Chex Mix

Tomorrow is Wednesday, tomorrow is Wednesday, tomorrow is Wednesday, tomorrow is Wednesday.

Tomorrow is Wednesday and there is nothing you can do about it.

And it’s hot under my shirt, under my mind. I want to go to the cool air conditioned place in the back of my head where I can sleep and be cold and not think about Wednesdays. But I’m sitting in class, fists punched into my sides, a strangle-hold on the fabric of my shirt. I can hear my breath in my head and I wonder if it’s as loud to everyone else. I can barely hear the teacher teaching or the students whispering or the papers shuffling or the pencils sharpening. I just hear my harrowing intake and calm, smooth exhale again and again. My heart is more background noise coming from deep inside. It pounds fast twice and gradually beats slow three times and then two again.

I wonder how I continue breathing; continue doing everything I’ve always done when my brain wasn’t so wrong. It seems like my mind has been isolated, shunned by the rest of me; left to fend for itself while the others do their jobs in silent apathy.

And then my breath and heartbeats are taken away and alarms are sounding, red devices on the ceiling flashing bright white with each shriek.

The teacher has us line up in chaotic order and merge into the hallway with the rest of the fish, flowing desperately in the current. We must be free.

And so we’re out in the cold weather that feels so good on my feverish, itching skin. Standing on the hard, frozen earth without a soft, white blanket to cover up the harshness of the dead yellow color of the landscape. Hands in pockets to give the image I’m cold, and somehow my fingers will be saved from the chill within worn jean fabric.

“Hey, remember me?”

I look up, searching for a face and find a familiar one—one from the nurse’s office. I narrow my eyes as I try to get my jaw to unlock so I can speak, try to get my tongue untied so I can swallow.

“From the nurse’s office? I want friends, remember?”

I wrench my mouth open because she looks hopeful. No one looks at me like that. “Yeah. I remember.”

“Uh… I’m Ry,” she says, pushing her hands into the pockets of her marshmallow-like jacket. I look down at my bare arms and wonder why I don’t have goosebumps.

“Owen,” I tell her, bobbing my head up and down.

She averts her eyes from me and then back. “Care to join me for a spell?” She smiles a little.

I screw my lips up halfway, sort of like a smile, my muscles tell me. “Sure.”

And we sit down on an empty patch of frozen, tamped grass, our conversation lingering on the cold and Ry’s lack of friendship. And as I pluck at icy blades of grass, a boy slides face first into the ground, having tripped over Ry.

“Seth?” she asks.

He groans in reply.

I look over my shoulder to the other two who are standing, panting by the door. The Asian boy from the office and the girl who was sick and Dessi. The gang’s all here.

But the strangest thing happens after that. We all gather around into a circle and talk. Like, really talk like good friends do over a good meal. Granted, I stay silent a majority of the time, but I already feel closer to these kids for some reason. Seth and Ry and Paulie and Ananda and Dessi.

I guess I can call them friends.