Megan Guo

I.

It’s sunset when dance class finally lets out, and the fingerprints and small children’s nose-smudges painting the strip mall doors catch the colors and create a network of pink and orange trails. The tangerine sun, round and bright as a stoplight, dips its bottom edge behind the silhouettes of pines beyond the highway. While the orange glow paves a warm new layer over the road, I feel the smooth brush of dusk on my skin. Just out of touch, but waiting.

I’m half-tempted to drop my purse in the studio so I don’t have to stand here with it awkwardly shifting my center of gravity. I could toss it in my backpack, of course, but what’s the point of bringing what I don’t need?  I’m standing here, bathed in the final light of summer, and I’d like to think I won’t need things like purses or high heels when fall’s first rays emerge on the other side of tonight. Because by tonight, I’ll be riding in a bus with streetlights flashing by my tired eyes, heading towards California and my sister.

Or maybe I won’t. I feel pinpricks across my arms and down my neck: the feel of half-tangible strings pulling me towards home, towards California, and everywhere in between. But the bus station is just across town, and Addie’s latest postcard and the seventy dollars she sent are jabbing corners through my jean pocket. (‘This should be half of the money you need to get a bus’, she wrote. ‘So you’re technically halfway here. Miss you, signed Addie.’) I want to hear her laugh infused in the words again, instead of having to siphon it from my memories and inject it myself. I want her to pull me into the store where she buys all of her postcards, and go through bulk crates of shaped erasers like we used to do at the general store when we were younger. I want to be able to stand solid at the fringe of the surf, eyes closed, knowing that Addie or her girlfriend, Kenna, will laugh and jerk me back if the water makes a rush for my shoes.

And yet…

Mom thinks I caught a ride home with some dance ‘friends’, although I don’t think she fully realizes that our relationship is more ‘taxi-driver-and-awkward-rider’ than anything else. Nor does she realize that the people I told her were driving me have been up at their cabin for the past week. I have an hour before the maybe-my-bus to California pulls into the dusty station though, so I can only hope she won’t notice I’m not home before I’m gone.

I’m not too worried. I shoulder my sister’s old backpack and watch the strong orange light emphasize the topography of my skin as I start down the street.

 

II.

I made up a story for my younger brother, Toby, when he asked me what happened to Addie. At that point, no one knew, but I kept imagining the last time I saw her at her desk, haloed slightly by the lamp. I kept layering meaning over the image — I still do —because maybe she was drafting letters to us that never got left behind, or scouring a bus route map to see which stop she should meet Kenna at, or digging her painted nails into the soft tabletop as she debated bringing Toby or me with. But until her first postcard came for me, she had vanished. So the story I created, technically, was just as true as any other at the time.

I told Toby how Addie slipped out the front door in the middle of the night, and how soft dawn grayness mingled with her frayed braid as she biked down the highway. I related how general-store-Kat said she stopped by at five in the morning, which was true, and that Kat told me Addie bought a handful of limp peach and fuchsia balloons, which was possibly not true.

Toby coiled his comforter around his arms. “And then what?”

I wasn’t sure if there really was a maze-like mass of water pipes crossing the back, outside wall of the convenience store, and I resolved to never look. But I said our sister clambered up them with the balloon skins wedged in her backpack straps, and when she reached the top, she filled them with the sky. They bulged, straining for the dawn — “Because they were the same color, the balloons thought they were part of it,” I explained — and Addie held on. She dashed across the flat rooftop and threw herself into the sky, her fingers tangling balloon ribbons and clouds. The balloons’ swollen stomachs lifted her up above the dimming streetlights, above the awakening town, above us.

And just like that, I pulled truth out of maybe-fact for my younger brother. I wonder who will do that again, when I’m gone.

 

III.

I know what Addie really did bring though, besides the list of things Kat said she’d bought. I name them in my head as I continue down the sidewalk. Her backpack, of course, the backpacking one she’d proudly purchased from a garage sale before Mom said she could definitely not go out into the wild by herself. She probably stuffed clothes inside in the way she always did, by shoving them so that they sprung out like patchwork flowers when the bag opened, and she took the stuffed animal pig I gave her when I was six. And for whatever reason, she swiped Dad’s half-pack of cigarettes from where they’d been stagnating on the washing machine for two years, as if she thought they’d seep nicotine courage into her skin. But what’s the use in muddling Toby’s truth with another?

