6. Interlude

There’s very few things that interest me, I think. Games, death, writing, thinking, napping, twintails and doors.

Doors?

I’m fascinated by them. Who wouldn’t be? I spend so much time with them, will spend so much time with them: in a bedroom, a classroom, an office, always with the door closed. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But there was one year I spent entirely behind a single dorm-room door. That was the year I discovered I was talentless.

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday.

Did you know that a person can survive only on ramen, clementines, baby carrots, and multivitamins?

Maybe “survive” isn’t the right word. There was one day that I blacked out far before evening, and when I woke up I was in the hospital. But in the end I’m still here, living, breathing, with a beating heart. Spending all this time thinking about doors.

The average chessmaster gets their title at the age of 18. I’ve never played a game of chess, and don’t really care about it, but without having even tried it I know that door is shut.

An ‘old’ Olympic gymnast is around 18, the same age as me—a person who has never even so much as touched a pommel horse. Closed.

Almost all artists, cartoonists, painters, have a history of tracing and making art when they’re children. Almost all writers had obsessed over short stories and books—two doors shut before I’d even had a thought of going through them.

I will never speak another language fluently, I will never know what it’s like to be a prodigy, and I will never be truly good at music.

It’s true that there might be exceptions to these rules, but for every one exception that you mention I can name 9,999,999 people that these rules bind. And wouldn’t thinking that I would be someone special be as delusional as thinking I’d win the lottery?

So knowing that I had already failed, that I already can’t live any dream, I froze as if by not acting I could freeze my time.

For that whole year I stayed in my dormitory and did anything that could chase thoughts from my mind. You know, the kinds of sites where you can scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll without thinking, or games where, without really understanding if I’ve won or lost, I can always just hit ‘play again.’ That’s how I spent that year.

It was as if a creature had curled up around my heart, squeezing me whenever I tried to do something for my life. It hissed to me, told me that this was the most I’d ever have to enjoy, scrolling and games.

But one person visited me. She knocked on the door (a real door) and I looked through the peephole and there she was, twin-tails trailing and a scowl on her face. She held a binder close to her chest.

“I have your homework,” she said. “Yuri? Are you there?”

“...I’ll leave it here,” she continued, and when the hall was empty I took the binder and added it to a pile that was underneath my bed.

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday.

She came with new sheets, new work, new papers.

“I talked to the teachers; you don’t need to do the work,” she said. “But at least look through the binder. When you feel like it, okay?”

When she was gone I picked up the folder, and the plastic felt like heavy slate. In one stilted motion, I managed to open it, and was confronted with a dozen neat lined sheets.

They were pages of handwritten notes, elaborate and cursive, and from the header I learned her name. Lily, class representative and disciplinary chair. In hindsight, maybe she was the reason I was held back instead of expelled.

On Saturday I expected to spend the whole day all alone, since there was of course no school and no reason to see me. But on that day she set food outside the door, a box with rice, sausage, eggs, tomatoes, and after sixty days, where she came every day, I decided that taking that little black ball that had nested within me to school was better than curling up with it alone in my room.