Sunday.
She didn't know why she had decided to do this.
(She sort of knew. But it didn't matter.)
On waking up she had remembered the half-finished, half-destroyed project she had rescued from the trash some time the previous week and had decided to fix it. It was probably a bad idea. She wasn't that good at shop, anyway —hadn't taken the class, even though she had attended a couple of times without anyone noticing her misplaced presence. It just was something that she had wanted to do.
(She had noticed John back then. Hadn't said anything. She never said anything, anyway.)
She slowly painted the reconstructed creature, carefully creating a chaotic and yet harmonious composition, slightly reminiscent of those Indian painted elephants photos she remembered seeing in some of her parents' books. While she let it dry, she carefully scribbled in a small notebook the instructions on how to assemble it. She was lucky her father owned so many books on all things electrical.
Brian probably wouldn't want her help. He probably wouldn't be asked the same assignment twice, and he surely wouldn't want to cheat. And he would probably be creeped out that she had picked it up from a trashed locker disaster and kept it before even knowing him. Even more freaked out that she had somehow managed to glue it all back together.
(He would look at her with that dorkish horrified expression of someone with too little experience in social interaction to mask the shock caused by what he doesn't understand and doesn't fit in his well-structured world. He was such a nerd.)
She looked up from her notes. It missed something. A little collage, perhaps?
She went to her closet to retrieve a box full of small pictures she'd cut from magazines and slowly started to select the ones she wanted to use.
(Which ones did she want to use? A pair of blue eyes. A scheme of a brain. A pencil. Some flowers. A crown. A gun. An open book. A lipstick. A pair of black boots. A peace symbol. A smile. Some shiny jewelry. A smoking cigarette. A pair of sunglasses. A kiss. A skull. A knife. The Olympic rings. A scar. A calculator. A can of coke.)
She slowly cut them in even smaller pieces and glued them one by one to the already colorful structure, before returning to the wiring she had had to replace. It wasn't really that hard to fix, and her father did keep all sorts of useful things in the basement that no one would notice missing (she made a mental note to check it out more thoroughly later on; some of those things may come in handy). Brian shouldn't feel like he was cheating, she wasn't even planning on doing all the work —she'd just make it easier to to put it all together later.
And really, it was just a way to pass time.
She quickly added some indications about the switch that she had forgotten to mention in her lengthy instructions before and made sure that the new wires were correctly attached to it, only leaving him with the task of screwing it shut.
(She really wasn't sure why she had wanted to do this, but she didn't want to think too much about it either.)
With a black marker she started drawing around the edges of the pictures she'd glued, peppering them with small written sentences that probably made no sense, but should be written somewhere sometime.
(And an elephant lamp was a perfectly reasonable place to write them.)
She stopped to take a look at the piece from afar, before going back to her brushes and paints. It lacked something, she just didn't know what yet.
(Closure. It lacked closure.)
She ran her fingers along the semi-dried spine of the ceramic elephant before snapping them in realization. Grabbing the pair of scissors with her sticky hand she cut a small lock of hair that she carefully glued to the end of the elephant's tail.
There. Much better.
(A Sunday spent fixing something from the trash. She knew it was strangely symbolic, but refused to acknowledge it.)
She left it to dry, pausing to stare at the bizarre lamp sitting on her desk for a while before going back to the instructions notebook. Making sure that everything was in order she finally closed it and placed it at the bottom of an old cardboard box along with some extra electrical cord, some screws and some other necessary components.
Finally noticing that she was done (at least until the paint dried and she could put the lamp in the box) she nodded decisively and stuck her dirty hands in her pockets.
She sighed. So what now?
She thought about leaving the box in front of Brian's house. She did know where he lived —she had photographic memory, even if she hadn't shared that secret with the rest of them, and one look at his wallet had been more than enough. She would take the bus, leave the stupid box in front of his home, and then what?
("What is gonna happen to us on Monday?" She hated that question almost as much as she hated the answer.)
She squeaked loudly in protest at her own thoughts. Monday didn't matter. Nothing mattered, the only things that mattered were the ones she cared for.
(She'd stupidly let herself care about them. She stupidly cared about Mondays.)
She threw her arms in the air and turned around until she became dizzy, trying to find the freedom she felt when she knew no one was looking her way (trying to dispel the loneliness she felt when she knew no one was ever looking her way).
She put everything back in the box, and the box in her closet. Put on her black sneakers and decided to go out for a walk, not bothering to announce it to her mother (asleep on the couch in front of the TV) or to her father (working on some papers in his study). As she made her way out of the house she passed her older brother Oliver in the hall, and they both awkwardly nodded in an attempt at being civil to someone they didn't know anymore (she missed him so much sometimes —it didn't matter).
She walked aimlessly for a while, humming to herself and trying not to think about anything. It didn't really work (it never really worked) but she kept trying anyway. She was tired of thinking.
But that was just it, wasn't it? Nothing would happen on Monday because nothing was supposed to happen on Monday. Nothing would change. Her perspective may change, the way she saw the people around her may change, the way she felt about herself, the way she felt about others, the way she felt about her problems and about other people's problems —but that was it. Nothing was meant to change on Monday.
Monday didn't matter at all. That was the point of it all.
She felt incongruously satisfied with that conclusion and saddened at the same time. Monday didn't matter. Nothing ever mattered. It was only a matter of perspective.
(She didn't want to think about that anymore. God, she didn't want to think at all.)
She stubbornly shook her head. She felt like yelling, and so she did. Noticing that had attracted the curiosity of an elder couple walking their dog, she turned around and started to run. She was out of breath when she finally made it home.
(It didn't matter.)
She laughed as she closed the front door.
(She was so tired.)