I’ve come to despise getting up early. I can no longer sleep 14 hours as I used to so easily. I miss that now, because when I wake I have an entire day ahead of me, one I never quite know what to do with. I want to feel better. I want to wake up and feel as though it’s a good thing to have hours at my disposal. But now it is as if the hours left over after work are nothing but fillers that I ungraciously want to toss aside and forget about. I keep talking about this, maybe because I am uncertain what it means or what I can do to change it.

Every day off I try. I’ll go through ten different projects trying to find one to keep me occupied, or I’ll play some videogame for a very short while, or I’ll even sit down and make a rather sad attempt at reading something, even if it is a local newspaper that’s more mundane to me than perpetually watching the Weather Channel. Anything. Usually what happens is I eat. I cook throughout the day, and eat, over and over and over. I always end up sick and regretting it by evening, but that doesn’t slow the process. I continue until, finally, I find myself doubled over, my stomach so fed up that it will make quite a valiant attempt to free up space.

I might heave for twenty minutes, but I stubbornly refuse to vomit. No, I get to live with these consequences. I get to spend the night in pain, and the next morning nauseated, and go to work and pretend that there’s nothing wrong with me, even though the upper part of my stomach is so painfully swollen it will literally have gained inches overnight to accomodate whatever I ended up binging on. It takes about two days to return to normal, and by then I either begin again, or don’t eat at all.

Why I do this is still not clear. Stress, I would think, though I rarely show any kind of panic or anger at work. All of it seems to come to me when I get home, like the gates to hell have been opened, and it swarms me suddenly. Our turnover rate is extraordinarily high, particularly in the area I work in, and it’s easy to guess why. We must have begun our original orientation about six months ago with about a hundred people all together, that were spread out over four different stores to be trained before coming to the store we are at now. We have a board the in breakroom with congratulations signs on it for those who made it to the sixth month. There are about fifteen names on it, nearly all of which are those who became managers.

We constantly get new crew, and I find myself struggling to remember their names. Most of them won’t last, I can tell already. They spend their first two weeks being willing slaves, then get lazier and lazier once they get comfortable. I get irritated and will literally walk around them if they aren’t going fast enough for my taste. I’m sick of being blamed for their inability to do a very simple job. All it takes is energy, but they whine constantly about not getting their breaks when all they do is stand around, while I’m busy doing most of their job and my own. I’m lucky if I get two breaks out of three.

I come back from breaks and generally find everything backed up, with a screen full orders, shitloads of empty trays (all of which should be filled with food), and two managers in the front screaming orders at people, trying in vain to sort through the chaos, while their shitty front people continuously hand out the wrong orders. There have been times where they will pull me from my half early because one of the newer crew has gotten too far behind to catch up on their own.

I hate breaks. I hate them. I need to sit down; I shouldn’t be running around for 6-9 hours straight, but because nearly all the crew in the back is new and all of the girls I generally work with aren’t around because of training at the moment, it’s like going into a nightmare. The floor will be a disaster, slicked in grease and covered with bits of fallen food, then there will be a screen blinking, with four orders up and god knows how many pending. The machine that prints out special receipts will have a tail of paper hanging down to the floor, sometimes with more receipts shooting out the top and floating down into a pile. The managers always give me a sympathetic look. And then of course, I have to fix it.

One particular instance, several weeks ago, I finally got so irritated I sent the woman away from the table (I had already been pulled from my break twenty minutes early and wasn’t a happy camper). I wouldn’t even let her work with me, that was how badly it was going. She’s a shift manager (highest you can go unless you are the store manager) who has been working as long as I have, and the woman can barely make a sandwich. To top it off she is incredibly slow about it for no reason other than that she doesn’t want to work. I finally looked over at her and said, “Go do prep”, because she was standing there looking at the food more than she was making it. No one said a word.

And still they have been constantly hinting to me at my promotion as some kind of manager (they all seem to have different ideas…), which I don’t even know if I want. In all honesty, I’m an idiot. When I talk about this job like I’m good at it, all that I mean is that I’m willing to do it. That’s the only problem with employees: they don’t want to do it like it should be done. It’s an easy fucking job. You memorize some shit and make food, how hard can it be? But apparently no one wants to work for their money, or deal with that fact, that yeah, we get screamed at, yeah, there are some angry customers who come in and treat you like shit. I’ve had people standing at the counter give me step-by-step instructions on how to make their sandwiches because they ‘don’t trust the grill people to do it properly’. Yeah, because apparently if you work in fast food you must be a dumb fucking cunt that can’t read ‘add 1 cheese, no mustard’ on a screen.

