Jarek
Part 1: Youth
Realization returned back from the shimmering figure of the moon dancing among the clouds of late night passing by to the unkempt windows of the school bus. I realized that the half asleep children all about me were starting to drift into a true stupor as I flipped about my music library. Once I was satisfied by choosing a nice, soft tune, I opened Snapchat to talk with Malorie. Quickly, I took a picture of my lit face among the darkened background of the bus and initiated another conversation about the schmucks that surrounded us everyday. As time passed, I, too, formed heavy eyelids, and without much attention was asleep.
Suddenly a voice woke me, and the blinding lights of the bus shone through my still closed eyes. As I opened them, I noticed the school in the distance and moaned as I stretched myself out.
"We're here" said one of the counselors. My friends and I all groggily got up and grabbed our garments and instruments as we walked out of the bus. We exchanged final farewells before parting ways. My mom waited for me in the car.
"How was the game?" She inquired.
"Another game. We lost of course" I replied as I set my trumpet and bag into the car. A short, almost inaudible scoff from her affirmed that lack of surprise from either of us. The rest of the way home was silent, and I watched random videos from YouTube until I went to sleep.
The next day, I woke up at about noon, and I went downstairs to see my parents leaving to visit relatives. They assigned me the task of cutting the grass. So I threw on some clothes to match my labor, turned on some music, and went outside to do the chore. Once it was completed, I returned to the abode to relax the rest of the day. The Sunday after proved similar, but the work was rather related to my studies (some algebra and some world history) and took place in the evening.
As for the next Monday, things seemed particularly norm. The alarm went off at the ungodly hour of six-thirty before I rushed to clothe myself and make my way to yet another school bus. Earbuds procured their way into my lobes before I settled in the seat, and they were not removed until the voice of my homeroom teacher spoke.
"Good Morning everyone. I have a few pamphlets to hand out." To this, he started passing about some fliers and other papers before rambling on about the same announcements that came out of his mouth on a daily basis. Each pamphlet showed some activity that I decided unfavorable. One read "Outdoor Odyssey: Mentoring kids through Adventure," and another indicated that student council was hosting the Red Cross in about a week for a day of giving blood. A third mentioned something about county band. The last was a broad invitation to try and get more kids to join the French club.
Soon after, the bell rang and classes went on as usual. Most were plainly uninteresting. In one class, we had to put up with A.J's backwards political ranting on how the "Slavs are a master race" until the entire class shut him up. The highlight was world history at the end of the day because Mrs. Ivan always teaches with vivacity.
But on the bus headed for home, as I thought about my homework and Malorie and everything else that had preoccupied me throughout the day, a most uneasy feeling came about. This was the first time it occurred to me that the void that was my evening was unsettling to me. Every day that I did not have band after school, I had went home and in my boredom flipped about the channels on television, but today something didn't settle right in my gut as I thought about it.
I started to think about the food I had recently eaten and if it could have upset my stomach. After all, the chicken bites on a bun served for lunch that day could have been under-cooked. And in that resolve, I finished my trip home and forgot about the whole thing before I even walked through the front door.
As I skipped past Fox News, I looked down onto my phone that was currently in iFunny to notice that Malorie sent me a snap. It was her face, slightly moping, with a single phrase: Bored. With a slight grin, I sent back my deliriously indifferent face and the word "Same." The conversation continued with ramblings on about any sort of thing: from the Cat in the Hat to Somatic's Thymatron. The dream that came to me that night was then of the strangest proportion. I found myself in a room with an abnormally large number of doors leading out of it. Each one opened before me and lead to barren nothingness. It was then that I turned round to get smacked in the face by the Cat in the Hat with his major league baseball bat. I appeared in some sort of therapy room where Malorie's mom was hooking up a Thymatron to our schools SameLOVE club president, Robert. Then, I was falling next to a rope that for some reason I never tried to grab a hold of. Once I hit the ground, I saw through the eyes of Hitler at the Nuremberg rally and turned my head left but to see A.J in a Nazi uniform playing some middle-eastern song I could not comprehend at which point I shot myself and woke up.