfair now, like she had set herself up to be a star that was destined to burn out, when she could have just been a person. She looks around at her graduating class, who all look older, less glamorous, but also less desperate, more relaxed. She laughs to herself at the picture she never updated in her imagination of thirty-year-olds acting like teenagers, vying for status by crowding around her or calling her out. There are no crowds in this room, just a scattering of strangers and old friends, and she feels close to them yet at peace with the fact that she doesn’t ever need to see them again, and doesn’t need them to see her either.

As she takes her gurgling son out of the stroller toward the end of the night, she notices Chuck’s “low battery” face. He’s sitting by a plate of unfinished cake. She sits next to him, rubs his back, and motions with her head to the door. They walk out without saying goodbye to anyone, because she has everything she needs by her side, and she thinks about how they have changed her world.

5/17/2022

The center of our town square is famous for its electronic ballot box. It’s not for collecting votes, but rather opinions from the public. Each day, the algorithm weeds out the nonsense and the slurs and selects a new opinion to broadcast onto the billboard overlooking the square. It’s become something of a local tradition for people to check the billboard for the daily opinion every morning and mock it together.

The opinion box was meant to serve as a conversation starter that would foster rich discussion in a local engagement forum, putting the physical interaction and humanity back into public discourse while also holding our collective attention for longer than an internet trend might. Rather than having an endless stream of content overstimulate our brains from our personal screens, the idea was to select a single thought each day and display it on a large communal screen, which seems really nice in theory, really nice. But I know what you’re thinking: recipe for disaster. Yeah, you’re not wrong.

When it was first installed (and somehow to this day), a lot of the opinions ended up being about the opinion box itself, which made the whole thing feel pointless sometimes. Still, it didn’t take long for people to get really into it, ironically at first, but then for real. It turns out it’s pretty empowering to be the one selected for the day and have everyone buzzing about your ideas. Unfortunately, it can feel even more empowering to be part of a mob as they destroy the daily opinion.

I remember the very first opinion: “This is what the town spends our money on?” It was an opinion that everyone could get behind, which ironically made us start to see the appeal of the opinion box. There was a lot of irony to the whole affair, like the day the algorithm broadcast a conspiracy theory about the algorithm: “This opinion will never get chosen because this box is rigged to be the mayor’s little propaganda machine, and we’re all eating it up like sheep.” The fact that that opinion was selected for the billboard only confirmed the conspiracy for some, because it felt too convenient, like we were being manipulated into believing the box allows for dissent, while it’s all still under the control of the box itself.

Questions about the algorithm have just kept coming since then. How does it “know” not to select personal opinions like “the girl who sits in front of me in math smells good”? How does it avoid selecting questions that are phrased like opinions, statements like “I think we should debate the town budget” (although I think questions would make for better conversation starters anyway)? And perhaps most importantly, why isn’t the code for the opinion selection process open source?

Although the display on the opinion box is electronic, a lot of us are pretty sure that the selection is done by hand. Could there be a selection committee sitting in our city hall each morning voting on what to broadcast? Perhaps it’s only one person’s job. Maybe if they don’t like anything we send in, they just write their own opinion and display it on the billboard while telling us the opinion box captures the spirit of free speech.

We all have our own conspiracies. Admittedly, it’s pretty fun to think about all of the different ways the box could be evil. Personally, I’ve never gotten my opinion chosen before, and I’m not sure I can believe people when they jump up and claim that their opinion has been selected for the day. Not when so many arguments have broken out in the past over who is the one who actually wrote the opinion that got picked.

Lending credence to the theory that there’s a single author, or shedding light on the strictness of the algorithm, the daily opinion has been consistent in a few different ways. It’s always an opinion of course, and one that pertains to everyone in society, or at least our town. It’s always displayed in proper grammar, which makes everyone suspicious. And it’s always just spicy enough, the right balance of well-intentioned and cynical to rile people up, but not so spicy that it triggers the hot topic landmines or incites people to violence.

The opinion box has certainly succeeded in getting us talking, but to what end? Is it trying to distract us? From what? Is it keeping track of our submissions and collecting data on the citizens for nefarious ends?

Everyone has so many opinions about the opinion box, the narcissistic little cube seems to exist only to share the world’s perceptions of itself. It’s so stupid. It’s resulted in controversies and incidents that have ended up on the local news more than once. Tourists have started to travel to our town to see it, and I always feel bad for them when they make the trip only to get a lame daily opinion.

The whole thing is ridiculous, honestly, and if anything, the act of going to the park with your loved ones and walking up to the metallic box in the middle of the town square and taking turns typing out different submissions on the interface generates more meaningful conversation than whatever ends up on the billboard for the day. It’s all so arbitrary. It’s all so suspect. We can’t help but to engage.

4/27/2022

The sky looked weird when I met your mother. The sky looks weird when something important is about to happen, have you noticed that? There was a big storm that night, heavy rain and thunder, but it wasn’t gloomy. Just the opposite, it was too bright for both the weather and the hour, and the clouds were blue and magnificent. How could I be getting drenched when the sky was this brilliant?

I’d been working late on campus, and her yogurt shop was on the way to the parking lot. I’d never gone in before. I’m more of an ice cream guy. But the forecast had said it would be clear, and when it started, it was as sudden as it was aggressive, straight from the heavens, and it drove me straight into the shop.

The shop was fluorescent bright and largely empty. It was almost closing time for them. I hung up my soaked coat on a rack, trying to limit how many puddles I was making. I figured I’d just stay until the downpour eased up a bit.

“I know you’re only here to wait out the storm, but we have a new smoothie, and this is the perfect excuse to try it.”

I turned around to put a face to that confident voice, and there she was. Curly hair barely held together by a tie, a lime green uniform standing behind the counter. I stepped toward her, and I remember thinking her smile was so full, it was like light was shining from her face. How could someone be so cheerful at the end of a night shift?

You know me, son. I hate wasting money, and I’m not big on smoothies. For some reason, I sat down at the counter, right in front of her, and took out my wallet. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

She threw in a kitchen sink cookie for free, and we ended up eating together. She told me she’d seen a talk earlier that day, but she’d come in late and couldn’t see the stage. I know you know this part, but she had no idea it was me! She went on for thirty minutes about the speaker and all of his interesting points and all of the mistakes he’d made. It might have been the first time I’d ever heard honest feedback. I’d gotten sick of people constantly trying to impress each other, and there she was, your mother, with nothing to prove and nothing to lose, actually telling me what she thought. By the end of her critique, I was ninety percent sure I was in love, but there was one last test.

“Thanks for the feedback,” I told her.

“What?” She dropped her smile for the first time all night as the meaning of my words dawned on her. Then she raised her eyebrows like I was a misbehaving child. “You were the speaker?”

I nodded, grinning. But would she backtrack now that she knew?

I’d thought her smile was beaming full force before, but now it was radiant, her face rosy. We laughed at the amazing coincidence for a few minutes, then she said, “Oh, thank God! You suddenly went all silent on me and I was just going on! I was afraid I talked your head off about some random event I attended!”

We talked long past the end of her shift. When people think they have nothing to say to each other, they really just don’t feel comfortable saying it. Her critique of my presentation had set the tone for our relationship, and we were able to be honest about everything. It was incredible, feeling willing to open up the more I liked her, even though the more I liked her, the more I didn’t want to say anything to make her leave. I’d always been reserved, and with the stakes this high, I had no reason to stop now. Still, she had a way of drawing the truth out of me. You know what she’s like!

As our meeting unfortunately came to its inevitable end, I said, “I feel like I know you. I mean, like I’ve known you for a while.”

And she said, “I hope this isn’t too forward, but I’d like to know you for a while. Maybe longer.”

And just like that, we swapped phones.

