Slowtown

17

I give a distressed sigh and look down. "How do you get used to this? Knowing that your real life is somewhere out... out..."

"Who said this isn't real life?" she challenges.

I say nothing. I think nothing.

"I know. You're out of your mind in the time before you remember, but the day you do, it's not a flashback, you'll feel it. You'll live it."

The back door squeaks open. Josh slides in with a buttload of small boxes crammed under his left arm. Many drop to the floor as he makes his way over to us, but he pushes those along with his foot.

We watch him standing over her now. Without warning, he opens his arms. But she's a good guesser, and moves quickly, swatting away the boxes that land too close to her head. It's alright though, because she's laughing, and so is Josh. I like their laughs.

"Did I miss the stories?" he whines. Ugh, how adorable, I can't take it.

"Only mine." She settles herself among the thin boxes. Sparklers.

"Which means it's my turn now." He plops onto the floor, closer to me than before. "I was depressed, so I jumped off a bridge and tried to drown myself. Don't think it worked."

The atmosphere is wrong, all wrong. It lags, it's still filled with the ringing of laughter, but it can't catch up, it doesn't understand the severity of what Josh just said.

And it's unbelievable, what he said. "Don't think," which implies he doesn't know at all.

Jenna scoffs, "You say that as if it's the only thing that happened in your life. You have your full memory, tell the whole story."

He takes her demand seriously, but simultaneously lightheartedly. An interesting blend. Like himself...

"Despite being a little aloof in school, I did just as okay as everyone else. I was everybody's friend, but that made me nobody's friend. Because I had nobody in particular, just everyone collectively. You see? But I was never bothered by it until the summer before I'd become a freshman. I was so lonely, all my siblings were going out and having fun, I didn't even want to be around people. So I thought going back to school would be good, get me out of this rut. But it didn't, because others saw that Josh changed, and they didn't want to be around me. That was the longest year of my life. And one time I was out walking and it just occurred to me, I should jump off this bridge, just do it, who cares, let's see if I make it, if I don't, if I drown." He tilted his head in her direction, "Jenna, you don't remember going to school, do you?"

She opens her mouth to say something, but then comes to a complete halt, mid-breath. And says something new, "I think I stopped going to school."

She lied. She does think. Oh, I get it. She just doesn't want to believe what she thinks, in case she's wrong, in case her brain made it up but that's not the way it really is. But this time, she sounds pretty certain.