It’s fucking insulting, the way people will look at me if I walk down to the local supermarket to pick up a few things and happen to be wearing my uniform. At the bank they always ask me, ‘where do you work?’ and when I answer they have to restrain themselves from raising an eyebrow. Yeah, I know, I’m not in the white-collar job my parents wanted me to have, I’m not going to college to become yet another of the supposedly educated masses. I stand over by some grills all day, making minimum wage, then go home and never leave the house.

To be incredibly honest, most days it seems like being dead would be more rewarding. I’m still not sure how to change that perception for myself.

When you spend enough time alone, you learn that there’s freedom nowhere. Even if you only commit your most horrible of acts all by yourself in a darkened room, you will still be judged. They will be there, trailing after you like a shadow, passing on their useless ideas to you, barring you from what you need should you permit them. And how easy it is to let them. How easy it is to feel as though the world is like this god, peering down at you, condemning you for what you are. But now it comes from yourself. Now the enemy has infiltrated your inner sanctum, and once it is let in, there are very few ways to get it out. It will cling until you tear it into pieces, until you find something, somewhere that validates you and makes you good enough to stand up for, to fight for. But sometimes you never find that….

I used to be afraid that if I thought anything bad, God would punish me. I’d wake up the next day and something terrible would happen to me or my parents or my friends. I used to spend a good five minutes in the night with the blankets up to my chin,  praying endlessly in this cycle. For anything and everything, for things to go alright the next day, for no one to die…. I’d say the same parts over and over again, until the words became jumbled. Repeat it over and over, like the fucker couldn’t hear me, like if I didn’t say it a hundred times he wouldn’t do it for me. You have to be like a slave to get him to listen, I used to think.

I’d walk up to the holy water in church sometimes and drop something in it. A necklace, a bracelet. Like somehow some water in a dish was going to do something to me. Things like that only have power because we believe they do. And what did I believe, really? I was clearing my conscience. I was trying to feel like I was doing everything that could possibly be done to keep everyone safe. Ah, what it is to be a child!

The prayers eventually turned to curses. I’d spend ten minutes facing the wall, white-knuckled, saying this darker mantra in my head.

Dear God, I hate you.
Dear God, I hate you.
Dear God, I hate you.
I hope you fucking die.
Dear God, I hate you.
Dear God, I hate you.
Dear God, I hate you.
I hope you fucking die.

It’s funny to me now, to admit to it. It seems almost crazy even. But no matter what happens, I always believe somehow. I can’t seem to fully fade into atheism, regardless of how pessimistic I get. I will die believing, and I will die still hating. I don’t even remember why anymore, how it all started, what moment it shifted. I hate him for being here, maybe. I think that’s what angers me so much; that I’m here and feel I had no choice. In the end it translates to an anger at myself for not doing anything about it. It’s me that I really hate; God is like this backdrop I can use to make it less inconspicuous.

Eventually that rage came back to haunt me. And I know now that that’s the voice in my head, the one that laughs and thinks this is all such a great game. I feel like I drown myself over and over, barely letting myself up for air.

You like that? Does it feel good?

I’m the one that I believe has failed. I’m the one that doesn’t want to do it. I’m the one who won’t die but yet refuses to really live. I don’t understand it. I have nothing in me that really wants to go forward, just this blind apathy to lead me around in the dark. And why? Why can’t that too leave me?

I wish now for some of that emotional clarity, where I wake up for the briefest of instants and suddenly I can’t stop crying for all that I’ve done, where I can’t think back and see a single reason at all to go on. Months ago that happened. Before the mountain. Before….  Was it before I started working? I still don’t know why I lived. I don’t know how I could hate myself so much and still continue to breathe. It feels impossible. But it was pure in all the ways this is not. I felt something, believed something. It wasn’t a blank, numb acknowledgement of self-loathing, it was something that felt real.

Never again? I was wrong to swear it off. I should have used those feelings when I had the chance, because I may float on forever in this apathetic void and not have that again. I may do it in a moment of weakness instead of a moment of strength where I am truly living with that feeling instead of feeling nothing, going on memory alone.

“There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.”