 

IV.

I told Addie she should tell Mom. She scowled and muttered something under her breath, but I missed it over the roar of the school bus’s engine.

“She won’t get it,” she said, louder.

“At least try,” I urged, but I could tell Addie was already envisioning Mom shoving her towards the door, shouting. Or worse, turning away in passive-aggressive disappointment, where the situation was officially ‘okay’ but really wasn’t. I guess Addie would rather run than face the unknown.

But then again, how am I any different? How many times have I told Mom an altered truth about what I’m doing, because I can’t help but think of the possibilities of how she could react? My lack of friends, for instance. The hours of creeping through the reedy wetlands behind the elementary school, collecting duckweed on my sneakers as I pursued frogs, replaced with made-up gatherings at the dance seniors’ houses. I’ve created separate lives for every person around me, separate stories that, to everyone else, are pretty much truths.

Addie did the same thing, to an extent.

“It’s a brave idea, to leave,” she asserted in one of her postcards, after I wrote about the time I went to a party and spent the whole time sitting awkwardly in the corner, hidden in the glare of the color-changing lights. “You don’t have to tell anyone about not really having all those friends you said you did, and deal with Mom’s disappointment and whatnot. You can just appear somewhere else and be who you want to be.”

I wish she would send letters rather than postcards sometimes, so that she could slip a photograph in the envelope and show me who she really wanted to be, and who she claims she is now. My only clues are her words, assuming she’s not writing me more false truths, and the marks that appear on the postcards: smudges in the corners and coffee rings overlaying the shiny pictures. When I rub my fingers over the slightly-raised circles, a chill darts down my arms. My sister never drank coffee; the warm, bitter scent always calls to mind rushed commuter adults and makes me wonder what I will find in California, if anything.

 

V.

There’s a playground across the road from the bus station, a remnant of the now-defunct day care. The equipment is painted green, and the now-purplish light is tinting it a navy shade while the metal’s joints catch the last glints of sunlight. Addie, Mom, and I used to come here to pick up Toby.

Does Toby have a multi-truth life yet, or is he too young? He’s peering over the edge of childhood, ready to dip into middle school, and I know it will be too late when he finally enters. He’ll learn how to turn lies into truth, just like Addie and I did.

I watch a thin dribble of golden light slide down the swing set pole as the sun finally disappears behind the optometrist building. The clock on the corner, with its face protected behind yellowed plastic, shows eight-twenty. I have ten minutes before the bus comes, so I slowly start across the street. It’s quiet now, almost eerily so; the crickets have stopped chirping as summer seeps out of the air, the highway’s noise has quieted to a drone, and the usually-present families around the clump of restaurants have been replaced by a single cashier reclining on a bench outside the pizzeria. Somehow, I thought that my mind at least, would be crowded with emotions and jostling thoughts, but it too, is quiet. Everything seems to revolve around Addie, Toby, and me.

Will Toby make up truths? Will he know that I, too, climbed aboard a bus when I got tired of my life, or will he say that I chased after the sister with the balloons, inflating my own as I ran? I tell myself that I shouldn’t be thinking about him, that this is about me now, but I can’t help but wonder what this will lead to. Will sneaking across the country become almost a rite of passage, a tradition? Will my brother leave Mom behind, wondering what she did wrong?

What did she do wrong? I try to pinpoint a specific event, but all I can unearth is a writhing sense of discomfort. It wasn’t a single happening; it was dozens, hundreds of little ones that slowly, slowly stilled my chattering mouth when she was around. And then, after Addie left, it was as if my sister had left a ghostly hand behind. Every time a flock of thoughts lighted around me when Mom and I were together, I’d open my mouth to share them, and my Addie’s arm would shoo them back into the sky. Back into my own mind.

That’s why I need to go. I need to get back to Addie, so we can let them free again.

 

VI.

The man behind the ticket counter doesn’t say anything as I walk into the bus station. There’s a family with a little boy perusing pamphlets in the corner, luggage-less, but the handful of other people who look like they’re actually traveling are mostly scattered across the stiff-backed benches.