As we left together out of the same building we had entered separately, I noticed that the sky had cleared up, but it still seemed strange, because I sensed, even then, that the same sky I’d lived beneath my entire life was from that night onward meant to cover a very different world. That’s what I mean when I tell you that you were always meant to be here.

3/4/2022

The party was held in the parlor, although it was the gloomiest room in the house, possibly so the hosts could show off their art collection. The catering was also an odd choice, a buffet of tiny foods that looked intricate and diverse yet all had the same bland taste. The guests were a fluctuating mass of black suits and white hair, with the occasional swaying flash of a colorful dress in the poorly lit crowd. Was the party a political event? A charity gala? A social gathering? It doesn’t matter, because this is Heidi’s story.

Heidi was a little girl in a forest green dress with long hair and no smile. She was convinced she was the only child at this party. The house would have been fun to explore if it hadn’t already been thoroughly inspected. Alas, she was the daughter of the hosts. After her parents had finished showing her off to the necessary parties to gain whatever shift in reputation they were looking for out of such interactions, she was free to roam around. The suits and dresses ignored her as she dodged their legs to get to the enticing yet strangely untouched display of food. In fact, none of the guests were eating, as far as Heidi could tell.

From among the offerings, she picked out a few beautiful biscuits that looked like coated shells. They were sparkling. With the first one she put into her mouth, she could taste its floury powder more than the cookie itself. She kept eating them because they were so pretty, one of them had to be good. After she had tried one of each kind of shell and deemed them all flavorless, she moved on to the other end of the table, where there awaited her a big display of shrimp laid out in layered rings around a central goblet of cocktail sauce. Heidi hated seafood, but they were so pink and pleasingly arranged. She grabbed one and wiggled it around like a worm.

She abandoned the buffet carrying her new friend Jumbo and brought him out to the garden, where there were fewer people, and that’s where she saw her: another little girl, with curls and a light blue dress, carrying her own shrimp. The unbreakable eye contact between children is a fearsome sight to behold. They unquestioningly walked toward each other upon locking eyes, their respective shrimp held out like a banner or a weapon, it wasn’t yet clear which. The second girl grinned, and thrust forth the shrimp with a triumphant shout. Heidi found her smile and proceeded to spar with her new challenger.

After beating the poor dead creatures against each other had lost its entertainment value, the girls hooked them together like interlocking chains in a link. Their eyes lit up as they shared a glance, and they didn’t have to say a word. They rushed inside to gather more shrimp. None of the adults seemed to pay any mind to the children running past transporting mounds of crustaceans in the bunching folds of their dresses. By the end of the evening, they had created something truly wondrous in the dirt of the garden. A glorious pattern of interlocking shrimp had been laid out in an alternating dance of stars and rings radiating outward. But such splendor is not meant to last.

“Heidi, what are you doing? Get up! Your dress is filthy!” Her mother approached, initially upset to see her daughter playing in the dirt in front of so many people she needed to impress. But upon spotting and making sense of the unreasonable quantity of shrimp in the soil so inexplicably arranged into a pattern, the mother’s gasp was loud enough to inadvertently draw the attention of the entire guest list.

“Heidi, what have you done? All this food! Oh, how wasteful!” Heidi had no doubt those chalky shell cookies would all be thrown away by her mother by the end of the night. She didn’t say a word, just looked at her mom daringly, unblinking, unsmiling, and standing her ground by her new friend and their magnificent work of art.

Before she could drag Heidi away, a man in a brown suit came up behind her mother to survey the scene. He turned to the little girl with curls and said, “Ah, how wonderful to see you’ve met a new friend! And look at what you’ve made! Now isn’t that something?”

Heidi’s mother’s eyes bugged out as she said, “Commissioner, this is your daughter?”

The man ignored her mother and dusted off the little girl in the blue dress. “Sweetheart, this is very nice, but it’s not right to play with food.” He turned to Heidi’s mother. “I can get this all cleaned up. I’ll cover the damages.” He got up and patted Heidi on the head, to which she smiled. This party had turned out even better than last year’s fortress of coats!

1/5/2022

The past year sucked. If you were here, it would have been better, but you’re still the main reason it sucked. Remember in lab when you made Mr. Jay think you didn’t know about death? Even now, that day is the best part of biology.

And I know what I said, and I do take it all back now. I’m glad you weren’t told how long you had until you didn’t have long, and I’m grateful now that you didn’t tell me till the end. I used to feel betrayed and abandoned, especially when everyone at school found a way to make your death about them, like they even freaking knew you, and all I could do was scoff at the thought that one of us was finally popular, but without the other. But you didn’t choose this. If you had, maybe you would’ve figured out a way to take me with you.

I know it’s selfish to say this now, but after the year I’ve had alone down here, I feel it’s my right: I’m happy you didn’t tell me till right before it happened, that I got to have one last awesome day with you catching waves and getting terrible pizza and amazing ice cream from the boardwalk, that I got to enjoy the cheesiest pop song playing twice every half hour in the background, knowing when it ended that it would soon be playing again, thinking we’d have more days like that one, that it wasn’t even a question.

But you knew, that whole day. And you looked happy eating your thin slice, like sitting next to me was enough. How could you enjoy it? You even knew that day in bio lab, and realizing that gutted me. Some days I think this whole thing is your way of messing with us, all of us, like your death was too good of a chance to pass up. I’m glad you seemed at ease, thinking back. I just really miss you.

When I tell Mom I don’t think I can get through high school without you, she says it’s only four years. Four years is a big fraction of my life. It’ll always be a big fraction of yours. But listen: I’m gonna go graduate without you real quick and do this whole life thing and get a job and fall in love and surf in your honor, and then I’ll reclaim my spot by your side, so just wait for me. Thanks.

12/12/2021

I only have two friends at school, and they hate each other. I don’t know how I ended up getting caught between them, but I swear they’re giving me whiplash. I always feel like I’m betraying one by spending time with the other, but I also think it’s pretty cool of me to hang out with such different people. I guess I just get along with everyone like that.

Jody likes to think of herself as a principled person and prides herself on her integrity. Everyone else calls her judgmental. Whenever I hang out with her, I feel like the last five decades of human history never happened. She’s entertaining, that’s for sure. Each day, she’s got some new rant, grumbling about technology, grumbling about social issues, and of course, grumbling about Heather.

Today’s topic is Heather again. Jody gets animated when ranting, her face getting ruddy and her worn sweatshirt stretching across her sturdy frame like a tree trunk clinging to the ground for dear life. “She’s sitting in the front row and still can’t find the shame to put away her phone! In front of the teacher, can you believe it? And what does the teacher do? Nothing, because she doesn’t care about actually educating us as much as she cares about creating a safe space for snowflakes.”

A lot of people would cringe at her speech, but Jody’s lectures are more fun than the teacher’s. Sometimes I like to poke holes into her rants, just to keep her going, so I say, “You’re not paying attention either, Jode.”

“Yeah, because her phone is distracting to all of us!”

The three of us are only in the same class for this one period, and it used to be super awkward before the teacher began assigning seats. I’d sit between them, and although I don’t have much to say normally, I completely shut down whenever one of them ranted into my ear on one side and I knew the other one was listening. The few times they’ve had a direct confrontation with each other, it got so heated so fast, they quickly learned not to bother with each other, and have now opted to talk about each other instead. And I get to listen.

*

My next class is with Heather, so I head over to her once we’re dismissed, but not before tossing Jody a “here we go” look, shaking my head and blowing air from my cheeks, much to her delight. That’s basically how I get away with staying friends with both of them. Anyway, Heather really does spend too much time on her phone. As we walk together to our next class, her sleek leather jacket draped over long legs making me feel underdressed even though it’s only school, she shows me a social media campaign on her feed to remove the superintendent because he failed to get more women on the school board.

