The exercise: write a story about a dream, describing the familiar as if it were unfamiliar.
Exercise taken from The Periwinkle Pen.
Fun fact: the story alludes to a song. Honestly, the song helped me finish writing it from heavy doubt. & the song does not belong to me, obviously, and full rights belong to the owner(s).
[Quicksand]
Not even in the midst of December was the weather cold. Chilly floated into St. Louis and repelled the long-lasting warmth somewhere in November; I don't remember exactly when the change occurred. But all that matters is that the weather didn't keep people confined indoors and that I could walk outside without wearing a ridiculous fluffy coat that made my body appear thicker than it already was.
I felt my lips curl into a smile as I walked up a plain sidewalk, staring ahead at the upper end of a large pavilion. In my vision I saw two buildings connected by an over passing roof that blocked off rain, hail, and snow. To my left, long stretches of trimmed green grass were fenced into rectangles by dark green chain fences. To my right were plain bricks of yet another building with a few trees scattered every few feet (to be earth-friendly, to make the place look better, to quench the thirst of parched environmental activists who wouldn't shut up). Neither of the sides were much of an attraction unless sports teams practiced in the fields, but even then, I didn't care. Sports wasn't my thing, and not because I was chubby either. I could play ultimate Frisbee longer that the next guy and keep trucking even from sweat and fatigue. The scenery wasn't the source of my smile.
The sidewalk cut at a right angle near the overhanging roof, jutting off into a different direction. I sharply turned with the sidewalk and met people who were sitting on steps outside of doors. The majority of them were males, all of them wearing faded blue jeans with holes and tears in them. Graphics tees with assorted bands promoted by Hot Topic covered their chests, and above the tees were jackets. One male in particular stuck out to me, one wearing a gray over his long locks of curled gold hair that rivaled Goldilocks’. He waved at me, and I nodded in reply.
Only one person was standing up, and she stood across from the group against a separate door with no steps. She glanced at me with her freckled face and smiled, her teeth peeking through her lips. As I reached her, she wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer. "Hello," she said, her voice like a preteen boy's voice hitting puberty.
The crowd of the guys smirked and chuckled. "You look like boyfriend and girlfriend," one of them called out.
"Whatever," the girl dismissed as her voice hit a rough undertone, waving the remark away with her hand. My face warmed as she rubbed my shoulder. I wanted to glare at the speaker, to bite back, to show discontent. But the girl stayed calm and collected, so I blended with her atmosphere--to keep her from embarrassment--
A hot breath hit my ear as I heard the rubbing-sandpaper voice whisper, "Wait here a bit, I left something in my locker." Before I could reply a simple "okay," she retreated into
I was left with a bunch of rowdy boys she hung with, most or all of them most likely stoners (hinting to one who wore a beanie with hemp leaves on it).
One perk of physical flawless is the inability to keep people's attention for long. The boys turned to one another and chatted among themselves, their interest flipping instantly like a light switch: on to off. The
The curly-haired boy heaved himself to his feet and walked to a dull brown-painted pole, the same color as the buildings' doors. He leaned an arm against the pole and kept his feet inches from the pole, an attempt at a "cool" pose as far as I could tell. He motioned with his head to join, using the same movement people used as a substitute for "'sup." Joining him, I wrapped an arm around the pole, my arm distanced from his, our faces closer than first anticipated.
"So."
"So."
Our heads slightly nodded back and forth. I continued to let my head metronome forward and back to invisible music as the boy looked behind him, quickly surveying the area and the other guys. When his eyes locked with mine again, the corners of his lips twitched upward, and after another second, restriction crumbled, letting the smirk reveal itself. "So how far have you two gone?"
The slight static sounds of the other guys diminished like a candle out of wax. The boy didn't speak loudly, but somehow, he caught everyone else's attention.
I shrugged and said, "Not too far, I guess."
"Have you thought about sex?"
A choked chuckle tumbled from my mouth, and my hand flew up to cover it. One of the boy's eyebrows arched upward, his eyes unmoving. His growing grin deceived his nonchalant cover up. Clearing my head, I tried to recompose myself, brushing my hair to one side. "If only I knew how to properly screw a chick."
The boy's body began to shake with the background sound of a low rumbling laughter drumming into sound waves. He laughed, ducking his head to hide his yellowing teeth fully exposed, and he beat his arm against the pole. He turned to the crowd and shouted, "Did you hear? She doesn't know how to screw a chick!" Immediately the crowd of boys exploded into laughter like a live audience crowd waiting for the "applause" card.
My lips caved inward, hiding them, and felt my cheeks burning. Laughing faces stayed constant, mocking and pointing, knee-slapping and beating at their legs, falling to the ground and shaking their heads.
Wiping an invisible tear from his eye, the boy's laughter swindled to pants and sighs. "That is hilarious. What a laugh!"
Before I could utter anything, the girl returned, arm around my shoulder again. She glanced over at the boys catching their breath and then turned to me, smiling. "Shall we go?"
I nodded and smiled in return. We walked toward the building opposite of the crowd, and the girl dropped her hand, allowed some space in between us, and then took hold of my hand. I pushed the door open for the both of us, and once the door closed behind us, locking out the howling laughter of the boys, the warmer air brushed past our faces.
We walked into the building smiling, but after a second’s look, the smiles dropped to frowns.
People bustled throughout the hallway, packed tight and walking in opposite directions. The girl and I exchanged looks before gaping on. The day was late, and never have people still inhabited the hallway during such an hour. Clubs and activities caused no such commotion nor have they dug deep into the day. In other words, there was no apparent reason why—if it was possible—every student who attended school still loitered about.