 

I won’t edit this. I don’t have the time.

I feel like there is a wall between myself and my reality. It’s always that sensation of looking through the glass, but never touching. Maybe that is why the world is so unreal to me, because I keep it at arm’s length.

Look, but don’t touch, they say, and for once I seem to be following the rules.

I had a bit of a bad day yesterday, regardless of anything I may have said. I almost didn’t leave the house to go to town for groceries. Again, one of those tiny things setting me off. I weighed myself, had a fit. It was literally like taking a trip back in time. I remember these moments.

I have ten different things piled on the bed, and I keep tearing new things from the closet, pulling it over my head. I walk to the mirror, reject it, and the process starts again. Then half my closet is strewn across the bed. For some reason I grabbed for my old favorite shirt. At one point when I wore it I weighed 190 pounds. And that’s what I felt like in it. Like I was back there again, out of fucking control and with no willpower to stop it. Even though it was as loose as a nightshirt, nearly down to my knees, I couldn’t take it for some reason. There was nothing comforting about it. It was horrible and painful, and I found myself fisting bits of my hair, wanting to rip it from the roots.

Oh yes, this is a possibility, oh yes, this is where I’ve been, where I’ve gotten to. We’re the same person this girl and me, no matter how much I want to dispute it and claim that I’ve changed. I can be there again, and I know exactly how I feel about that. I’d rather be dead. I feel like I’m there already, even if everyone tells me I’m thin already and can stop now. Doesn’t look that way. Doesn’t feel that way.

I ended up ripping the seams on a sweatshirt in anger and throwing it to the back of the closet. I wore all black again, layers over layers so I wouldn’t have to feel like I could be seen in any way. I even coated my face over in make up, which I never do. I almost couldn’t bear to go.

My father and I had an argument. He keeps telling me to keep a checkbook, which I should. Unfortunately banking falls into the ‘I absolutely don’t give a shit’ category, which is why I made a mistake recently. I look over to him and mumble that I’ll watch it from now on, and he goes into this whole, “well why are you saying it like that?” line of questioning.

“I don’t care. I just don’t.” Unapologetic, flat.

His irritation is building. It’s coming off him in waves, and he won’t even look away from me to give me a moment’s rest from that accusing fucking gaze. I stare at my computer screen, blinking rapidly. Not because of him, but because of myself. Because I really don’t care, and only ten minutes earlier I was laying on my bed studying the pattern on my comforter thinking about the next time I can go up the mountain. Thinking about going off  into the snow. It would be a miserable way to die.

He goes on, asking me why, and I have no emotion. There’s nothing in me that wants to tell him. Now I’m getting annoyed myself and I want him to leave, and I’m hiding behind my hair because I’m crying from my own lack of caring. I know it’s wrong. But I can’t change it. It’s the one thing I have no control over, though I hate to say it. I hate to admit defeat. I loathe it. But I have lost. I lost a long time ago. This is why I continue my downward spiral.

“You wouldn’t understand,” I finally get out, still looking at the screen.

 I feel like one of those angsty teenagers in a Lifetime movie, but I don’t seem to have any pangs of regret about it. I don’t want to explain. I could talk of it a thousand years and he will still not get it. I would not get it if I hadn’t felt it for myself. How is it possible to be so blank? This I can’t answer. It seems against everything to not care, to have not the slightest bit of feeling over your own life and where it’s going. I’m a feather floating around, soon to hit the ground, soon to lose all flight. But what does that matter to this head of mine? I make no sense; even I can’t understand myself.

What he says next almost makes me want to smile. All I catch for sure is: ”You can shoot yourself.” Then something about ‘this is your life, start caring about it’.

Yeah, I can shoot myself. You don’t think I’d do it, do you? How wrong you are. It’s nice to know you haven’t forgotten our little conversation.  

I keep saying I’ll take care of it, but I don’t sound even slightly convincing. I can hear the irritation in my own tone, and he’s giving me one of those looks like I’m the most useless piece of trash he’s ever seen. I don’t care. I am not valued solely by his interpretation of my worth.

He walks out, finally, and I breathe in, embracing my own apathy.  

I can hear him through the wall, in an angry, loud voice: “She’s insensitive to her own plight.”

Yes, yes I am. That is the only thing about me that can be called beautiful. At least I am smart enough to know that I am inconsequential and anything I do in this life makes no fucking difference. It’s over when your born; it’s even more over when you die.

