Levitating

The Silence of the Children

        Marianne always hated walking through the young neighborhoods. They were eerier, quiet echoing from thin tree (a standard oak, birch, or redwood, which would later get trimmed down to regulation size) to thin tree. Marianne had a birch when she was growing up. It always seemed to thin to her, some kind of instint thudding against her ears whenever she would go outside to rub her hand against the pale bark. If a passerby ever asked, she always told them she was ‘experimenting’. “On what?” They would ask. She would just smile and shake her head. “It’s for science.” “Oh.” The couple, usually old and somewhat reminiscent of the tree she was touching, would smile. “The young these days. So smart.” They would then walk away. Marianne never told anyone, but she always loved these quiet encounters with the old.

                However, despite the thin barrier of age between her and the young now, she highly doubted that they ever had the same interactions. Her chest hurt inside, yet another instinct pressing against her. Her intuition has always been her strength. The other young may have worked hard, just like everyone else, but they were always missing that gut instinct to truly make it to the top. Marianne had done it, and was still doing it. Being the best was the only thing she knew how to do.

                Back into the silence. Marianne stepped softly, resisting the urge to trail her hands along the trees, to retrace the step size of the yards. Always 14 large strides in chubby 5 feet even legs(she did this mostly between the age of twelve and fourteen, regulation stated that she must reach at least 5’ feet by her twelve year in order to qualify for her high school entrance) by 50 tiny steps(feet inching along carefully, as if she were balanced on a tightrope). Always by herself. The other young were locked inside their houses, their parents frantically stuffing their minds with information as Marianne smiled to herself and swore she’d study later. She always did, late late into the night. So what if her eyes seemed darker to the others? The Officials never noticed.   

                The street was reaching its end. Marianne took a deep breath, like she always did, before her feet hit the rough pavement and the lights lit up. COME THIS WAY. The lights would say. BUY BUY BUY BEFORE THIS LIMITED TIME OFFER IS OVER. Please, can someone please dim these lights? TIRED? BUY THIS NEW ENERGY DRINK. GUANRANTEED TO MAKE YOU 100% MORE AWAKE.

WAKE UP.

Wait, what was that? Marianne flicked her hands out and caught the tiny sign between her hands. It was almost like it was trying to go unnoticed, fluttering with the bigger signs in a kind of wandering fashion. Marianne expected some cheap, new energy drink brand, but as she tried to click the words, nothing happened. The texture of the sign was different too, a kind of rich, velvety surface that felt like water against her hands, used to the harsh click-clack of THIN, ECONOMIC, keyboards. It felt almost like…paper? A gust of wind from a vanishing taxi yanked it out of her hands. Marianne never liked the rush and speed of the taxi’s driving by. On her first day of her College Experience, Marianne wanted for hours trying to find a taxi to get from her dorm room to her college on the other side of the town, until a young land named David finally let her in. There he was now. Marianne sighed as she slid into the seat of the taxi, resting her head between her hands.

              “Were they more annoying than usual?” David, her taxi driver, said. She just shook her head. “It’s all right, shh shh.” He said. Marianne hadn’t realized she was gasping out half-formed sobs. She collected herself, mentally shook her brain out, and preened her feathers, getting ready for her next performance. Not literally. Marianne didn’t have feathers, unlike some of her classmates. She always found it vaguely disturbing, the urge to decorate one’s body like an advertisement sign.

                She preffered people like David. Down-to-earth, mellow, always there for you. David had been Marianne’s taxi driver for a while now, ever since she first came to this wonderful (horrible, absolutely terrible) place called the College Experience. Two years she’s been here, and she just now graduated into the Master’s program, the exclusive program that determined whether you were truly a Successful Person, or not. If you finished, and made it into the Doctorate Program, you were. If you didn’t, you could always fall into the job the Officials had handed to you when you graduated high school. Or die. IT didn’t matter to the officials as long as it was quiet. An accidental overdose on Sunshine (Marianne’s preferred energy drink) would draw no notice.

                “Marianne?” David’s voice crawled in the space between them, timid.

                “Yes?” She asked. “Hey, David, why do you always pick me up, not any other taxi driver?”

                “Well.” He said, fumbling with the radio dial. It was required to play some sort of music in any vehicle, a law that made Marianne turn away from her friends when they travelled somewhere and glance outside, until the bright lights hurt her head. Then she would close her eyes and practice piano chords in her head. It was hard not to practice that habit now, but she wanted to distract herself from…herself.

                He coughed, a harsh sound against the twinkling of the piano. Jazz. Marianne smiled. At least he picked something she could tolerably stand. She hummed along softly, almost forgetting she asked a question.

                “It’s because you looked so lost.” He said, so soft she almost lost his voice, drowning in the music. “Most people come to College Experience and look sure of themselves, proud, too haughty for their own good. But you. You looked lost and sad and…different.”

                “Oh.” She said, twisting her hands.

                “It was a good different.” He said, defensively, almost as if he could trace her train of thought.

                The quiet, not truly quiet, echoed between them. She sighed, tracing the outside of her hand with her thumb, not knowing what to say. Never, in the time she had known him, had David ever let a silence play out like this. He would always rush to fill it, commenting on some cheap ad playing on the radio, mocking it, making her laugh. But not this time. This time it stretched.

                And then screeched. The taxi lunged to the left, David twisting the wheel. Another paper flittered through her window, and she grasped at it.

WAKE UP OR HE DIES.

                What? Marianne’s breath caught. Could these bits of paper be truly directed at her, zeroed in like some kind of military missile striking the Rebellion? No. They couldn’t. They were just cheap, super cheap ads struggling to find a single customer. But why resort to threats?

                Time seemed to be crawling. Marianne watched as David slung the wheel over to the right, struggling to readjust to whomever, whatever had jumped into the street. Sometimes that happened. Jumpers, they were called, people who let gravity take a hold of them in order to find some adrenaline, that buzz, never realizing they could be a safety hazard to those below.

                Marianne closed her eyes as the metal shrieked, collided, flipped end over end, crashed and clanged like a percussion section in a symphony gone crazy. She opened them when it ended, something wet dripping down her face, dark tinted. Blood?

                Up was down, and down was up. Marianne saw David’s body slung against the glass between them, looking like a tomato set on puree. She couldn’t look away. The glass between them was cracked gently, the blood from his body leaking onto her leg. The advertisements outside were dark, reporting the incident.

                Only thing left to do now was wait as the Medics arrived.