“But didn’t only one woman apply, that crazy tree lady?”

“Don’t say ‘lady,’ that’s sexist,” Heather says condescendingly.

I think she doesn’t have many friends despite being so trendy because not a lot of people can stomach the way she talks, but I can, just like I stomach Jody’s rants. They’re both more amusing than annoying, if you have the right attitude.

“It’s sexist to say ‘lady’?”

“The way you’re saying it, it just sounds bad. And if only one woman applied, it’s because the superintendent failed to make the culture of the board appealing to women.”

The irony is that Heather is just as preachy as Jody, and I feel like they don’t hate each other because they’re opposites, but because of how similar they are. It takes a chill person like me to be able to put up with either of them.

Well, that was my attitude before the student council election.

*

“Counting on you, lady!” says Jody, slapping my back on her way to lunch, and she hands me a flier as she heads to the cafeteria. Now that they’ve both taken to the cafeteria, lately I’ve resorted to eating in the library, claiming to be swamped with work, just so I don’t have to make a decision to sit with one of the girls while the other can see us. I look at the flier, and my stomach drops. Jode is running? But Heather is running for student council too, to make the school more environmentally conscious, and I promised her she’d have my vote. Based on the flier, Jody’s platform is school safety. I mean, both sound good.

I spend the rest of the lunch period hunched over a library table with a bag of chips, mulling over my dilemma alone. I guess I should vote for Heather, since I did explicitly promise her I would, and she announced her candidacy first. But just as I resolve to do so, she walks into the library and spots Jody’s flier in front of me. She storms over and snatches it up, a scary expression overtaking her face as she reads it.

“Hey, Heather!” I say weakly. “I didn’t realize she was running too, but she just gave it to me before lunch.” I laugh like it’s all good. She doesn’t respond, just keeps reading the flier. “Don’t worry, I’m still voting for you, of course,” I add hastily.

“Are you?” She narrows her eyes at me, and my breath gets stuck in my throat. “Because I heard that you’ve been talking about me with her.”

“What?” I launch out of my plastic chair so forcefully, it rattles against the table. “No, I haven’t! She just says stuff and I ignore it.”

“You mean you enable it.”

“I mean, you say stuff about her too.”

“Right, because I thought we were on the same side, allies against ignorance. Why are you friends with her, even?”

“Same reason I’m friends with you! You keep things interesting. You have a lot to say. Why do you guys hate each other so much?”

“She’s only running because I’m running! Everything she does is reactionary! Her one goal in life is to oppose progress, and the fact that you can’t see that is really sad!”

“I seriously feel like you guys should get along. You’re both so self-righteous!”

Heather looks at me for too long, her mouth open, so I look away, breathing heavily from my nose. She’s pissing me off, but I don’t want to lose her.

“What do you want from me? I already said I’d vote for you.”

“I want your loyalty. You don’t believe in anything. You just watch from the sidelines, not taking anything seriously, which actually makes you worse than Jody.”

“If you’re gonna be like that, then I’ll vote for her instead!”

Heather shakes her head at me in a way that makes me want to smack her forehead, just to get her to stop. She says, “See, just the fact that you’d flip so easily is what’s really disturbing to me.”

As for me, I’m too disturbed to go to class after our altercation, and I spend the rest of the school day hiding out in the library.

*

I’m getting ready for bed when I get an email from Jody. Typical of her to write a letter instead of sending a text. I assume it’s about her campaign, and now that I’m voting for her, I can read it without feeling sick to my stomach. Or so I thought.

“Hey, Heather cornered me after school today and told me about how you’ve been egging us both on for a laugh. I’m not gonna be an oversensitive drama queen like her, and I actually value loyalty, so I won’t immediately believe her, but even if she’s telling the truth, I can forgive your spinelessness as long as you promise to start telling me what you honestly think. I don’t need to be surrounded by a mob of adoring idiots like her. If you don’t agree with me, I want to hear it. I’m a big girl, I can handle it.”

It takes me a tortured hour of guilt and indignation to fall asleep after reading that fake high-ground message, and on my way to school the next day, I find myself missing the days I had no one to sit with. I probably won’t have to miss them for long. I usually spend the minutes before the first bell catching up with Heather, since our homerooms are nearby, but I don’t expect to see her waiting for me out in the hall today. Instead, it’s her and Jody together. I freeze, and consider turning around, but they both come up to me.

“What do you actually think?” demands Heather.

“Did you get my message?” blurts Jody at the same time.

“Yeah, I got your message. Thanks. What do I think about what?”

“About the election!” says Heather. “There’s no way you actually don’t have an opinion, somewhere deep, deep down!”

“I mean, you both have good ideas…” I mumble.

Heather throws her head back and scoffs. Jody gives her an uncomfortable side-eye.

“Heather, I really mean it! Can’t two people have good ideas?”

“Not when those ideas are at odds with each other,” she says.

“I hate to say it, but she’s right,” says Jody. I knew they could get along! She continues, “The funds budgeted to the student council every year are very limited. We each drafted a different proposal for how to spend the money based on our contrasting priorities.”

Heather is nodding along, which she’s never done to anything I’ve ever had to say, and I’m thinking maybe, if I play my cards right in this moment, then we can all start eating together once this whole election thing is over, which is all I really care about. I realize they’re both staring at me and totally invested in what I have to say, which isn’t a feeling I’m used to. It feels kind of nice.

“I’ve made my decision,” I say with gravity. I almost start laughing when they both lean in. “I’ll put together my own proposal. I’m running too.”

10/12/2021

She’s smart and pretty. At least, that’s what he can gather from her profile. She went to a good school. Her witty status made him laugh. Her keen eyes mesmerize him. And though he feels silly for having the thought, her height is perfect for him. He imagines her standing next to him at an event, turning and smiling at him like she’s smiling in her fourth photo. There’s just something about her face, a sweetness. He has a good feeling. He swipes.

After swiping, he starts to worry. Feel guilty. She won’t want him. If she does, she probably shouldn’t. It’s been two years, but he’s still not at a good place with his PTSD. Not to mention his student debt. Who is he to dump that on her? And who is she to accept, a shining girl like that with her whole life ahead of her? He tells himself to stop worrying, to go to sleep, because she’s not likely to swipe back anyway.

But she does.

He’s caring and brave. At least, that’s what she can gather from his profile. She got excited as soon as she saw him in her inbox, unexpected and teeming with potential. The more she sees, the more she reads as she scrolls, the more she likes him, at least on paper. Or on screen, rather. In theory. In a few sentences, he’s managed to convey his thoughtful, considerate nature. And he got pretty vulnerable in his profile, which is rare to witness. Even she avoided making mention of the ongoing drama with her family. It’s a bigger part of her life than that one vacation when she touched a dolphin, but that photo made the cut, and not a single detail about the situation with her parents.

What does he see in her? She bites a nail as she scrolls back through his profile. Maybe he can tell her for himself.

She swipes.

9/27/2021

“Bette has left the group.”

We were all gathered around the phone in my hand during break, jaws gaping at the screen. Both friends and coworkers whose names I could never keep straight crowded over my shoulders, all no doubt thinking the same thing: why would Bette do this?

She was one of the most active members in the work group chat, always sharing articles and reacting to memes, not to mention one of the most popular and reliable people at work, the type to ask about your weekend rather than telling you about hers.

Everyone speculated for the rest of the break about her exit. Was she moving? Was she bothered by our supervisor’s last political post? What were her political beliefs, anyway? Clearly, it was a slow work day.