Why do I want to suddenly look up and see Toby, watching me over one of the armrests?

Addie’s postcards stick their corners through my pocket and prick my side. “Come on,” they urge, in my sister’s voice from three years ago. “Get that ticket already.”

I want to tell myself that I’m hesitating because of fear, but I can’t. I’m not scared; not while I have pictures of far-off cities and the Pacific Ocean stacked in my pocket like a pile of tiny windows. I’m more scared of staying here, sinking into false versions of myself, and yet I can’t move.

Toby. Mom.

No one looks at me as I merge my sneakers with the red-orange tiling. I imagine Mom realizing that I’m missing tonight. Will she panic, like she did with Addie? Or will she somehow know where I’ve gone, and why?

Not why, though. I don’t think she’ll ever know why.

I hear the purring of a bus in my ears, even though the station is quiet. It’s a phantom, really: a memory of Addie’s bus, a prediction of mine. Maybe a forethought of Toby’s when he decides that this is how to be brave, and tries to shed the non-truth layers of himself he’s built up. It’s rumbling past, but I can’t see if I’m among the faces behind the tinted glass.

Maybe that doesn’t need to happen, but what about Addie? Maybe she’ll send me her phone number one of these days. Or maybe she’ll disappear again. But either way, she has Kenna. She has me, and Mom, whether she thinks she does or not.

But I could still go…

The windows are near-perfect mirrors now, on account of the darkness outside. But when I study my reflection, which is as illusion-like as I feel, a spark winks from beyond. It’s the streetlamps flickering to life, but when I blink at the closest one, more emerge like stars at dusk. The lights outside Toby’s school glint through the trees. The purple strands outlining the ice cream shop, where our family used to go together, are barely visible from their spot far down the street. And far after, even though I can’t see them now, are the lamps on either side of my house’s doorway. A glow will be emanating through the windows from the kitchen, where Mom and Toby will be waiting for me over bowls of cooling spaghetti.

I can fold false truths so seamlessly around people. I can give people a lens through which to see me. But I can also push back through the bus station door, I can follow the sparks, I can feel dusk disintegrating around me…

I can pull back the worlds I’ve constructed for people, wipe away the falsities, and build everything back together again.

 

 

Lauren Otolski is a senior at Minnetonka High School. In addition to writing, she enjoys exploring parks, volunteering at a local farm, and playing clarinet in her school’s marching band.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the story of Spe Ultima. You will only hear this once, before your music resumes. The choice to listen is up to you. Choose wisely.

 

“Warning: Battery low. Charge device as soon as possible. Repeat: Begin charging device.”

The announcement jolted me awake. I felt like I had been daydreaming, but the feeling was stronger than just that. I felt like I was waking up from a coma. But something was… different. Things seemed quieter than usual. Like something was missing….

“My music!” I looked down at my iPhone and realized that nothing was playing on it.

That was very unusual for this day and age, ever since the passing of the United Nation’s Jam Session Act of 2110. That was six years ago. Since that time, all iPhones were programmed to play music non-stop. It sounded like a weird law at the time, but nobody had argued with it, because everyone basically had their headphones in non-stop anyway. Their reasoning behind the law was that if everyone was always listening to encouraging music, everyone would always be in a good mood. This means no more wars, not even a bickering match. The thing is, it had worked. I hadn’t heard anyone yell in ages… in fact, I hadn’t heard anyone at all.

“Begin charging device as soon as possible. Begin charging device.”

I looked up from my phone. I was sitting in my living room. That’s funny; the last thing I remembered was putting my headphones in this morning as soon as I woke up. I looked at the clock. It now read 8:00 PM.

Where had the day gone? I literally remembered none of it. I couldn’t have told you if I had spent the day in school, or if it went by while I was pulling off a bank heist. Not that I would do something like that…

“Charge device now!”

I ripped out my headphones. A searing pain jolted through my head, like I was pulling my brain out through my ears. I looked down at my headphones just in time to see something like tentacles slither into them. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The tentacles were gone. How strange a day this was turning out to be. Or, ending as. I still don’t know where the day went…

“FINAL WARNING: BEGIN CHARGING DEVICE NOW!”