You’ll get over it.

Our shake machine at work has been acknowledged to be ‘possessed’. There have been countless incidents since our store opened that have led us to believe the damn thing is out to get us. It occasionally squirts out vanilla ice cream for no reason, overflows shakes (the level that it fills to is supposed to be automated…not that it works out that way or anything), and even has been known to not stop when you press the button. Oh yes, there have been times where three employees will rush over to assist the poor victim with extra cups while they desperately try to staunch the flow of chocolate milkshake as it quickly begins to flow to the floor. But the worst of it, I have yet to mention….

Today was the worst in the store’s short history. I’m making sandwiches, minding my own business, not paying much attention because I have a headset on and am listening to the people in drivethru try to figure out what they want. Suddenly there’s this loud ‘pop’, like something exploded. Keep in mind I am several feet away. A watery, white spray of frothy milkshake splatters everywhere, coating quite a bit of my right side. I blink for a moment, not sure what just happened. Even my face and hair are wet. I hear a string of curses, and one of the people in front starts laughing. I look down at my clothes. Well then.

The table I am working at has a nice pretty pool of bubbly white on it. It was so bad, that somehow a puddle of it even ended up clear on the other side of the store, over by the grill. The woman who always does drivethru while I’m around (who is also one of my favorites) looks over to the customers who are laughing. “I’m afraid the entertainment costs extra.”

But what happened to me isn’t bad at all. The cursing came from the woman attempting to repair the ice cream machine. She was standing right over the open vat just as it exploded….. 

The fact that the spray happens to be white  has already caught my attention, but besides covering up a few giggles, I say nothing. It’s one of the other girls who can’t keep her mouth shut, and she looks at the poor woman drenched in cream as she says it.

 ”Looks like you just rubbed it the right way.”

I couldn’t stop laughing.

I don’t know what I am going to do. I can’t stay home like this; it’s driving me insane. I need something to do.  I need someone to stand in front of me and tell me exactly what to do. So I don’t have to think, so I don’t have to spend all these waking moments looking for an out that I’m not supposed to want.

I’ve changed. I can’t sustain myself anymore. I’ve weakened from all the pressure and now I can’t do what I used to do. The pointlessness of everything is glaring back at me more than ever. I get home and look around and think, “What now?” I don’t care if I have the job that people consider the lowest, I don’t care if all I do is work. They keep calling me in, or having me stay late, and not once have I protested. It’s better that I’m not here. It’s better that I’m not home. I tire of my daydreams of suicide.

I finally allowed myself to heal a little. Now there are pink lines instead of red, and some a deep purple, just everywhere, as though there was no rhyme or reason to it, only a sick kind of desperation. But I admit that I am throwing tantrums more often than ever. Tossing things into the wall (particularly in the freezer where I can’t be heard), or randomly sobbing when something doesn’t go my way. No one has witnessed any of it, thankfully. The crying is almost comical; it is literally over the stupidest most mundane of things. I want to laugh at myself, at how pathetic it is. Can’t live at all, can you? Can’t take it when something is broken, or the food you want isn’t there, or you can’t sleep? What a waste it is for me to even breathe sometimes, such a snivelling, stupid thing. You know why I won’t work the registers? I’m afraid I’ll fuck up the math. I’m sure counting coins would be too much for me. I’m just that stupid. Don’t even give me that responsibility; I’m sure I can’t handle it. My register would probably be off by twenty dollars.

What does it matter, really? It was all over before it began.

All I think when I am awake is ‘I should be sleeping’. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong anymore. I’ve done what I was expected, but found nothing in any of it. I’ve worsened. I haven’t even tried to go for walks. I always go every day during the fall, but not this year. Winter is already setting in, and the sky is black long before its time because there are always heavy grey clouds layered over the blue, blocking out the few straining rays of sunset.

It’s a bleak transition from night and day, one that I have come to like because it feels like less time is spent waiting for night to come. Just the same, the days feel far to long. Time crawls by, and I find myself doing nothing more and more often. It seems like I lie in bed perpetually while I’m home, only getting up to eat. Sleep doesn’t come easily like it used to, and instead of losing myself in it I just stay motionless for literally hours on end, staring up at the ceiling.