Once the theories had run dry and the crowd had thinned out, I was able to leave the lunch table and head for her desk. Bette and I weren’t close, but we weren’t not close either; she was friendly with everyone. Actually, there was one time when she talked with me for hours in a private chat when I had to stay overnight in the hospital last year. Either way, I felt obligated to be the one to check in on her, since I was the one who first saw the notification that she’d left the group, and I had foolishly blurted it out while surrounded by coworkers, thereby inciting an impromptu gossip circle right at work. Feeling guiltier with every step, I found her hunched over her computer, brunette waves draped over a pink cardigan.

“Bette? Is everything alright?” I asked too quietly. I had to repeat myself to get her to turn around.

“Oh! Hi, Sidney. Yes, why wouldn’t it be?” she said, smiling.

“The group chat.”

“What group chat? Oh, you mean the email thread?”

Was she serious? I knew I was looking at her strangely, but I couldn’t help myself. This situation was more drama than I’d anticipated. I didn’t expect her to go with denial.

“The group chat, Bette! The one you’re always commenting on, chatting with the people from reception! You know, sharing articles about healthy eating?” As I said that, both of our gazes traveled to the chips and donuts on her desk.

“I didn’t even know we had a group chat, Sid. That wasn’t me. But if you’re an admin, could you add me?”

8/22/2021

Sadie is the sort to get completely, irrationally absorbed into fleeting fancies that shift and dramatically reverse within the week. Last week, she was convinced she was meant to become a nurse. Her business degree had been a mistake, she told us, her way of stalling to avoid making a decision. “But when you stall for too long,” she said, “your buffer becomes your purpose.” It was at the office that she had realized her true calling; one of her clients was an emergency room nurse who must have dazzled our Sadie.

Sadie, who changed her major so many times, she ended up graduating long after her friends, even the newer ones from her business courses, and every change she made came with a speech. Sadie, who was searching for nursing programs and watching YouTube videos about her new profession for hours each day up until last night. Sadie, who announced today that, actually, she wanted to travel the world. “It’s not my old routine at the office that I’m sick of. It’s routine in general!” she proclaimed before launching into a new round of research.

We used to laugh at Sadie. She’s always been like this. It’s hard not to judge her. But lately I’ve found something to admire in her. In constantly planning and replanning for the future, she is always excited about it, and in that way, she lives in the moment better than anyone I know.

7/23/2021

There are certain topics you just don’t breach with certain people, and you have to learn who not to bother about what the hard way. My buddy Otto has always been weird about money. He’s so weird about it that I don’t even know if it’s because of some childhood trauma or something to do with his personality. I don’t know if he has too much or not enough. He’s private about it to the point of it being a taboo subject, and it’s not like I’m all materialistic, but sometimes you have to discuss practical matters when you’re splitting the bill, things like that.

The first time I vowed never again to discuss finances with Otto, we were at a diner downtown after working late one night, and this guy was going from booth to booth selling roses. I ended up getting one just to go with the flow, but Otto’s the one with a wife, so I tried giving it to him so he could bring it home to her. Big mistake. His face fell right away and he was all, “I would’ve bought one myself if I wanted one. Why did you get one only to push it on me?” He was recently hired at that point, so it was my first time seeing him get worked up.

I remember saying, “Relax, man! You don’t have to take it, I can bring it to the front desk tomorrow.” We went home quickly after that, parting ways awkwardly, and I spent the night wondering what had set him off, why a flower that cost a dollar was so offensive. Did I hurt his pride by mentioning his wife or something? That had been my first thought, but by the time a few more incidents had piled up, it had become clear to me that he was a tightwad. I realized that if I wanted to be friends with him, I had to avoid the topic of spending.

But it didn’t take long for me to step in it again; humans are forgetful by nature. It’s a mercy, really. If you make the same mistake twice, doesn’t that mean you were able to recover from the bad memory of the first mistake? Otto and I were assigned to take out these clients to a showing, and we were implicitly expected to use our own money. I was nervous about it when I first heard about having to treat the clients out of pocket, because I knew Otto would get weird again, but I figured I should be safe if I just offered to cover everything myself. Again, big mistake. He was so insulted for some reason, he actually started questioning my ability to pay in front of the clients, and we ended up losing that account!

That was the latest incident. After that day, Otto went home without me, which was fine, because I didn’t feel like being around that tightwad either. Well, apparently not a tightwad, since he got mad about spending money and about saving it, so I don’t know what his deal is. Maybe he hates feeling like he owes me something? Whatever it is, we have to keep working together, and I do like the guy, so as soon as the weekend arrives, I end up asking him to come out to meet me. He drives over to my house pretty quick, but he’s already looking annoyed when I get the door. My intention was to make nice, but his face really gets to me.

I say, “Not fair. I’m the one who should be wearing that look after what you did.”

He sighs and takes his hands out of his pockets so he can gesture while lecturing me. He says, “Look, I know I cost us the account, but you honestly drove me to it.” I let out a sardonic laugh, and he shakes his head, looking out at the street behind him as he stands on my stoop blaming me. Did he come here just to spew bull? He goes, “I knew this would happen from the moment we were assigned to this project together. I like hanging out with you, dude, but it’s a bad idea to get mixed up with you when it comes to spending. You just get so weird about money.”

I hear a screeching noise in my head. “What did you say?”

“Oh, come on! You can’t not know this about yourself. It’s not a big deal. So you’re a bit of a spendthrift!”

6/20/2021

It was different before, but we have this game that we play every night at the dinner table. We go around the room, and each person pulls a question out of a pink plastic bowl and has to answer it. Mostly, it’s a good way to keep ourselves entertained while we eat.

Mom wrote the questions.

She actually had a whole system. Any question that didn’t get drawn would remain in the bowl for the next night, but the ones we answered got taken out and taped into her scrapbook, even the ones that ended up causing a fight. The only questions that were always in the bowl were on yellow slips of paper and had open-ended lines that worked from one day to the next, questions like, “What got you down today, and what kept you going?”

Then there were the targeted questions, which were color-coded for specific people: orange for Dad, green for my brother, and purple for me. If you saw your color in the bowl, you had to select that slip for the evening, and you had to answer honestly. Targeted questions tended to be serious, like a means of intervening when Mom got worried about us, but they could also be positive or even lighthearted.

One night, Mom left a purple slip in the question bowl for me that read, “What does it feel like to be the champion?” Our basketball team had just won the season. I smiled as soon as I saw purple in the bowl that night, because I knew what it said without reading it.

Mom didn’t have a color when she was alive.

I told myself that’s just how it worked, that someone had to be holding the camera, and that person wouldn’t end up in the photo. But why didn’t any of us stop to take the camera from her and point it in her direction, even just once? I know my brother and Dad were thinking the same thing: she deserved her own color more than anyone. The first dinner after the accident was so unbearably silent, we stopped eating together for a while after that.

But one day, Dad forced us back to the table. It took a lot of banging on our doors, and my brother and I gave each other annoyed looks as we followed him downstairs. Then, after all that, I couldn’t even make it into the dining room, because I could immediately spot from the staircase that the question bowl was on the table, placed right on top of the pizza box. The message was clear: if you want to eat tonight, you’re going to have to play along.

“No,” I said, and turned around.

“Oh, come on!” said Dad, following me up the stairs. He grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me back down. “You’re not even gonna read the slip?”

I rolled my eyes. Why was he doing this? There was no way this little idea of his wouldn’t end in tears. I was about to yank my arm back, but then I realized that my brother was already at the bowl.

“Only one question?” he called out to Dad.

“Yeah,” Dad said, smiling sadly.

My brother looked at me. “It’s red.”

He lifted a red scrap of paper out of the bowl, clumsily torn and awkwardly large. I stepped into the kitchen, Dad behind me. My heart jumping, I sat down at the table, and my brother handed Dad the question. He read it aloud: “Can we talk about Mom?”

