Halcyon Days

The next morning, I discovered that the strange story was still there, right on the pages of the journal where it had been the night before, and it had not merely been a weird dream.

I didn’t know what to do about this, or even where to begin. If I took it to the police, would they help? I doubt anyone would believe me. And really, why should they? Was I best off if I just ignored the whole affair, or better yet, if I checked myself into a psychiatric facility? I’d get to skip a lot of school that way, after all.

No, I wouldn’t actually want to spoil my perfect attendance record. The artistic value I saw in the points system I used was skillfully wasting time. It was about having something I should have been doing, and choosing to do nothing instead. To skip school would simply be a sum score of 0 points, because I wouldn’t have the chance to waste any time that I didn’t have in the first place.

It would be like claiming to have speedrun a video game by simply opening it and then force-quitting it. It doesn’t matter how fast doing something like that would be; you couldn’t argue that the game was ever played at all, so it would never count for anything.

There’s no fun in “winning” if you don’t play by the rules of the game.

All that to say, I went to school as always. My sister gave me a weird look as I was brushing my teeth in the morning, and it was probably on account of the bags under my eyes, but there was nothing I could do about them. I figured questioned about my lack of sleep at school, I could tell teachers I was up studying, and I could tell fellow students…who knows? They wouldn’t bother to ask me anyway.

On the bus, same as the way home the day before, I had a book open but I wasn’t really reading. This time, though, my thoughts weren’t about fictional worlds and stories I could tell. They were about “Ethel”, and the enigma that was “A Look Through the Window”, of course.

The ride felt shorter than usual, and I arrived at school with my head so far in the clouds that I couldn’t see where I was going, so I tripped over my feet and fell down the stairs at the front of the school bus, onto the blue-painted curb.

I carried myself to first hour. It seemed like today would be an easy day to rack up points, since my mind was elsewhere, but then again, simply not paying attention was not really the goal of the game, and if that was enough to count, I’d get full points every single day. Still, I zoned out as my history teacher Mrs. Matthews rambled on. Today was about art history.

History was such a boring subject.

At lunch, I met up with my closest friend, Kenya Jones. Kenya was a cheerful guy, but not in the fake way that popular people act cheerful. He didn’t care too much about others’ opinions, but listened to them when they wanted to talk, too. He was comfortable to be around, and the only reason he didn’t have many friends, in my opinion, was because he didn’t bother trying to make any. He was satisfied with just the friends he’d had since childhood, because he really was a cheery guy, and so he hung out with me, even though I was quite gloomy.

We probably didn’t fit together in the eyes of everyone else, but neither of us were the type to care.

I had been waiting all day for lunch period because I wanted to talk to Kenya about what transpired the day before.

“Hey Kenya,” I spoke between bites of my turkey sandwich, “have you ever had any stalkers?”

Kenya is tall and muscularly-built, with hazel eyes and warm brown skin. He has a great attitude and his resting face is a smile. Objectively speaking, he’s a handsome guy, and I was sure if anyone I knew would be sought after enough to have experienced such a situation, it would be Kenya.

“Stalkers? As in, someone following you home or something?” He pondered for a second but quickly answered. “Definitely not. One time in fourth grade, a friend followed me home because his mom couldn’t get off work when school closed and I lived within walking distance, but—“

“No, that isn’t what I mean.” Please understand that I was not interrupting for no reason, it’s just that lunch period was short and I needed to get to the point. “Like, someone maybe going into your house at night and pranking you?”

Kenya looked stunned.

“Dude, are you okay? Do I need to call the police or something?”

“N-no, it was just a rhetorical… theoretical question.” I stuck my arms out and waved them around, putting my whole body into my denial. Right, I’d forgotten. This guy was too well-adjusted. If I went to him for help, he would just do something like get the police involved, like any normal person would do. But I didn’t want to do that.

“Well, theoretically, I’d talk to my parents at least.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

But I had no intention of talking to my parents, so the conversation had not borne fruit at all up until this point. We are in silence for a minute or two before Kenya spoke again.

“I know I shouldn’t bring it up, Goldie, but I just need to make sure: this isn’t somehow related to Ruby again, is it?”

“No, it’s not. I’m seriously past that.”

“Right, okay, that’s good to hear. I just had to make sure.”

Now it appeared he was concerned that it was actually ME in the role of stalker. I’d caused quite a misunderstanding. I wasn’t too worried though, because if there was anyone in the world who would have my back even if I was objectively in the wrong, it would be Kenya Jones. He’d still tell me off relentlessly, though. That’s just the kind of guy he is.

Since it seemed moot, I decided to retire the conversation there and spent the rest of lunch period talking with Kenya about video games that I hadn’t actually played. For the rest of the day at school, I didn’t accumulate any more points, because the lesson we had in computer programming was about HTML, and I actually wanted to learn that so I could make a good website once I made it big as an author.

When I got home, I read four chapters of a book, ate a light dinner, and went straight to bed. I didn’t bother taking the journal down from off the top of the bookshelf.