The announcement blared through my phone’s speaker. With it, the soothing sounds of music. My brain became a little foggy, and I suddenly had the urge to charge my phone, so I could continue listening to my music. I reached for my phone…

“NO!” I grabbed my phone and hurled it out an open window. With a thud, I heard my phone hit the ground, and the music stopped. Almost immediately, my head cleared up, and I could think again.

“Honey? Are you okay down there?” My mom came down the stairs, headphones in and music playing. She saw me standing by the window, and quickly looked me up and down. Before I had a chance to say anything, she suddenly asked, “Where are your headphones?”

“Um, uh well… my phone… and charging… and something about a final warning…” I was stuttering hard.

“Ok, don’t worry honey, there’s an extra upstairs, I can just go grab it, so you can keep listening to your—”

“NO! I mean no, Mom. I don’t want to listen to music anymore.”

“Honey, you have to. The law says so. Go upstairs and put in your headphones, or I will have to call the cops on you. And we don’t want that, now do we sweetie?”

“Mom, you don’t understand. There’s something wrong with the music. It was fogging up my mind. I couldn’t think, and as soon as I threw my phone out the window, and the music stopped…”

“You threw your phone out the window? That’s it.” She put her phone up to her ear, and said “Hello? μsiCore? I’m calling to report my son for destroying his phone and refusing to listen to music… Yes, he is acting aggressive… Yes, I’ve tried to get him to the backup…”

She turned around for a second. I used the chance to sprint out the back door. As soon as I got outside, I screeched to a halt. Everything was… different. But there was no time for that now. I could hear the sirens of the μsiCore in the distance. I had to run. I took off, cutting through backyards, jumping over fences, avoiding dogs, complete with Mutt-Phones™ (Revision of the Jam Session Act in 2112 included designs for headphones that animals could use, so that they wouldn’t feel left out), and basically just running for my life.

Once I was out of earshot of the sirens, I stopped to catch my breath. I looked around some more, and realized what was wrong. Everything was grayish, and everything just looked uglier and polluted. It had never looked this way before, at least not that I had noticed. Everything had always looked beautiful, with blue skies, beautiful nature, with flowers, and bunnies and rainbows, like it was a kid’s coloring book or something. Now, I realized it was all fake. I had a suspicion that it had something to do with the headphones.

I looked around to try to figure out just where I was. I was in a suburb, probably somewhere near my house, but nothing looked familiar. I was behind someone’s house, but there was a fence keeping the people inside from seeing. For whatever reason, I highly doubted that it mattered whether there was a fence or not, because more than likely, the people living inside probably never looked outside. In fact, it was probably safe to sneak a peek through one of their windows, and see just what was going on.

I sneaked around the fence, and pulled myself up to one of their windows, but only enough that I could see through. What I saw made my stomach drop.

There was a family sitting on the couch, watching the TV. They all had their headphones in, which wasn’t unusual, but I noticed that they all acted completely brain dead. They just stared straight ahead at the TV screen. I adjusted myself so I could see what they were looking at, and it made my stomach drop even more.

The news was on, and on it was a reporter, with a big fat unflattering picture of me staring over his shoulder.

I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the words “Unentertained and Aggressive” were flashing across the screen. Great. That meant that everyone knew that I had smashed my phone, and they knew to look out for me. This made things a lot harder. But, I had an idea…

 

I waited until it was completely dark outside, then I retraced my steps until I reached my house.  I needed some supplies, but it was going to be difficult not to be caught. As long as my mom didn’t hear me, I would be okay.

My room was on the second floor, so I climbed up a gutter, and walked along the roof. When I got to where my room would be, I lowered myself down carefully to my window, and as quietly as I could, I climbed through my window. I had to move fast, or I would definitely get caught. I grabbed a book bag, stuffed some clothes in it, along with a hat, and my favorite watch. That’s all I needed from my room, and I was about to climb back out the window when I suddenly realized what I really needed was in the garage. I stealthily went down the stairs, and into our garage. I grabbed screwdrivers, pliers, and some other tools. I had an idea on how not to get caught.