5/23/2021

“Performance reviews are this week, aren’t they?”

Tracy’s comment, delivered in an artificially casual tone, withers to the table between us. I take a last sip of coffee and get up to adjust my belt.

“Wait!”

She hurries after me as I head for the door. I turn to look at her.

“Lou, you never know…”

I scoff, and kiss her, and leave.

*

At the office, there are two people waiting at my desk: my boss Sherman, and a young woman with orange hair who I haven’t seen before. My last conversation with the boss was about why Korey, who’s ten years younger than me and has been working here for four years compared to my nine, was promoted over me last month, and how with a “slight attitude adjustment,” I could start to see some advancement in my career. The longer I stay here, the more I think about leaving, and the harder it gets to make the smallest change to my life. I’m barely in my forties, but this place feels like a coffin.

“Morning, Lou!”

Sherman drops his smile when he reads my face and sees that I have yet to adjust my attitude. He straightens up.

“Lou, I’ve been thinking about our last, uh, one-on-one meeting, and I’ve decided to give you a bit of an extra challenge today.”

“Right.”

“This is Ella, our newly hired accountant!”

“Hi, Lou!” The young woman smiles broadly, like she’s being introduced to a celebrity.

“Hi.”

“Lou, I’m putting you in charge of her training. Ella, you have any questions, you just ask Lou, okay?”

“Okay, thank you!”

“Wait, what? I’m not an accountant! Korey is… was in accounting. Shouldn’t he take care of her?”

I know I’m being loud, but I don’t care anymore. This is my opportunity to prove myself? If I had gotten the position, which would have actually made sense, then he’d be stuck training her today instead of me. In fact, I’m the one who trained Korey, so I’m almost certain Sherman is just antagonizing me at this point. Ella looks nervously back and forth between him and I, her face overly expressive, like it matters which one of us suckers ends up training her.

“Lou, look, you don’t need to teach her how to do her job. She has the qualifications. Just show her the ropes of this office, okay? Now I’m not asking you again.”

With that, Sherman walks off, leaving me with the newbie. She looks at me with big eyes, her smile toothy, but twitching.

“I won’t be too much trouble,” she says. “I’m sure I can figure it out.”

I sigh. “Actually, we use a system that’s pretty uncommon. Where’s your desk?”

*

By lunch, I’ve managed to get Ella up to speed and fall behind on all of my work. I could work through lunch, show off my adjusted attitude, but there’s only so much insult a man can take, so I head to my usual corner of the break room and take out Tracy’s leftover wrap, the few minutes of happiness to carry me through the rest of my workday. But then Korey walks in with Ella. He normally goes to the cafe across the street and takes extra long breaks, but our boss is usually with him, so I guess it doesn’t count as an attitude problem.

Korey holds out an arm in an exaggerated gesture. “Here we are. The break room. What do you think? Isn’t it amazing?”

I gag on some lettuce. His smile is so obvious. He’s trying way too hard. Don’t fall for it, Ella.

“Oh, haha. Thank you,” she says awkwardly. She’s not biting. She’s not bad.

“Alright, you let me know if you need anything else,” he says, and he actually winks before leaving, to which she makes a face after he’s gone. Her expressions are so good, I can’t help but laugh. She turns and notices me.

“Don’t mind Korey,” I say. “He’s a schmoozer.”

“Just like my last boss,” she says, shaking her head.

“There’s one in every office.”

Ella sits down at my table with a donut and some juice, and I’m about to tell her she doesn’t have to sit with me just because I’m training her, but then she points to the pin on my lapel.

“Breast cancer?”

I tense up. Since everyone in the office already knows my story, I wasn’t expecting to be pitied today. But I’m the one wearing the pin, so I nod. “My wife. She’s a three-time survivor.”

“God bless her. We’ve been through it too.”

“Your mom?”

“My aunt. But she was like a second mom to me. We grew up right next door to her.”

“She didn’t make it?”

“No.”

“When?”

“Last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ella is tearing up a bit, but the silence feels like a third companion.

“Three times. You must be drowning in bills,” she says after a while.

“Only reason I’m here.”

“That’s not a bad reason.”

“No.” I smile at my paper bag. “I guess not.”

4/28/2021

“Almost everything I consume, I don’t believe in.”

Hala came to this troubling realization and wrote this line in a note on her phone one night after taraweeh, about one week into Ramadan, because she was scared to forget this feeling. For the first time in so long, Hala had paid attention to the recitation of the Qur’an, the words that she usually kept playing in her home like little more than pleasant background noise. Tonight she had actually listened to the messages, letting them into her mind, rinsing out her heart with them, rid of distraction and free from detachment as she stood with her sisters in prayer.

Driving home from the masjid, she kept thinking about that line in her phone, and how she had justified only reading and listening to and watching content for entertainment, content with no message, and even content with messages at odds with her deen, by telling herself that she wasn’t consuming it mindlessly; no, she was a critical thinker, and she was judging this content as she enjoyed it, approaching even her entertainment with intention. In fact, she used to reason, the questionable content actually brought her closer to Allah swt, because it made her realize that she was more devoted to Islam than those she followed, and because she was able to remain devout regardless of what kind of content she consumed.

Hala shook her head at the steering wheel as she drove, muttering istighfar, embarrassed that it had taken her a Ramadan epiphany to see how flawed her logic had been. How had the cognitive dissonance not driven her mad? Humankind cannot help but to determine how well they’re doing by seeing how they measure up to those around them, but what a fallacy! What a ridiculous feeling she had internalized, that she was a better Muslim than those she followed, when those she followed weren’t even Muslim. If one wanted to build their muscles, would they chart their progress against artists or athletes? How had internet celebrities come to replace her prophet, peace be upon him, and his companions, as her role models? And how had she not noticed?

Out of habit, Hala turned on the radio when she got on the highway. But then she caught sight of the hilal from her window, one of Your many signs, a waxing crescent, calm and available for those who bother to look up. A song about dancing all night long in the club didn’t seem like the appropriate soundtrack to conclude her experience of praying all night long in the masjid. She turned off the radio, and started a new habit of making du’a in the car. Her first request to Allah swt was that the habit would last, from Ramadan to Ramadan.

3/20/2021

There is no sight more alienating, I realized on a gratuitously chilly Monday morning, than that of fluorescent sneakers stomping down the hall in a pack, no sound more offensive than that of raucous laughter when you’re having a bad day.

I was having a bad year.

I lived in a harsh world that didn’t want me there. I had come to that conclusion at the start of summer, after the town had passed a law that pretty clearly discriminated against my family. The insult was threefold, because first had come the shock of the law being proposed, then the shock of its enactment, and finally, the shock that no one seemed to care. People were too caught up in their own lives, I supposed, privileged to not have a stake in this battle, and uncaring enough to only look up when they were directly affected.

So how was I, after the betrayal of this past summer, to be expected to feel anything but spite for my blissfully fluorescent-clad classmates? Jenny walked up to me in the same ridiculous sneakers that the rest of them wore, the latest trend from the summer. Meanwhile, my summer had consisted of a lonely fight for my family’s rights and a depression-inducing degree of disillusionment. I hadn’t heard from Jenny all summer, so when she came up to me with a sad smile, I didn’t want to hear belated false sympathy from her, not now.

“Hey, girl,” she said awkwardly, taking a seat next to me. I gave her a tight-lipped smile. “I missed you,” she said. “Sorry it’s been so long.”

“Were you on a cruise or something?” I replied without looking up from my book.

“No.” Jenny’s voice sounded off, so I looked up, and she was looking at me strangely. “You didn’t hear? I guess that explains it.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, annoyed that she was talking to me like I was the one who was out of the loop and needed to catch up on some foolish summer gossip.

