Where The Walls Speak

"Cannot believe this." Mother rants under her breath, "Going to be late!"

She's talking about me, I know. She always is as she backs her car out the drive. Because I always make her late for work.

"...get a paycheck."
I stare out the window as the landscape begins to move. Forcing my eyes past my transparent self, I gaze into the endless wheat. Their golden stalks crowing each other, dancing together in the wind. They are, I've discovered, the perfect median to daydream. And as I watch them, Mother slowly becomes the white noise to my thoughts as my mind drifts away into the field.

She waits for me there, just past the crop. In a valley whose grass has been flattened by previous unrelenting rain. She stands there, at its center, untouched by the wind and unbothered by the wet tread beneath her feet. She doesn't talk, but I can see her words unravel when she breaths.

I arrive.

She smiles, and it's a thousand conversations at once. Every sentence ever conveyed over the mirror's hard face now floating out upon us in their fog bodies. One stays slightly above the rest, gliding amongst us like a bird, hovering on invisible wings. Promise.

I finally return her smile, and she raises her palm to me: an invitation. I reach up to take her hand, able now - in my dream world - to pass beyond the glass. Fingers glance—

"Athens, are you listening to me?"

The valley is sucked away, and she along with it. Unplugged like an old TV screen.

"Athens!"

I respond to the warning in my mother's voice. "Yes, mom."

After a deep exhale, she reiterates, "Your school is coming up; get your bag ready."

I do as she asks, retrieving my pack from the floor and heaving its book-laden self onto the seat beside me. Glancing quietly inside, I attempt again to dream, and fall into its water-stained interior.

I see her there too, hiding between the hard textbook covers—

The car lunges to a stop, and once more I lose her.

"Three o'clock, Athens."

This is my goodbye.

Unclicking my seatbelt, I heave both the door and my bag out into the empty street. Standing there, as my mother drives away, I stare at the dilapidated building face I've seen years before and will for years to come. Washington Elementary. Built in a time when the budgets were low, it is a place falling apart far beyond just at the seams; whose student body consists more-or-less of children exiled from the remaining district, whether for record or poverty. Bordering on condemnation, it is the place I come to learn.

I tromp up the crumbling front walk, caring less about the old building or the bullies that use its halls as their way to hunt. Opening the cracked glass doors, I scurry past full classroom in search of mine. Caring less of my tardiness. Caring only for one thing. One person.

Her name is Amy.