I went back up to my room and out the window, across the roof, and down the gutter again. It would have been a lot easier if I could have used the back door, but that would have set off an alarm that would have woken my mother up in an instant, and it would be game over for me. I quietly searched my backyard until I found my phone, ear buds included. Luckily, it wouldn’t turn on, which is exactly what I wanted. I threw it in my bag, and took off.

I ran, once again escaping from being caught (or so I hoped), but in a different direction this time. I was headed for a nearby woods that I knew about. There, I had a hideout that I hadn’t been to in a long time. The treehouse.

I had built it back in elementary school, before the Jam Session Act was created, and people actually went outside. I used to go there to read, or think, or basically just escape from the world. Now I was headed back for the same reasons, except this time it was a little more serious.

Once I got there, I threw my stuff down on the floor. My bag broke the old boards and fell through until it hit the ground. I heard a sickening crunch, and I almost cried when I realized my watch was in there.

I climbed down and grabbed my bag again, then started to climb back up, but a lot more cautiously this time. I didn’t have time to make repairs yet, so I had to be careful not to break anything else. I set my bag down carefully this time, then opened it up to see what was still intact.

I pulled out my watch first, and was relieved to see that it had been spared. I reached for the phone next, and saw that the cracks were all the same as before, from when I’d thrown it out the window. That left the earbuds. Perfect.

I pulled them out to see that they had fallen apart, but what I found inside was sickening. It looked like a little balled up tentacle where the wires should be. That’s what I had seen earlier when I ripped my headphones out. That must be why I couldn’t remember anything past putting my earbuds in, because this thing somehow messes with my head. And that’s what caused the massive headache…this thing getting ripped out of my brain!

It all made so much sense now. That’s why the government would pass a law as stupid as the Jam Session Act! So they could control everyone through the power of music! How had nobody figured this out yet? I mean, everyone takes out their headphones each night so they can charge their phone (there’s no headphone jack anymore, so you can only charge your phone or listen to music; not both at once), so how could nobody notice?

Wait; when my phone started playing music through the speaker, I immediately wanted to do what it told me! That means that all music has some kind of mind control ability! Then why the headphones? Maybe to strengthen the bond?

All this was hurting my head, and it was getting hard to think. It didn’t help that I was exhausted from all this running. I needed to sleep.
I took some of the extra clothes out of my bag and used them as a pillow. I lay down and closed my eyes. A faint lullaby in the distance helped lure me into a sleep… I could figure this all out tomorrow. First, sleep…

 

I jolted awake to the sound of a car door closing. I shot up and saw red and blue everywhere. I jumped down from my treehouse and started to run. The μsiCore had found me.

I started running for my life, weaving through the trees, away from the sirens and the red and blue lights. I looked back for a second and ran straight into a tree. I fell to the ground, and with a foggy head, heard footsteps closing in on me. I felt two giant arms grab me and lift me to my feet. Two enormous μsiCore officers had caught me, and were taking me back to their police cars. As I was being dragged towards the police car, I saw a cameraman on the scene, and I had an idea. I kicked the officers as hard as I could, and they let go in their surprise. I sprinted towards the cameraman, but was grabbed before I got there. In a last desperate attempt, I screamed at the top of my lungs a final warning to all the world. Then one of the officers hit me in the head with his baton, and everything went black.

 

Your music will now resume.

 

Mrs. Ultima suddenly had the urge to go downstairs and watch the news. Never one to ignore an urge, she walked down the stairs with her earbuds in and turned on the TV. On the channel was live footage of the criminal kid she had heard about. It looked like they had caught him. She turned up the volume to hear what was being said. As it got to the clip of the teenager being dragged away, the voice of the reporter stopped, and the sound of the teenager’s voice cut through the music coming from her headphones and went straight to her heart.

“Beware the headphones! Beware the iPocalypse!”
            Mrs. Ultima was so startled that she dropped her phone. Her head cleared as the music stopped, and in total despair, she said “MY SON!!!”

 

Noah Darfus is a sophomore at Canal Winchester High School. Noah’s English teacher gave his class a writing assignment, then challenged them to make it good enough to be published. Noah took it literally.