“I was wondering why I never heard from you,” she said quietly, and for some reason, she seemed to be on the verge of tears. I was about to confront her about the audacity of her hypocrisy, given what I’d been through, what she had made me face alone, when she said, “My mom died.”

And with those words, I could feel my stomach acid freezing over as she started crying right there in the classroom, and I held her and decided to tell her about my summer later, because she was having a bad year, and maybe so was everyone else.

“Cute sneakers,” I said, wiping tears from her face, and she laughed through her mucus.

2/17/2021

Three strangers ride an otherwise empty subway late at night.

Woman in Long Dress: Excuse me.

Man in Baseball Cap: Hi!

Woman in Long Dress: Could you please move over a bit? Oh! No, the other way. A bit more. Please. Thank you.

Man in Baseball Cap: My pleasure.

Woman in Long Dress: Oh! Uh, you’ve followed me? I… Okay… Well, it’s just that I asked you to let me by so I could take advantage of all this empty space. That way you could have more room too.

Man in Baseball Cap: Oh, you’re very nice! But I don’t mind. That was very nice, though. I appreciate it.

Man in Sweater: Hey man, take a hint! You’re crowding her. Stop making her uncomfortable and scram!

Man in Baseball Cap: The hell do you know? I’m not making her uncomfortable. We’re friends. Right?

Woman in Long Dress: Friends?

Man in Baseball Cap: Seriously? You asked me for directions, and I helped! What, you suddenly don’t remember, or are you just a liar?

Man in Sweater: Whoa, man. Step back.

Woman in Long Dress: No, I do remember. But I’m not your friend, and you actually are making me uncomfortable.

Man in Baseball Cap: Pfft. Forget this. Women, they’re all teases!

Man in Sweater: Whew! Well that was wild! Good riddance, huh?

Woman in Long Dress: Yes. Thank you. I really appreciate you stepping in.

Man in Sweater: Oh, of course, haha!

Woman in Long Dress: Um, but… Could you please move over a bit?

1/26/2021

It happened at a gas stop.

We had just crossed over from New York into Vermont. My son needed to pee for the third time that morning. There wasn’t much for him to do in the van other than drink Gatorade, I guess. It was time to refuel anyway.

“Hurry back!” I told him.

He jumped out of the van and ran toward the convenience store, and I felt proud that he was getting old enough to enter stores on his own. I started swiping my card to fill up the tank. I remember my mind felt burdened. I just wanted to get home. It had been good to see the family, but I needed to feel in control again. Weeks of my parents telling me how I was raising him wrong, because they would know how to be perfect parents, clearly, had taken their toll on me. That was why I had to cut our trip short, even though I knew my son wasn’t happy with me for it.

After filling the tank and letting my mind wander in the van for a few minutes, I realized it was taking a while for him to get back. Trying not to panic, I parked the van and ran into the store, straight to the back where the bathrooms were. There he was. Thank God. But he was talking to somebody, a man who was grabbing his arm with one hand, and with the other, showing him a toy that my son had outgrown two years ago. My son looked confused. I stepped forward.

“Kiddo, you ready?”

The man waved awkwardly and walked off. Dazed, I took my little boy back to the van, even did his seat belt for him, and kissed his forehead. He smiled. I called my parents before getting back onto the road, and I put them on speaker to let them say hello and let them know that we had safely crossed into Vermont.

1/15/2021

It’s official: my birthday has become a sore subject. I’m finally at that age. I’ll leave you to guess the exact number. It doesn’t matter anyway. There were things I thought I’d have achieved by now, and I haven’t. And it doesn’t even feel like I’m behind anymore; it just seems like it will never happen for me.

By my age, I thought I’d have been promoted to manager. But not a single promotion ever came close to crossing my broken career path, and last year, I lost my job and had to move back home.

And I wasn’t going to bring this up here, but now it seems weirder not to; there’s also a divorce behind me. The relationship died before we even got to the “having kids” phase. And everyone told me that was a good thing, that this way, I get a clean start. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like I’m not meant for having kids. Or a career.

Every day is fine. It’s just my birthday that kills me. For most of the year, I’m grateful to have a home, a supportive family to retreat back to, a chance to come up with a new plan from the comfort of a heated living room I didn’t have to pay for. That’s a lot more bounty than many people can boast. Yes, staying in the moment has kept my anxiety at bay.

But my birthday. It just puts my whole life in context, and I don’t love looking at the bigger picture. So why can’t I look away? Why am I drawing it all out in my new journal?

Well, I was going to end this first journal entry on that bitter, honest note, but my mom looked over my shoulder while I was writing it (privacy has been another problem for me this year), and she said something interesting: “‘At that age?’ You’re only at the age where you’ve finally figured out that life can’t be planned. But that’s always been true. So what are you going to do about it?”

I don’t know, Mom. You’ve given me something new to chew on. At least I’m still here, with time to do that. And I don’t know. Writing this felt good.

Till tomorrow, then.

12/17/2020

1) How do you tell your new coworker that you saw the sticker on his laptop, the one proudly proclaiming his allegiance to the same group responsible for the destruction of your homeland and the genocide of your people?

2) You don’t.

3) You go up to him and say hi.

11/21/2020

Aram is angry. He’s so angry, all the time, it feels like his personality. His identity. And it’s been that way for a while.

Aram is a boy in high school, but he doesn’t feel that old. Or that young. Whichever it is, he’s the wrong age for who he is. Out of place for as long as he’s stuck here.

Aram wears glasses. They’re like his black hair and shrimpy body in that he didn’t choose them, but they define him, and speak for him. Maybe somebody else with the same traits could make them work, but on him, they say, “gloomy weird guy, do not engage.” He doesn’t always want them to say that.

Aram is short with his dad and rude at school. He’s never in the mood. Suppressing dark thoughts used to be his full-time job, until he had a new thought. Why should he?

Aram is a victim. That’s the thing. He has been wronged. His is a righteous rage, and what isn’t right shouldn’t be left alone.

Aram has dark thoughts that he replays in his mind whenever he’s alone, which is usually. They put him in a toxic state of mind, but at least he’s no longer running. He’s honest with himself. And how can you overcome anger if you don’t express it?

Aram was at the convenience store the other day, and the cashier reminded him of his mom. Unlike his mom, her hair was tied back in a graying braid, but like his mom, she didn’t stop smiling at him for the entire transaction, even though he never smiled once. She made him sad, but he keeps thinking about her. Would his mom’s hair have gone gray by now?

Aram isn’t angry with his mom these days, because he’s figured out that he can feel mad at himself. He’d been hoping he could free himself by learning to stop bottling up his anger, but forcing his memories to play on loop in his head like that, he’s only been generating more anger for his heart to bottle up. Letting it out doesn’t seem to be the answer. How about letting it go?

10/23/2020

Some days, being is hard. Today is like that, from the moment I wake up. I go from not being, or not being aware, to being in my bed, and not wanting to be there. Imprisoned in my own body. My healthy body, in my comfortable house, and there are no tangible troubles currently weighing me down, so the pressure to make something out of all I’ve been given is what finally gets me to rise into the day. But even without any tangible troubles to shoulder, motivation can be hard to find.

Let’s leave this house and see what meaning we can glean from this world. Normally, staying home is easier, but today is one of those days in which I feel uncomfortable in my skin, so it doesn’t make a difference where I go. My best chance to alter my state of feeling like something is wrong even though nothing is wrong is to change my surroundings. Thanks for staying in my head, reader, during this unplaceable ordeal.

My first thought as I exit my home is that I need to find a way to not be alone. Alone is suffocating today. My soul feels heavy in my body. A second person would distract me from my being a person. There is just too much going on internally at the time, so I figure I’ll try to find a solution in the external. I think I see someone. Let’s go.