There must be better than this, but in this mood I will not find it. I could be dropped into the world of paradise and I would still find a dark, forgotten corner to hole myself up inside until the brightness leaves the sky. It’s a crazy way to be. It makes me feel inhuman. I’m like some animal, only awakened by the most basic of things. Leave the higher thought to the others, I say, I will not be bothered with it. I don’t care what this is or why, I only want to fall away from it. I want it to be gone from me like a demon banished so that maybe this won’t feel so much like a hell.

Another memory. I think it’s true, the whole ’stranger than fiction’ saying. 

When I was six or seven I used to bathe in the creek at my friend’s house. There were parts of it that were so deep I could stand in it with water to my waist. The water was calm in most places, and clean—melted snow runoff from the distant mountains. It grew into whitewater further down, but that far I wasn’t allowed to go. It was the first place I learned to spend time alone. I’d have a fight with someone back at the house, and I’d go there, out to that creek. The slippery rocks gave me my first scar. That’s how I know it was real.

One of her older sisters has a friend living with them. On the edge of the property are several campers and trucks, most of which don’t run. There’s a truck with a shell that they frequent. The sister steals cigarettes from her mother’s stash. Eventually her mom begins to lock her car. Money keeps disappearing. They are beginning to blame the friend, but I know better. She and the sister are fighting more and more often, but they still disappear for hours at a time.

Their room is filled with incense. It stinks too much for my sensitive nose, so I tend to avoid going in. It’s poster-covered room with a spiral drawn in black sharpy on the ceiling. I’m too young to know that the incense is to cover the smell of pot. I just look at all the Metallica posters every time I walk in. Sometimes I look up at that spiral, even though it makes my vision fill with dots.

The sister usually won’t let us in, but occasionally she does when she wants to have what she must consider a heart-to-heart. This consists of her asking us in several different ways if we think she is fat.  

I stay for days in a row sometimes. Some nights I see shadows across the lawn in the yellow moonlight. One night I hear sounds and walk through the dark to that door. There’s light beneath it. I hear voices. My friend is beside me, and after a bit of arguing, we finally open the door. I catch a glimpse of a teenage boy hurrying out the sliding glass door. The sister laughs and says, “shhh! Don’t tell mom!”

Some nights she sneaks him in. We don’t say anything. Apparently that makes us cool. We play Supermario until three in the morning. Some days we get up the next day and go to school. 

I’m sitting at the table, eating dinner. It’s hamburgers and hotdogs, a staple for the family. My friend is hardly eating. I tell her that I’m going to go get more, and she shakes her head. “I’m too fat. I have to go on a diet.” She’s six. By 14 she’s probably bulimic or anorexic, but I’m not friends with her then. I just see her, collar bones sticking out. I’m later told that eventually she looked like nothing but a skeleton. It happens.

It’s a few years later and I’m out on the trampoline at another friend’s house.  I’m probably 8 or 9. My friend from before is there too. They keep leaving me behind and whispering every time they see me, so I can’t really figure out why I was invited. They’re comparing weights and get angry when I’m the lowest. Suddenly they don’t want to talk to me.

It gets worse and worse. They come over to my house and won’t play with me. My mom gets angry and sends them home. At school they start spreading rumors and making fun of me. They tell everyone horrible, embarrassing things about me. People don’t want to talk to me anymore. They’ve made up lies about my mom, who often comes to the school to help the teachers. Everyone is saying things. 

One day I go back to her house. It’s after things have cooled down a little. My friend isn’t home, but her mother is. I say I’m going to go to the creek. She suggests I go swimming in the pool instead. So I do. She shows up, with that Mrs. Robinson smile of hers and stands in the water watching me, wearing some stupid bikini. She doesn’t swim, she only stands there, talking to me quietly like she does sometimes, like this fucking adder waiting to strike. And I’m 9 and don’t know how to handle her. And then she’s saying things about my mom and I’m getting angry, and I say I want out, so I leave. Leave the adder in her pond to wallow. I want her dead. It’s the first time I really want it, but I want to see her hang. I want to see her bleeding in pain, misery, dying. But she’s not dying. I’m sure she’ll live forever. The assholes always live forever.

I get new friends and it starts all over again.

