his back, the outline of his head. He’s rocking now, swaying back and forth. His shoulders are shaking. His breathing sounds strangled.
“Do you feel sad?”
He keeps his face hidden against the crook of his arm. “Go away.
Please
go away.”
I scrub my hands off on the tops of my thighs and stand up. “Okay, fine. Fine. If you want to wallow in the dirt, that’s completely up to you.”
I start back toward the cracked patio and the naked light. In the middle of the yard, I stop. Ollie Poe is coming toward me, elbowing his way through the crowd and carrying a gray army blanket. As he passes, his arm brushes my shoulder but he doesn’t seem to notice. As soon as he touches me, though, a tight, creeping sensation blooms on my face and my bare legs, like something is very wrong.
Above me, the moon is smiling in its luminous, pockmarked skin. I shiver and wrap my arms around myself. Something about the moment is getting thinner, but I can’t tell if it’s me or everyone else. The feeling on my skin is chilly and squirming. Then it’s nothing.
—
The light on my ceiling is unsteady. When I toss the blankets back, I do it so aggressively that the candle gutters out.
In the dark, I’m not entirely sure where I am.
The dream is still alarmingly vivid. Marshall Holt, with his bare arms, his bent back. The warmth of his touch as I reached under the picnic table for his hand.
It’s difficult to hold on to these things, though, and the harder I try to inventory my surroundings, the more disoriented I feel, until I’m not sure of anything anymore, apart from a cold, scratching sensation whenever I move.
I flail toward the nightstand, fumbling for my lamp, then sit frozen in the circle of light, staring down at myself.
There are dead leaves plastered all over my feet like leeches.
.
The weekend gallops past in flashes. I keep coming back to the problem of my feet. I do the research for my midterm paper, help Maribeth with the student council budget, win the mini-meet against the parochial school across town by almost forty seconds. I’m still thinking about my feet.
By Monday, the thought has stopped feeling like a thought and is more like a low-grade toothache, flat and tolerable, but always there.
I sit at my desk while cities fall, cells divide, the imaginary shadows of imaginary flagpoles make acute, useless angles when the imaginary sun shines down on them. I’m thinking about my feet.
The first order of business was to wash them. Then strip the sheets, pick twigs and scattered leaves out of my bed. I didn’t put them in the trash. Instead, I carried them outside and walked up and down the block looking for a maple tree.
Maybe this is evidence that I’ve started sleepwalking. Maybe relaxation does strange things to people. Maybe, unbeknownst to me, I’ve been attending redneck-themed keggers on autopilot.
Counterargument:
1) No one at the party seemed to see me except for Marshall Holt.
2) All the trees in my neighborhood are cottonwoods.
There’s a formula for finding the volume of an irregular prism scrawled on the inside cover of my notebook, but I don’t remember writing it there. The rest of the notebook is full of Spanish verb forms.
Marshall’s attendance record is generally spotty, but today he makes it to class—a full three minutes after the bell. When the door opens, everyone turns to look at him. It’s strange, how everyone is always turning to stare at latecomers, like just this once, there will be a mechanized dinosaur or a rhinoceros standing in the doorway, instead of some slacker who was smoking out by the baseball diamond and lost track of time.
His gaze rests on me for one scant second. By the time I meet his eyes, he’s already looking away. Marshall Holt is just a boy I talked to once, for one excruciating second in the counseling office. There is no evidence that we conversed the other night, even briefly, which leaves a very realistic dream. The kind in which you
“Do you feel sad?”
He keeps his face hidden against the crook of his arm. “Go away.
Please
go away.”
I scrub my hands off on the tops of my thighs and stand up. “Okay, fine. Fine. If you want to wallow in the dirt, that’s completely up to you.”
I start back toward the cracked patio and the naked light. In the middle of the yard, I stop. Ollie Poe is coming toward me, elbowing his way through the crowd and carrying a gray army blanket. As he passes, his arm brushes my shoulder but he doesn’t seem to notice. As soon as he touches me, though, a tight, creeping sensation blooms on my face and my bare legs, like something is very wrong.
Above me, the moon is smiling in its luminous, pockmarked skin. I shiver and wrap my arms around myself. Something about the moment is getting thinner, but I can’t tell if it’s me or everyone else. The feeling on my skin is chilly and squirming. Then it’s nothing.
—
The light on my ceiling is unsteady. When I toss the blankets back, I do it so aggressively that the candle gutters out.
In the dark, I’m not entirely sure where I am.
The dream is still alarmingly vivid. Marshall Holt, with his bare arms, his bent back. The warmth of his touch as I reached under the picnic table for his hand.
It’s difficult to hold on to these things, though, and the harder I try to inventory my surroundings, the more disoriented I feel, until I’m not sure of anything anymore, apart from a cold, scratching sensation whenever I move.
I flail toward the nightstand, fumbling for my lamp, then sit frozen in the circle of light, staring down at myself.
There are dead leaves plastered all over my feet like leeches.
.
The weekend gallops past in flashes. I keep coming back to the problem of my feet. I do the research for my midterm paper, help Maribeth with the student council budget, win the mini-meet against the parochial school across town by almost forty seconds. I’m still thinking about my feet.
By Monday, the thought has stopped feeling like a thought and is more like a low-grade toothache, flat and tolerable, but always there.
I sit at my desk while cities fall, cells divide, the imaginary shadows of imaginary flagpoles make acute, useless angles when the imaginary sun shines down on them. I’m thinking about my feet.
The first order of business was to wash them. Then strip the sheets, pick twigs and scattered leaves out of my bed. I didn’t put them in the trash. Instead, I carried them outside and walked up and down the block looking for a maple tree.
Maybe this is evidence that I’ve started sleepwalking. Maybe relaxation does strange things to people. Maybe, unbeknownst to me, I’ve been attending redneck-themed keggers on autopilot.
Counterargument:
1) No one at the party seemed to see me except for Marshall Holt.
2) All the trees in my neighborhood are cottonwoods.
There’s a formula for finding the volume of an irregular prism scrawled on the inside cover of my notebook, but I don’t remember writing it there. The rest of the notebook is full of Spanish verb forms.
Marshall’s attendance record is generally spotty, but today he makes it to class—a full three minutes after the bell. When the door opens, everyone turns to look at him. It’s strange, how everyone is always turning to stare at latecomers, like just this once, there will be a mechanized dinosaur or a rhinoceros standing in the doorway, instead of some slacker who was smoking out by the baseball diamond and lost track of time.
His gaze rests on me for one scant second. By the time I meet his eyes, he’s already looking away. Marshall Holt is just a boy I talked to once, for one excruciating second in the counseling office. There is no evidence that we conversed the other night, even briefly, which leaves a very realistic dream. The kind in which you
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