“Hey you!” I yell, running toward the distant figure.

I’ll need to be more subtle; the figure runs away immediately.

I end up at the library. It’s only noon. I feel every second it takes to lift my arm and make it reach out, grab the handle, and pull open the door. My muscles fight the physical inertia of having been dangling at my side, limp, and the emotional inertia of overwhelming ennui.

As I swing the door aside, a father emerges with his little girl skipping behind him. She’s got on pink rain boots even though it’s sunny. I throw a smile her way and walk inside. It’s pleasant here. I sit on a couch by the entrance and watch a librarian chat with a patron. The couch is blue suede. Why am I here?

I get up abruptly and head out with determination, as if I have somewhere to go. I find myself walking behind the father and little girl. The question echoes with my steps. Why am I here? I walk back to my house, and I dig into my pocket for my key at the front door. What a pointless excursion. Why did I do that, leaving my house only to return, having gained nothing?

Why am I here?

“You’re not here,” speaks my conscience. “But you should be.”

I pocket my key, turn back around, begin walking a familiar path.

I hate how familiar it is.

I make it to the hospital, and I pull open the door. I’m not feeling listless anymore. My heartbeat picks up. I don’t try to challenge its pace. It actually feels good. I force myself to check in at the front desk. Who would have thought that today of all days would end up bringing me back here?

“Are you family?”

“Yes.”

9/18/2020

Quint moved across the country right before the pandemic struck. He had all these plans for what his new life would be like, but every idea fell flat on the same day without debate, silenced by a world that was suddenly unanimously wary of a particle that was around a hundred nanometers wide. It was surreal at first, the novelty of a world in quarantine merging with the novelty of his new apartment, which was full of shoddily drywalled yellows and faced a view of the woods. The experience of getting used to the dimensions of the space, figuring out which switch did what, remembering that he was somewhere new every morning when he woke up, all of that kept him feeling a sense of wonder as he watched the news each evening. The world is changing, and so am I, he’d think.

But that was before the novelty wore off, and inconvenience took its place. Spontaneity seemed like a luxury of the past, and today, on the way to the store, Quint only realized he’d forgotten his mask after getting onto the highway. He gripped the steering wheel as he pulled off at the next exit, feeling cheated. He was supposed to become a man out here. His plan had been to start at the bottom, eager and reliable, and do everything the honorable way, maybe even find love. Anything had seemed possible after he’d put some distance between himself and his manipulative family. But here he was months later, alone, with no way to change his story, freedom looking like nothing but a new kind of cage.

He pulled into his parking spot on the hill, rode the elevator down to his apartment, stalked into his bedroom, and rummaged through a box of disposable surgical masks, jamming four into his pocket to keep some in the car for next time. On his way back to the elevators, he encountered one of his neighbors, a preteen boy in fluorescent mesh shorts and a gray hoodie. The rims of his eyes were red. He was just lingering outside of his family’s apartment, and Quint remembered how he used to take the long way home after school.

“Hey, kid. You alright?” Quint stopped walking to greet him, but put on a mask and kept some distance from the boy.

“It’s Grandpa,” said the kid, his voice unexpectedly deep for his baby face. “Last week he tested positive, and now they have him in intensive care. Mom won’t let me go see him.”

“Oh.” Quint instinctively took a step away, then shuffled back to his original position, feeling like a jerk. “I’m sorry.”

The kid looked away, probably to conceal fresh tears from his neighbor.

“Would your family like any spare masks? I have plenty,” Quint offered, his voice unintentionally coming off robotic. As he spoke, the elevator doors parted.

“We’re okay, thanks,” the kid said, getting into the elevator, looking like a man.

As Quint watched the slit of light coming from between the doors ascend with his neighbor, he thought about how people didn’t share elevators anymore, and each person had to make his own way up. For others, that way involved illness, loss, grief, or poverty. For him, it was about inconvenience and waiting. But it wasn’t like Quint hadn’t suffered his own tragedies in the past. Despite what he’d been through, waiting was still a challenge in its own right. Yet all he could do was accept it, eager and reliable. So he pressed the button to call the elevator back down, and he waited.

8/20/2020

At seventeen, she had her resume all decked out. She thought that by twenty-three, she’d have her degree, the job facing a computer, even a promotion and a skyscraper view.

At twenty, she couldn’t take it anymore, the pressure of living up to everyone’s expectations, the loneliness of the legendary dorms, the soulless routine of the renowned lecture halls. She dropped out of college.

Her parents were outraged. It was their money, their investment, they told her. But wasn’t it her lost investment too? I’ll pay it back, she’d said then. Though how could she, without the job facing a computer?

She started by working the register for her hometown grocer. Not the best resume fodder, but she needed to save up while figuring out her next move. It would have to be better planned, better executed, to avoid another catastrophic meltdown. Another failure.

Meanwhile, she took solace in the easy friendships she forged with her coworkers and the comforting routine of the store. She didn’t have to impress anyone, and yet she did, without trying, stacking fruit into a highrise in colorful patterns, putting customers at ease with every smile. She could feel her heart rate settle every time she put on her apron, and spike every time she thought about not being able to wear it anymore once she plotted her course back to that skyscraper view and was ready to take off her apron for good.

So she didn’t.

7/18/2020

Lion had grown tired of being the king of the savanna. He remembered a time before his mane had grown out, so conspicuous and commanding, when the entirety of the savanna had been his playground. Now he was the greatest beast in the kingdom, and all the grasslands of Africa served as his domain, yet he felt smaller than he ever had as he tried to lead his fellow animals to prosperity. Every decision he made seemed to be popular with one group only to be controversial with the other, so that he was never free from criticism, and his task was starting to appear impossible by design. There was a constant tension between the desires of his pride and the concerns of the other species, who occupied the lower roles in the ecosystem. And what his pride didn’t seem to understand was that it was in their best interest to keep those other species happy. In fact, the horrible realization that had dawned on Lion not long into his reign, the realization that had ironically required his crowning to become clear, was that Lion was not a king at all.

He was a slave.

From afar, or from the vantage of someone too close to have a reliable perspective, it might have seemed like the lions ruled over the savanna. None were more powerful or more cunning. It was almost unfair. Yet it made sense. Of course the species on top was the best; otherwise, they would never have reached the top. The logic of evolution was simple. But it was also damning.

Without the grass, the wildebeest would starve, and without the wildebeest, the lions would starve, so the truth was that the one at the top of the food chain was in the most precarious position. Lions were dependent upon every link in the chain before their own, and a single break anywhere along that fragile line would guarantee devastation for lions above all others. What a curse it had turned out to be, to be above all others. Perhaps in reality, grass was king. Or dirt, or the rainfall. Or Whoever sent it down. Yes, having reached the supposed top, Lion was certain now of the freeing truth that he was the most needy creature in all of the savanna, an absolute slave, and there was no mirage in any desert more deceptive than his mane.

6/21/2020

It was all so predictable, the way her soul seemed to dissociate when he finally, mercifully passed, the way accepting her new reality meant immediately becoming numb to it, or making herself numb to it, the way she began relating to the world, or stopped relating to the world, the detached way in which she carried herself for months afterward.

She was acutely aware of how typical she was being in sweatpants on a Tuesday on the couch with stale chips, a flavor she didn’t even like, but he had done the shopping the last time one of them had done the shopping, too long ago, and here she was eating them anyway.

And she knew that others had lost loved ones before, in far more traumatizing ways, that the end of her world was not the end of the world, and that she was blessed to have had him at all. She even understood that she could one day get up from this, and meet someone new, perhaps not in that order. She was not so immersed in her despondency, nor so removed from reality, to be unable to regard her situation with perspective. No, she was precisely detached enough to observe herself living rather than simply live, or not care to observe herself at all, and all of her observations were made with intense investment brimming beneath the surface of her mild interest in her own life.