The changes in mood are killing me. I can even feel it in my body now, this deep ache of exhaustion. When you are away, working, it’s easy to get lost in thought, it’s easy to forget everything but never-ending line of meaningless tasks. I’ve been less low lately. Not well, but at a spot that was almost bearable. Then I wake up yesterday and that feeling of pointlessness was stronger than ever. This numb state of mind and body has overtaken me once again, to the extent that I feel automated. I feel…as though I am not really alive. And why must it be this way? Why does it shift so rapidly? Why, if it is just hormonal, can I not bring myself to change anything?

I’m falling faster and faster, down into the black, all my senses fading–literally. I get so bad at times that food has almost no taste, warm doesn’t feel so warm, and pain is a dull, pointless thing that barely touches me. I don’t understand the purpose of this, I don’t understand what it is that I am asking myself to see. That it can be worse? That I am nothing? That even the smallest of pleasures can be taken away?

Numbness is beyond pain, and somehow it hurts more than anything.  I can’t be emotional. I will die that way, I see that. My worst moments were lived when the numbness was gone and there was nothing but a raw wound. I can’t bear it. I can’t feel. I am so used to being without it, that to experience it is overwhelming.

They say that each day survived is one that makes you stronger. But why is it then that I only find my resolve growing weaker, my mind struggling less and less to evade these thoughts? Am I obsessed with it? Have I become so enamored with an idea that I have allowed it control over my life? The answer I get is probably. I am lazy, I am weak and stupid, and I don’t want to try. What better a way to end that misery than to simply…stop it from existing?

I am sick of apologizing for my selfishness. I am tired of my own inaction. Everything about me is so horrid that I can’t bear it sometimes. I feel smothered by my own self hatred, and even locking myself away in this darkened room isn’t enough to ease it. It just keeps getting worse and worse, to the point where I find myself laying in bed, willing myself to call into work and tell them that I am through. I can’t do it. I can’t do anything, because I can’t stand to be myself, and I am too set in my ways to ever change.  

Every morning I have this fight with myself, and every morning the numbness is all that convinces me to get up. I don’t know what else to do, and sometimes I know I don’t have it in me to finish this. All it takes is a single bullet and one simple squeeze on a trigger, right below the chin. Kaboom, and there is nothing to fret over. There is no job, there are no problems, there is no pointlessness. There is nothing. And most importantly there is no life. And is that so terrible? Do I honestly believe that I make a shit bit of difference anywhere, to anyone? I am not an integral part of anything; I hold nothing together. I have always been something clinging to the fringes of existence, too small and insignificant to ever hold sway.

 And I don’t feel sorry for myself; it was all my own doing. I wanted obscurity and here it is. I would have been out of here a long time ago without it. I am grateful because I know that the day I die I will have accomplished and meant nothing, just like everything else, and at least my one redeemable quality was that I was not stupid enough to deny and fight it.  That will have to be enough. It must be enough.

It is all that we can ever expect.

I will attempt to write these sorts of posts occasionally. It will be a story about something that happened in my life. I feel like changing it up and talking about something different here and there will probably be good for me. I am so buried in all of this; I need air occasionally.

I must be about 10 or 11, but I recall the memory better than most current ones.

I’m at a friend’s house. We’re in the backyard playing with her brothers, as usual. We invent new games frequently, trying to keep ourselves busy during the hot California summers. Their lawn covers most of their property, and we are running around on it or gathered around their oversized trampoline. I remember this patch of clovers used to grow in the circle of shade beneath it, and there we’d lay down on our stomachs concentrated on that spot, searching for four-leaf clovers. 

But this day is different. We’re more restless than usual. I think I woke at dawn to watch the pink on the horizon through the lacy curtains of my friend’s bedroom window. For some reason, though I have always disliked mornings, my body always awakened me at dawn there. You could see a sunrise like no other from their porch, and I hate to miss it.

We pack a bunch of things, mostly junkfood. We’ve called round to several of the neighboring kids. A few of the friends of her brothers who had also spent the night as I had, come as well, and somehow we end up with a fair-sized group. We all go to the same school, so there are no strangers, even if we are mere acquaintances. We start up the gravel road, trying to decide who else we should bring with us.

It’s hot, I remember. There are no clouds in the sky, just that cornflower blue of a perfect day. We’re all wearing shorts and t-shirts and sweating nonetheless. Up the hill we walk, clustered together as though afraid to get separated from the herd.