The girl next to me muttered under her breath and squeezed my hand. Without explanation she dragged me into the crowd as I tried to keep balance in my boots. People made way for the girl like the seas parting for Moses with only a glance behind their shoulders while pressing the crowd into the walls. We turned into another hallway known as the senior hallway, one with less people. I expected the girl to stop since the particular hallway was her favorite, but instead, she continued her pathway throughout the hallways. On one entire side were windows that revealed the beautiful courtyard laden with walkways and big bushes. On the other were large red lockers hiding a door to a library in their midst.
Questioning could have helped me, but I decided to just go with the flow. As long as we could do what was planned, it didn't matter. Like Machiavelli wrote, the end justified the means. But the masses of students still flocked in the hallways sealed my mouth shut for the moment.
The main hallway of the school also burst to the seams with students. I couldn't help gaping as the girl continued to lead me. "You've got to be kidding me," I murmured, but the girl either couldn't hear over the people's buzzing chatter or could care less about a pointless comment.
We elbowed people out of the way disregarding the polite manners in order to reach the cafeteria, which was—you guessed it!—filled to the max by people. Bright and dark colors of clothes and skin and bags and backpacks hid the dusty blues of the cafeteria. Now the people surrounding us glared and shouted at us as we pushed on, creating a pathway of compressed teenagers.
With a great effort we finally made it through the cafeteria and into the school's kitchen. The area, devoid of people, was occupied by rows of ovens, stoves, fryers, microwaves, storage shelves, the general supplies expected in kitchens—except for a white silo, taller than humans (and standing on stilts) but still fitting in the room that stood against a wall to the side. No odors hung in the air, and no staff members were in sight. The kitchen was abandoned, wrapped in solitude, and we ripped away the paper and hid from the world.
The girl eyed the short white silo, her eyes resting on the silver ladder up the side. I looked at it as well with little interest, but my eyes widened when the girl jumped onto the latter. As she began climbing I asked in a harsh whisper, "What the hell are you doing?"
"There shouldn't be anything inside this thing, which means this can allow us some privacy."
I bit my bottom lip, just watching the girl continue climbing higher until she dropped down over the edge. She then swore and shouted, "Christ, what is this stuff?"
A gasp escaped me, and I threw myself at the ladder, scrambling up the silo. My heart skipped a few beats, still tumbling around from the previous fantasy of privacy and now from what could have gone wrong; what was in the silo that caused the girl to curse so?
I peered over the edge to see the girl, arms raised above her shoulders, face twisted into a scowl, soaking in white-yellow liquid that appeared to have lumpy materials in it. Cringing, I said, "That looks like some sort of soup or chowder."
"Yeah, I think so too. Come in."
I stared. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. Close your eyes if you must."
If the girl could endure standing in food—and, I thought, the school better not try to sell the concoction the next day at lunch—I supposed I also could. After all, we were alone in the kitchen. No one could tease us for standing in some nice, warm soup.
So I sucked in some breath and heaved my legs over the edge, letting them dangle for a moment. They were suddenly jerked down, pulling the rest of my body with it, and I squealed in surprise as the white-yellow liquid smothered me. When I felt my feet hit a surface, by body untouched from the waist-up, I heard the girl's boyish laugh ring and echo in the silo. If I was not aware of who was in the silo with me, I would have assumed that a twelve year old boy jumped in with me.
She took my arm and led me to a rounded edge of the silo, and once her back made contact with the wall, she wrapped both arms around my body. I returned the gesture with a smile on my face. Mentally I sighed with relief, but the stress soon returned. I could swear that something from within the soup grabbed at my legs, slowly edging me down. Yet the girl did not move one bit.
A fear hit me: what if I would be pulled down and lost forever, never to see the girl again? Never to see my loved ones, the school, the millions of people roaming the halls, or never to taste soup? Did the pulling mean that my time was limited? My body shook, and in my mind, I thought of a farewell.
"I cannot believe how lucky I am."
The girl looked at me with a curious stare, and her thin lips parted as she said, "What do you mean by that?"
The sensation of my feet being dragged down shot through my legs stronger than ever. I tightened my grip around the girl, sucking in a breath. She pressed me closer, her hands hardening against my back—to my surprise, it felt like a comfort—and our eyes met. Releasing all the breath from before, my voice quivered as I said, "There are many reasons why I am lucky. Months ago, the helpless notion of my lonely future gripped me. I felt undesirable, horrendous, all the bad adjective that you could think of. On top of that, I thought that my parents would disown me if they knew about my secret crush. What my friends would think of my secret crush. What everyone else would think about my secret crush. But now here I am, standing with said secret crush, happier than I can put into words, even if we are standing in food. For this reason I hope you're as happy as I am."
"I am happy," she started, "very happy. Don't ever doubt that—ever. If I was unhappy, we wouldn't be together anymore. Drink some confidence juice, stop being scared of what people think of us, and let us keep having fun with smiles on our faces."
I tried not to laugh. The girl was never good at pep talks despite her hearing it constantly from playing sports, but nonetheless, my heart began to feel lighter. With our eyes still locked, I smiled. "I guess I'm just nervous. I wasn't sure where this relationship would lead me—us."
Then I thought of something.
"You’re right," I said, taking her hand and straightened my back. The pulls on my feet stopped, and then the soup's sinking reversed, leaving me standing normally, eye level with the girl. Once the sensation completely left, I grabbed the girl's other hand and stepped back, pulling the girl away from the curved wall and to the middle of the silo. For a moment, we leaned forward and let our foreheads touch, drowning out the soup's smell, replaced with the girl's cologne.
Then the girl broke eye contact, her eyes fleeting to the direction of the kitchen's door; thumps of shoe against ground leaked through the door's edges. I released one hand and reached for the top edge of the silo. The girl smiled, like she knew what I was about to do, and proud of it.
We stepped out of the silo, the soup dripping off our ruined clothes, and walked out of the door and along with the others.
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