It was all so predictable, the scene of his death in the trailer giving away too much of the movie of her existence, so it was easy to check out, or it should have been easy to check out, but sometimes it was suddenly impossible, and she resented how her consciousness was tethered to herself, while simultaneously feeling grateful that she could still feel resentment, and then that she could feel gratitude, and surprise that even though she felt like she knew everything that lay in store for her after he was gone, actually living through it was different, and being here mattered after all.

5/22/2020

Nadine is on her morning walk when she spots what she thinks is a crow. It’s just standing there on someone’s lawn like an ornament, and it’s unexpectedly large, looking more like a black chicken than one of the spring birds that nest in the neighborhood trees and sing from the branches.

At her husband Don’s indirect request, Nadine has been walking to lose weight. She usually doesn’t enjoy the daily hour she spends walking. She likes feeling the sunshine on her face and seeing its golden light beam through the new leaves to form a translucent mosaic from sky to ground, but she’d prefer sitting and taking it all in rather than walking, as if she had a destination, carrying herself farther and farther away from her home, which is her true journey’s end.

After watching the bird strut around on the grass for a minute, Nadine continues her walk, and the impressive creature takes off. Its wings look powerful, and the intense black feathers seem mismatched against the deep blue of the sky and the brilliant pastels blooming all around them. Nadine too doesn’t match her beautiful environment. She wears her worst clothes to go walking, so it won’t matter if they get sweaty, but they make her feel even more out of place than usual against the white apple blossoms and soft purple lilacs.

When she finally slides open the screen door and steps into the kitchen, she’s feeling more worn than relieved, and Don is sitting at the counter, so she braces herself.

“Hey. Good walk?” he says, glancing up briefly from his laptop.

“Hi,” says Nadine, a little out of breath. “It was fine.” She arranges her sneakers into their spot on the corner tile with her back to her husband. Ever since he suggested she use the good weather as a chance to “get healthy again,” she’s felt self-conscious about her body around him, and her ragged shirt, desaturated over the years to the point of being colorless, doesn’t help in the way it bunches around the slopes of her shape. Her black curls are less than sightly right now too, frizzing and coming loose from their elastic in a haphazard array.

“Oh, I saw a crow,” she says as she turns to head for the shower.

Without looking up, Don nods as he crunches a chip. He’s put on weight too over the years. His weight doesn’t bother her. His lack of self-awareness, though, is a different issue. She tries not to think about it in the shower.

Once she’s clean and dressed, she pulls open the drapes in their bedroom, and there it is. The crow. It peers into their home from its branch. Goodness, it’s massive. She’s moved that it’s visited and she’s been given this chance to get a closer look. Its eyes are frighteningly alert, and it has a large beak with a strong downward curve that makes its presence all the more commanding. Though its feathers absorb all light that touches them, they paradoxically glimmer in the sunlight. They’re very fluffy.

“You’re not a crow, are you?” she says, smiling for the first time that day.

It flies away too soon, and Nadine spends a few minutes on the computer in the bedroom to determine that her friend was a raven. Crows and ravens both are among the smartest birds, but the raven’s feathers are shinier, its beak mightier, its stature more immense, and its wingspan more reaching compared to the crow. Nadine feels honored she got to encounter one today like this.

When Don steps into the bedroom, he catches her off guard, and she snaps away from her research and sits up in the chair, but he stands motionless in the doorway like a glitching program as he finishes looking at whatever’s got his attention on his phone. His stance is odd, his legs wide apart, and he’s dim, silhouetted against the magnificent light from the window. “Hey,” he says, like a minute after he appears. He’s still on his phone, so she doesn’t reply, instead just waiting for him. Letting him make her wait. At last, he pockets his phone and says, “Hey. Wanna go make us some lunch?”

She’s not sure why, but she starts laughing.

He frowns. “What?”

“Nothing,” she says, recovering. “Let’s order pizza.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I think it’s time for you to consider some healthier options.”

For a moment, his comment hits her, seeping dread into the pit of her stomach and the core of her heart, and she feels like a crow trapped in the rafters of a barn. But she doesn’t want to feel that way, doesn’t want to let this new way Don has started to see her become a full-on thing between them, so she says, “Yeah, I guess we could both stand to eat better.”

When he makes real eye contact with her, she realizes it’s been a while. “What?” he says, and the obvious displeasure on his face is so mundane, how could it scare her?

She smiles. Regardless of the consequences, that felt good to say, and the Nadine from yesterday might not have dared. High on the restored balance of power, she gets up and takes her husband by the hand. “What are you doing?” he asks, but he lets her lead him to the kitchen. She pecks his cheek, and he smiles sheepishly at the sudden affection, accepting the tomato and knife she holds out to him.

“Chop, chop,” she says with a laugh, the sun glinting off of her raven curls.

4/28/2020

Once again, Rabab was waiting out a storm in her room. She could hear her parents’ competing voices, laced with toxic emotions, seeping into her refuge from out in the hall. Rabab had excused herself and left the table as soon as the conversation showed signs of turning sour. She’d gotten good at anticipating the weather in this house. But the storm had followed her upstairs, since her mom had walked away from the heated dinner discussion that had suddenly grown ugly the moment she’d had enough, giving up too quickly like always, and Rabab’s dad had chased after her, trying clumsily to make amends a few sentences too late, with an imprecision that only reopened wounds, like always, and Rabab, like always, wished she could leave the house, but that would mean leaving the solitude of her room and walking through the minefield that the hallway outside had become.

Now, Rabab was lying on the carpet, her legs propped up against the wall. Upside down like that, she noticed the swirling pattern on the ceiling and realized how infrequently she thought about the ceiling, though it was always right above her.

“That’s not what you said five years ago! No, it isn’t!”

One muffled voice had become louder than the other, drowning it out altogether. After a few minutes of considering ceilings, she started to make shapes with the gaps between her fingers and hold them up to the light, staring at the effects and resulting rays of color so she would have something to focus on for a few moments longer other than the argument that continued to escalate so recklessly just outside of her door.

“Me? You think I’m the one who needs to be more sensitive?”

Putting her hands down, she turned her attention to her skyward legs and clenched and unclenched her toes beneath her socks. Her feet were cold.

Outside: a raised voice, so sharp as to sound unfamiliar.

A hushed tone, developing into a sob.

Perspective. That’s what I need, Rabab thought, trying not to panic or despair, trying not to slip away into that dark place of hers. So she took stock of her immediate surroundings, choosing to filter out the screams. The muscles of her toes grounded her physically, reminding her of her health and volition, her ability to act. The rays of color reminded her of the beauty and light and goodness of this world. And the ceiling reminded her that even when she forgets, there is, above her, One who never will, watching over everything, hearing every word, the ultimate witness: Allah.

This is a storm, she reasoned. Storms pass. That’s what they do. But these moments, in the heart of the chaos of the whirling cyclone, these moments matter. Yes. Before the clouds part, her mind said to her heart, you need to think about why this is happening, and how best to handle this situation; you need to pray. So she did. Wholeheartedly. And after Rabab’s private prayer, she felt closer to Allah than she had all year, which made her glad she was alive to experience even moments like these. Not only was the dark retreating, but it was like she had just woken up, and it had taken the accumulating tensions of her parents’ quarreling to snap her out of her numb oblivion.

Outside: the merciful sounds of affection. Could it be? Reconciliation already. Rabab could hear laughter from them both, the kind that comes with a tension released. She bowed down in gratitude, her face pressed to the floor and cushioned by carpet. The storm had passed, carrying away with it the stagnant air that had allowed it to form in the first place.