It’s the dead of summer, so when we get to the pond it’s a dried, cracked bed of dirt, where even the weeds are struggling to grow. It’s like one of those old western moves where the ground is so dry it appears to have patterns. We are all laughing, recalling the Titanic incident, wherein the oldest brother built a toy model of the Titanic that he had gotten for Christmas then sunk in the pond one winter. One of the other boys dived in for a snake on one long-ago occasion, swimming in the murky, green water to snatch it up as it wriggled across the surface. He’d ended up soaked, and had walked back to the house dripping wet and grinning, carrying the garden snake for us to look at.

But it’s all gone now. There’s nothing to see here. We drink some water and start walking again. Cars pass every once in awhile, leaving us in a cloud of dust. It’s not as annoying as it should be. We are too excited to care, hurrying along up the winding path of gravel, toward the top of the sagebrush-covered mountain. We avoid the dogs, all of which snarl menacingly as we pass, or bark erratically from porches.

We’ve never gone this far before. There’s an abandoned trailer off the side of the road, squared, old. It has broad windows in the front that glare at us in the heavy sunlight. We’re all becoming ever the more drenched in sticky sweat. It makes me think of taking a dip in the swimming pool when we return to the house.

The boys are talking excitedly. The girls are off to the side, though my friend is wandering closer. I’m trying to talk them out of it. I make some weak protests, but they aren’t paying much attention, laughing at what they see as cowardice. And maybe it is.

 The first rock is thrown. Glass shatters. A hole is made, surrounded by an intricate spiderweb of cracked glass. Now it has begun, with that one action. All the boys are leaning down, grabbing rocks between already dirty fingers. It’s loud, the breaking sound. I cringe a little, wondering briefly whose house it is. I’m walking away from them, toward the edges of the group, still saying things to them, warning them of what could happen, telling them to stop. I’m not interested in getting caught, and instead of joining them, I keep moving further and further away, hoping they’ll grow bored with their game. But they are laughing and carrying on, trying to find a way inside.

Then there is a noise. A car maybe. I don’t recall what it was. Suddenly, fear seems to grip everyone. They’re wide-eyed. Someone is coming. We’ll get caught. One of the boys is the first to run, and it starts off a chain reaction. I won’t stay behind, so I follow.

We run, a group of kids frightened of consequences. Faster and faster, following the road. We’re shouting at one another, encouraging everyone to move as quickly as possible. It doesn’t take long. The fear hasn’t faded, but the energy has. The sun is leeching us of endurance and we’re slowing, whether we want to or not. The sprint turns into a jog, one that grows weaker and weaker until the group is nearly separated, the boys in the front, leading, the girls lagging behind. Finally we get to a walk, panting and looking back, afraid. 

Then we start laughing, probably in relief. And on we go. Somewhere along the way part of the group turns back, thinking we’ve gone too far. They’re complaining that it’s hot and too far to walk. For whatever reason, I refuse to go back, even though I’ll be the only girl left. They try to coerce me into leaving with them, but with a few words from her brothers, I shake my head, watching them leave. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. We have gone really far and we’ll probably get into trouble. But I want to see what is at the top, and that desire is enough to outweigh any worries I have about getting reprimanded. I know the girls will be mad at me later, but I don’t care.

It takes a fair amount of time to reach the top of the mountain. It’s littered with huge boulders that we have to climb over, but we’re getting more enthusiastic, running over the clear spots. Now we’re going downward, through a cluster of bushes. Finally we climb over one of the biggest rocks yet, and there it is: the view.

We’re high enough above the brush that we can see all the way down the mountain. Our town is situated in a valley inside of it, and a the city lies far beneath it somewhere. We can see the lone road that cuts through the hills, the one everyone uses to get to the city, to ‘civilization’. I’ve never seen anything like it. The hills in the distance are just visible, green and rolling, and I feel like a bird watching the dot of a car descend the steep mountain. There’s a cooling breeze up this high, and I am thankful for it. I can feel the heat on my face, the sweat beneath my hair.

One of the boys is digging through a backpack, fishing out some fruit rollups that we distribute amongst the last of members. There’s a bit of talk about the others who left, but it dies out quickly. We stay for a long time, just talking. I remember wishing I had a camera.

I know that I won’t regret it, even if I do get in trouble. I have a lot to brag about when I finally meet up with the other girls at the house, all of which aren’t too thrilled to see me. I’m too happy to really mind.

A few years ago I spoke with the oldest of her brothers. He said to me, “Do you remember that time…”

All I said was, “of course I remember.”